U.S. court order against Palestinians could lead to Cdn. asset seizure

Aaron Blumenfeld

Only a few days before a U.S. court awarded the victims of Palestinian terrorism $655.5 million in damages (all figures US), Fatah, the main component of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), continued to glorify terrorist attacks that claimed dozens of innocent lives.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported that Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, praised as “heroes” Japanese terrorists who killed 24 in an attack on an Israeli airport in 1972.

Palestinian terrorists who killed eight in an attack on the Hotel Savoy in 1975 were called “heroic self-sacrificing fighters” and a terrorist who planned the 1972 Olympics massacre was dubbed “the Martyr Commander, the Red Prince.”

In assigning liability against the PLO and the PA, a jury in Federal District Court in New York dismissed suggestions that the organizations were not linked to six terrorist attacks in Israel from 2002 to 2004 in which Americans were killed. And while the subsequent glorification of terrorist attacks did not prove a liability, payroll records and other documentation did. Evidence submitted in court, some of it provided by PMW, showed that killers were on the PA payroll, that the PA paid the salaries of terrorists in Israeli prisons and made payments to the families of suicide bombers.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, which included the family of former Toronto native Yechezkel (Chezi) Goldberg, said if the PA and the PLO did not pay the judgment, they would begin the process of seizing PA assets to satisfy the judgment. That could include assets in Canada, said lawyer Aaron Blumenfeld.

The U.S. court decision is  “precedent setting. It’s huge,” said Blumenfeld, a member of the Canadian Coalition Against Terror (CCAT), an advocacy group.

“The main thing is imposing responsibility on the PA. That’s been done before. This case is bigger and it involves many more people and events. It shows them for what they are,” he said.

Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said the court decision shows that victims “are able to avail themselves of the courts to assign at least partial responsibility to those entities. It is an important decision and could have large implications going forward.”

Fogel said the decision “obliges [the two Palestinian entities] to consider the issue in terms of their own responsibility. That’s an important image for Canadians to assimilate.”

The decision supports the position that it’s not just the perpetrators of terrorism who are culpable, but also those who support and finance it, he said, adding that the award could be taken from large sums that the American government transfers to the PA every year.

Blumenfeld said the decision hits the terrorists where it hurts – their pocketbooks. The PLO and the PA make huge investments abroad and these are now subject to seizure to satisfy the judgment, he said.

The United States and other western democracies remain the heartbeat of the world’s financial system and the PLO and the PA may have to look elsewhere to get a return on their money, he said.

Blumenfeld noted that the case circumvented the political echelon entirely.

“The courts can force the responsible parties to pay for their wrongdoing, even when the [U.S.] State Department says no, we want Israel to make peace with these people,” he said.

Last week’s decision wasn’t the first finding against the two groups in a terrorism case. In two other cases, default judgments were registered for more than $100 million, but  the organizations reached confidential settlements.

Other court decisions found the government of Iran responsible for terrorist attacks. One such ruling led to the seizure of a building in Manhattan worth $500 million. In addition, a wire transfer of more than $1 billion that went through Wall Street was intercepted and frozen, Blumenfeld said.

PA assets in Canada are liable to be seized to pay the judgment, he added.

One of the plaintiffs was the family of Goldberg, a 41-year-old father of seven who was killed in a Jerusalem bus bombing in 2004. His widow, Karen, a native of Brooklyn, testified about the effect of her husband’s death on their children. They suffered from depression, anger issues and trouble in school, the New York Times reported.

Their youngest child did not speak until he was three. The first words he uttered were, “Did someone kill my father?” the New York Times reported.

The suicide bomber in that attack was a PA police officer from Bethlehem. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a wing of Fatah, Blumenfeld said.

Victims can also launch their own cases in Canada under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, said Blumenfeld, who lobbied for passage of the act as a member of Canadian Coalition Against Terror.