A U.S.-based charity hosted an event Wednesday to proclaim the innocence of a Palestinian criminal recently freed through an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal — alongside a terror-linked advocacy group.
A webinar with tax-exempt nonprofit Eyewitness Palestine featured Hussam Al-Zaanin, who was sentenced to 17 years in Israel prison over links to terrorism, and a speaker with the West Bank-based group Addameer. Eyewitness Palestine hosted them for over an hour and a half as they told their audience they are victims of Israeli smears without evidence.
Al-Zaanin is tied to the terrorist organization Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, with the group’s website calling him a captive “hero” while he was in prison. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade reportedly assisted Hamas’s most recent war on Israel that began with the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Eyewitness Palestine bills itself as an organization promoting “peace with justice” that brings “delegations” to the Middle East to educate people on “the realities Palestinians live with.”
“Just as President [Donald] Trump withdrew federal funding from Columbia University for supporting anti-Semitic behavior, all tax-exempt benefits should be revoked from any group that supports terrorist organizations,” Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York told the Daily Caller News Foundation in response to an announcement of the event. Tenney sponsored a bipartisan bill, passed to the Senate, that allows the IRS to strip the tax-exempt statuses of “terrorist supporting organizations.”
The charity did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF about hosting Al-Zaanin.
The Center for Monitoring Security Threats, a research group, confirmed to the DCNF that Al-Zaanin was convicted of “membership in an unrecognized organization,” “contact with a hostile organization,” “military training,” attempted murder and other crimes, citing records it translated from the Israeli Ministry of Justice. He was freed in a Jan. 25 exchange of prisoners and hostages between Israel and Hamas.
Eyewitness Palestine Executive Director Nancy Mansour introduced Al-Zaanin as a “political prisoner,” alleging that Israeli forces killed his brother before arresting him. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade previously hailed his brother as a “martyr” and posted a picture of him armed with guns and a green uniform.
No speaker explicitly endorsed terrorists at the event, but claimed that accusations against Al-Zaanin are an Israeli conspiracy. Eyewitness Palestine’s advertisement for the webinar falsely stated Al-Zaanin was imprisoned “for more than a decade without charges.”
Al-Zaanin claimed throughout his talk that Israeli officials coerced him into confessing to crimes he did not commit and tortured him in prison, according to a translator putting his words into English for the audience. He said his arrest originally stemmed from an accusation that he shot someone, which he now denies.
The speaker after Al-Zaanin was an activist with Addameer, a group that provides legal support for “political prisoners” to fight Israeli criminal charges. Israel banned the group in 2021, declaring it a stand-in for the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) after determining that PFLP terror leaders were effectively running it. At one point, “the head” of the PFLP was the vice-chairperson of Addameer as it became a legal defense front for terrorists, Israeli authorities found.
The speaker, Jenna Abuhasna, pushed allegations of unlawful detention and torture in the Israeli justice system. She boasted that Israel raided Addameer’s offices “to instill fear in the organizations” standing for Palestinians and “this did not work.”
“People are asking how they can donate to Addameer,” Mansour said in the webinar, addressing Israeli sanctions. “I know that Israel has been attacking Addameer, so I don’t know how you guys are handling that, but … if you email us, we can connect you to folks at Addameer and figure that part out.”
Addameer did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Ryan Mauro, who studies extremism for Capital Research Center, told the DCNF the event comes dangerously close to breaking federal law against “material support” to terrorism, though there may not be legal precedent for prosecuting based on a speaking engagement.
“There is no guise of it being an academic exercise or part of an educational series featuring diverse views,” said Mauro, who has advised government agencies on counterterrorism. “Instead, it is endorsing [Al-Zaanin] as a credible source whose propaganda should be heard by the audience without pushback or words of caution.”
“Furthermore, the other speaker is from Addameer, a very thinly disguised front for the PFLP terrorist group and the Israeli government has designated it as a terrorist entity based partially on overwhelming publicly available proof,” Mauro said.
The researcher co-authored a paper in 2021 that documented Addameer’s influence in the U.S. via speaking engagements and lobbyists in Congress. The group’s members have appeared on college campuses from coast to coast and at the Washington, D.C. office of Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.
The pro-Israel legal group Lawfare Project told the DCNF that an event would have to cross the line into “propaganda services” such as “justifying acts of terrorism” or “sharing recruitment materials” to be illegal under current law.
“There is a distinction between independent advocacy (even if sympathetic to a terrorist cause), which is generally protected by the First Amendment, and advocacy that is coordinated with or benefits” a foreign terrorist organization, the law firm said.
Mauro said it’s still time for officials to take more action against “the pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic seditionist infrastructure” driving violent anti-Israel protests and other activities in America.
“Why the hell hasn’t a group like Addameer been designated [as a terrorist group] when it’s an obvious PFLP terrorist front?” he said. “There’s a pile of examples like that. Let’s stop wasting time.”
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