During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing earlier this month focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the United States, experts described the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) as “the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational scholarly authority.” The State Department, for its part, has repeatedly written that the organization is “widely viewed in the press and academia as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

For the first time, a Jewish Onliner investigation has systematically mapped several key IUMS members active in North America — including prominent imams, institutional leaders and scholars who chair religious legal councils operating across both the United States and Canada.

The ramifications of IUMS’s active presence in the U.S. and Canada are significant. The body was founded and led by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader until his death in 2022. IUMS provides religious legitimacy for the Muslim Brotherhood’s political and ideological agenda, which includes issuing successive fatwas declaring armed jihad a religious obligation for Muslim-majority governments and Muslims worldwide.

The investigation comes as IUMS President Ali al-Qaradaghi, the successor of Qaradawi, has publicly credited the October 7 attack and ensuing Gaza war with delivering political gains for radical Muslim candidates in the United States like NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling the outcomes “among the blessings of the Al-Aqsa Flood.”

IUMS Members in the United States and Canada

Jewish Onliner has now identified individuals in the United States and Canada who have been named as IUMS members through their own statements, institutional biographies or IUMS-linked publications. Both countries appear on IUMS’s official membership map, though the organization does not publish a comprehensive roster.

Several of the identified members also operate within institutions named in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum that described the Brotherhood's work in America as a "Civilization-Jihadist Process." Its attachment listing "our organizations and the organizations of our friends" included groups these indiviuals are affilaited with such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Muslim Students Association (MSA), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and the ISNA Fiqh Committee — the institutional predecessor to the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA).

Yasir Qadhi is based in Plano, Texas, where he serves as resident scholar at the East Plano Islamic Center, known for the EPIC city mega-mosque controversy. He is also dean of the Islamic Seminary of America and the chairman of the FCNA. Qadhi identified himself as an IUMS member in a June 2025 X post while describing the organization as a “the most respectable” international scholarly body.

Suhaib Webb is based in Washington, D.C., where he serves as resident scholar at Center DC. He previously served as resident scholar at the Islamic Center at New York University and as imam at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. An ICNA Chicago biography identifies Webb as an IUMS member.

Zaid Barzinji is founder and president of the Nashville-based Maqasid Institute, whose leadership biography identifies him as an IUMS member.

Barzinji is the son of Jamal al-Din Barzinji, a relationship documented in a family memorial volume. Scholar Lorenzo Vidino identified Jamal al-Din Barzinji as one of the figures involved in building early Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks in North America. Jamal Barzinji helped establish MSA and IIIT and held leading roles ISNA and NAIT — all four of which appeared in the 1991 memorandum.

Ibrahim Kamel, an imam at the Islamic Center of Southern California, was identified in a joint 2021 Arabic petition which included the signatures of many Muslim scholars and groups, including many IUMS members. In his signature, Kamel identified himself as an IUMS member.

Jamal Badawi is a Halifax-based professor emeritus, FCNA member and ISNA co-founder whom IUMS-affiliated reporting named as an IUMS trustee in 2022. The 2020 “Palestine fatwa” — which declared peace and normalization deals with Israel religiously forbidden and cast jihad for Palestine's "liberation" as a binding obligation — also identified him as a member of IUMS’s Board of Trustees.

Federal prosecutors identified Badawi as an unindicted co-conspirator and/or joint venturer in the Holy Land Foundation case. Evidence introduced during the trial also included Muslim Brotherhood documents that researchers have cited as placing Badawi among figures associated with the movement’s North American leadership, as Jewish Onliner previously reported.

Mohamed Rida Beshir is a Muslim educator with longstanding Canadian ties. His biograpghy states he has long been active with organizations including the Muslim Association of Canada, ISNA and the MSA. An ‘About Author’ section of his described him as an IUMS member. The George Washington University Program on Extremism has separately catalogued the Muslim Association of Canada among Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities operating in the West.

Wael Shehab is based in Toronto, where current materials identify him as resident imam of Masjid Toronto. A 2015 appointment announcement identified Shehab as an IUMS member and former head of the Sharia and fatwa sections at OnIslam.net.

Jasser Auda immigrated to Canada in the early 1990s and became involved in leadership of the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada. He earned a doctorate from the University of Waterloo and has held academic positions in Canada and is founding chairman of the Canadian Fiqh Council. A 2025 report, however, lists Auda as residing in Malaysia.

His archived Maqasid Institute biography describes him as a “Founding and Board Member” of IUMS, while the same 2020 “Palestine fatwa” identified him as a member of IUMS’s Board of Trustees.

Auda also appeared alongside Yusuf al-Qaradawi at scholarly events in Qatar. A 2013 seminar organized by the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies’ Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics listed Auda and Qaradawi among the participants. Qaradawi, was barred from entering the United States and United Kingdom amid controversy over his public endorsements of suicide bombings against Israelis.

IUMS Fatwas Called for Military Jihad

On August 30, 2020, the IUMS issued a collective “Palestine fatwa” declaring "peace, reconciliation, and normalization" agreements with Israel religiously forbidden and void, and affirming that "jihad and resistance for liberation" from the occupation is an obligation on which the jurists have reached consensus. The fatwa stated that:

“The jurists unanimously agree that jihad in all its forms, including fighting in self-defense or to repel injustice, becomes an individual obligation if the enemy invades and occupies a Muslim country," and it prohibited relinquishing "any part of the blessed land of Palestine."

On October 31, 2023, IUMS’s Ijtihad and Fatwa Committee issued a religious ruling declaring military intervention in the Gaza war a religious obligation for Muslim governments and armies.

A separate IUMS fatwa dated March 28, 2025 called for jihad against the “Zionist entity,” military intervention and the provision of weapons, military expertise, intelligence and money to fighters. It described participation as an individual obligation for all capable Muslims.

Jewish Onliner previously uncovered that Australian Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohammed personally participated in the 2025 fatwa alongside IUMS President Ali al-Qaradaghi and other officials.

IUMS Chief Calls U.S. Electoral Gains a “Blessing”

The North American membership findings come amid recent remarks by IUMS President Ali al-Qaradaghi crediting the October 7 Hamas attack and ensuing Gaza war with the political rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

“Had it not been for the Al-Aqsa Flood, Mamdani and Abdulrahman El-Sayed would not have reached [where they did],” al-Qaradaghi said in Arabic. “These are among the blessings of the Al-Aqsa Flood.”

Al-Qaradaghi delivered the speech at an Istanbul event inaugurating the Turkish office of the Al-Quds International Institution, according to his official announcement.

The U.S. Treasury lists “Al Quds International Institution” as an alias of the Al-Quds International Foundation, which the United States designated in 2012 for being controlled by and acting on behalf of Hamas. In 2024, Treasury described its chairman, Hamid al-Ahmar, as a prominent international Hamas supporter and called the foundation a “sham charity”.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Transnational Scholarly Authority”

The Senate testimony submitted by National Jewish Advocacy Center Senior Litigation Counsel Arielle Klepach said IUMS maintains a close relationship with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which the U.S. Treasury designated in January 2026 for providing material support to Hamas.

The testimony also documented IUMS’s amplification of Council on American-Islamic Relations material and previous interactions between CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and al-Qaradawi. It described those relationships as part of a wider pattern connecting American organizations with overseas Muslim Brotherhood institutions.

The George Washington University Program on Extremism has separately described IUMS as a major source of religious legitimacy for Muslim Brotherhood-aligned causes. Its research documented IUMS’s support for Hamas, calls for jihad during the Gaza war and close relationship with Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt jointly listed IUMS as a terrorist organization in 2017.

The United States separately designated the Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood branches and Lebanon’s al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah in January 2026, as Jewish Onliner previously reported.

On September 2, Israeli legal scholar Avraham Russell Shalev released a forthcoming paper arguing that the international legal consensus shaping many judgments about Israel has developed within an academic environment that Shalev argues systematically marginalizes Jewish and Zionist perspectives.

In his forthcoming paper From Blogs to Boycotts: Anti-Zionist Biases in Legal Academia, Shalev examines how international-law journals, conferences, professional networks and academic platforms help create the “expert consensus” later invoked by international institutions.

His central argument is not simply that individual scholars hold anti-Israel views. Rather, he argues that the infrastructure producing international-law expertise has developed institutional mechanisms that marginalize Jewish and Zionist perspectives, allowing a narrow ideological framework on Israel to become embedded as a dominant interpretation within parts of international legal discourse.

The paper examines controversies involving Opinio Juris, the Columbia Law Review, the Leiden Journal of International Law and what Shalev describes as informal “grey boycotts” against Israeli scholars.

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The Battle Before the Courtroom

International legal campaigns involving Israel often rely on claims of expert consensus. Arguments about occupation, proportionality, self-defense, genocide and state responsibility frequently cite academic commentary and legal scholarship as evidence that a particular interpretation represents mainstream international law.

That influence is recognized within the international legal system itself. Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice identifies “the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations” as a subsidiary means for determining legal rules.

Shalev argues that this creates an overlooked power center: the academic institutions that determine which scholars, arguments and interpretations receive legitimacy.

When certain perspectives are excluded from journals, conferences and professional networks, he argues, the resulting consensus can become self-reinforcing and influence the legal positions adopted by international bodies.

From October 7 to the Legal Narrative

A central focus of the paper is the reaction of parts of the international-law community following Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

Shalev examines international-law blogs such as Opinio Juris, arguing that some platforms have provided space for scholars whose responses to October 7 framed Hamas’ attack through anti-colonial theory while leaving Zionist perspectives underrepresented.

One example discussed by Shalev is an October 2023 Opinio Juris post by legal scholar Mohsen al-Attar responding to an interview with Professor Noura Erakat. The discussion situated October 7 within a broader anti-colonial framework and referenced Frantz Fanon’s argument that “decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon.”

The post also included an addendum published after October 7 that continued discussing the conflict through the lens of anti-colonial struggle. Critics argued that the framing risked treating Hamas’ attack primarily as an anti-colonial event rather than confronting Hamas’ deliberate targeting of civilians and the scale of the atrocities committed during the attack.

University of Haifa legal scholar Yahli Shereshevsky later criticized elements of the response within international-law circles, arguing that some reactions reflected a failure to fully acknowledge the nature of the October 7 attacks.

For Shalev, the episode represents a broader pattern: legal discourse surrounding Israel often begins from frameworks of colonialism, oppression and state violence while placing less emphasis on Israeli security concerns, Hamas terrorism and the legal obligations of non-state armed groups.

The Institutions Defining Acceptable Debate

Shalev also examines the controversy surrounding the publication of Rabea Eghbariah’s article Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept in the Columbia Law Review.

The article became controversial after the journal acknowledged that it had been commissioned and did not undergo the journal’s standard review process.

Shalev argues that the episode reflected a broader asymmetry: arguments challenging Israel’s legitimacy often gain access to prestigious academic platforms, while scholars defending Israel or contesting dominant narratives face greater professional barriers.

The paper also discusses cases involving Israeli scholars whose submissions were rejected or altered during publication processes, including Anne Herzberg and Tal Mimran.

Shalev also examines the controversy surrounding the Leiden Journal of International Law. He argues that the journal’s decision to add a disclaimer to an article by Israeli authors after criticism on social media reflected broader concerns about the treatment of Israeli scholars publishing on Israel-related issues.

The “Grey Boycott” of Israeli Scholars

Beyond formal publication decisions, Shalev focuses on what he calls “grey boycotts”: informal professional practices that isolate scholars without requiring an official boycott policy.

The paper highlights the 2018 controversy involving legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich at a conference hosted by the Asser Institute in The Hague.

Critics of Kontorovich’s scholarship on Israel and disputed territories, including Dr. Valentina Azarova and Professor Ralph Wilde, called on organizers to reconsider his invitation. When organizers refused to withdraw the invitation, Shalev argues that critics pursued informal forms of professional distancing from him.

The paper also discusses the case of Israeli scholar Daphné Richemond-Barak, an expert on underground warfare, whom Shalev cites as an example of the barriers Israeli scholars can face in international academic and policy settings.

Shalev further argues that Jewish and Israeli scholars have faced both explicit and informal exclusion from conferences, professional networks and academic spaces.

A 2024 survey by the Israel Young Academy and AFIK surveyed 1,015 Israeli senior faculty members and found that 32% reported significant damage to international collaborations and 26% reported difficulties presenting at international conferences.

The Question of Who Produces “Expert Consensus”

The battle over Israel at international institutions does not begin when judges issue rulings or diplomats draft resolutions. It begins earlier, in the academic journals, conferences and professional networks that determine which legal theories gain authority and which scholars shape the boundaries of accepted debate.

Shalev’s central argument is that the struggle over Israel in international law is fought upstream, before court filings and diplomatic resolutions, through the institutions that determine which scholars, concepts and arguments acquire academic legitimacy.

His paper argues that before legal arguments reach courts, governments or international institutions, they are first filtered through the academic ecosystem that determines which scholars, concepts and interpretations receive authority.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Hollywood Bureau is bringing its Muslim House cultural hub to the Toronto International Film Festival for the first time on September 13 and 15, with MPAC President Salam Al-Marayati scheduled to interview filmmaker Bassam Tariq inside TIFF Lightbox.

Al-Marayati’s appearance comes 25 years after he suggested, during a Los Angeles radio interview on September 11, 2001, that Israel should be investigated over that day’s terrorist attacks. “I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list,” he said on KCRW’s Which Way, L.A.? The Los Angeles Times later reported the remarks.

The episode was not his first national controversy involving terrorism. Two years earlier, his appointment to a federal commission examining terrorism was withdrawn amid objections over his previous statements concerning Hamas, Hezbollah and attacks against Israel.

The Hollywood Bureau and Muslim House operate under the Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose charitable contributions are generally tax deductible. Muslim House does not appear to be a separate nonprofit entity. MPAC describes it as a program produced by the Hollywood Bureau.

“Legitimate Resistance” and the Marine Barracks Bombing

In November 1999, Al-Marayati described Hezbollah attacks against Israeli soldiers in Lebanon as “legitimate resistance” during an appearance on PBS.

That year, an MPAC counterterrorism position paper addressed the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen. The paper said the bombing was “not in a strict sense, a terrorist operation,” instead characterizing it as a military attack against a noncivilian target. The language was later quoted in witness testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Then-House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt had appointed Al-Marayati in June 1999 to the National Commission on Terrorism, a 10-member body tasked with reviewing U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Jewish organizations and members of Congress objected to the appointment, with critics accusing Al-Marayati of failing to unequivocally condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Gephardt withdrew the appointment the following month amid the controversy.

MPAC’s Response to October 7

MPAC’s framing of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack also drew criticism.

In a statement issued as the attack unfolded, MPAC identified Israeli “occupation” as “the source of the problem.” It said Israeli policies had created a political vacuum that allowed Hamas and other groups to gain support and “justify their violent attacks.”

MPAC has since described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. Its archived Palestine page states, “It is a genocide.”

MPAC’s Muslim Brotherhood History

MPAC’s founding leadership also included figures with documented histories involving the Muslim Brotherhood.

Maher Hathout, an MPAC founder and longtime senior adviser, was reported in 2012 as acknowledging that he had participated in the Muslim Brotherhood’s student movement in Egypt before immigrating to the United States. Hathout said he was “very proud” of that involvement.

His brother Hassan Hathout, who also served as an MPAC president, described Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna as the person who most influenced his life. In his writings, Hassan Hathout called al-Banna his teacher and said he had shaped his “Islamic personality.”

MPAC later portrayed organizations such as the Brotherhood as potential competitors to violent jihadist movements. Its Building Bridges to Strengthen America counterterrorism paper, quoted in a U.S. Senate hearing record, said “conservative groups like the Muslim Brotherhood” could present a long-term strategic challenge to violent extremists by drawing Muslims toward peaceful political activism.

Al-Marayati also cited Tunisian Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi in a 2002 speech at the U.S. State Department as an example of someone promoting “dialogue between civilizations, not confrontation.”

MPAC has repeatedly opposed efforts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Most recently, it denounced an August 2026 Senate Judiciary hearing examining Muslim Brotherhood networks in the United States as promoting “long-discredited conspiracy theories.”

The Muslim House Comes to Toronto

The Canada Pavilion program lists the September 15 events as presented by Muslim House and MPAC Hollywood Bureau alongside Muslims in Media, M Film Lab, the Inspirit Foundation and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

Several participants also have documented records of activism targeting Israel. Fawzia Mirza withdrew from the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival in 2017 in support of the cultural boycott of Israel, while Mirza, Aisha Jamal and Amber Fares have since signed the Film Workers for Palestine pledge. Bassam Tariq signed an earlier statement accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid, and Jamal used the phrase “continuing genocide” in a 2026 Hot Docs program description. Shireen Ahmed has also participated directly in BDS programming, chairing a 2022 webinar organized by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.

Over the past week, multiple outlets have reported on Jewish Onliner’s exposé that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) directed educators, administrators, and school boards to a 9/11 curriculum developed by CAIR-New Jersey and Teaching While Muslim that included Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America.” Initial coverage, including Jewish Onliner’s, described the manifesto as a high-school resource.

Jewish Onliner has now found that the resource was directed at far younger students. The curriculum’s elementary school section itself lists The Guardian’s full text of bin Laden’s “Letter to America” under “Background Resources.” The page covering middle and high school also includes the same link, meaning the manifesto appeared in background-resource sections spanning elementary, middle, and high school.

CAIR National later removed its endorsement of and link to the curriculum after Jewish Onliner’s August 25 investigation. In a correction, CAIR said an earlier version “did not go through proper vetting” and added that primary-source documents “related to the 9/11 perpetrators” are “best reviewed at the post K-12 level” and with additional context.

To examine what CAIR's recommended resource actually contains, Jewish Onliner reviewed bin Laden’s roughly 4,000-word “Letter to America” in full. The letter, published in November 2002, rationalized attacks on American civilians, called for Israel to be erased, promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of U.S. politics, media, and the economy, called on Americans to embrace Islam and submit to Islamic law, and threatened further attacks if its demands were rejected.

The Guardian removed its online copy in November 2023 after the letter spread widely across social media, including TikTok, explaining that the transcript was being shared “without the full context.” House Energy and Commerce Republicans later condemned the letter’s resurgence and highlighted its antisemitic claim that Jews “control your policies, media and economy.” CAIR’s August 24 announcement explicitly tied its 2026-27 back-to-school campaign to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and said the effort was intended to reach K-12 and higher-education communities.

“Do Not Await Anything From Us But Jihad, Resistance and Revenge”

The letter is organized around two questions bin Laden poses to Americans: why al-Qaeda is fighting the United States, and what it wants Americans to do. It opens by quoting Quranic verses that urge believers to “fight in the Cause of Allah” and against the “friends of Satan.”

Bin Laden places U.S. support for Israel first among his grievances. “You attacked us in Palestine,” he writes, before declaring that “the creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased” and that those responsible must “pay for it heavily.”

He goes on to cite Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Lebanon; the U.S. military presence in Muslim-majority countries; sanctions on Iraq; and what he portrays as American exploitation of Middle Eastern oil. He also attacks governments allied with Washington as American “agents” that obstruct Islamic law, calling their removal necessary to “make the Shariah the supreme law.”

Toward the end of that section, he warns: “Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge.”

Justifying the Killing of American Civilians

Bin Laden next argues that American civilians are legitimate targets because, in his view, they share responsibility for U.S. government policy.

He points to elections and taxes, arguing that Americans choose their leaders and fund U.S. military operations. The American people therefore “cannot be innocent,” he writes, of what he describes as crimes against Muslims.

He makes the rationale explicit: “Whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.” America, he says, “does not understand the language of manners and principles,” so it is being addressed in “the language it understands.”

The letter also glorifies “martyrdom,” describing the Islamic nation the “The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life,” and cites Quranic passages about those killed “in the way of Allah.”

“The First Thing That We Are Calling You To Is Islam”

After laying out his grievances, bin Laden turns to what he wants Americans to do. “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam,” he writes.

He condemns the U.S. constitutional system for allowing laws to be made outside Sharia and attacks the separation of religion and politics. He calls the United States “the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind” and condemns homosexuality, alcohol, gambling, sex outside marriage, and other practices he presents as violations of Islamic law.

His demands are not limited to foreign policy: he also calls on Americans to embrace his interpretation of Islam and reject core elements of the U.S. political and social order.

“The Jews, Who Control Your Policies, Media and Economy”

Antisemitic conspiracy theories recur throughout the letter. Bin Laden portrays Jews as controlling American economic, political, and media life while rejecting Jewish religious and historical claims to Palestine.

He claims that Muslims, rather than Jews, are the true inheritors of Moses and the “real Torah,” and describes Muslims as “the most worthy nation” of Palestine. Later, after condemning interest-based finance, bin Laden claims that “the Jews have taken control of your economy,” then the media, and ultimately “all aspects of your life.”

The letter repeatedly pairs “the Americans and Jews” as enemies. Bin Laden accuses the United States of “shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us” and warns that continued American support for Israel “will result in more disasters for you.”

“Leave Us Alone, Or Else Expect Us In New York and Washington”

In the letter’s final section, bin Laden instructs Americans to “pack your luggage and get out of our lands” and warns: “Do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.” He adds: “Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.”

He then warns: “If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation.” Several Quranic passages and additional exhortations follow before the letter ends.

The Bin Laden Manifesto CAIR Put in an Elementary-School Curriculum

This is the manifesto that the CAIR-endorsed curriculum placed under “Background Resources” on its elementary school page and again on the pages covering middle and high schools. CAIR National’s K-12 guide instructed educators and school boards to access and share the curriculum.

Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother, Frances Haros, was killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, criticized the curriculum in the New York Post. “The further we get from 9/11, this new generation of kids will learn to blame our country,” Haros said. “These kids are going to be poisoned — and that’s the intent.”

A bipartisan House Intelligence Committee report warns that artificial intelligence is supercharging covert influence operations by Iran, China, and Russia, allowing foreign adversaries to flood social media, target college campuses, and exploit divisions inside the United States at unprecedented scale.

The report, released August 31, places those operations within a changing threat landscape in which foreign state influence, terrorist propaganda, and online radicalization increasingly overlap. It cites Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s warning that since 2023, Iran, China, and Russia have conducted covert operations aimed at dividing Americans, while AI now enables adversaries to generate fake voices, videos, and millions of messages.

The review also says Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror networks flooded online platforms with doctored videos and misinformation after the October 7 attacks, using the war in Gaza to shape public debate, raise funds, and generate international political pressure on Israel. Separately, it says antisemitic attacks rose sharply after October 7 and that many were carried out by homegrown violent extremists radicalized by content denigrating Jews.

The 52-page Review of the 9/11 Commission Report was released at the Flight 93 National Memorial ahead of the attacks’ 25th anniversary. The year-long bipartisan review was launched by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford and Ranking Member Jim Himes, and co-chaired by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer. According to the committee’s release, the review drew on classified and public briefings, two open hearings, and a public roundtable.

The committee found that reforms enacted after 9/11 transformed U.S. counterterrorism and broke down intelligence silos. It also concluded that nearly two decades of concentrating on counterterrorism allowed counterintelligence capabilities to fall behind as foreign adversaries learned to penetrate American institutions, manipulate decision-making, and exploit the country’s openness.

Hamas Propaganda and Antisemitic Radicalization

The report describes foreign malign influence as a form of cognitive warfare directed at the political, social, and informational foundations of Western societies. After the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, it says, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror networks used false or manipulated content about Gaza to influence political debate, collect money, and increase pressure on Israel.

The committee says such campaigns may combine propaganda, covert media manipulation, cyber operations, fake accounts, proxy organizations, and selective amplification. Their purpose is not always to sell one false claim. They may instead deepen polarization, confuse the public, and weaken trust in government.

The report does not identify individual Hamas or Hezbollah posts or calculate the reach of the post-October 7 campaigns in that section. Its assessment is nonetheless explicit in treating terror-network messaging as part of the foreign influence threat, rather than as political advocacy alone.

In a separate section on homegrown violent extremism, the committee says radicalization increasingly occurs through social media, encrypted messaging, online communities, and algorithmic networks. Individuals can progress toward violence without joining a group or contacting an overseas handler, leaving fewer of the indicators post-9/11 systems were built to detect.

The review points to the recent attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, as an example of the security burden now placed on Jewish institutions. The FBI assessed the March attack to be a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism that deliberately targeted the Jewish community.

Iran’s Proxies and Covert Networks

Iran appears in the report as both a state influence actor and a persistent counterintelligence threat. The committee says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force sponsor, train, and equip proxy groups abroad, allowing Tehran to conduct global terror operations while retaining a degree of plausible deniability.

It also cites Iran’s use of transnational criminal networks to target dissidents in the United States. In one example, a federal jury convicted two organized-crime leaders in 2025 over an IRGC-directed plot to murder Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad in New York.

The influence section reproduces Gottheimer’s statement at the committee’s July 21 hearing that Iran, China, and Russia have run covert operations since 2023 to divide the United States through social media, criminal groups, and college campuses. He warned that artificial intelligence allows one adversary to produce fake voices, videos, and millions of messages.

The report also says China has provided Iran with economic, technological, and diplomatic support while buying discounted sanctioned oil. A March fact sheet cited by the House report says Chinese buyers take roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported oil. It separately documents Iran’s use of offshore accounts, including accounts under Chinese jurisdiction, to help finance the IRGC, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and other Iran-aligned groups.

A New Intelligence Model

The committee issued 20 recommendations. It calls for professionalizing open-source intelligence, creating dedicated budget lines and career standards, and treating publicly available information as the intelligence discipline of first resort. The report says open-source reporting already supplies 20 percent of the President’s Daily Brief but remains underfunded and unevenly integrated across agencies.

It also recommends stronger intelligence sharing with local law enforcement and fusion centers, closer cooperation with private companies, and safeguards against terrorists using advanced artificial intelligence. The panel says any response to influence operations must preserve First Amendment rights.

Among its final proposals, the committee calls for keeping the National Counterterrorism Center as the Intelligence Community’s lead counterterrorism integrator and requiring greater sharing of counterintelligence information with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. The recommendations now require action by Congress, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and individual agencies to take effect.

George Washington University will host a two-day conference in September whose organizers describe the United States as an “empire” perpetuating “multiple genocides,” invoke the “historical legacy of ‘Amerikkka,’” portray comparisons between Hamas and ISIS as part of an Israeli propaganda campaign, and offer workshops teaching activists how to “identify targets” and “continue resistance.”

The September 17-18 conference, When Will This War End? Lessons and Legacies of the War on Terror, is organized by the Muslim Counterpublics Lab and co-sponsored by George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, according to the conference website.

Muslim Counterpublics Lab states that it is a fiscally sponsored project of Defending Rights & Dissent, a Washington-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations to MCL are processed through the tax-exempt fiscal sponsor.

Its published program places those themes alongside relatives of men convicted in major Hamas and al-Qaeda-related terrorism cases, speakers who publicly promoted Palestinian “resistance” during or after October 7, and advocacy organizations that have challenged landmark post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions.

Conference Accuses U.S. of ‘Multiple Genocides’

The conference’s own descriptions frame the War on Terror as an extension of what organizers call “systems of capitalism serving empire,” U.S. “militarism and policing,” and broader structures of “state violence.”

Its opening plenary places the post-9/11 wars within what organizers describe as a “long arc of extraction, land theft, and systems of capitalism serving empire,” connecting the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to what the program calls the “US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.” Another session is titled State Violence by Design: Anti-Indigenous Racism, Anti-Blackness and the Historical Legacy of “Amerikkka.”

That session says anti-Indigenous and anti-Black frameworks have been used by the state to advance “land theft, forced labor, and resource extraction,” and describes anti-Muslim bigotry as an ideological foundation for the War on Terror.

A media workshop says “mainstream corporate media” has been complicit in “manufacturing consent for violence and genocide” and promises to train participants in reporting on Muslim “resistance movements” while creating “counternarratives against state propaganda.”

The Palestine panel, titled Palestine and the War on Terror: (Dis)arming Genocidaires and State Repression, calls Israel’s actions in Gaza the “current stage of genocide,” describes Israel as a “settler state,” and says its “Hamas is ISIS” messaging is part of a propaganda campaign. Participants will learn about organizing arms embargo and divestment campaigns, according to the event description.

Another workshop promises instruction on how activists can “identify targets,” mobilize communities and organize against governments and corporations, while a session examining the “terrorism paradigm” promises strategies to “challenge repression, continue resistance, and build collective power.”

The closing plenary states that “U.S. empire” is perpetuating “multiple genocides in Muslim countries and throughout the Global South” and describes the United States’ trajectory in terms of “genocide, land theft, regime changes, mass incarceration, and militarism.”

Organizer Promoted ‘Resistance’ on October 7

Muslim Counterpublics Lab founder Maha Hilal posted on October 7, 2023, as the Hamas-led attacks were unfolding, that “#PalestineWillbeFree & no power in the world can stop the #resistance #FreePalestine.”

Later that month, Hilal delivered a presentation comparing political rhetoric surrounding September 11 with the response to October 7. According to the Wisconsin Muslim Journal, she criticized political leaders for describing both attacks as “evil,” saying that framing left no possibility to consider either as a “struggle for resistance.” Hilal also questioned grouping Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah together as an “axis of evil,” saying doing so removed each from its individual context. Her remarks were published later that month.

The coalition’s own history says its origins included handwritten prison notes produced by former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

His daughter, Laila Al-Arian, a journalist and executive producer with Al Jazeera English, is also scheduled to speak at the conference in a session titled Manufacturing Consent for State Violence: Media Complicity in the War on Terror.

Additional Speakers Celebrated Oct 7th

Another session, titled Palestine and the War on Terror: (Dis)arming Genocidaires and State Repression, features Sara Arman of the Palestinian Youth Movement, Dylan Saba of Palestine Legal, Tina Al-Khersan of Project South and American University professor Irene Calis.Saba drew attention for comments posted as the October 7 attack unfolded. He wrote “Glory to the resistance” and said he could not be more proud of Palestinians fighting for liberation, remarks documented by The Forward.

The Palestinian Youth Movement separately described the October 7 breach of Israel’s Gaza border as a “prison break actualizing the right of return” in a 2025 anniversary statement.

‘Political Prisoners’ Panel Includes Relatives of Terrorism Convicts

One of the conference’s most notable sessions is titled We Refuse to Be Silent: Testimonies of Survivors and Political Prisoners Post 9/11.

The conference schedule lists former Guantanamo detainee Mansoor Adayfi alongside Nida Abu Baker, daughter of Holy Land Foundation president Shukri Abu Baker, and Mariam Abu-Ali, sister of convicted al-Qaeda defendant Ahmed Omar Abu Ali.

Shukri Abu Baker was among five Holy Land Foundation officials convicted in a federal terrorism-financing case involving Hamas. He received 65 years in federal prison following convictions on material-support, money-laundering and related offenses.

Mariam Abu-Ali’s brother, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted of offenses including providing material support to al-Qaeda, conspiring to assassinate the president of the United States, conspiring to commit air piracy and conspiring to destroy aircraft. The Justice Department said Abu Ali was convicted on all counts following a federal trial.

Controversial Organizations Listed as Conference Sponsors

Listed conference sponsors include the Muslim Legal Fund of America, Coalition for Civil Freedoms, Muslim Justice League, Center for Constitutional Rights, Rutgers University's Center for Security, Race & Rights, Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

The Muslim Legal Fund of America has directly challenged the Holy Land Foundation prosecution, and its 2019 annual report describes the HLF defendants as “humanitarian leaders.” MLFA attorney Sufia Khalid is also scheduled to appear during a conference workshop titled Who Can Say What? The Terrorism Paradigm and Criminalization of Dissent.

The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism states in its governing principles that Zionism is a “settler colonial racial project,” explicitly opposes Zionism and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Adalah Justice Project Among Sponsors

Another conference sponsor is the Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led U.S. advocacy organization involved in boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel.

Adalah Justice Project describes its work as combining political education, coalition building, boycotts, divestment and other forms of organizing. Its website also states that the organization is fiscally sponsored by the Tides Center.

On October 7, 2023, AJP posted an image of a bulldozer breaching the Gaza border barrier accompanied by the words “No cage goes unchallenged.”

Recasting 9/11 Through a Radical Anti-American Lens

GWU has previously provided a platform to figures behind the event. In April 2024, its Institute for Middle East Studies featured Muslim Counterpublics Lab founder Maha Hilal at its annual conference, Middle East Knowledge Production in the Aftermath of October 7.

The September gathering extends that relationship into a program that seeks to recast the post-9/11 legacy through an anti-imperialist and anti-Israel lens, using the aftermath of the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history to advance arguments about “U.S. empire,” “genocide,” state violence and “resistance.”

A new federal indictment alleges that Mohammad Yousef Hasna, who directed Gaza humanitarian coordination for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation from 2009 to 2017, had been a member of Hamas’s military wing since 2003.

The August 25 indictment alleges that Hasna was recruited to Hamas in July 2003 and has since held several positions in the al-Qassam Brigades, including platoon commander and brigade trainer in the Signal Corps. An earlier criminal complaint states that Hasna served from approximately 2009 until May 2017 as director of the Gaza Coordination Office in the OIC’s Humanitarian Affairs Department. His LinkedIn profile has also identified him with the OIC position.

The two federal filings indicate that Hasna’s years overseeing the OIC’s Gaza humanitarian coordination operation overlapped with his alleged membership in Hamas’s military wing. Prosecutors say his military rank since at least July 2019 has been deputy company leader in the al-Qassam Brigades.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation describes itself as the “second-largest intergovernmental organisation after the United Nations” and has 57 member states. It also describes itself as “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”

The indictment significantly expands the case against Hasna, who was initially charged in July with allegedly using a purported humanitarian organization to funnel money and supplies to Hamas. Prosecutors do not allege that Hasna diverted OIC resources to Hamas or used his OIC position as part of that scheme.

The Al-Khair Connection

Federal prosecutors separately accuse Hasna of using a purported humanitarian organization, referred to in federal filings as the “Sham Charity,” to provide money and supplies to Hamas.

The indictment does not expressly identify the organization as Al-Khair Foundation. However, Hasna identified himself on LinkedIn as global director of the UK-based Al-Khair Foundation, and reporting on the federal case has connected the organization to the allegations.

Prosecutors allege that Hasna used his position with the organization described in the filings as the Sham Charity to raise funds and coordinate deliveries of supplies to Hamas under the guise of humanitarian assistance.

He allegedly worked directly with Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau and former deputy foreign minister in the Hamas-run Gaza government, to identify recipients and coordinate deliveries of cash and supplies.

Prosecutors Describe Efforts to Conceal Hamas Control

Federal prosecutors describe an extensive system through which Hasna allegedly coordinated the procurement, transportation, storage and distribution of humanitarian supplies.

According to the complaint, Hasna arranged for goods to be purchased for import into Gaza, transported by truck from Egypt and elsewhere, stored in warehouses and distributed according to lists supplied by Hamad.

Prosecutors allege that Hasna also took steps to conceal Hamas’s role in the operation.

In one alleged method, Hasna misrepresented shipments as being delivered to Gaza’s Ministry of Social Development when they were instead sent to warehouses under his control.

In other instances, prosecutors say supplies were first delivered to the ministry before being redistributed to recipients selected by Hamas.

Hasna also allegedly used photographs and videos to document deliveries for donors while avoiding signs and other identifying information that could reveal which warehouses or entities actually controlled the supplies.

The indictment alleges that the operation was intended to provide Hamas with money, goods and services while concealing the terrorist organization’s involvement from donors and others participating in the humanitarian supply chain.

British Authorities Open Investigation

On August 5, the UK Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Al-Khair Foundation and issued an order restricting the charity’s transactions to Hasna, his organization or Gaza without the Commission’s permission.

Britain’s Department for Education has also sought information concerning four schools associated with the foundation, three in London and one in Oldbury, near Birmingham.

Hasna was arrested in Britain on July 31 at the request of U.S. authorities and was ordered detained pending extradition proceedings.

The August 25 indictment charges Hasna with four federal offenses: conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, provision and attempted provision of material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to finance terrorism and financing terrorism.

In late August 2026, Finnish broadcaster Yle reported Finland’s Ministry of Defence had signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel in 2024 extending bilateral cooperation on defense materiel through 2034. The agreement covers research, development, and procurement of military products and establishes a joint coordination group scheduled to meet at least annually. However, unlike the extension signed in 2019, which was brought to the Foreign Ministry’s attention, this reassessment did not happen in 2024.

News of the memorandum came just days after Finnish Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio announced that Finland’s multi-year funding agreement with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWA) would expire without renewal, ending €5 million in annual direct support that had run since 2023.

Diving into the Memorandum

The underlying framework dates to 2013 and had previously been renewed in five-year increments. Finland proposed the extension in early 2024, as the prior version approached expiration. Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen approved a ten-year term.

Häkkänen told Yle that the arrangement reflects standard practice between states engaged in defense trade, noting that Finland maintains cooperation documents with approximately 40 countries and that Israel has been among them for years. He said the memorandum supports implementation of existing air-defense and procurement projects.

Yle reported that the 2024 renewal was not referred to the Foreign Ministry in the manner the 2019 renewal had been.

The Defense of the Future: Finnish Variation

Finland’s defense relationship with Israel centers on the David’s Sling air-defense system. The government of then-Prime Minister Sanna Marin approved the purchase for more than €300 million shortly before the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023, making Finland the system’s first foreign customer. The system is expected to enter service in the late 2020s.

Finnish Defence Forces commander Janne Jaakkola told Yle that Finland selects systems based on military capability, cost, and suitability, and that David’s Sling performed best during the procurement process.

Finland joined NATO in April 2023 and shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia. An Israeli Defense Ministry representative described Finland to the Jerusalem Post as Israel’s gateway to NATO and European markets.

Finnish defense manufacturer Patria has integrated Rafael’s Trophy active protection system into its AMV XP 8x8 armored vehicle and equipped other armored vehicles with Israeli Spike anti-tank missiles. Yle reported that over 20 projects involving the Finnish military and Israeli defense companies are currently underway, with details undisclosed. A Finnish-Israeli defense seminar convened in Helsinki in May 2026, following a similar event in 2022.

Redirecting Aid Flow to the Right Place(s)

Tavio, of the Finns Party, said Finland is following the approach taken by Sweden, which ended direct UNRWA funding in December 2024, and cited criticism of the agency’s lack of neutrality and the degree of its separation from Hamas.

Tavio said support for Palestinians will continue at the same level through other channels, naming the World Food Programme and identifying the UN Palestine reconstruction fund as a possible route. Finland has previously channeled humanitarian assistance through the WFP, the International Committee of the Red Cross, OCHA, and Finn Church Aid.

Tavio told MTV Uutiset that the government is not unanimous on the question but that the decision falls within the development minister’s authority. Norway signed a new two-year agreement with UNRWA in January 2026, and Denmark accelerated payments to the agency during its liquidity shortfall.

Finland previously suspended UNRWA payments in January 2024 after Israel alleged that 12 agency employees participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks, then resumed funding in March 2024 after allocating 10 percent of its contribution to risk management.

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U.S. Government Shuts it Down

The USAID Office of Inspector General, a statutorily independent oversight entity, announced on June 5, 2026 that it had referred 101 current or former UNRWA staff to the State Department for suspension or debarment consideration based on participation in the October 7 attacks and/or affiliation with Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades and PIJAll . Counting prior referrals, the cumulative total reached over 108 subjects.

Those referred included school principals, teachers, security personnel, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals. The Inspector General identified cases including a deputy school principal serving as an al-Qassam deputy company commander and a school principal assigned to a Hamas military manufacturing unit’s chemical department whose school contained three anti-tank positions and a tunnel shaft.

On August 26, 2026, the office reported that the State Department had proposed debarment for three former UNRWA teachers, one alleged to have conducted kidnapping operations on October 7 and one alleged to have held civilian hostages. The investigation has produced one completed government-wide debarment, of former UNRWA school principal Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa. Additional referrals and potential criminal referrals to the Justice Department are expected.

The eighth and final installment of the Gaza GenoLIE series documents how the false genocide accusation against Israel represents the latest stage of a delegitimization campaign that began nearly five decades before the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre.

Titled “New Accusation, Old Campaign,” the installment traces the narrative through the Soviet- and Arab-backed “Zionism is racism” resolution at the United Nations, the 2001 Durban conference, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and present-day campaigns targeting Israel.

The terminology has changed across generations, but the objective has remained consistent: isolating Israel internationally and challenging its continued existence as a Jewish state.

The UN’s “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution

The historical timeline begins on November 10, 1975, when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, declaring that Zionism was “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”

The measure passed by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions. It was championed by the Arab League and Soviet bloc, with broad support from the Non-Aligned Movement.

The resolution remained in place for 16 years. On December 16, 1991, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 46/86, revoking the earlier determination by 111 votes to 25, with 13 abstentions.

It was the only time the General Assembly explicitly revoked one of its resolutions. The reversal underscored the political nature of the 1975 designation.

The same formula continues to circulate. In January 2024, The People’s Forum, which House investigators have described as part of a CCP-linked funding network centered on Shanghai-based businessman Neville Roy Singham, published a statement titled “We Will Not Apologize: Zionism Is Racism.” The statement revived the language of Resolution 3379 more than three decades after its revocation.

Durban Assembled the Modern Vocabulary

The delegitimization campaign resurfaced at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

A parallel NGO forum, distinct from the conference’s official government proceedings, adopted a declaration calling for the restoration of the “Zionism is racism” designation.

The declaration labeled Israel a “racist, apartheid state,” accused it of “war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing” and described Israeli policy as “settler colonialism.” It also called for measures previously used against apartheid South Africa, including comprehensive sanctions, embargoes and the suspension of diplomatic relations.

Mary Robinson, then the UN high commissioner for human rights, said she could not recommend the NGO declaration to participating governments because she could not accept some of its language.

Durban brought false accusations of racism, apartheid, settler-colonialism and genocide together within a common anti-Israel framework. The same collection of terms remains central to campaigns targeting Israel today.

Durban’s Framework Moves Into BDS

Four years later, the Palestinian-led BDS movement formally launched its campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

BDS presents itself as a nonviolent effort to pressure Israel over Palestinian rights and international law. Its co-founder Omar Barghouti, however, has explicitly rejected Jewish sovereignty.

“We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” Barghouti said in a statement documented by the World Jewish Congress.

The methods had shifted from UN resolutions and NGO declarations to economic, cultural and academic pressure, but the stated opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state remained.

Scholars’ Resolution Faces Scrutiny

The International Association of Genocide Scholars passed an August 2025 resolution advancing the false accusation that Israel’s conduct in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide.

A subsequent investigation found that the organization’s membership directory had expanded from approximately 150 members before October 7, 2023, to roughly 440 when the resolution was released.

At the time, membership started at $30, and paid members could participate in votes on resolutions by email. The membership application did not require specific academic credentials.

The rapid membership expansion and low entry threshold raised questions about how the resolution was presented publicly as expert consensus.

The False Accusation Expands Beyond Gaza

The false genocide accusation has been applied beyond Gaza to other Israeli military campaigns.

On April 6, 2026, Mehdi Hasan published a Zeteo article titled “Israel’s Latest Genocide Is Against the Shias of Lebanon. Why Is the World Silent?”

Genocide in Lebanon too? Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo platform publishes an article in April 2026 on “Israel’s Latest Genocide” in Lebanon, proving that the accusation of genocide arises whenever and wherever Israel defends itself because the goal is to delegitimize the Jewish state entirely.

The Lebanon article provides a documented example of the false genocide accusation moving into another theater where Israel was conducting military operations against an armed group.

From the 1975 UN resolution to Durban, BDS and the current Gaza genocide narrative, the language and methods have changed while the intended consequence has remained the same: transforming Israel into a uniquely illegitimate state subject to international boycott, isolation and exclusion from the international community.

The manufactured Gaza genocide narrative did not begin with the war launched after October 7. It is the latest iteration of a decades-long campaign used to pressure Israel during its war against Hamas, isolate the Jewish state internationally and intensify anti-Zionism and antisemitism worldwide.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations quietly revised the September 11th section of its national 2026-2027 back-to-school guide one day after Jewish Onliner published an investigation into the organization’s recommended classroom materials.

The original guide directed educators, administrators and school boards to a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” among its high school resources. By August 26, CAIR had removed its endorsement of and link to the curriculum and added a note claiming that an earlier version “did not go through proper vetting.” Yet CAIR National had promoted the same curriculum in its 2025–26 back-to-school guide.

CAIR did not publicly announce the change, identify who failed to vet the material or say whether Jewish Onliner’s reporting prompted the revision.

CAIR Quietly Removes Its Endorsement of 9/11 Curriculum

Jewish Onliner published its investigation on August 25 after reviewing CAIR’s newly released nationwide guide and the materials to which it directed American schools.

The original 9/11 section told readers that CAIR-New Jersey and Teaching While Muslim had developed a “comprehensive” curriculum for elementary, middle and high school classrooms. It said the resource included recommended texts, videos, discussion questions and teaching strategies.

The section concluded:

“Access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”

This was more than a passing reference. CAIR National explicitly instructed readers to access the curriculum and circulate it among educators, administrators and local school boards.

By August 26, the paragraph and hyperlink had been removed from the online guide. The revised version retains the heading “25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” but no longer names CAIR-New Jersey, Teaching While Muslim or their curriculum.

The replacement text states:

“Comprehensive lesson plans would address the 9/11 attack itself, the victims and families impacted, and the aftermath of the attack, such as the war in Afghanistan, changes in national security, and the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against American Muslim and perceived-Muslim communities.”

CAIR Cites “Proper Vetting” Failure

CAIR also added a note addressing the earlier material:

“An earlier version of the document did not go through proper vetting and included a link to a primary source document that was removed in November 2025.”

The note does not identify the primary source by name. In context, however, it appears to refer to bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” which the curriculum listed as a high school background resource through a link to the full manifesto published by The Guardian.

CAIR says it generally supports referring readers to primary-source documents, but now maintains that documents connected to the 9/11 perpetrators are “best reviewed at the post K-12 level” and alongside other materials. It names a fatwa against terrorism, a 2014 open letter rejecting ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s interpretation of Islam and the 9/11 Commission Report as examples of the additional context it considers necessary.

The explanation represents a significant change from the original national guide, which explicitly encouraged educators and school boards to access and distribute the CAIR-New Jersey curriculum.

CAIR’s Explanation Leaves Timeline Unresolved

The note does not explain why CAIR National nevertheless released a guide in August 2026 directing K-12 educators to the curriculum. Moreover, CAIR-New Jersey’s own September 2022 announcement continued to link to a copy listing The Guardian’s full text of bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” while a separate copy remained available through the University of Pittsburgh-hosted website of the Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies.

The curriculum also contained several additional elements documented in the original investigation. It described the September 11 perpetrators as “a group self-identifying as AlQaeda” rather than explicitly identifying them as terrorists. It presented American support for Israel, the Persian Gulf War and the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East as explanations for the attacks.

Its recommended background materials also included V for Vendetta, a film centered on a masked revolutionary who attacks government buildings.

CAIR’s new note does not address those elements individually. Instead, the organization has removed its national guide’s entire recommendation and hyperlink to the curriculum.

Rest of K-12 Guide Remains Intact

The visible revisions are narrowly focused on the 9/11 section. The guide still describes itself as an expansion of CAIR’s “Unhostile Campus Campaign” into K-12 schools and retains sections directing students toward pro-Palestinian activism guidance, providing scripts for discussing Gaza with children as young as five and encouraging students to explore terms including “apartheid,” “genocide” and “terrorism.”

The sequence is clear. CAIR National initially instructed educators, administrators and school boards to access and circulate a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed bin Laden’s manifesto. After Jewish Onliner documented the material, the endorsement and hyperlink disappeared. In their place, CAIR added a note claiming that an earlier version had not undergone “proper vetting.”

CAIR has not explained how the recommendation reached its national guide, who failed to vet it or why publicly accessible copies continued to list the manifesto. The organization removed the recommendation, but not the questions raised by how it was placed before K-12 educators in the first place.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Masar Badil and two of its senior leaders on Wednesday, formally determining that the transnational movement operates as a front for the U.S.-designated terror group, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

The action corroborates findings covered by Jewish Onliner since its inaugural article on November 12, 2024, which traced the shared personnel and activities connecting Masar Badil to Samidoun. On May 20, 2026, a second Jewish Onliner investigation identified Masar Badil as a likely sanctions target after OFAC designated Mohammed Khatib and Jaldia Abubakra, both Samidoun officials and members of Masar Badil’s executive committee. Three months later, OFAC designated the movement itself and two additional leaders.

Treasury also sanctioned the UK-based Palestine Action and Italy-based digital infrastructure provider Autistici Inventati as part of an enforcement package targeting what the department described as violent far-left terrorist networks.

“Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, adding that the department would continue cutting the groups’ financial lifelines.

Treasury Formalizes the Samidoun Connection

The Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Masar Badil under Executive Order 13224 for being owned, controlled or directed by Samidoun, or for acting on Samidoun’s behalf.

In October 2024, the United States sanctioned Samidoun, while Canada listed it as a terrorist entity. Treasury described Samidoun as a sham charity serving as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The United States has designated the PFLP as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) since 1997.

Treasury described Masar Badil as “inextricably linked” to Samidoun and noted that one of its senior leaders had characterized the organizations as components of the same political project. According to the department, they share fundraising mechanisms, senior officials and members of their respective executive committees.

The overlapping personnel include Khaled Barakat, Mohammed Khatib and Jaldia Abubakra, all of whom Treasury previously sanctioned. OFAC’s latest action added Germany-based Zaid Abdulnasser and Brazil-based Rawa Alsagheer to the sanctions list for serving as leaders or officials of Masar Badil.

The designation blocks all property and assets of Masar Badil, Abdulnasser and Alsagheer that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons. Entities owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked. Unless authorized or exempt, transactions by U.S. persons or within the United States involving their property or interests in property are generally prohibited.

PoE Report Maps Masar Badil’s International Network

The Program on Extremism, housed at George Washington University, also published a 49-page report on Masar Badil in August 2026. The study examined how the movement has built an international network around armed resistance advocacy since its founding in 2021.

Researchers found substantial overlap with sanctioned entities through leadership, coordinated messaging and public calls for support. The report noted that Masar Badil’s platforms have hosted senior officials from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, memorialized deceased terrorists and promoted designated organizations and their campaigns.

Masar Badil claims to have conducted more than 1,000 “political and mass activities” since its founding. Its organizing has included international conferences, prisoner campaigns, political education, campus activism and the creation of youth and student networks.

The GWU study examined Tariq El-Tahrir, a youth and student network described by its organizers as Masar Badil’s “mass and organizing arm.” The network focuses primarily on universities in the United States, Canada and Europe. It does not publicly identify a separate legal entity, governing body or financial structure, while its website is linked directly from Masar Badil’s main navigation and uses an email address on the organization’s domain.

Researchers also found that Masar Badil’s public messaging became more explicit following the October 7 attacks. Its calls expanded from demonstrations and boycotts to “direct action,” strikes, blockades, civil disobedience and sustained confrontation.

The report concluded that Masar Badil was using campus partnerships, political education and international exchanges to move younger activists from general solidarity into an organized movement that normalizes designated terrorist organizations and accepts violence as a means of pursuing political objectives.

The Wider Network Now Faces Scrutiny

The designation shifts attention to the wider ecosystem Masar Badil has built across Europe and North America. The GWU report identified Tariq El-Tahrir, Nidal, Al-Ahrar Palestinian Prisoner Support, Alkarama and SUPER-UW among the movement’s affiliated, aligned or collaborating organizations. Masar Badil’s placement on the OFAC sanctions list may affect how financial institutions, online services, universities and foreign authorities assess fundraising, joint events and shared infrastructure involving these groups.

Their personnel overlaps and coordinated campaigns now warrant closer examination, particularly given the possibility that sanctions pressure will push the network to obscure its operations through lesser-known affiliates or newly created front organizations.

Israel is developing offensive space weapons capable of striking targets on Earth as part of a multiyear defense plan that marks the country’s most ambitious push yet into the military space domain. Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the initiative as part of the Defense Ministry’s budget for the space sector, with a roughly 16 billion shekel ($5.4 billion) investment over the next decade aimed at establishing what Israeli officials call “security superiority in space.”

The program encompasses two primary offensive capabilities: weapons designed to protect Israeli satellites from hostile spacecraft, and weapons capable of striking targets on Earth from orbit. Katz argued that space-based systems will provide the IDF with decisive advantages in future conflicts, particularly against Iran and other regional adversaries.

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War with Iran Accelerates Space Ambitions

The push has accelerated following Israel’s recent campaigns against Iran, particularly Operation Roaring Lion in 2026, during which the Defense Ministry says satellites played an expanded role in intelligence collection and target development. Avi Berger, head of the Defense Ministry’s Space Program Office, stated that Israeli satellites “collected tens of millions of square kilometers of extremely high-quality imagery, day and night” during the 12-day war, with targets built in real time to support strike operations.

“The war with Iran has further sharpened our understanding that we must dramatically increase investment in developing and maintaining Israeli superiority over our adversaries in space,” Berger said at the International DefenseTech Summit. The ministry’s objective is that “Israeli space capabilities will be present at every point in the Middle East, collecting intelligence and providing alerts around the clock and in all weather conditions.”

The Directorate of Defense Research and Development (MAFAT), the IDF, and Israeli defense industries are engaged in planning and development to advance these capabilities.

From Intelligence to Attack

Israel already operates advanced reconnaissance satellites including Ofek 13 and Ofek 19, both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems capable of penetrating clouds and photographing targets day or night. The new program represents a shift from purely intelligence-gathering assets to weaponized systems.

According to Haaretz, Israeli defense officials have discussed kinetic orbital strike concepts, sometimes called “rods from God,” which involve dropping dense projectiles from space that gain destructive force through velocity alone. However, no official Israeli source has confirmed development of this specific technology, and experts note significant technical and cost barriers.

The plan also includes expanding intelligence collection through multiple satellite layers, establishing resilient space-based communications for the defense establishment, and developing anti-satellite weapons to protect Israeli assets from hostile nations’ spacecraft.

Positioning Among Space Powers

Katz has stated in closed forums that the space domain requires “a major, rapid upgrade to create an advantage over enemy states and position Israel among the world’s five leading countries in the field.” Israel has maintained an independent satellite-launch capability since the 1988 launch of Ofek-1.

The Defense Ministry’s multiyear budget plan allocates dedicated funding for offensive space operations alongside upgrades to existing surveillance and communications infrastructure.

Legal and Strategic Implications

While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in orbit, conventional weapons systems like kinetic strike platforms and anti-satellite capabilities remain outside the treaty’s scope — a gap that the United States, Russia, and China have also utilized in their space programs.

The announcement places Israel firmly in the emerging arena of space militarization. As regional tensions persist following the Iran conflict, Israeli defense officials view space superiority as essential to maintaining the country’s qualitative military edge against numerically superior adversaries. Funding for the ambitious program has not yet been fully secured, and implementation will unfold over the coming decade as technologies mature and operational requirements are refined.

The NAVI K-12 Extremism Tracker reports that on Wednesday, August 26, Philadelphia’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter is hosting a “Socialist Night School” alongside Rethinking Schools managing editor Adam Sanchez, who will teach a workshop focused on how pro-Israel groups have “weaponized” antisemitism to suppress criticism of Israel.

The Philadelphia DSA describes the event, titled “Weaponizing Antisemitism: An Interactive History,” as “a collaboration between Philly DSA and Rethinking Schools.” Rethinking Schools is a longtime collaborator and self-described partner of the National Education Association (NEA), with documented ties to major teachers unions and public-school educators.

According to organizers, the workshop will examine how “pro-Israel watchdogs are weaponizing antisemitism to attack organizers, students, educators, public schools, and the broader infrastructure of the left.” It will also examine what organizers describe as the weakening of the “Zionist consensus” and the use of antisemitism allegations as “a tool of repression.”

NAVI’s reporting places the workshop within a broader network connecting Sanchez and Rethinking Schools to CODEPINK, socialist organizations, anti-Israel education campaigns and activists working inside Philadelphia public schools.

From Rethinking Schools to CODEPINK

The DSA workshop builds directly on Sanchez’s recently published Rethinking Schools article titled “Weaponizing Antisemitism: From the 1968 Teacher Strike to Today’s New McCarthyism.”

Sanchez writes that Jewish identification with Israel is “a more recent phenomenon” that resulted from a “decades long campaign launched by pro-Israel activists.” He describes accusations of antisemitism against anti-Israel activists as part of an effort to silence what he calls a growing “anti-imperialist left.”

The DSA workshop is not Sanchez’s first recent appearance in an explicitly anti-Zionist political campaign.

In June, Sanchez participated in CODEPINK’s four-day “Challenging Zionism in Schools” series, which told participants it was designed to combat what the organization called “Zionist brainwashing in our schools.”

CODEPINK said the program would teach educators, parents and students to challenge organizations such as the ADL, which it accused of using Holocaust education to “justify state violence and silence Palestine.”

Sanchez appeared during the opening workshop, which focused on “deconstructing” ADL educational material and examining claims that historical Jewish trauma is being used to justify what organizers described as present-day Israeli “oppression and genocide.”

The Workshop Heads to Socialism 2026

The same “Weaponizing Antisemitism” workshop is also scheduled to appear at the upcoming Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago.

As Jewish Onliner previously reported, the four-day conference includes workshops focused on organizing K-12 schools around Palestine, targeting U.S. defense suppliers, pressuring university governing boards and developing local activist campaigns.

The conference is presented by Haymarket Books in partnership with a broad collection of organizations that includes the Democratic Socialists of America, Rethinking Schools, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

The inclusion of Sanchez’s workshop effectively takes the same framework from an education publication, to CODEPINK’s school-focused campaign, to a local DSA “Socialist Night School,” and then to the national Socialism Conference.

Connections Inside Philadelphia Public Schools

The Philadelphia event also intersects with a network of educators already active around Palestine inside the School District of Philadelphia.

Sanchez has previously written about the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, a Philadelphia educator network from which Philadelphia Educators for Palestine emerged.

Philadelphia Educators for Palestine includes district teachers Hannah Gann and Keziah Ridgeway, both of whom contributed to Rethinking Schools’ Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices. The group has organized workshops around the book and publicly promotes a political framework declaring that “all resistance is righteous.”

On October 7, 2025, Philadelphia Educators for Palestine also co-hosted a “Rally for Rage and Resistance” promoted with calls to “Honor the Martyrs” and “Uplift Resistance,” according to material documented by the NAVI K-12 Extremism Tracker.

Sanchez himself previously taught a pilot Palestine-Israel lesson at Philadelphia’s Academy at Palumbo High School.

Student feedback highlighted by Sanchez included one student writing that U.S. support for Israel had helped “ruin so many lives” and that “people need to understand this as the buildup to Oct. 7.”

The connections carry additional significance because the House Education and Workforce Committee launched an investigation into allegations of antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia in November 2025.

The committee specifically cited concerns about district educators using Teaching Palestine materials, alleging that the curriculum “rationalize[s] terrorist violence and advocate[s] for the destruction of Israel.”

Ties to the Nation’s Largest Teachers Unions

Rethinking Schools’ political collaborations extend beyond activist groups.

The organization openly describes a longstanding relationship with the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union.

After participating in the NEA’s 2025 Conference on Racial and Social Justice, Rethinking Schools wrote that it was “grateful for our partnership with the National Education Association.” Rethinking Schools staff conducted workshops at the conference, while editors promoted Teaching Palestine to participating educators.

The relationship has also included state-level union activity. Rethinking Schools has documented its partnership with the New Jersey Education Association, an NEA affiliate, including workshops and distribution of Rethinking Schools publications.

NAVI’s review of Labor Department filings found that the NEA paid Rethinking Schools a combined $109,691 between fiscal years 2011 and 2025.

The organization also operates within networks connected to the American Federation of Teachers. Both the AFT and NEA are national partners of the Public School Strong coalition, while the Zinn Education Project, jointly coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, is a partner on the AFT’s Share My Lesson education platform.

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The Philadelphia workshop makes those overlapping networks unusually visible: an education organization with documented relationships with teachers unions and public-school educators collaborating directly with socialist activists to teach a political framework about Israel, Zionism and antisemitism.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which federal prosecutors listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 Hamas terror-financing case, has released its 2026-2027 nationwide back-to-school guide — a document CAIR itself describes as part of its "Unhostile Campus Campaign." The guide's own introduction states the resource is now being formally extended from college campuses down to K-12 schools.

The guide directs schools to a 9/11 curriculum that lists Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" as a high school resource and does not describe the September 11 attackers terrorists. It points student activists to a document — published five days after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre — that instructs organizers to use U.S. citizens as legal absorbers of arrest and consequences for non-citizen protesters.

The guide provides age-bracketed scripts for discussing Gaza with children as young as five. The scripts themselves do not mention Israel, Hamas, or the October 7 massacre. CAIR published the guide in August 2026 despite active congressional scrutiny, including a formal petition from Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) alerting the Department of Education to CAIR's K-12 partnerships. The document represents an institutional escalation: material previously distributed by state chapters is now being formally endorsed by CAIR National for a nationwide audience of students — children as young as five through university seniors.

The 9/11 Curriculum CAIR National Now Endorses

Under a section titled “Guidance on Challenging Topics: 25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” CAIR’s 2026-2027 guide formally recommends and hyperlinks a single classroom resource — a curriculum developed by CAIR-New Jersey and a group called Teaching While Muslim — instructing educators to “access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”

The curriculum is titled “The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims.” It is designed for use in elementary, middle, and high school social studies and English classes.. And it describes the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks as “a group self-identifying as AlQaeda hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan.” The word “terrorist” is not used to describe them. The curriculum tells middle and high schoolers that the attackers “launched the attacks in response to America’s support of Israel, their involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and the vast presence of the US military in the Middle East” — repeating al-Qaeda’s own stated grievances as historical explanation, with U.S. support for Israel listed first.

The curriculum introduces Osama bin Laden to students as “a man named Osama bin Laden” — an anti-Soviet fighter the U.S. once supported. As a resource for high school classrooms, the curriculum recommends The Guardian’s full text of Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” — the manifesto in which bin Laden justified the September 11 attacks and called for the mass killing of Americans and Jews. The curriculum also recommends the film “V for Vendetta,” as a 9/11 backgorund resource, which depicts the bombing of government buildings as heroic resistance.

Jewish Onliner previously documented that CAIR chapters in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Florida, and Illinois have distributed similar 9/11 materials — including a CAIR-Philadelphia guide instructing teachers to avoid “inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”

With the 2026-2027 guide, CAIR National has now formally endorsed and nationalized the CAIR-New Jersey 9/11 Teaching Resource Guide. The guide suggests the material it provides should be taught in Social Studies or English classes throughout the country.

A Post-October 7 Activism Playbook — For K-12 Students

Under the section “Guidance for Students Speaking Out Against Islamophobia and for Palestinian Rights,” the K-12 guide directs students to a CAIR document hosted on islamophobia.org — a CAIR project. That document was published on October 12, 2023 — five days after the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1,200 people in Israel and before Israel’s ground response had meaningfully begun.

Under a heading titled “Organizing Responsibly,” the document instructs activists to “Recruit at least 10 U.S. citizens to your core team,” explaining that “citizens typically face fewer risks when protesting publicly. A larger citizen base adds legal resilience to your group.” It directs organizers to “let citizens take front-line roles in protests” — where they will “hold signs, lead chants, speak to the media, and take direct action, minimizing risk to non-citizen participants.” It then instructs organizers to “assign non-citizens to behind-the-scenes roles” like logistics and communications, “lowering their exposure to arrest or retaliation.”

The framework treats American citizens as legal absorbers of arrest and consequence, while structurally shielding non-citizen participants from law enforcement scrutiny. It was drafted in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre. And it is now the document CAIR’s 2026-2027 K-12 guide directs American schoolchildren toward as authoritative activism guidance.

Coaching K-12 Students on Gaza and Loaded Terminology

Beyond the 9/11 curriculum, CAIR’s guide devotes sections to “Talking to Young Children About Gaza” and “Issues related to Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Palestinians, and others against genocide.” The guide encourages students to “explore key terms that may arise in lesson plans or that students may raise, such as ‘apartheid,’ ‘genocide,’ and ‘terrorism.’”

It provides age-bracketed scripts for adults discussing Gaza with children as young as five. It instructs educators to “ensure students are not penalized or stigmatized for expressing support for Palestinian human rights and do not conflate peaceful advocacy for Palestinian freedom with supporting terrorism or antisemitism.”

Timing, Scale, and Congressional Scrutiny

CAIR itself ties the guide’s release to the 25th anniversary of September 11 and to “the ongoing conflicts overseas.” Corey Saylor, CAIR National’s Research and Advocacy Director, said the campaign’s purpose is to make sure students, parents, and educators know “where a school’s authority ends.” The guide is being deployed nationwide alongside a webinar series aimed at both K-12 and higher education communities.

The release comes despite mounting federal scrutiny. In September 2025, Senator Cotton alerted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to CAIR’s efforts to influence K-12 schools, warning that “such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children.”

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) told Jewish Onliner in an exclusive statement that “credible reports that CAIR is partnering with K-12 schools to push a radical curriculum are deeply troubling given CAIR’s ties to terrorism and antisemitism.”

UNICEF UK says it took “immediate action” against an employee accused of involvement with an online store that sold merchandise praising Hamas leaders, invoking armed “resistance” and explicitly calling for violence against Zionists.

The action followed an investigation by antisemitism-monitoring group GnasherJew and a subsequent complaint from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which raised concerns about Muhammad Karim, identified at the time as a Marketing Manager at UNICEF UK. GnasherJew also identified Karim as chair of the UNICEF Staff Association.

Karim’s employment with the charity now appears to have ended. According to UKLFI, his UNICEF position disappeared from his LinkedIn profile following the complaint. UNICEF UK, however, has not publicly confirmed whether Karim was dismissed.

“Punch a Zionist” and Praising Hamas Leaders

The controversy centers on an online store called Solid Mujahid, which GnasherJew linked to Karim through public records and digital footprints. The shop has since been taken offline.

Among the products documented was a shirt emblazoned with the words “Punch a Zionist,” accompanied by an illustration appearing to show a Palestinian flag-bearer punching a person marked with an Israeli flag.

Other merchandise included hoodies reading “Death Death to the IDF,” caps displaying the inverted red triangle used in Hamas propaganda videos to mark targets and a shirt depicting a watermelon throwing a flaming Molotov cocktail at an Israeli tank.

According to UKLFI, Karim allegedly promoted the latter as an “epic representation of resistance” against what he described as “the absolute worst of humanity, the IDF and its ilk.”

One shirt featured the names of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Ahmed Yassin alongside other historical and political figures. Karim allegedly described those featured as “Champions of truth throughout history.” A promotional image showed a man carrying a flaming Molotov cocktail.

Hamas has been proscribed in its entirety as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom since 2021.

Posts Praising ‘Armed Resistance’

The merchandise was not the only material uncovered.

GnasherJew’s investigation found that immediately after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre in Israel, Karim posted material describing the attacks as “decolonisation in practice.”

The organization also documented on X a broader collection of material it attributed to Karim and Solid Mujahid.

On October 7, 2024, one year after the massacre, Karim allegedly published a post endorsing “armed resistance” alongside a flaming inverted red triangle.

GnasherJew further reported that Solid Mujahid’s social media accounts amplified Holocaust denial and antisemitic material, including the “271k” conspiracy theory used to minimize the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust and claims invoking longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jews, money and global conflicts.

UNICEF UK Takes “Immediate Action”

UKLFI wrote to UNICEF UK on August 9, asking the charity to investigate whether Karim operated the accounts and store, whether the conduct complied with its code of conduct and safeguarding requirements and whether any of the material should be referred to police or Counter Terrorism Policing.

“We are aware of the serious allegations concerning this employee and took immediate action commensurate with the alleged conduct,” UNICEF UK Chief Executive Dr. Philip Goodwin told UKLFI. The organization declined to provide further details.

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UKLFI stressed that determining whether any criminal offense occurred is ultimately a matter for British authorities. It said the material raised potential concerns under British terrorism legislation, while the “Punch a Zionist” merchandise appeared to expressly advocate physical violence against a category of people.

Former hostages Aviva and Keith Siegel have described sexual abuse against young female captives, severe beatings, starvation, forced nudity and psychological torture during the 51 and 484 days they spent in Gaza after Hamas-led terrorists abducted them from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023.

Their new joint account, published by the Daily Mail and reported by Israel Hayom on Aug. 24, expands upon testimony the couple previously delivered to the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

Aviva said young female hostages repeatedly returned visibly injured or shaken after being taken away by their captors. One came back so badly bruised that her skin appeared purple. Another disclosed that a captor had touched her body and threatened to kill her if she spoke about it.

Aviva also described a hostage being taken into a bathroom, ordered to undress and forced to perform oral sex on a captor. A 16-year-old girl was forced to shower while a guard watched and smiled.

“I wanted to die. I just wanted to die,” Aviva said of witnessing the abuse.

Young Hostages Returned Bruised and Shaking

The latest interview provides a fuller account of incidents Aviva previously described before the UN committee in Geneva in November 2025.

Aviva testified that captors repeatedly took young women into bathrooms, where there were fewer witnesses. One hostage returned trembling and later disclosed that a captor had sexually assaulted her. Another was forced to perform a sexual act and smile afterward.

The captors also forced female hostages to shower naked in their presence and wear clothing that did not fit properly, according to the Siegels’ account.

Keith separately described being brought into a room where a female hostage was tied, gagged and beaten with rods. Her captors reportedly pressed a sharp object against her forehead and held a gun to her head while demanding that she confess to being an Israeli military officer. Keith was ordered to help pressure her despite knowing she had nothing to confess.

The episode continues to haunt him, he told the UN.

Starvation and Total Physical Control

The couple described a system in which captors controlled food, water, movement, hygiene and access to toilets.

Aviva lost approximately 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, during her 51 days in captivity. Keith lost roughly 35 kilograms, or 77 pounds, over 484 days. Aviva said their captors ate in front of the hostages and gained weight while the captives became increasingly malnourished.

At some locations, the hostages were ordered to remain lying down from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m. and were threatened if they moved. Aviva recalled being screamed at for allowing one foot to extend from beneath a blanket.

Keith said guards forced him to undress, shaved his body and compared his genitals with those of another hostage. Captors also threatened the hostages with knives and restricted their access to toilets, causing them to wait until they could no longer control their bodily functions.

During his entire captivity, Keith estimated that he was permitted to rinse himself only about 25 times using a bucket and cup. At one tunnel location, two hostages and three captors shared a toilet that could be flushed only once a day.

Dozens of Locations and Captors

Keith was repeatedly transferred among tunnels, schools and residential buildings. He said he encountered approximately 60 captors and spent about six months in complete isolation.

His account describes an extended detention system involving rotating personnel, controlled food distribution and repeated transfers between military tunnels and civilian locations.

Conditions reportedly worsened after the November 2023 ceasefire collapsed. Keith described being kicked and spat upon while lying on the ground. By the final stage of his captivity, he feared he had become too weak to crawl out of the tunnels.

He was released on Feb. 1, 2025, after 484 days. Aviva had been released in November 2023 after 51 days.

Accounts Match a Wider Evidentiary Record

The Siegels’ testimony adds to multiple investigations documenting sexual and gender-based violence during the Oct. 7 attack, the abduction of hostages and their subsequent captivity.

A March 2024 UN mission found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence, including rape and sexualized torture, was committed against hostages taken to Gaza. The mission also found reasonable grounds to believe that such abuse may have been continuing at the time.

In May 2026, the Israeli nonprofit Civil Commission published a two-year investigation drawing on more than 430 interviews, testimonies and meetings, alongside more than 10,000 photographs and video segments representing over 1,800 hours of visual analysis.

The commission identified 13 recurring patterns, including rape, sexual torture, forced nudity, threats of forced marriage, abuse of male hostages and the filming or distribution of sexualized humiliation. It concluded that sexual and gender-based violence was widespread, systematic and integral to the Oct. 7 assault and the subsequent treatment of hostages. Those findings represent the commission’s legal analysis and have not been adjudicated by a court.

The Siegels’ latest interview does not present an isolated allegation. It adds specific firsthand testimony concerning multiple captors, victims and detention locations to an expanding record of sexual abuse, torture and deliberate deprivation inside Gaza.

The seventh of eight pieces in the Gaza GenoLIE campaign documents how images of emaciated Gazan children became central to allegations that Israel was deliberately starving Gaza, even when some of the most widely circulated photographs omitted serious medical conditions affecting the children shown.

Its central example is Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an emaciated toddler whose photograph appeared prominently on the July 25, 2025, front page of The New York Times. The original caption relayed his mother’s statement that he had been born healthy and was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition. Days later, the Times added previously undisclosed information about health problems affecting his brain and muscular development.

The July 25, 2025, issue of the New York Times with an image of Mohammed al-Mutawaq, Source: The New York Times

The Image That Reached the Front Page

The photograph showed Mohammed in his mother’s arms, with his ribs and spine visibly protruding. It rapidly became a prominent image used to illustrate reports of starvation in Gaza.

Independent investigator David Collier reported that a May 2025 medical document identified cerebral palsy, hypoxemia and a suspected inherited disorder. These conditions affected Mohammed’s health and nutritional vulnerability but were absent from the initial presentation of his case.

Additional photographs showed Mohammed’s mother and older brother appearing considerably better nourished. The campaign presents those wider images as context that was missing when the closely framed photograph of Mohammed was circulated internationally.

The Times subsequently updated its report after obtaining information from Mohammed’s hospital and medical records. The newspaper said the additional material gave readers a fuller understanding of his condition while maintaining that he suffered from severe malnutrition.

The omission of an unusually vulnerable child’s medical history allowed his appearance to be treated as evidence of a population-wide policy.

The case was not confined to one newspaper. Euronews reported that the BBC, CNN and The Guardian also distributed Mohammed’s image before the Times added its clarification. A later investigation by The Free Press examined 12 children whose photographs had become symbols of Gaza’s hunger crisis and reported that all had additional medical conditions, including cystic fibrosis, rickets and neurological disorders.

The New York Times issued this correction to the story on Mohammed al-Mutawaq, who they claimed was emaciated from famine in Gaza even though he suffers with severe pre-existing health conditions that make it difficult for him to eat. July 2025. Source: NY Times Communications X

Hunger and the Claim of Genocidal Intent

The Gaza GenoLIE campaign explains the distinction between the existence of hunger during a prolonged war and the allegation that Israel imposed starvation with the specific intent required for genocide.

The August 2025 famine designation was highly controversial. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies analysis said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification lowered the threshold for determining famine and used new metrics to apply the designation to Gaza. Israel rejected the finding, saying it relied on Hamas-influenced data and criteria applied inconsistently.

The campaign does not dispute that Gazans experienced hunger. It maintains that hunger or a famine classification does not independently establish an Israeli intent to destroy Palestinians as a group.

Aid Entered, but Much of It Never Reached Warehouses

Israeli measures taken to prevent starvation contradict the allegation of a deliberate policy intended to decimate Gaza’s population through hunger.

In July 2025, the IDF introduced daily 10-hour operational pauses in al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. Designated convoy routes remained open from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. to facilitate the movement of food and medicine. Israel also conducted airdrops containing flour, sugar and canned food and coordinated additional deliveries by Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Aid entering Gaza did not necessarily reach its intended recipients. Between July 20 and August 3, at least 12,000 metric tons of food entered through the UN-coordinated system, according to OCHA. More than 90 percent was offloaded by hungry crowds or looted by armed gangs along convoy routes before reaching warehouses.

The campaign also cites Israeli figures reporting that approximately 1.78 million tons of food entered Gaza between October 2025 and June 7, 2026. COGAT said the increased supply coincided with falling staple prices.

Separate COGAT figures cited by the campaign state that more than 70,000 cubic meters of water were being supplied to Gaza each day through pipelines, desalination facilities and other infrastructure.

How the Fabricated Narrative Was Built

The campaign shows how Gaza’s deprivation resulted from the war initiated by Hamas on October 7, the embedding of its forces within the civilian population and the breakdown and theft of humanitarian aid after it entered the territory.

This is seen in how the false starvation allegation was presented. Images of medically vulnerable children were separated from essential clinical context, circulated internationally and incorporated into claims of deliberate famine and genocidal intent. Corrections and clarifications followed only after the photographs had already reached global audiences.

The emotionally overwhelming images reached global audiences first, cementing the famine allegation long before the medical and logistical context that undermined it emerged.

An Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel who was seriously wounded by a sniper in Gaza has developed an artificial intelligence system that translates electrical activity from the brain into real-time flight commands for a drone, according to an Israel Hayom report.

The 37-year-old officer, identified only as Lt. Col. S., built the noninvasive brain-computer interface as a master’s project in intelligent systems at Afeka College. Electrodes placed on the scalp record electrical activity, which an AI model is designed to classify and convert into digital instructions sent to a DJI drone. Afeka said the project used an EEG system with 14 sensors.

The college says the system recognizes seven movement commands with approximately 89% accuracy. Israel Hayom, citing the officer, reported a success rate of about 80%.

From Battlefield Injury to Engineering Project

Lt. Col. S. served as a company commander in the Givati Brigade during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. He was wounded by sniper fire in both legs and said he came close to requiring an amputation. He returned to military service after rehabilitation, studied electrical engineering and took technological posts in the IDF Ground Forces’ Weapons Department.

He now commands an operational software unit and completed the drone system while pursuing a master’s degree at Afeka.

His project addresses a problem he encountered as a combat commander: operating equipment while simultaneously processing information and making time-sensitive decisions. A hands-free interface could allow a commander to issue a limited set of instructions without moving between a weapon, a controller and other command systems.

How the System Works

The prototype does not read thoughts in the ordinary sense. It looks for repeatable patterns in electroencephalography, or EEG, data produced when the user performs or imagines a particular action. Once trained to associate a pattern with a command, the software converts the classification into an instruction such as turning the drone left or right.

Afeka describes the project as a hybrid deep-learning architecture that examines both where a signal appears and how it changes over time. According to Israel Hayom, Lt. Col. S. put on the electrode headset, closed his eyes and imagined directional movements while watching the drone respond in real time.

The approach avoids brain surgery, but it also carries the limitations of scalp-based EEG. The signals are weak and can be distorted by eye and muscle movements, environmental conditions, the user’s physical state and the sensitivity of the hardware.

Israel Is Studying the Same Operational Problem

The project nevertheless aligns with a research area already identified by Israel’s defense establishment. In February, Dr. Alona Barnea, director of the Neurotechnology Division at the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, said researchers were examining how drone operators could use brain interfaces and how one person could manage a swarm.

Barnea described the wider concept as “hybrid intelligence,” in which a human supplies intent and judgment while AI and autonomous systems handle more of the execution. No public evidence connects Lt. Col. S.’s academic prototype to the ministry’s work, but both efforts target the same bottleneck: how one operator can direct an expanding number of unmanned systems without manually piloting each platform.

The concept is not new to Israel’s military technology community. In May 2018, the IDF publicized a different brainwave-operated drone prototype produced during a technology workshop. The military explicitly described that workshop as nonoperational.

Research published August 21 in Frontiers demonstrated one version of brain-swarm control. Eight participants were tested in five two-person pairings that used EEG, muscle signals and visual stimuli to direct two DJI quadcopters through movement and formation changes. The system recorded an average online decoding accuracy of 88.89%, though it was a hybrid interface rather than control by brain signals alone.

A separate 2026 study involving 30 participants reported 87.24% classification accuracy for six-command simulated drone navigation using a consumer-grade EEG headset. The classifier required 0.09 seconds of computation, with a total decoding time of approximately 1.09 seconds.

The Operator Sets the Intent

The United States has explored a comparable concept through DARPA’s N3 program, which identifies unmanned-aircraft control, cyber defense and complex military multitasking as potential applications for portable, nonsurgical brain-machine interfaces.

The longer-term objective is not simply to replace a reliable joystick with a noisier neural signal. It is to let the operator communicate an intended outcome while autonomous software determines how individual machines should carry it out.

The sixth piece of the Gaza GenoLIE campaign’s eight-part puzzle documents how Hamas embedded tunnels, fighters, weapons and command infrastructure within Gaza’s civilian environment while reserving its underground protection for the terror group’s own members.

The piece focuses on Hamas’s use of civilians and protected sites to shield military objectives from Israeli attack. The strategy provides essential context for assessing the images and casualty figures used to support the manufactured narrative that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Hamas Built Its Military Network Beneath Civilians

International humanitarian law prohibits using civilians to shield military objectives. Hospitals receive special protection, but that protection is not unconditional.

Under the laws of war, hospitals can lose their protected status when they are used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy,” including housing fighters, weapons or military command posts, according to the ICRC.

Hamas deliberately converted Gaza’s civilian population into a defensive asset by constructing a subterranean network exceeding 350 miles beneath its cities. Tunnel entrances were placed beneath hospitals, schools, mosques and even children’s bedrooms, positioning Hamas’s military infrastructure inside locations that constrain Israeli operations.

Urban-warfare expert John Spencer described the tunnels as a military network built beneath Gaza’s urban areas. The IDF has also published extensive documentation of tunnel shafts, weapons and operational infrastructure discovered within civilian sites.

In September 2024, Israeli forces located the shaft leading to the tunnel where the bodies of six murdered hostages were recovered. The entrance was beside stuffed animals and cartoon artwork in a children’s area.

Hamas Said Its Tunnels Protected Fighters

Senior Hamas member Mousa Abu Marzouk described the purpose of the tunnels during an October 2023 interview with Russia Today Arabic.

Asked why Hamas had constructed a vast tunnel network but had not built shelters for Gaza’s civilian population, Abu Marzouk said the tunnels existed to protect Hamas members from Israeli airstrikes.

“We are fighting from inside the tunnels,” he said.

Abu Marzouk assigned responsibility for protecting Gaza’s civilians to the United Nations and Israel, according to the interview.

Hamas placed its fighters underground while leaving civilians without access to comparable protection. It also discouraged or prevented Palestinians from evacuating combat areas or seeking safety, according to a May 2026 analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, became the most prominent test case for Hamas’s use of protected civilian infrastructure. Israel and the United States asserted that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes above a tunnel network. In November 2023, the IDF released footage of a fortified tunnel beneath the compound.

A subsequent New York Times investigation reported that Hamas used the hospital for cover, stored weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex. The tunnel was supplied with electricity, water and air-conditioning. Haaretz also concluded that the hospital had been used for military purposes. The IDF separately identified a Hamas command center beneath the compound.

Al-Shifa was one of several documented cases involving Hamas’s use of hospitals and other civilian infrastructure for military purposes. An April 2025 report by the Henry Jackson Society compiled evidence from international media reports, military assessments, legal analysis and firsthand accounts. It documented tunnels beneath residential areas, schools and hospitals, weapons and command posts inside civilian sites, and military activity within humanitarian zones as components of Hamas’s broader human-shields strategy.

Human Shields Change How Casualties Are Assessed

When military operations are deliberately embedded within protected civilian sites, the party using those sites bears primary responsibility for the danger imposed on civilians. The presence of human shields also affects how an attack is evaluated under the laws of war. Proportionality is assessed by weighing anticipated civilian harm against the military advantage of the target. It is not determined through a simple casualty count.

A high civilian toll during combat against an enemy operating from civilian infrastructure is therefore not, by itself, evidence of an intent to destroy a population.

Hamas’s human-shields strategy was designed to place Palestinian civilians in danger and produce images of civilian casualties capable of generating international pressure against Israel. Those images cannot be assessed separately from the tunnels, weapons, fighters and command infrastructure positioned within the civilian environment.

Palestine House of Freedom, also known as Dar Alhurriya, a federally tax-exempt nonprofit headquartered near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to host an event Thursday with Nasser Abu Srour, a Fatah member convicted of participating in the brutal 1993 murder of an Israeli security officer.

Abu Srour will appear virtually from Egypt, where he has lived since Israel released him in a 2025 hostage-prisoner exchange. The event will run from 6 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 20.

Admission is free, but the registration page solicits “tax receipt eligible” donations to Palestine House of Freedom. The organization also says copies of Abu Srour’s prison memoir, The Tale of a Wall, will be offered as gifts in exchange for donations.

The Murder Missing From the Event Description

Abu Srour was serving a life sentence for participating in the January 1993 murder of Haim Nahmani, a 25-year-old officer with Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service.

Contemporaneous reporting said Nahmani was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in an apartment in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood on Jan. 3, 1993. He had arrived to meet Maher Abu Srour, a Hamas terrorist who had been acting as an informant.

Palestinian sources have also independently acknowledged both his affiliation and participation.

A 2023 Arabic-language profile published by the Palestinian Vision Center for Political Development states that Abu Srour joined Fatah, participated in operations against Israelis during the First Intifada and established an armed cell with his cousins Maher and Mahmoud Abu Srour. It explicitly says he “participated in killing a Zionist officer.”

Fatah’s own media outlet has likewise reported that Abu Srour was serving life for participating in the killing of an Israeli officer.

In a 2013 prison interview with Israel’s Channel 2, Abu Srour described himself as a soldier rather than an innocent bystander.

“I was a soldier in the army of Palestine,” he said. “What do soldiers do? They fight.”

Abu Srour added that he had done his part in the struggle and would “continue” through other means. He predicted that, without a diplomatic solution, there would be “a third, fourth, fifth and sixth intifada.”

Released in a Hamas-Israel Exchange

Abu Srour remained imprisoned through multiple proposed prisoner releases before being freed in October 2025 as part of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement. He was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were released and transferred to Egypt, according to reports.

Abu Srour’s public statements since his release indicate that his underlying position on armed “resistance” has not changed.

In a July 2026 Arabic-language interview with Al Jazeera, Abu Srour said prison had changed nothing about his core convictions. He defended Palestinian terror groups retaining their weapons, calling the gun “a revolutionary means” and an integral part of Palestinian identity.

He also praised former Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, describing him as a charismatic and imposing leader. Abu Srour said the October 7 attack was unsurprising to those who had known Sinwar in prison and rejected efforts to hold him responsible for the resulting destruction in Gaza.

Referring to Hamas’s name for the attack, “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Abu Srour said October 7 had shattered Israel’s image of invincibility.

“The Palestinian has proven that the occupation state is an entity capable of bleeding,” he said, according to a translation of the Arabic interview. “As long as the entity is capable of bleeding, it is capable of dying and disappearing from this region.”

A Tax-Exempt Organization Near Congress

Palestine House of Freedom operates under Education for Peace & Understandng, the name as rendered in IRS records. The organization has been federally tax-exempt since July 2023 under Section 501(c)(3), making qualifying donations tax-deductible. Its EIN is 92-1906608.

Its 2024 Form 990 reported $510,746 in revenue, including $509,556 in contributions. The organization spent $211,045 and ended the year with $314,845 in net assets. Founder and President Avraham “Miko” Peled received $98,077 in compensation.

Palestine House describes itself as a nonprofit with “extensive outreach to Congress” located “just steps away from the halls of Congress.” Its stated vision calls for “a free, democratic Palestine on all historic Palestine to replace the current apartheid regime.”

Peled has generated controversy through his own comments about terrorism and Jews. During a November 2024 Oxford Union debate, he declared that the Hamas-led October 7 attack “was not terrorism.”

“They were acts of heroism of a people that have been oppressed,” Peled said.

In 2016, Princeton’s Palestine committee canceled one of Peled’s appearances after he posted that people should not be surprised that Jews had a reputation for being “sleazy thieves.”

A Pattern of Controversial Programming

The Abu Srour event follows several other programs that have placed Palestine House of Freedom at the center of controversy.

In May, the organization hosted a virtual discussion with U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Its announcement said Albanese would appear by video “since she is sanctioned from entering the United States.” The Treasury Department had placed Albanese on its sanctions list over what the State Department described as her efforts to advance International Criminal Court actions against American and Israeli officials.

In June 2025, Palestine House hosted a fundraiser for Birzeit University. The university has faced congressional scrutiny over its Hamas-affiliated student bloc, which held a majority in the student government. Harvard halted its formal collaboration with Birzeit during an institutional review, while a House committee later described Birzeit as an institution whose student body showed overwhelming support for Hamas.

Two months later, Palestine House screened To Kill a War Machine, a documentary about Palestine Action. Its own listing promoted the film as having been banned in Britain after Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organization.

A Federally Tax-Exempt Platform

By placing Thursday’s event under its charitable banner, Palestine House of Freedom is lending its institutional name and Washington platform to Abu Srour’s appearance. The program offers a concrete example of the figures the organization chooses to elevate through its nonprofit activities. That decision potentially merits scrutiny from donors and the broader public.