An Israel-born former actress called Wednesday for the FBI to investigate funding that pro-Palestinian organizations may be receiving from terror groups.
Noa Tishby, who served last year as Israel’s first-ever special envoy for combating antisemitism, told the House Ways and Means Committee that federal and state law enforcement should “immediately” look into the sources of support for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
“With the amount of evidence linking SJP and AMP members with support and financing of terrorist groups, including Hamas, these organizations and networks should be investigated by state police and the FBI,” Tishby told members led by committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).
“The terrorists … currently hold over 200 Israeli, Americans and other countries’ citizens hostage. The time for criminal investigation is right now,” she added.
Israel-born former actress Noa Tishby is calling for the FBI to probe funding that US college student groups may be receiving from terrorists. Alon Shafransky
Panel members agreed during the hearing to send bipartisan letters to the FBI and IRS requesting an investigation into the funding — a move that Tishby later told The Post in an interview was “long overdue.”
“This explosion of anti-Jewish hatred that is happening in America right now did not come out of nowhere,” Tishby said. “We knew this was festering and brewing underneath the surface.”
“Every single one of us on this panel knew exactly what was going on — on campuses — but it’s been hidden from the majority of Americans,” she added.
Tishby also said that university campuses would not only have to reckon with antisemitic rhetoric but also denials of the horrors perpetrated by Hamas.
“The Jewish community had to prove to the world … that the Holocaust happened,” she continued. “There was a massacre against Jews on Oct. 7. And since then, we’re hearing calls for more massacre and we’re trying to convince people that the massacre actually happened — when it’s the perpetrators of that massacre that have videotaped themselves.”
Those refusals can be plainly seen, Tishby noted, in many videos that have surfaced online of college students caught tearing down posters of Israeli hostages taken by the terror group back to the Gaza Strip.
“They have been brainwashed to think that Israel’s actually committing a genocide, so they’re gloating and happy for the ‘good’ that they’re doing,” she said. “It’s just shocking and heartbreaking.”
AMP, which was founded by University of California at Berkeley professor Hatem Al Bazian, currently harbors employees and fundraisers who formerly worked for defunct organizations that gave more than $12 million to Hamas, according to former Treasury Department terrorism finance analyst Jonathan Schanzer.
Now a senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Schanzer said that while working at the Treasury, he and his colleagues had “disrupted several Hamas charities” operating in the US.
“The case against these groups, which provided financial and material support to Hamas is by now well known,” he added. “More than a half-dozen individuals who previously worked for those Hamas charities now run American Muslims for Palestine.”
“There is sufficient evidence linking SJP and AMP members with support and financing of terrorist groups including Hamas, that both state police and the FBI should investigate them immediately,” Tishby said. APSchanzer had previously testified before the House Homeland Security Committee in 2016 that the organizations — the Holy Land Foundation, KindHearts, and the Islamic Association for Palestine — had sanctions and prison sentences imposed on their leaders after the terror financing was revealed.
At the same time, he added, AMP has been lobbying “Squad” Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), as well as Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and Andre Carson of Indiana.
SJP further “receives funding and guidance and support from AMP,” according to Schanzer.
Pascrell, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, dismissed Schanzer’s assessment of AMP’s influence as “total rubbish,” but did not direct any questions at the witness.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also noted SJP’s pro-Hamas messaging and promotion of violence against Israelis in the wake of the brutal Oct. 7 surprise attack that killed more than 1,200 people — including 33 Americans.
“We cannot any longer give free passes to supporters of organizations committed to global Jihad that currently hold over 200 Israeli, American, and other dozens of other nationals hostage in Gaza,” Tishby said. APSJP issued a memo hours after the attack that justified the killings as “resistance” and urged its university chapters to express “solidarity.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered his state’s university system last month to ban the radical pro-Palestinian student group from campuses over their “harmful support for terrorist groups.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares launched a probe into AMP Oct. 31, saying the organization was unregistered and “may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”
Tishby, who is the best-selling author of the 2021 book “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth,” denounced SJP in her remarks as “a hate group.” Kleponis Chris/CNP/ABACA/ShutterstockOther SJP chapters have either had their official status revoked for holding unauthorized rallies — and for displaying antisemitic messages — as at Columbia University and George Washington University, respectively.
Students at Cornell University have also called for their administration to take disciplinary action against a professor who called the terror attack “exhilarating” at an SJP rally.
Cornell University student Talia Dror also testified before the House committee about a professor on her campus calling the terror attack “exhilarating” during an SJP rally and Jewish students receiving death threats.
“Jewish students on campus received threats that said, ‘If I see another Jew on campus, I will stab you and slit your throat. If I see another pig, female Jew, I will drag you away, rape you and throw you off a cliff,’” Dror testified.
The professor, Russell Rickford, later apologized and took a leave of absence. Patrick Dai, a junior at Cornell, was arrested and charged on Oct. 31 for making death threats.
The Anti-Defamation League has also noted SJP’s pro-Hamas messaging and promotion of violence against Israelis in the wake of Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 surprise attack that killed 1,200. REUTERSTishby, who is the best-selling author of the 2021 book “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth,” denounced SJP in her remarks as “a hate group” that is “grooming American college students — grooming your children — to hate Israel, to hate America and to hate Jews.”
“SJP hijacks any campus that it operates, and they use that word deliberately, after all, this organization that puts the Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled on its T-shirts,” she said.
“Every college in this country should ban SJP and never let them back. We wouldn’t fund KKK chapters in our colleges,” Tishby also said. “And if universities fail to remove SJP off of campus, if they continue to protect and fund the ringleaders of an antisemitic mob, then this committee should withdraw funding for them.”
“We would not allow the Mafia to teach business on campus. We should not allow terrorist supporters to teach political activism to our children,” she added.
Tishby also agreed with Schanzer that members of Congress “should never be funded from the same pot as murderous terrorists” — and blasted Tlaib following her censure by the House for repeating the phrase “from the river to the sea” on her social media account, which is a call for the eradication of Israel.
“I don’t understand how Representative Rashida Tlaib says that this is a call for freedom,” Tishby said. “I don’t understand how you can understand that line, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ in any other way other than cleaning the Jews out of this land.”
“They say resistance by all means possible, even after October 7,” she added. “So that means resistance by beheading babies and raping women and girls — because that’s what they say.”
Tishby has joined with Israeli “Wonder Woman” actress Gal Gadot to bring attention to the horrors that Hamas carried out, including by screening footage of the atrocities at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles last week.
“I’m not saying that Israel doesn’t have political issues every country does,” Tishby also told The Post, noting that she had been dismissed from her role as special envoy for having disagreed with a judicial overhaul effort put forth by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
“I knew it might cost me my position. And it did. And I was okay with that because Israel is a democracy,” Tishby said. “I might not agree with the Israeli government on every policy, but I certainly don’t want Israel to cease to exist.”
“I’m the perfect embodiment of how you can criticize some laws that the Israeli government is proposing while still being a staunch Zionist,” she added, “and understand the safety and security of the state of Israel is important for the safety and security for the entire Western civilization.”






