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Israeli Legal Eagle Gets Her Talons into Terrorist Groups
(The Age-Australia) Barney Zwartz - Nitsana Darshan-Leitner says her Israel Law Center has collected $120 million for victims of terrorism, put liens on $600 million more, and won judgments for more than $1 billion against such groups as Hamas, Hizbullah, the governments of Iran and North Korea, and banks that service terrorists. ''We go after the funds of terrorist groups, taking away their oxygen. If you stop the flow of money you can stop the flow of terrorism,'' she says. Darshan-Leitner modeled her non-profit legal center on the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, which crippled white supremacist groups in the U.S. She has about 100 cases active at the moment and recently won a $378 million judgment against the government of North Korea for funding and supporting the terrorists who killed 26 people at Israel's Lod airport in 1972. A vital case was against the Arab Bank, begun in New York in 2004. The bank was paying rewards of up to $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, and she sued them on behalf of Israeli victims. ''Right after we filed the case the banks stopped transferring money to designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad."