The Hind Rajab Foundation Is Lawfare — And Washington Must Treat It That Way

This week, Shurat HaDin filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice. We are asking Washington to open a national security investigation into the Hind Rajab Foundation — its officers, its funders, its affiliates — and to consider sanctions, FARA enforcement, immigration measures, and coordinated action across the FBI, State, Treasury, and OFAC.

This is not a symbolic filing. It is an operational request. And it is overdue.

What the Hind Rajab Foundation Actually Is

The Hind Rajab Foundation — HRF — presents itself as a grassroots human-rights group. It is not. It is a globe-spanning legal operation running multilingual filings across multiple jurisdictions, with investigative capacity, media reach, international travel, data-collection infrastructure, and coordinated criminal complaints against Israeli soldiers, reservists, veterans, and increasingly against Israeli-American dual nationals. That does not run on donations from a shoebox. That runs on money — and someone is writing the checks.

Our complaint asks the Justice Department to find out who. Whether HRF is coordinated with Hezbollah, Iran, the IRGC, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Houthis. Whether U.S. banks, payment platforms, law firms, and nonprofit intermediaries are moving the money. Whether HRF's chairman's publicly reported ties to Hezbollah trigger the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Whether the doxing of IDF soldiers on American soil crosses into cyberstalking, threats, conspiracy, and material support for terrorism.

Why This Reaches Americans

Then the American piece — and this is the point most Washington observers have missed.

HRF has already publicly pursued Israeli-American citizens. Dual nationals living in the United States. Reservists visiting family in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. The dossiers are being assembled here. The arrests are being sought abroad. American passports are being weaponized against Americans by a foreign-funded operation with alleged ties to designated terrorist organizations.

Today's target is an Israeli soldier. Tomorrow's target is a U.S. Marine who fought ISIS in Mosul. A Navy SEAL who took out a Houthi drone site in Yemen. A Green Beret who trained the Peshmerga. If a foreign-directed organization can build criminal cases against dual nationals in Berlin, Brussels, and Buenos Aires, no American servicemember is safe from the same playbook.

This Is Not Censorship

HRF and its defenders will call this censorship. It is not. Nobody is asking to shut down human-rights advocacy. Nobody is asking to prosecute criticism of Israel. The question is narrower and harder: is this organization a front? Is the money coming from designated terrorist entities? Are the operations directed by hostile foreign principals? Those are questions the Justice Department answers every day about every other suspected foreign influence operation on U.S. soil. HRF should get the same treatment — no more, no less.

The Tools Already Exist

The Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Anti-Terrorism Act. The material-support statutes — 18 U.S.C. §§ 2339A and 2339B. OFAC designations under Executive Order 13224. Immigration measures. Sanctions. The Justice Department has used every one of these against Iranian influence networks, Hezbollah financiers, and IRGC front groups from Michigan to Manhattan. There is no reason HRF should be the exception.

The Battlefield Has Moved

Iran and its proxies have learned that rockets get shot down and drones get intercepted — but a courtroom can hold a soldier in a foreign jail for months on a manufactured complaint. Lawfare is cheaper than munitions and harder to trace. That is why HRF exists. That is why the network is expanding. That is why the targets are shifting from Israelis abroad to Israeli-Americans at home.

The legal record is not self-retrieving. Neither is the record of who funds what. Both have to be built, filed, and pressed by people willing to do the work.

What the DOJ Must Do Now

The Department of Justice has the authority. It has the statutes. It has the interagency machinery. What it needs now is the political will to look at HRF the way it would look at any other suspected foreign influence operation with alleged ties to a designated terrorist organization.

Investigate. Follow the money. Apply the law. Protect American citizens — including the ones who also carry an Israeli passport.

The courtroom is the new front. America cannot cede it.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is the founder and president of Shurat HaDin Law Center, an Israeli legal rights organization that combats terrorism and antisemitism through litigation and legal advocacy. She is the author of Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters.