The anti-Israel group National Students for Justice in Palestine is “broke,” its attorney told a judge on Friday.
Jonathan Wallace is representing the group in Matthew Weinberg v. National Students for Justice in Palestine, in which Weinberg, Rabbi Dovid Gurevich, Nir Hoftman and Eli Tsives sued the group, its leaders and associated groups, including Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network and WESPAC Foundation, in April 2025 for alleged antisemitism and assaults.
Those attacks occurred, allegedly, at the anti-Israel encampment on the University of California, Los Angeles campus between April 25 and May 2, 2024.
In a letter to A. Joel Richlin, a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, on Friday, Wallace wrote that he is “personally overwhelmed” by the amount of discovery in the case, noting that he is “inexperienced in federal discovery, especially at this large a scale.” (The letter listed the judge as part of the state’s northern district.)
“Requiring a broke organization and its harried solo attorney to be able to respond to whatever plaintiffs’ two law firms and law nonprofit can throw creates a truly Darwinian environment,” he wrote. “NSJP has no endowment, savings, nest egg or other financial resources.”
According to NGO Monitor, Students for Justice in Palestine branches on university campuses are not registered nonprofit organizations and thus not subject to financial disclosure laws. WESPAC Foundation, which is also a defendant, is a fiscal sponsor, according to Wallace.
Multiple universities have suspended SJP chapters due to violations of campus policies. Recently, Missouri opened an investigation into the group, alleging that it may be misleading donors and sending funds to terror groups.
“NSJP has not been sued seven times because it is a Marvel super-villain reaching out nationally to harm innocent people everywhere, though that is what the plaintiffs in this case assert,” Wallace told the judge.
“It is a group of American students in their 20s, who passionately use their First Amendment rights to advocate for the Palestinian people and against the Israeli nation-state, and it is being targeted everywhere for that reason,” the attorney wrote.
He claimed that he has found “no evidence of antisemitism” or that NSJP controls local chapters or had “direct involvement” at UCLA.
According to the complaint, Hoftman was “assaulted and robbed by members of the encampment’s ‘security’ team,” Gurevich was “assaulted and subjected to death threats,” Weinberg was “denied access to the ‘occupied’ parts” of the quad on campus and Tsives was “denied access to his ordinary route to class.”
Wallace asked the judge to limit subpoenas and proposed search terms for discovery. “In summary, I am drowning here,” he wrote.
In response, the plaintiffs told the court that NSJP has “not made a good-faith effort” to comply with the court and asked that the judge “not allow them to continue to evade these obligations.”
