Americans injured in terrorist attacks in Israel and relatives of people killed in those attacks can go forward with a class-action lawsuit against the Palestine Liberation Organization, a judge ruled yesterday.
Manhattan federal Judge George Daniels found that US law allows the victims to pursue their $3 billion case in federal court, rejecting arguments by the PLO that it is protected by sovereign immunity and that the violent incidents were acts of war.
The suit details seven deadly attacks on innocent passersby, including two shootings and five bombings on public streets, a passenger-filled bus and a university cafeteria between 2001 and 2004 in and around Jerusalem.
The depraved attacks killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more, many of them American citizens, according to court papers.
Relatives of Janis Ruth Coulter, a Brooklyn resident who died when a terrorist’s bomb destroyed the Hebrew University cafeteria July 31, 2002, are among those seeking to hold the PLO responsible for the bloodshed.
Also suing are a 28-year-old Brooklyn man who was shot when a terrorist unloaded a machine gun into a crowded plaza Jan. 22, 2002, and four members of a Long Island family who were injured when a bomb went off on the same street five days later.
Lawyers for the PLO unsuccessfully argued that the lawsuit rightfully belonged in Israel.
But Daniels noted that the US government does not recognize Palestine as a state and found that the incidents of violence were not acts of war but terror strikes aimed at innocent people.
The attacks “were purportedly carried out at locations where noncombatant citizens would be known to congregate,” Daniels wrote. “The use of bombs under such circumstances is indicative of an intent to cause far-reaching devastation upon the masses.”
“Such claimed violent attacks upon noncombatant civilians, who were allegedly simply going about their everyday lives, do not constitute acts of war,” Daniels said, citing the Antiterrorism Act of 1991, which allows the case to go forward in New York.
The lawsuit claims the PLO has plotted and carried out the attacks, specifically targeting civilians.