Hatem Bazian, founder of American Muslims for Palestine and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Photo: Screenshot

A circuit court judge in Richmond, VA, ruled on Friday that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a nonprofit which has sponsored a series of anti-Israel protests following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel, must provide financial information which the activist group has long guarded from government investigators.

Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has said that the organization possesses connections to terrorists and has submitted multiple filings to compel AMP to provide its donor list. He said his office “has a legal obligation to ensure that charitable organizations operating in Virginia are following the law” and vowed to “continue to enforce state law without exception or delay to protect Virginians.”

Judge Devika Davis’s decision represents the end of AMP’s efforts to legally delay Miyares’s investigation.

Labeling Miyares’s claims a “defamatory smear,” AMP lawyer Christina Jump said the “vague accusations that AMP has anything to do with Hamas or Oct. 7 just got thrown out completely by a federal court judge.” She referred to the dismissal last week of a Nevada lawsuit against the group.

A second suit in Illinois remains ongoing, arguing that AMP is a resurrection of the former organization Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which a judge found liable for $156 million due to its support for Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

Individuals formerly involved with IAP and now supporting AMP include AMP’s current executive director, Osama Abuirshaid; Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Rafeeq Jaber, a former president of IAP who speaks at AMP events; former AMP executive director Abdelbaset Hamayel, who worked for IAP as executive director and secretary general; Kifah Mustafa, who worked for IAP in Illinois; and Raeed Tayeh, a former IAP member.

The lawsuit charges that AMP includes “largely the same core leadership as IAP/AMS; it serves the same function and purpose; it holds nearly identical conventions and events with many of the same roster of speakers; it operates a similar ‘chapter’ structure in similar geographic locations; it continues to espouse Hamas’s ideology and political positions; and it continues to facilitate fundraising for groups that funnel money to Hamas.”

In 2015, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) first revealed the extensive cross-over between IAP and AMP.

In a speech while protesting at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Dec. 1, 2023, Abuirshaid denied the atrocities committed by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre: “Most of the civilians were killed by their own army … They killed their own civilians … There were no rapes, that’s what they told us. And they still lie to us, why?”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence during their Oct. 7 onslaught.

Abuirshaid has a history of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories such as the claim that Jews originated not in ancient Israel but among the Khazars.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes AMP as “at the core of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States” and notes that the group’s leadership “promotes antisemitic tropes and support for violence against Israel, such as praising Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack which marked the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Founded in 2006 by Hatem Bazian — a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and the group’s current national board chairman — the ADL says that “some AMP-sponsored anti-Israel rallies have featured flags of terrorist groups and the glorification of individual terrorists, such as Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida; speeches and posters that contained antisemitic conspiracy theories about Zionist control of the US government; and incidents of harassment towards Jewish people.”

Bazian has previously made comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, a claim which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism characterizes as antisemitic. In 2015, he wrote that Gaza was “an epistemic Warsaw Ghetto but only different Semites are locked up this time around” and that “the Europeans who fought Nazism with arms were labeled ‘terrorist’ by Hitler. Hamas is fighting against the occupation of Palestinian lands and is labeled ‘terrorist.’”

AMP works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), another anti-Israel activist group also cofounded by Bazian. Jump told the Daily Mail in an April 2024 statement that AMP provides between $500 and $2,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace and SJP in support of protest events.

According to NGO Monitor, an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, “SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. Each SJP chapter operates independently and is responsible for forming its own constitutions, finding funding sources, and organizing activities.”

The post US Judge Orders Anti-Israel Nonprofit American Muslims for Palestine to Reveal Funding Sources first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Pope Leo XIV holds an audience with representatives of the media in Paul VI hall at the Vatican, May 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV has emphasized his commitment to strengthening the Catholic Church’s “dialogue and cooperation” with the world’s Jewish communities in a letter to an American Jewish leader.

“Trusting in the assistance of the Almighty, I pledge to continue and strengthen the Church’s dialogue and cooperation with the Jewish people in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate,” the first US-born pope wrote in a letter to Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

The AJC posted the letter, which was dated May 8, on the social platform X late on Monday.

We are deeply moved that Pope Leo XIV, so early in his papacy, has reaffirmed his commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations.

In a letter to AJC’s Director of Interreligious Affairs, Rabbi Noam Marans, he pledged to continue to strengthen dialogue with the Jewish people in the… pic.twitter.com/YC1w9gNrYQ

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) May 12, 2025

The Nostra Aetate was a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated in 1965 by Pope Paul VI that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions.

Leo also appeared to invite Marans to his upcoming inauguration: “I am pleased to inform you that the solemn inauguration of my pontificate will be celebrated in Saint Peter’s Square on 18 May 2025.”

In response, AJC wrote in a statement that “we are deeply moved that Pope Leo XIV, so early in his papacy, has reaffirmed his commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations.”

The Jewish group added, “As we approach the 60th anniversary of this landmark declaration [Nostra Aetate], we look forward to working together to deepen understanding and cooperation.”

Leo was elected to become the next bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church last week following the death of Pope Francis in late April, becoming the first American to hold the position.

In his first Sunday blessing, Leo took time to comment on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. He called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas took during its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening in Gaza,” Leo said. “May a ceasefire immediately come into effect … Let humanitarian aid be given to the exhausted civilian population, and let all hostages be freed.”

Francis had become an increasingly vocal critic of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in the months before his death.

During his pontificate, Francis strongly condemned antisemitism and promoted interfaith dialogue between Jewish and Catholic communities. However, he also drew the ire of pro-Israel supporters and Jewish leaders, including the chief rabbi of Rome, for his sharp words against the Jewish state.

Israeli officials and Jewish groups offered congratulations last week following the election of Leo.

The post Newly Elected Pope Leo XIV Calls to ‘Continue and Strengthen’ Dialogue With Jewish Community first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A person holds Nazi-related material that was originally confiscated by local authorities when it was shipped to Argentina in 1941, after several boxes containing the material were recently discovered by chance in the archives of the Supreme Court of Argentina, in Buenos Aires, Argentina in this handout picture released on May 11, 2025. Photo: Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Republica Argentina/Handout via REUTERS

Argentine Supreme Court officials have uncovered hundreds of long-forgotten Nazi documents, membership cards, and propaganda materials in the court’s archives, potentially revealing crucial information about the Nazis’ global financial networks and activities outside Germany during World War II.

On Monday, the judicial body revealed that court staff had discovered these documents during the relocation of materials for the upcoming Supreme Court museum, 84 years after they were first confiscated.

According to a press release, the documents were shipped to Argentina in 1941 from the German embassy in Tokyo and seized by local authorities upon the discovery of their contents, but they remained forgotten in the Supreme Court basement until their recent uncovering.

“When opening one of those boxes, we identified material destined to consolidate and spread Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina, when WWII was in full swing,” the release said.

Inside wooden crates in the court’s basement, authorities found documents, photographs, postcards, propaganda materials, and thousands of notebooks connected to the Nazi Party’s overseas organization and the German Trade Union Confederation.

Photos show the boxes filled with notebooks bearing swastikas on their covers, along with data cards that appear to hold personal information and Argentine addresses.

Argentine Supreme Court Minister Horacio Rosatti requested that the boxes be preserved and moved to a more secure office within the building, with “intensified security measures.”

Present at the opening of the boxes were Rosatti, representatives from the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center and the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, as well as conservation specialist María de la Paz Podestá — who will oversee the preservation and rehabilitation of all the documents.

“The goal is to carry out a detailed analysis to determine if the material has crucial information about the Holocaust […] and whether the clues found in them can throw light on issues that remain unknown, such as the Nazi money route at a global level,” the press release said.

Local authorities check Nazi-related documents that were recently discovered in the country’s Supreme Court basement. Photo: Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Republica Argentina/Handout via REUTERS

According to the Supreme Court’s historical reconstruction, the German embassy in Tokyo shipped 83 boxes to Argentina on June 20, 1941. At the time, the German embassy in Buenos Aires claimed those boxes contained personal belongings of diplomats and requested they be allowed entry without inspection.

However, the Argentine customs office asked then-Foreign Minister Enrique Ruiz Guiñazú to intervene, expressing concerns about the potential nature of the documents, which could have compromised Argentina’s neutrality during World War II.

After discovering the contents of such documents, local authorities denied the German diplomats’ request for the boxes to be handed over so they could be sent back to Tokyo. They cited the presence of “antidemocratic propaganda” and noted that the German embassy had previously lied to smuggle a radiotelegraph transmitter as diplomatic mail.

In September 1941, a federal judge ordered the material to be seized and sent to the Supreme Court, where it was stored in an underground basement and remained forgotten until now.

Employees handle a box with Nazi-related material that was among several boxes originally confiscated by local authorities when they were shipped to Argentina in 1941. Photo: Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Republica Argentina/Handout via REUTERS

Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America, but the country was also a prime destination for many high-ranking Nazi officials who fled Germany after the fall of the Nazi regime during World War II.

Last month, the Argentine government released nearly 2,000 previously classified secret service documents detailing the arrival of hundreds of Nazi war criminals who escaped to the country.

According to these documents, it is estimated that more than 10,000 Nazis used so-called “ratlines” to flee Germany as the Axis powers collapsed, with around half of them believed to have sought refuge in Argentina — known for its reluctance to grant extradition requests.

The documents shed light on the activities of prominent Nazi war criminals who fled to the Latin American country, including Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann and the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele.

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