The president and founder of the legal team that fights against terrorist organizations and defends the rights of IDF soldiers in the International Criminal Court in The Hague will participate in a panel discussion concerning the fight against global antisemitism in The Jerusalem Post Annual New York Conference 2025.
At the height of the Second Intifada, attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner decided to change the rules of the game. When a wave of terrorism claimed hundreds of Israeli victims, Darshan-Leitner, as a young, energetic lawyer, began to fight the extremist groups herself with legal tools by cutting off their economic oxygen pipelines.
Since then, over two decades later, Shurat Hadin, the organization that she founded, has been operating from Tel Aviv in all legal arenas worldwide.
It is leading unprecedented legal struggles against terrorist organizations, states that support terrorism, financial institutions involved in funding terrorism, and anti-Israeli activity in the global arena.
Darshan-Leitner, a married mother of six from the Hashmonaim community, began her career working with the legendary Harpoon unit of the Mossad.
This unit was tasked with thwarting terrorism through economic warfare, working to eliminate terrorist organizations’ financial infrastructure.
The late spymaster Meir Dagan, who was the Mossad’s director at the time, recruited Darshan-Leitner for the mission.
Dagan told her, “If you want to defeat terrorism, go after the money.” Indeed, this advice has led to hundreds of lawsuits in Israel and worldwide against Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Qatar for financing and supporting terrorism.
This pursuit has even won precedent-setting rulings that have yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for victims of terrorism.
“Since the October 7 massacre, Israel has been facing many challenges, including dangers far from the military battlefield,” Darshan-Leitner said.
“The threat that had hovered over us for years in the International Criminal Court in The Hague has become real,” she continued.
“With the issuance of arrest warrants against the Israeli prime minister and defense minister, we acted firmly against this unlawful decision and were the only Israeli organization to represent the Israeli side in the matter,” Darshan-Leitner said.
“In addition, we have established a special online task force that will be able to assist and protect IDF soldiers all over the world if they are harassed, detained, or prosecuted pursuant to an international arrest warrant.”
During the war, Darshan-Leitner led a sweeping fight against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, incitement to terrorism and antisemitism, and false accusations against IDF soldiers for war crimes.
She will be discussing this at the conference on May 19th at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan.
The attorney is known for her determination in standing up to powerful bodies, and her activism has made her a symbol in the fight against terrorism and in protecting its victims, along with the Jewish community, through innovative legal means.