Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, President of the Shurat HaDin international legal advocacy organization, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva, about her organization’s continued fight against Hamas in the courts and the banks.

“As the IDF is fighting Hamas, we in Shurat HaDin are trying to fight the financing of Hamas, the legitimization that Hamas has received worldwide, by filing lawsuits against those who support and finance Hamas. We filed a major lawsuit against the Palestine Authority that grants $1 billion a year to Hamas. We're filing lawsuits against the cryptocurrency companies, where Hamas raised funds from against the Qatari charities that fund the charities of Hamas in Gaza, the National Bank of Qatar that funds Hamas. All in order to crush Hamas financially. In addition, we find ourselves fighting on the global ‘hasbara’ front, mainly those who promote antisemitism and pro-Hamas protests on campuses in the US and elsewhere, so we just filed a lawsuit against Harvard University for the escalating antisemitism on their campus. We filed a lawsuit against Student for Justice in Palestine, an extreme pro-Hamas, pro-Muslim organization that burns the campuses and shifts their public opinion against Israel towards Hamas, in favor of Hamas. This war has to be done not necessarily by the Israeli government, whose hands are tied by civil organizations like Shurat HaDin,” she explains.

On the effects of money issues on an ideology-based terror organization, Darshan-Leitner says that, “It's not about the money that the terror victims will receive. During the two decades that Shurat HaDin is working, we were able to receive judgments for billions of dollars and collected some of them in favor of the terror victims and the terror victim received hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of these cases. But it's not about that. Money doesn't bring back life. But this money, when you take it away from the terrorist organizations, you actually block them from receiving more funds from their financial sources. If you put a lien on Iranian assets or you put a lien on a bank, this bank will not be able to wire money anymore to a terrorist organization or Iran will not be able to give this specific asset to terrorist organization. This is where the success is.”

Darshan-Leitner explains, “As a result of our cases, we change the international banking system to an extent that no bank agrees to open a bank account anymore for a designated organization. Hamas cannot have bank accounts anywhere, neither their heads nor their officials. No bank agrees to operate in terror zones, like South Lebanon or Gaza. Hezbollah and Hamas don't have international banking.”

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is also active in the challenge of telling Israel's story to the world: “Israel is fighting a war that I believe they never fought before. The delegitimization for the Israeli war is so wide and so wild that it's hard for us to continue the war and this is why we in Shurat HaDin were drafted to help the IDF win this war. At the end of the day, we have to buy as much time as possible for Israel, and we see that Israel is facing not only enemies Hamas or Iran or Hezbollah, it’s actually facing those organizations that are supposed to be objective, that are supposed to make peace, to solve the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, UNRWA. UNRWA was supposed to take care of the refugee problem, but we see that they just participated in the massacre, so we sue them in court, or the Red Cross that was supposed to take care of the rights of the prisoners on both sides; to visit our hostages, same as the demand to go and visit prisoners in Israel. Yet they failed to do so, so we are filing a lawsuit against them as well. The goal is really to bring up the light to those who don't help Israel and to bring them to fulfill their obligation.”