The Courtroom Is Israel's Newest Front — And We Are Winning It

On March 30, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated a $655.5 million judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority — one of the largest civil terrorism awards in American legal history, awarded to American families killed and wounded in Second Intifada attacks between 2002 and 2004. The judgment had been thrown out on jurisdictional grounds in 2016. It took twenty-two years, one act of Congress, and a Supreme Court ruling to put it back on the books.

The path went through Fuld v. PLO, the Supreme Court case my organization litigated on behalf of the family of Ari Fuld, murdered in a 2018 stabbing attack outside a Gush Etzion shopping center. On June 20, 2025, the Court held 9–0 that the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act — passed by Congress in 2019 — is constitutional, and that American courts have jurisdiction to hear terror-financing claims against the PLO and PA. The Second Circuit's decision nine months later was the direct consequence.

This is what Israel's newest battlefield looks like. It is not a border. It is a docket.

Lawfare cuts both ways

For years, Israel's enemies have used the international legal system as a weapon. Arrest warrants at the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders. Boycott legislation in European capitals. Museum exhibits rebranding the founding of the Jewish state as ethnic cleansing. Universities passing motions that criminalize Israeli speakers before they arrive. This is called lawfare, and until recently Israel treated it as a nuisance rather than a threat.

It is a threat. On May 26, 2026, the Irish cabinet approved the Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill — the first EU member state to advance a settlement-goods import ban into legislation. Spain has already enacted one. Belgium and the Netherlands are drafting theirs. Ireland's total goods imports from Israel in 2024 were valued at €3.8 billion. The bill's stated target is €214,204 in direct settlement imports — a symbolic number that carries a very unsymbolic legal precedent for every Israeli exporter selling into Europe.

At the ICC, we have filed a war-crimes complaint against the Prime Minister of Spain over the alleged transfer of dual-use explosive components to Iran. We have opened complaints exposing corruption allegations surrounding the ICC's own leadership and the outside influence benefiting Hamas that has shaped the Office of the Prosecutor's docket. We are challenging the Canadian Museum for Human Rights over its "Nakba" exhibit and pressing Washington to add Ireland to the U.S. Treasury's boycott-country list if the goods ban becomes law.

We demanded criminal accountability from The New York Times over false allegations that Israeli soldiers committed systematic sexual violence — a modern blood libel published by a paper of record, and one that will echo inside the AI systems that now summarize the war to a global audience.

Each of these files is a small case in isolation. Together they are a doctrine: Israel's enemies do not get to run a one-sided legal war. Every filing against Israel now meets a counter-filing. Every institution that lends its name to the delegitimization campaign now has to account for what it published, what it exhibited, what it funded, and what it looked away from.

Why this is an economic story

The Israeli economy is not defended only by the shekel, the tech sector, or the Bank of Israel. It is defended in courtrooms in Washington, The Hague, Ottawa, Madrid, and Dublin — because every boycott law, every arrest warrant, every reputational strike lands eventually on an Israeli company's balance sheet.

The $655.5 million Sokolow judgment is a message to every state sponsor of terror that the American civil system will collect where criminal prosecution cannot reach. The 2019 PSJVTA made the payment of "martyr salaries" by the Palestinian Authority — an estimated $300 million per year in "pay-for-slay" transfers to convicted terrorists and their families — a jurisdictional trigger under U.S. law. The Palestinian Authority now faces a binary choice: end the pay-for-slay program or continue submitting to American courts. Both outcomes are wins.

Blocking a European boycott law is a message to every Israeli exporter that their government and their advocates will not let them absorb the cost of somebody else's foreign policy. Fighting the ICC on its own procedural ground is a message to every Israeli reservist that the country will not surrender its officers to a compromised tribunal. These are commercial outcomes, not only moral ones. The Israeli economy runs on the assumption that Israeli citizens, Israeli businesses, and Israeli officials can move, trade, and defend themselves without being criminalized in foreign jurisdictions. That assumption is under sustained attack. Defending it is the work.

The next generation

This year, more than one hundred and thirty young professionals joined the launch of our Young Professionals Network. Over thirty students graduated from our Israeli Internship Program after a year of law, geopolitics, and advocacy training alongside senior legal and public figures. Our Driver Security Program continues to train Israeli civilians in the practical skills that keep families alive on the country's roads.

None of this is glamorous. All of it is compounding. The next twenty-two years of this fight will not be led by the lawyers of my generation. They will be led by the lawyers, advocates, and executives now sitting in our programs. Israel's legal defense, like Israel's economy, requires bench depth.

The message from the Supreme Court

When the highest court in the United States rules 9–0 that American law reaches state sponsors of terror, and a federal appeals court then reinstates a $655.5 million judgment after a twenty-two-year fight, the message is not only for the Palestinian Authority. It is for Iran, for Hamas, for Hezbollah, for the international institutions that laundered their narrative, and for the corporations, foundations, and NGOs that funded the campaign against Israel while calling it human-rights work.

The message is this: the receipts are being collected. The dockets are open. The rulings are coming.

Israel's newest front is a courtroom. We are winning it.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is the founder and president of Shurat HaDin — Israel Law Center. She has spent more than two decades litigating against terror financiers, state sponsors of terrorism, and international institutions engaged in the legal targeting of Israel. She is a lawyer, an author, and a mother of six.