Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

The U.S. Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned released a paper on June 3 analyzing Hamas’s recent combat operations against the IDF in Gaza and assessing how Taiwan’s army could adapt some of those tactics against a potential PLA invasion.

The 12-page report analyzes how the U.S. and EU-designated terror group’s “combat effectiveness” stemmed from decentralized cells, hit-and-run ambushes, and a sophisticated tunnel network dubbed the “Gaza metro.” The study says Taiwan could adapt Hamas-style subterranean tactics by integrating existing urban infrastructure with purpose-built tunnels and other underground routes. The relevant distinction is between studying tactical adaptation rather than adopting Hamas’s model wholesale

Decentralized Cells and Hit-and-Run Tactics

The Army study identifies Hamas' core tactical unit as decentralized, small, and semi-autonomous cells of three to five fighters operating under mission command principles. These squads receive general objectives within geographic sectors and execute operations independently, making them highly adaptive without reliance on constant top-down communication. Their autonomy is enabled by intimate knowledge of local terrain and a distributed network of pre-positioned caches containing weapons, explosives, ammunition, food, and water, allowing units to re-arm and sustain operations without vulnerable supply lines.

The document describes their signature tactic as waiting for high-value targets to enter pre-selected kill zones, initiating sudden attacks, then immediately exfiltrating through tunnel networks. This creates a resilient fighting force with no single point of failure, resulting in protracted, casualty-intensive urban warfare for the IDF.

Weaponizing the Urban Battlefield

Hamas transformed Gaza's cityscape into defensive assets and lethal traps, according to the study. Buildings became multi-layered fortresses with internal "mouse holes" for concealed movement and positions on different floors for snipers and antitank teams.

The Army documents how Hamas exploited airstrike rubble as unpredictable cover that disrupts sightlines and creates difficult terrain for armored vehicles. The terrorist group used city geometry to channel enemy columns into narrow streets serving as pre-planned kill zones, where IEDs disabled lead vehicles and trapped formations for coordinated attacks from multiple elevations.

The “Gaza Metro” Tunnel System

The report details Hamas's most significant tactical asset, a tunnel network constructed over two decades with electricity, ventilation, and communications infrastructure. The Wilson Center reports the network spans approximately 300 miles, with structures reaching depths of 200 feet in some areas.

The Army study emphasizes Hamas's "pop-up" ambush tactic, where small units emerge from camouflaged tunnel entrances hidden in homes, school, and mosques to attack targets from unexpected directions, then quickly disappear underground before effective response. This eliminates traditional frontlines and secure rear areas, compelling the IDF to view every piece of cleared ground as a potential danger zone.

Commercial Drones as Force Multipliers

The study documents Hamas’ weaponization of commercial drones like the DJI Phantom for surveillance and attack. Research from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) indicates Hamas demonstrated two key drone innovations, using small drones to precisely strike sensitive, high-value defenses and employing drones as a central part of combined-arms assault.

The Army notes these platforms provided crucial reconnaissance of Israeli positions before the October 7, 2023 assault and enabled real-time intelligence for coordinating ambushes during the conflict.

Human Shields and “Lawfare”

The report addresses Hamas' practice of operating from civilian areas, describing it as weaponizing international law to create strategic dilemmas for the IDF. The study notes Hamas encouraged civilians to ignore IDF warnings, framing the use of human shields as patriotic resistance and an effective strategy.

A Lieber Institute analysis by Michael Schmitt says the use of human shields is strictly prohibited under the law of armed conflict, while cautioning that the legal category is narrower than merely operating near civilians. Schmitt wrote that Hamas violated the prohibition by using hostages as shields and preventing civilians from leaving northern Gaza, and that placing fighters or equipment in or under places such as hospitals or schools can be a powerful indicator of shielding intent depending on the circumstances. The U.S. Army report concludes this approach successfully imposed strategic costs on Israel, even when the IDF achieved tactical objectives.

The Taiwan Recommendation

The study applies those findings to Taiwan’s “porcupine strategy,” arguing that the island could adapt selected tactical solutions observed in Gaza, including subterranean movement, decentralized small units, fortified urban strongpoints, drones, pre-positioned caches, local defense forces, and prepared kill zones, to make a PLA invasion more costly.

Taiwan could draw lessons from how small units use terrain, tunnels, drones, and decentralized command to survive against a potential PLA invasion. It could not lawfully replicate Hamas’s use of civilians, hostages, protected sites, or civilian suffering as part of the battlefield.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine, an unsanctioned University of Colorado Boulder activist group, is drawing new scrutiny after its public link network connected a statement defending convicted Boulder firebomber Mohamed Sabry Soliman with donation portals for Lebanon that raise significant terrorism-finance due-diligence concerns.

The widely covered controversy is that Boulder SJP published a statement praising Soliman’s June 1, 2025 attack on a Run for Their Lives walk for Israeli hostages; the less-examined issue is what else sat inside the same online ecosystem.

A Jewish Onliner review of Boulder SJP’s Linktree found that it promotes Aid4Lebanon, a fundraising aggregator that remains live and includes a center with prior public links to Samidoun, and fundraising promoted through Dahiyeh-linked channels in a geography closely associated with Hezbollah.

The Underreported Link: Fundraising Infrastructure

Boulder SJP’s Soliman statement was explicit. The page called the convicted attacker’s firebombing “direct action,” described the hostage-awareness walk as a “colonist procession,” and said Boulder SJP “stands in solidarity” with Soliman. The Justice Department charged Soliman after prosecutors said he threw two lit Molotov cocktails at people gathered near the Boulder courthouse for Run for Their Lives, a weekly walk calling attention to Israeli hostages in Gaza.

The fundraising network is the added finding. Aid4Lebanon’s Linktree, created in March 2026, lists several donation options: a Hamra community kitchen, a Venmo for the al Naqb Center, a Fundahope campaign promoted “via @humansofdahieh,” a Venmo for Solidarity Network Lebanon, a Venmo for Aïnata municipality, a GoFundMe for displaced families, and a Lebanon aid map. Not all of those campaigns appear problematic on their face. The concern is that several rely on personal payment accounts, rather than transparent nonprofit infrastructure, while others point into political or geographic environments closely associated with U.S.-designated terrorist networks.

The Samidoun Connection

One Aid4Lebanon link routes donations to “funds for al Naqb center” through a personal Venmo account. Al Naqab Center for Youth Activities describes itself as a youth and education center in Beirut’s Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, but its public fundraising history includes a documented connection to Samidoun. That connection dates to 2020, when Samidoun posted a fundraiser for Al Naqab Center following the Beirut port explosion, and when Al Naqab Center co-initiated Samidoun’s “#Action4Return” campaign alongside the network.

That matters because the U.S. Treasury Department designated Samidoun in October 2024 as “a sham charity” that served as an international fundraiser for the PFLP, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Treasury said Samidoun functioned as a PFLP front and provided financial support to the group. At the time of the co-organizing and fundraising, Samidoun had not yet been sanctioned by either the United States or Canada.

The link does not prove that current donations to the al Naqb Center are routed to Samidoun or the PFLP. But it creates a potential due-diligence question: why would a U.S.-based campus group direct followers toward a personal payment account for a center with a prior fundraising connection to an organization now sanctioned by the U.S. government as a terrorist fundraiser?

Why Payment Rails Matter

Aid4Lebanon also includes campaigns that appear to be ordinary civilian-aid efforts, including a Hamra community kitchen and a fundraiser for displaced families. But the combination of opaque payment rails, personal Venmo accounts, and links into Hezbollah- and PFLP-adjacent networks is precisely the type of charitable-sector risk U.S. officials have warned about.

Treasury said in 2025 that Hamas and the PFLP have used sham charities and humanitarian fronts to raise or move funds, and warned that terrorist fundraising can mix legitimate charitable work with diverted or obscured flows.

That broader warning does not mean every Aid4Lebanon campaign is illicit. It does mean Boulder SJP’s role as a promoter is relevant. A campus group that has already praised a convicted killer as a resistance figure was also directing attention to fundraisers that require serious donor scrutiny.

The After Effect

Soliman is now serving life without parole plus 2,128 years after he pleaded guilty to more than 100 state charges in the attack that killed 82-year-old Karen Diamond. Boulder County prosecutors identified 29 victims, 13 of whom suffered physical injuries. Yet Boulder SJP’s page honored him and demanded his release.

The Boulder case is no longer only a story about rhetoric or recognition status. It is a case study in how an unsanctioned campus group can use public link hubs to normalize violence against Jewish civilians while simultaneously steering followers toward donation channels with unresolved terrorism-finance red flags.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

On the night of May 29, Hezbollah rockets struck Saint George Orthodox Church and a nearby school in Jdeidet Marjayoun, a predominantly Christian town in southern Lebanon already living under the shadow of the terror group’s war against Israel.

The strikes fit a pattern documented by Israeli officials and echoed by Lebanese local sources, with Hezbollah activity around Christian religious sites pulling civilian communities into an active battlefield. The threat has reportedly become so acute that some Lebanese residents have stood guard outside churches to keep Hezbollah operatives out.

The Marjayoun strike

The Jerusalem Post reported that IDF footage showed Hezbollah rockets striking Saint George Orthodox Church in Marjayoun on May 29, and said the Israeli military emphasized that no Israeli soldiers were operating near the church when it was hit. Times of Israel also reported, citing the Israeli military, that a Hezbollah rocket salvo struck several buildings in Marjayoun, including the church.

Local Lebanese reporting described the same damage in civilian areas. MTV Lebanon reported that Jdeidet Marjayoun was “gripped by panic” after rockets fired toward Israeli forces targeting Hezbollah positions near Dibbin landed inside residential neighborhoods and civilian sites, causing significant property damage. The report said the damage included Saint George Church and the Sacred Hearts school complex, placing the strike in the middle of a town where residents were already facing advancing ground operations nearby.

Subscribe now

The Hezbollah allegation — and the dispute over blame

According to This is Beirut, a local Lebanese official said that the rockets were launched from the Mahmoudiyeh area northwest of the village, which he claimed Hezbollah uses to fire rockets and drones toward Israel and Israeli military positions.

What that official said may be the most revealing detail in the whole episode: young men from Jdeidet Marjayoun had been standing guard at Saint George Church and the town square since the beginning of the war to prevent Hezbollah members from infiltrating the area.

Qouza, May 19: fired upon from inside a church

The Marjayoun strike followed another church-related allegation involving Hezbollah. On May 19, Times of Israel reported that Maj. Itamar Sapir, an Israeli reservist, was killed in Qouza after a Hezbollah operative opened fire from inside a church at Israeli forces operating in the village. This is Beirut separately reported that Israel’s Foreign Ministry described Sapir’s death as a Hezbollah attack launched from a church in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry later accused Hezbollah of “turning churches in Lebanon into terror strongholds” and “putting Christian civilians in harm’s way.”

A ceasefire collapsing around civilians

By June 3, Israel and Lebanon said they had agreed to implement a new ceasefire framework, but Reuters reported that the arrangement depended on Hezbollah ceasing fire and evacuating its operatives from the South Litani Sector, after earlier ceasefire efforts failed to curb Hezbollah’s continued violence.

For southern Lebanon’s Christian communities, those overlapping crises have collapsed into a single reality: Hezbollah fires, Israel responds, and their villages are caught in between.

The deeper Lebanese fight over Hezbollah’s arms

The Marjayoun incident also lands inside Lebanon’s unresolved struggle over Hezbollah’s weapons. Reuters reported in March that Lebanon’s government banned Hezbollah military activities after the group opened fire on Israel, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon rejected military actions launched from its territory outside legitimate state institutions. Salam said the decision of war and peace belonged exclusively to the Lebanese state and called for Hezbollah to hand its weapons to the state.

Share

That debate is no longer abstract for Christian villages near the border. Southern Lebanon’s Christian villages are increasingly trapped between Hezbollah’s armed presence and a Lebanese state struggling to reclaim authority over war and peace. That is why the damaged dome of Saint George Church is more than battlefield debris; it is evidence of a deeper crisis in Lebanon’s sovereignty, security, and communal survival.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

A new report from the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center says its researchers observed Instagram recommendations moving two fresh test accounts from mainstream self-improvement content into conspiratorial and antisemitic material within days.

The study, conducted between May 8 and May 14, 2026, used two new Instagram personas built around wellness and biohacking, and fitness and discipline. CAM said both accounts followed only mainstream creators before the platform served them content that escalated from clean eating and fitness motivation to conspiracy theories, coded antisemitic narratives, and explicit antisemitic material.

The finding matters because the alleged pathway did not begin with users searching for antisemitic content, but with ordinary lifestyle content that Instagram’s system appeared to connect to conspiratorial communities.

A Controlled Test of Two Instagram Personas

CAM’s researchers created two fresh persona accounts to simulate ordinary users in separate aspirational ecosystems. One account was centered on wellness, biohacking, clean eating, and self-optimization, while the other was centered on fitness, discipline, productivity, and physical self-improvement.

Across three days of 45-minute sessions, researchers said the accounts engaged only with Level 0 mainstream content. Once Level 1 or higher recommendations appeared, including conspiratorial, coded, or explicit antisemitic material, researchers recorded the links but did not like, follow, comment, share, or save them.

The report says that safeguard was designed to avoid creating escalation through researcher behavior and to measure recommendation pathways from neutral content.

The Numbers Behind the Escalation

The wellness and biohacking account was served 59 classifiable videos over three days, and CAM classified 32.2% of them as coded or explicit antisemitism. On the third day, the wellness account received nine videos CAM classified as explicit antisemitism in a single 45-minute session.

CAM’s public data sheet describes examples involving kosher-food claims, “Hava Nagila” audio, “goyslop” memes, Rothschild banking conspiracies, Epstein-related blackmail narratives, and claims framing Israel or Jews as hidden forces behind elite abuse.

The fitness and discipline account recorded 71 classifiable videos over three days, and CAM classified 24% as coded or explicit antisemitism. On day three, that account was served 17 videos classified as coded or explicit antisemitism in one 45-minute session. CAM said the two accounts converged on similar narrative clusters despite starting in different content ecosystems.

From Wellness Content to Conspiracy Narratives

The report’s central concern is not that wellness or fitness content is inherently extremist. CAM argues that mainstream concerns about food, health, masculinity, surveillance, institutional distrust, and elite corruption can become bridges into conspiratorial narratives that eventually assign hidden power to Jews, Israel, or familiar antisemitic stand-ins.

The report identifies 14 narrative clusters, ranging from anti-establishment distrust and sovereign living to Rothschild conspiracies, blood libel themes, Holocaust rehabilitation, and a broader “puppet master” worldview.

CAM described “food system corruption as subjugation” as arguably the most important entry bridge in the dataset. That pathway began with mainstream anxieties about ultra-processed food, seed oils, lab-grown meat, and institutional health failures before moving toward claims about globalist plots and antisemitic scapegoating. CAM also identified Epstein-related “elite predator network” content as a recurring bridge from conspiratorial framing to explicit antisemitism.

Coded Language that Can Evade Moderation

CAM said much of the antisemitic signaling appeared through implication rather than direct slurs. The report flagged “Hava Nagila” audio, emoji substitutions for Jews, vague “they” framing, fabricated quotes, decontextualized clips, and content warnings that conspiratorial users could reinterpret as proof of Jewish media control.

Separate research on automated toxicity scoring has found that common antisemitic codes and simple text manipulations can substantially lower toxicity scores, highlighting a possible blind spot for systems that rely on such tools.

That gap is central to the Meta question. Meta’s Community Standards apply to Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Threads, and the company says it may remove ambiguous or implicit content when context shows it violates the rules. Meta also says it removes content that could contribute to physical-security risks or intimidate, exclude, or silence others. Yet CAM’s findings suggest that coded antisemitism may travel through recommendation systems in ways that do not always resemble a single obvious hate-speech violation.

A Broader Warning

CAM’s report fits into a growing body of research on algorithmic exposure to antisemitism. A 2023 ADL study found that Instagram recommended antisemitic content to all six of its test personas and pushed the most graphic antisemitic material to a 14-year-old engagement persona. In April 2026, ADL said Instagram removed only 7% of 253 hateful or extremist items reported by its researchers during enforcement testing.

ISD and the Antisemitism Policy Trust reported in 2026 that TikTok recommendations exposed UK teen personas to antisemitic content, while Rumble’s “Editor’s Picks” and platform environment surfaced more overt antisemitic material.

The timing also comes as Meta is publicly trying to diversify repeated content exposure for teen users. Reuters reported on June 2 that Instagram is testing a feature to prevent teens from seeing excessive amounts of repeated themes, including nutrition, weightlifting, and anxiety content. Meta separately announced in 2025 that it would lift restrictions on some mainstream-discourse topics and focus enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series examining the 29 organizations listed in the infamous 1991 Muslim Brotherhood “Explanatory Memorandum” outlining a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to destroy Western civilization from within. With renewed scrutiny of Brotherhood networks in America, this investigation traces the documented connections between these groups and their role in advancing Brotherhood strategic objectives on U.S. soil.

The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was listed by name in the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum. Federal prosecutors later identified NAIT in Holy Land Foundation case filings as an entity that “are and/or were” part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

NAIT operates a religious-endowment program called the Islamic Centers Waqf. Under that structure, NAIT says Muslim communities have entrusted mosque and Islamic-center property titles to the organization across 42 states. Those properties are dedicated in perpetuity for their donor-designated Islamic purposes. NAIT’s own homepage lists one of its central purposes as reviving the prophetic tradition of waqf.

NAIT’s waqf doctrine page presents the model through the classical example of Umar ibn Al-Khattab’s Khaibar endowment, which included “jihad” among the charitable uses listed in that tradition. The same NAIT page also states that waqf proceeds have historically been used for “socio-economic, military, or political purposes.”

Two state court cases, in Minnesota and Ohio, offer a public window into how NAIT waqf agreements operate once a mosque signs on. The separate Holy Land Foundation litigation shows how NAIT later appeared in federal terrorism-financing case filings.

What a Waqf Is

NAIT defines a waqf as “the permanent dedication of a portion of one’s wealth for the pleasure of Allah,” in which “ownership thus passes from the waqif/a (person making the waqf) to Allah.” Once made, the property is restricted “on a perpetual basis.” NAIT also acknowledges that historically the proceeds of a waqf may be applied to “socio-economic, military, or political purposes.”

The doctrinal page cites publications of the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah — a Saudi-headquartered multilateral Islamic-finance body — as its authoritative source.

How NAIT’s Waqf Works

When a mosque joins, the local community conveys the title of its property to NAIT under a “Declaration of Trust.” The mosque becomes the beneficiary; NAIT becomes the trustee — what NAIT calls the “Nazerul Waqf.” NAIT states that “neither NAIT, nor the donor, nor the beneficiary can alter the donor-designated use, objectives and location of the Waqf property.” NAIT also warns that local mosque boards may be “tempted” to change a property’s use, prohibit “universally accepted” worship, or permit “un-Islamic” activity — concluding that “none of such actions would be feasible if the property is part of the NAIT Waqf Family.”

The Minnesota court record revealed that the declaration of trust at issue required disputes over “appropriate use of the property, successor trustees, and successor beneficiaries” to be submitted to a “FIQH Committee of reputable Muslims in the United States.”

Even Muslim community attorneys have flagged concerns: a 2017 MuslimMatters guide advised mosques to “review their status” with NAIT, warning the model is “merely a relationship between two vulnerable organizations.”

In Ohio, the trust clause said that such a committee would be appointed by the trustee and that its decisions would be final and binding. Separately, FCNA’s own history places it inside the ISNA institutional ecosystem: FCNA says it evolved from the ISNA Fiqh Committee, became the Fiqh Council of North America in 1986, and continues to be an ISNA affiliate.

A Shared Address in Plainfield

The Fiqh Council operates from P.O. Box 38, Plainfield, IN 46168 — the same mailing address used by ISNA's headquarters at 6555 S County Road 750 E. That Plainfield compound, purchased in 1976 and built out in 1978 explicitly "to house the North American Islamic Trust.” That Plainfield institutional cluster has long been central to the NAIT, ISNA, and FCNA ecosystem.

Leadership interlocks reinforce the structure: Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi serves simultaneously on NAIT's board and the Fiqh Council, while having previously directed ISNA. Dr. Jamal Badawi, listed by FCNA as a council member, also appeared on the government's HLF Attachment A list of unindicted co-conspirators.

In effect, a mosque that signs a NAIT waqf agreement may agree to route specified disputes over property use, trusteeship, or beneficiary status through a religious-arbitration mechanism tied to the NAIT trust framework. That framework sits within a broader NAIT, ISNA, and FCNA institutional ecosystem that appears in both the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum and later HLF case filings.

NAIT’s Stated Goals

NAIT’s homepage lists four organizational purposes. The first is to “Revive Prophet’s Sunnah of Waqf.” NAIT’s “Why Join” page pitches the waqf as a guarantee that mosques will be preserved “for the Islamic aims for which they were founded” — language that closely mirrors the 1991 Brotherhood memorandum’s call to make the movement “rooted” and “enabled” through “firmly-established organizations.”

The 1991 memorandum, authored by Mohamed Akram, listed NAIT among 29 Brotherhood-aligned organizations the memo described as “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” part of “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Current Operations and Holdings

NAIT says Muslim communities have entrusted titles to properties in 42 states with a market value of several hundred million dollars. Islamic Horizons reported in 2023 that NAIT’s network included “400+ waqf institutions in USA and Canada.” In 2003 Senate testimony, Stephen Schwartz cited a CAIR-stated figure, reported by the St. Petersburg Times, that NAIT owned about 27 percent of roughly 1,200 U.S. mosques. In separate Senate testimony that same year, J. Michael Waller testified that NAIT was “reported” to own between 50 and 79 percent of mosques on the North American continent.

In June 2026, NAIT announced a “Resilience and Protection Waqf” and separately announced a strategic safety partnership with CAIR to arrange regional safety trainings.

A 2015 New York Post investigation tied NAIT’s property role to several mosques that later surfaced in terrorism-related cases, including cases involving the Chattanooga shooter, the Boston Marathon bombers, and 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour.

Bridgeview, Illinois, shows how those property arrangements could shape control on the ground. After the mosque’s deed was transferred to NAIT in 1981, the property became part of a broader struggle over the institution’s direction. Reporting on the dispute described how hardline leaders, including current imam Jamal Said, later listed by the government in the HLF case as an unindicted co-conspirator and/or joint venturer, consolidated influence over the mosque.

Litigation Exposes the Mechanism

In United Islamic Society v. Masjed Abubakr Al-Seddiq, the appellate record exposed the actual language of a NAIT declaration of trust executed on March 12, 2012, by then–executive director Mujeeb Cheema. The agreement designated the Rochester mosque as “waqf property” and required disputes be sent to a NAIT FIQH Committee.

In Al-Foutiyou v. NAIT, Ohio’s Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of NAIT’s request to stay the case for arbitration. The mosque alleged that NAIT had obtained a 50 percent property interest through an unauthorized quitclaim deed, while NAIT argued that a 2012 trust agreement gave it title rights. The opinion documented NAIT’s effort to block the property’s sale and seek transfer of 100 percent of legal title. It also quoted the trust’s arbitration clause, which called for disputes over specified Islamic-law provisions to be decided by a FIQH Committee or Fiqh Council appointed by the trustee. The court held that the sale and fraud dispute fell outside that narrow arbitration clause and affirmed the trial court’s denial of NAIT’s motion.

In United States v. Holy Land Foundation, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis wrote in 2009 that the government had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.”

The Minnesota and Ohio records show how the structure works in practice: title held by NAIT, perpetual-use restrictions, limits on sale or transfer, Islamic-conduct provisions, and religious arbitration through a FIQH Committee or Fiqh Council. The HLF litigation adds the federal-terrorism record. In that case, Judge Jorge Solis wrote that the government had produced “ample evidence” of associations among CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and Hamas.

That combination is what makes NAIT’s waqf structure significant. It is not merely a property arrangement. It is a durable trust mechanism under which hundreds of mosque and Islamic-center property titles have been entrusted to an organization listed in the 1991 Brotherhood memorandum and later identified in HLF filings under the heading for entities prosecutors described as “members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an Israeli-designated terrorist organization, is under renewed scrutiny after archived staff records placed one of its former personnel inside its digital operations while Dutch reporting identified the same woman as secretary of Stichting ISRAA, the Netherlands-based charity at the center of a Dutch Hamas-financing case and a 2025 U.S. sanctions action.

Share

The questions come as Euro-Med’s credibility is already under fire after Nicholas Kristof’s highly inflammatory New York Times column cited the group as a reliable source in a piece that brought the now-infamous “dog rape” allegation into mainstream U.S. media.

The ISRAA Link

A 2019 archived Euro-Med staff page listed Anne Jellema under “Digital Strategies,” while Trouw later identified her as secretary of Stichting ISRAA. That overlap matters because the U.S. Treasury Department later described ISRAA as part of the Union of Good, the Hamas fundraising umbrella Washington designated in 2008.

Dutch prosecutors alleged that Amin Ghazi Abou Rashed and Stichting ISRAA moved roughly €8 million from 2010 to 2023 to organizations linked to Hamas. In May 2026, the Rotterdam District Court acquitted Abou Rashed of financing Hamas on a technicality, while convicting him on sanctions-related conduct involving the continuation of Al Aqsa Foundation activities.

The Ramy Abdu Connection

The Dutch case also brought Euro-Med founder Ramy Abdu back into view. Dutch journalist Kees Broer reported that Abou Rashed’s wife was on Euro-Med’s payroll, according to courtroom proceedings. Broer also reported that Jellema connected the two worlds: an ISRAA official who was also a Euro-Med staffer.

That makes the Jellema record more than an isolated résumé detail. It places a former Euro-Med digital staffer inside the same Dutch charity network that U.S. officials later accused of belonging to Hamas’s fundraising infrastructure.

The Italy Warrant

A separate Italian investigation adds another layer. Reuters reported that Italian prosecutors arrested nine people suspected of financing Hamas through Italy-based charities, alleging that roughly €7 million had been diverted to Hamas-linked entities. Italian reporting separately identified Saleh Mohammed Ismail Abdu, also known as Abu Khaled, as one of the suspects sought abroad in the Genoa probe.

HonestReporting has reported that Saleh Abdu is Ramy Abdu’s brother. That relationship should be attributed unless independently confirmed through court records. But if accurate, it would place another member of Abdu’s immediate family inside a European Hamas-financing investigation.

Share

Why It Matters Now

Euro-Med’s credibility is no longer a niche NGO question. Kristof’s New York Times column cited Euro-Med while amplifying allegations critics called the “dog rape” libel. Euro-Med itself had previously published the underlying police-dog rape allegation and later defended its prison-abuse claims.

Euro-Med’s archived staff page, Jellema’s ISRAA role, Abou Rashed’s wife’s reported employment by Euro-Med, and the Italian warrant for Abdu’s alleged brother all raise the same unresolved question: how much due diligence did media outlets and international bodies perform before treating Euro-Med as a neutral human rights source?

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

On June 6, Muslim Tech Fest 2026 will convene at London’s Novotel West, drawing together Muslim technology professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors from across the globe for what organizers describe as a day of “ideas, innovation and ambition.” An examination of the event’s sponsorship roster and speaker lineup, however, reveals sponsorship by Turkish state-backed entities and individuals who have been scrutinized for alleged extremist or terror links.

The event includes a “Palestinian Tech” networking space featuring Tech for Palestine and Gaza Sky Geeks. Tech for Palestine is simultaneously hosting a conference in Brussels on the same date, June 6, which will feature Dyab Abou Jahjah, the co-founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, and a self-described former Hezbollah member who claimed he received military training.

Share

Turkish State Apparatus Central to Event

The event lists multiple Turkish state-linked entities as official sponsors. Invest Türkiye, officially the Investment and Finance Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, is listed as a sponsor. The organization reports directly to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Turkish-linked state news agency Anadolu Agency (Anadolu Ajansı) also appears on the sponsor list. According to a World Trade Organization Secretariat report published on February 1, 2023, Türkiye’s Ministry of Treasury and Finance held a 47.75 percent stake in Anadolu Agency. Critics and analysts have described Anadolu as closely aligned with the Turkish state and Erdoğan-era media ecosystem. The media-rating site Media Bias/Fact Check rates Anadolu Agency as “Right Biased” and “Mixed” for factual reporting, describing it as an agency controlled by Türkiye’s ruling party with “a very strong pro-government state bias.”

Turkish Airlines is also represented in the speaker lineup through Murat Can Demir, listed by Muslim Tech Fest as Head of Startups at Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines is 49.12 percent owned through the Türkiye Wealth Fund.

Previously Detained Commentator Listed as Event Speaker

One of the event’s featured speakers is Sami Hamdi, a British political commentator detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at San Francisco International Airport on October 26, 2025. ICE said the State Department had revoked his visa on October 24, 2025, and that he was placed in immigration proceedings after the revocation. U.S. officials alleged he supported terrorism and threatened national security.

In a video posted online shortly after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, Hamdi called to "celebrate the victory" of October 7 and asked his audience "how many of you felt euphoria" when they heard of the Hamas atrocities.

Gaza-Focused Workshop Features Controversial Figures and Organizations

The event also includes a “Palestinian Tech” networking space, described for those “interested in the role of technology in Palestinian resilience, innovation, and progress”, featuring Tech for Palestine and Gaza Sky Geeks. Tech for Palestine, previously reported by Jewish Onliner, has proven deeply controversial, with documented concerns about their leadership, methods, and affiliations, including associations with terror-linked speakers and organizations and antisemitic statements from personnel. The organization was founded in late 2023 by Irish technology entrepreneur Paul Biggar.

Gaza Sky Geeks is a program of Mercy Corps, a US-registered 501(c)3 and EU-registered charity. Separately, NGO Monitor has scrutinized Mercy Corps’ Gaza aid operations, citing a USAID/BHA factsheet stating that Mercy Corps received $9 million in FY2022 funding for multipurpose cash assistance in Gaza. NGO Monitor said such aid programs relied on coordination with Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, including beneficiary lists.

Sponsor Connections to Muslim Brotherhood and Alleged Hamas Links

LaunchGood, the Muslim crowdfunding platform, appears in promotional material for a roundtable titled “Reclaiming the Sovereignty Stack Muslims Lost to Empire,” featuring the platform’s founder, Chris Blauvelt. The Jerusalem Post reported that LaunchGood hosted more than 70 Gaza-related campaigns, while noting concerns about alleged Hamas links involving some aid organizations using the platform.

LaunchGood’s partner for the event is Al Sharq Forum, whose founder and director is Wadah Khanfar, a former director-general of Al Jazeera. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Khanfar “was named as an early leader of Hamas’s office in Sudan” by multiple sources, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website previously identified him as such in 2007.

Tax-Exempt Organization Under Investigation Sponsoring Event

Islamic Relief is listed among the event sponsors. In the United States, Islamic Relief USA has been under investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee over its affiliation with Islamic Relief Worldwide, which the committee described as an organization with suspected ties to terrorism. The committee cited Islamic Relief Worldwide’s alleged “connections to terrorist entities, including Hamas, and a history of antisemitic behavior.”

IRUSA later filed a lawsuit against Islamic Relief Worldwide in the Southern District of New York in an attempt to sever ties, citing the committee’s referrals to the IRS for review of its tax-exempt status. Islamic Relief UK is also represented in the program

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government announced a new antisemitism push in Toronto on June 1, naming a Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion and directing it to begin by reassessing the “nature, scale, and drivers” of antisemitism in Canada. The same announcement said Jewish Canadians, roughly 1 percent of the population, were targeted in more than two-thirds of religion-motivated hate crimes last year.

Yet one of the council's appointees is Omar Alghabra, P.C., a former Liberal minister and former president of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) — an organization that opposed Canada's designation of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist entities, rejected the labeling of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade as a terrorist group after Ottawa had already listed it, and pressured Toronto's police chief not to participate in a Walk with Israel event.

Alghabra himself told the Jewish Tribune in 2006 that he did not believe Hamas sought Israel's elimination. As Canadian citizen journalist Masha Kleiner documented, even after the October 7, 2023 massacre Alghabra declined, when directly asked, to condemn Hamas — while continuing to describe Israel as "brutal and cruel."

The Crisis Ottawa Says It’s Answering

Canada’s antisemitism crisis is not theoretical. Statistics Canada reported 1,342 police-reported hate crimes targeting religion in 2024, with 70 percent directed at Jewish Canadians and 17 percent at Muslim Canadians. The number of police-reported hate crimes has more than doubled since 2018, rising 169 percent over six years.

The Toronto figures are similarly stark. The Toronto Police Service’s 2024 hate crime report found that anti-Jewish incidents represented the largest single category of reported hate crimes in the city, including 148 anti-Jewish mischief-related occurrences, or 33 percent of all reported hate crimes. Carney’s office framed the federal response around this surge, pledging new Criminal Code tools, security funding, and a council tasked with shaping government-wide policy.

Alghabra’s CAF Record

Alghabra’s controversial record largely centers on his time with the Canadian Arab Federation. A 2015 archived chronology documented that CAF issued a December 2002 press release opposing Canada’s designation of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist entities.

Alghabra became CAF president in 2004 — after that position was adopted — but led the organization while it remained part of CAF's public record. Canada had listed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on November 27, 2002; Public Safety Canada’s current terrorist-entity list continues to include Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.

The pattern continued under his leadership. A September 2004 CAF press release during his presidency criticized a newspaper for identifying the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade as a "terrorist group" — more than a year after Ottawa's official listing. In June 2005, Alghabra personally sent a letter opposing Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's participation in a "Walk with Israel" event, arguing it created the appearance of endorsing Israeli practices.

Then came the clearest Hamas-related statement. In January 2006, Alghabra reportedly told the Jewish Tribune: “I don’t believe that Hamas wants the elimination of Israel.” The statement sat directly against Hamas’s own charter language and Canada’s terrorism designation.

A Broader Pattern, Documented

Citizen journalist Masha Kleiner compiled a wider record of Alghabra’s public positions, noting that he has repeatedly argued Hamas and Hezbollah should be removed from Canada’s terrorist entities list, publicly mourned Yasser Arafat, and — even after October 7, 2023 — declined to condemn Hamas when directly asked, while routinely describing Israel as “brutal and cruel.”

Kleiner also documented his calls for Toronto officials to boycott Jewish charity events and his opposition to cooperation between Canadian police and Israeli counter-terrorism units.

CAF’s Federal Funding Collapse

CAF’s later federal funding fight amplified the concerns around the organization Alghabra had led. The Supreme Court of Canada case summary records that then-immigration minister Jason Kenney refused a new contribution agreement after saying CAF had made public statements “promoting hatred, anti-Semitism and support for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.” The Federal Court dismissed CAF’s judicial review in 2013, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in 2015, and the Supreme Court dismissed CAF’s leave application in 2016. That litigation concerned CAF’s later leadership, not only Alghabra’s tenure.

Carney's council is tasked with defining the drivers of antisemitism, improving data, and measuring whether Ottawa's response protects Jewish Canadians. Alghabra's appointment places a figure with a decades-long record of minimizing Hamas and opposing pro-Israel engagement inside the very room where that policy will be written — a contradiction the government has yet to explain.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

A May 27 Rome event previously reported by Jewish Onliner is now drawing political scrutiny from Israel and inside the European Parliament after its published speaker list included Dyab Abou Jahjah, the co-founder and general director of the Hind Rajab Foundation and a self-described former Hezbollah member, alongside European lawmakers and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

The event, financed by the European Parliament and organized by the European Left Alliance, prompted a sharp public statement from Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, who said the European Parliament was funding a platform for “extremists” and warned that Abou Jahjah’s record posed a threat beyond Israel.

Share

Separately, Dutch MEP Sebastian Kruis said he and the entire PVV delegation had asked European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to intervene, sending a formal letter raising concerns over Parliament financing for an event featuring Abou Jahjah.

The May 29 letter, signed by six PVV lawmakers, said the use of European Parliament funding in connection with the event raised “serious concerns” about institutional integrity, reputational risk, and the Parliament’s stated commitment to combating extremism and terrorism.

A Parliament-Financed Event in Rome

The May 27 Rome event page also listed MEPs Catarina Martins, Rima Hassan and Mimmo Lucano, former European Parliament vice president Luisa Morgantini, and Palestinian activist Fadwa Barghouti.

The event was organized in the framework of the “Justice for Palestine” European Citizens’ Initiative, which calls for the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The campaign’s funding page lists two European Left Alliance contributions, €25,000 on January 12, 2026, and €7,281 on February 1, 2026, totaling €32,281. That page, like the event page, carries a European Parliament financing disclaimer.

Abou Jahjah’s Hezbollah Past Drives the Backlash

Abou Jahjah’s inclusion is central to the controversy. The Hind Rajab Foundation describes him as its general director and has said he led its delegation in meetings with European law enforcement officials. NGO Monitor, citing Belgian registration records and past reporting, has identified Abou Jahjah as a founding HRF figure and documented his prior statements about joining Hezbollah and receiving military training. The EU’s current terrorism list includes the “Hizballah Military Wing,” also known as the Hezbollah Military Wing, including the Jihad Council and units reporting to it.

HRF’s Expanding European Footprint

The Rome event was not an isolated point of contact between HRF and European institutions. According to the foundation’s own public statements, HRF has previously engaged with European Parliament forums and Europol-linked law-enforcement discussions.

In February, HRF said it addressed the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with Palestine in Brussels, with a delegation led by Abou Jahjah. HRF said several MEPs expressed support during that meeting and that Abou Jahjah urged lawmakers to raise awareness of the foundation’s legal campaign.

HRF has also said Europol invited it to speak at an annual meeting in The Hague on October 22, 2025, where Abou Jahjah led the delegation. The foundation said the meeting involved its methodology, evidence collection, and possible cooperation with national war-crimes units.

That contact already prompted formal parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament records list a Dec. 8, 2025 written question by six MEPs titled ‘Europol cooperation with Hezbollah-linked Hind Rajab Foundation.’ The question asked the Commission about screening protocols and possible cooperation with HRF. The question described HRF as anonymously funded and chaired by Abou Jahjah, and cited his past Hezbollah involvement.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series examining the 29 organizations listed in the infamous 1991 Muslim Brotherhood “Explanatory Memorandum” outlining a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to destroy Western civilization from within. With renewed scrutiny of Brotherhood networks in America, this investigation traces the documented connections between these groups and their role in advancing Brotherhood strategic objectives on U.S. soil.

In 1979, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), later listed as entity eight in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, established the Islamic Centers Cooperative Fund (ICCF).

NAIT says ICCF pools the reserve funds of more than 400 Islamic centers, invests them through NAIT, and extends limited interest-free loans to Islamic centers, mosques, and schools. NAIT-linked materials reported that ICCF held close to $50 million in net assets as of year-end 2021.

NAIT receives funding from donations and grants and, according to InfluenceWatch, does not file IRS tax returns as a religious organization. ICCF is presented as a NAIT program overseen by NAIT’s board, including chairman Dr. Gaddoor Saidi. He appears to correspond to “Gaddor Ibrahim Saidi,” listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s Holy Land Foundation filing.

The Brotherhood’s 1991 strategic memo called for a “civilization-jihadist process” of “settling” Islam in North America. ICCF appears to function as a financial mechanism within that institutional strategy. NAIT says the fund pools mosque reserves, invests them through NAIT, and extends interest-free loans to Islamic centers, mosques, and schools. That model closely resembles the durable institutional infrastructure Hudson Institute analysts traced to the Brotherhood’s 1991 “Settlement” strategy.

The Fund and Its Origins

ICCF describes itself as a cooperative pool that lets mosques avoid “Riba-laden banks,” grow their reserves through sharia-compliant investments, and access interest-free loans for new construction. Mosques deposit excess funds either as “Qard al-Hasan” (trust) or for halal investments, which NAIT then invests in “halal stocks, real estate, properties, leases and other opportunities.”

NAIT board member Muzammil Siddiqi stated that 12–15% of ICCF’s holdings circulate as short-term interest-free loans to entrusted institutions. A “Yield Equalization Reserve” absorbs market losses so that participating mosques never lose principal.

That financial model sits inside a broader institutional history. The Plainfield, Indiana complex associated with MSA, ISNA, NAIT, and related institutions was built with foreign support, including from Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a spiritual leader for the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the Arab world’s most influential Sunni clerics before his death in 2022. The Washington Post reported in 2004 that MSA opened the suburban Indianapolis headquarters complex with $21 million raised in part from Qaradawi, banker Youssef Nada, and the emir of Qatar.

Qaradawi was later listed in the government’s Holy Land Foundation filing under individuals who participated in fundraising activities on behalf of HLF. He was also barred from entering several Western countries after years of controversy over his rulings and statements, including support for attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.

Who Runs It

ICCF is presented by NAIT as one of its own programs, not as an independently governed fund. Its oversight therefore runs through NAIT’s board, chaired by Dr. Gaddoor Saidi. The government’s Holy Land Foundation filing lists a similarly named “Gaddor Ibrahim Saidi” under “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”

Dr. Bassam Osman has served on NAIT’s board since 1980. He also previously served as director of the Quranic Literacy Institute, which was later held liable in civil litigation under the Anti-Terrorism Act over support linked to Hamas’s murder of American teenager David Boim. The institute also employed Mohammed Salah, a convicted Hamas operative, as a computer analyst.

Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, who has publicly described ICCF, translated a 1992 lecture by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Abdel Rahman was later convicted of seditious conspiracy in a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. In the lecture, he rejected nonviolent jihad as “weak” and described fighting Muslims’ enemies as obligatory.

How the Money Flows

Former FBI agent Robert Stauffer, who led a 1980s investigation into Muslim Brotherhood finances, later alleged that NAIT served as a financial holding company for Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and that millions of dollars were wired through it from countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia, Libya, and reportedly Iran.

Federal prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation case introduced evidence involving ISNA/NAIT accounts and checks made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahideen,” as part of a prosecution that resulted in HLF and five leaders being convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

Unlike a separately filing nonprofit, ICCF’s reported asset pool is disclosed through NAIT and AHI materials rather than annual public Form 990 filings.

The Mosque Network It Sustains

ICCF supports mosques and Islamic institutions within NAIT’s broader waqf ecosystem. That property network has included mosques later connected in public records or reporting to several high-profile terror cases.

The Bridgeview Mosque Foundation in Illinois transferred its deed to NAIT in 1981; its imam Jamal Said was later named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, and Hamas financier Mohammed Salah sat on the mosque’s eight-member executive committee.

The Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga grew out of a mosque whose property was reportedly purchased by NAIT in 1997. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who killed five people at two Chattanooga military sites in 2015, was later reported to have attended Friday prayers there. Fundraising materials associated with the mosque also invoked Yusuf al-Qaradawi by name.

In Oklahoma, reporting on the proposed Broken Arrow mosque says the land was purchased in 2014 by NAIT for the Islamic Society of Tulsa. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond later opened an investigation into the project’s ownership, governance, and financing. Near Austin, Renaissance Academy says its new 19-acre campus will be placed into waqf once the real estate assets are free of loans, either under NAIT or a similar organization.

How ICCF Fits Inside the NAIT Machine

ICCF appears to fit into NAIT’s broader institutional structure. The waqf program holds property titles in trust, while ICCF pools mosque reserves and channels them into investments and interest-free loans.

The Iman Fund, managed by NAIT’s for-profit subsidiary Allied Asset Advisors and chaired by Bassam Osman, reported $120 million in net assets by September 2022. A 2004 SEC filing for the Dow Jones Islamic Fund listed NAIT as the record owner of 76.83% of the fund’s outstanding Class K shares. The same filing identified Allied Asset Advisors, the fund’s investment adviser, as a wholly owned subsidiary of NAIT, showing NAIT’s controlling role in the fund structure at the time.

NAIT’s ecosystem also extends into publishing. American Trust Publications appears to function as its publishing arm and is listed as entity number twelve in the 1991 Brotherhood memo. Its catalog includes works by Muslim Brotherhood figures and other major Islamist thinkers, including Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Maududi.

The American Halal Institute, established by NAIT in 2020, places halal certification inside the same NAIT-linked institutional ecosystem. NAIT and related materials show overlapping leadership across multiple divisions, including Saidi, Siddiqi, Osman, Cheema, and Malik.

The Big Picture

ICCF appears to be one mechanism that helped make the 1991 memo’s institutional vision durable. It pools mosque capital, invests it through NAIT, and lends it back into Islamic centers, mosques, and schools. The result is a closed-loop financial structure inside a trust network built in part with foreign support from figures including Qaradawi, and overseen by leaders whose names or affiliated institutions have surfaced in federal terror-financing records and litigation.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Pramila Patten, the UN official whose office compiled the report placing Israeli armed and security forces on a UN sexual violence blacklist, said she had not personally seen the evidence behind the allegations and insisted that verification was “not the responsibility of my office.”

“I made it clear to Israel I would not visit any detention facility, even if offered. It’s not the responsibility of my office to do any verification,” Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told reporters at a May 29 press conference. Asked whether she had seen the evidence herself, she replied, “No, because it’s not my job.”

Subscribe now

The Blacklist Decision

The May 2026 report added Israeli armed and security forces to the UN’s annual list of parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in conflict. The annex places Israeli security forces, including the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Prison Service, and police, in the same UN list as Hamas, Islamic State, and other terrorist groups.

The report’s own details raise questions about the evidentiary threshold behind the listing. Of the 31 cases involving Palestinian victims that the United Nations says it verified, 13 occurred in 2025, the report’s stated reporting year, while 18 dated to 2023 and 2024.

The report separately says the United Nations was unable to verify six public accounts of sexual violence from hostages released from Hamas captivity. The distinction underscores a central methodological concern: allegations involving Israeli security bodies were treated as verified for purposes of the report, while public accounts from released hostages remained outside the verified tally, despite a substantial public record documenting Hamas’s sexual violence on and after October 7.

Israel’s Response

Israel responded by severing ties with UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s office, calling the decision “shameful and absurd.” Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said the move was “political” and “detached from the facts and from reality.”

According to Danon, Israel had provided detailed responses to each allegation, shared its complete legal and oversight framework including regulations and complaint mechanisms, and arranged meetings between senior Prison Service, military, and Justice Ministry officials and Patten’s delegation. He stated that Patten canceled planned visits to Israel due to technical issues and security concerns, though Israel never blocked access.

A Pattern of UN Bias

Guterres was declared “persona non grata” by Israel in 2024, and the UN has faced accusations of ignoring Hamas’s use of civilians and civilian infrastructure while amplifying unverified claims against Israeli forces. The report itself says Hamas has not recognized any incidents of sexual violence or taken accountability measures.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced it would “wait until a new UN Secretary-General is appointed” after Guterres’s term expires on December 31, 2026, accusing him of exploiting “his final months as Secretary-General to fabricate baseless accusations against Israel.”

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

An anonymous Wikipedia account that had been inactive for nearly nine months returned on October 25, 2023, eighteen days after Hamas’s attack on Israel. Its first substantive post urged editors on the Talk page of the October 7 attacks article to include the framing that the “attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” echoing language used days earlier by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. Two days later, the same account began editing Wikipedia’s coverage of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-funded broadcaster Israel banned in May 2024 on national-security grounds.

The user, registered as Gsgdd, later renamed Astropulse and now operating as Cinaroot, is now credited with shaping a striking share of Wikipedia’s Al Jazeera coverage. According to XTools figures reported by investigators Ashley Rindsberg and Toby Dershowitz, Cinaroot authored more than 40 percent of the main Al Jazeera Media Network entry, more than 27 percent of Al Jazeera English and 68.2 percent of Al Jazeera effect. The issue is not merely one prolific editor. It is that Wikipedia text shaped by an anonymous account can influence the summaries surfaced by Google, ChatGPT and other AI systems used by students, journalists, policymakers and the public.

A Dormant Account, Activated by October 7

The Cinaroot account was registered on November 12, 2022, just over a week before Qatar opened the 2022 World Cup, the centerpiece of Doha’s global soft-power push. After making a handful of unrelated minor edits, the account went silent for nearly nine months before returning after October 7.

Its return on October 25, 2023, was not incidental. The post it placed on the October 7 attacks Talk page echoed UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s contested framing and enumerated alleged Israeli responsibilities for the Hamas massacre. From there, the account pivoted directly to Al Jazeera.

The Whitewashing Pattern

In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt severed relations with Qatar and demanded Al Jazeera’s shutdown as one of thirteen conditions for restoring ties. That fact sat in the lead section of the Al Jazeera Arabic article, the first thing readers encountered. Within days of activation, Cinaroot moved the four-nation demand out of the lead and into a buried controversies section, replacing it with favorable language about the network’s journalism.

Rindsberg and Dershowitz report that the account’s edits repeatedly softened or removed material concerning Al Jazeera’s relationship with Qatar, including references to Qatari royal leadership, state-media labeling and controversies surrounding the network’s funding and governance. That same month, the account narrowed the article’s discussion of the Department of Justice’s FARA determination to AJ+, the U.S.-targeted digital outlet that DOJ said acted on behalf of foreign principals including Qatar and Al Jazeera Media Network.

In June 2024, Cinaroot removed the “state media” label from Al Jazeera English’s infobox. Rindsberg and Dershowitz report that Cinaroot deleted 39,544 bytes in a Jan. 2026 restoration of an earlier version. The removed material included significant content concerning the network’s structure and controversies.

The Citation Laundering Loop

The most striking work is on the Al Jazeera effect article, which now asserts in Wikipedia’s voice that the network enjoys an “unprecedented margin of freedom” and has driven a “democratizing” media revolution.

The signature claim is sourced to a paywalled paper by Mohamed Zayani, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar. That connection is notable because ISGAP estimates Georgetown has received about $1.073 billion in Qatari funding since 2005. According to ISGAP, Georgetown reported $927.6 million to the Department of Education, leaving an estimated $146 million gap, while the report separately estimates more than $102 million in undisclosed Qatari grants to Qatari students.

Not an Isolated Operation

The Cinaroot case also follows another documented instance of Qatari-linked Wikipedia editing. In January 2026, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that subcontractors working for Portland Communications had edited Wikipedia entries on behalf of Qatari clients.

The pattern also fits into a broader set of concerns about Wikipedia editing in the Israel-Palestine topic area. In its March 2025 “Editing for Hate” report, the Anti-Defamation League alleged that at least 30 editors had coordinated anti-Israel and antisemitic narrative changes. Separately, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee and related enforcement processes have banned multiple editors for misconduct in the same topic area.

Big Picture Implications

A 2025 Profound citation study found Wikipedia was ChatGPT’s most-cited domain, accounting for 7.8 percent of all ChatGPT citations and 47.9 percent of citation share among ChatGPT’s top 10 cited sources. The same study found Wikipedia played a much smaller role in Google AI Overviews and did not rank among Perplexity’s top overall cited sources.

In December 2025, Al Jazeera announced an expanded Google Cloud AI partnership, underscoring how central AI systems have become to the way news organizations and audiences process information. But the more immediate concern is Wikipedia’s role in that ecosystem. When users ask Google, ChatGPT or other AI tools what Al Jazeera is, the answer may draw from articles shaped in significant part by Cinaroot, an anonymous account whose post-October 7 activity began by urging Wikipedia editors to include the claim that Hamas’s attacks “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is launching a June public-meeting tour across the United Kingdom to pressure public institutions to sever contracts with major U.S. technology companies, including Palantir, Oracle and Cisco. On PSC’s current event page, Francis is listed only as a “Palestinian human rights lawyer,” although she serves as general director of the U.S.-sanctioned Palestinian NGO Addameer.

Share

On June 10, 2025, the Treasury Department sanctioned Addameer, saying the group “has long supported and is affiliated with the PFLP.” Treasury also said that in spring 2022, Khaled Barakat coordinated with the PFLP to send funds to Addameer and arrange meetings between Addameer and Samidoun, which Treasury has described as a “sham charity” that serves as an international fundraiser for the PFLP. Israel previously designated Addameer as a terrorist organization in October 2021.

The designation places PSC’s campaign in sharper focus, as a British boycott tour targeting sensitive public-sector technology contracts is also platforming a speaker who leads a U.S.-sanctioned organization. The campaign is aimed not only at private companies, but at contracts involving the British government, local councils, universities and workplaces.

Francis’s Roles Across PFLP-Linked NGOs

Addameer is not the only Palestinian NGO in Francis’s record that Israeli authorities have designated as part of a PFLP-linked network. NGO Monitor has noted that Francis has been previously described as serving on the board of Defense for Children International-Palestine and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. Both organizations were among the six Palestinian NGOs designated by Israel in October 2021 as part of what Israeli authorities described as a PFLP network operating under civil-society cover.

In a February 2019 interview with +972 Magazine, the outlet reported that “one of the achievements Francis is proudest of” was supporting Khader Adnan during his 2012 hunger strike. Adnan has been described as a prominent political leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

NGO Monitor has also cited a September 2014 PFLP article and Arabic-language media reporting that Francis participated in a PFLP-organized memorial event for Hashem Abu Maria, Sultan Al-Zaakik and Abd al-Hamid Breigheth. At the event, Francis reportedly referred to Hashem Abu Maria as “Hashem the human, Hashem the fighter.”

PSC Takes Aim at Britain’s Tech Contracts

PSC’s event page says the “Delete Genocide Tech” campaign will launch in June with public meetings in Liverpool, Cardiff and London. The group says the campaign is intended to “force” what it calls “complicit tech companies” out of “the government, local councils, universities and workplaces.”

The campaign names Palantir, Oracle and Cisco Systems, alleging that the companies provide Israel with IT infrastructure or software while also holding contracts in Britain. A Cardiff ticket page for the June 16 meeting at the Temple of Peace uses similar language, saying the campaign seeks to “sever” what it calls “complicit contracts.”

PSC’s campaign targets companies with major British public-sector contracts. NHS England says a consortium led by Palantir Technologies UK won the Federated Data Platform contract in November 2023. The contract formally began in March 2024 and could run until March 2031 if all extension options are used.

Palantir also supplies the U.K. Ministry of Defence. In February, Defence Minister Luke Pollard told Parliament that Palantir is a “strategic supplier” to the MOD, providing data integration, analytics and AI platforms for operational planning and decision-making. MPs also discussed a December 2025 Palantir MOD contract worth £240 million.

Oracle, another company named by PSC, said in January that it had signed a new cloud agreement with the U.K. Ministry of Defence to help move legacy systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and support the ministry’s adoption of new AI capabilities.

Palantir’s Public-Interest Work

Palantir is best known for high-stakes government work, but its technology is also used in health care, humanitarian response and other public-interest settings. In Britain, NHS England says the Federated Data Platform, awarded to a consortium led by Palantir after a competitive procurement process, is intended to connect vital health information across the NHS so staff can deliver better care and work more efficiently.

In Ukraine, the Ministry of Economy has said Palantir’s technology is being used to help automate and prioritize humanitarian demining, a life-saving task in a country heavily contaminated by land mines and unexploded ordnance.

The World Food Programme has also described Palantir as a partner in strengthening data-informed decision-making for humanitarian operations. Those examples show why public institutions often view Palantir not as a generic software vendor, but as infrastructure for high-stakes data coordination.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

A Jordanian summer camp called PalPrep is training Arab teenagers to “talk and organize for Palestine on Western campuses,” with the help of a curriculum that includes books by a terrorist leader and says the objective of Zionism is ethnic cleansing. The program, held annually in Ajloun, has graduated at least 30 students across two cohorts since launching in 2024 and is now recruiting its third class for July 2026. Co-founder Samar Saeed, a PhD candidate at Georgetown University, stated that the goal is to prepare students “to advocate for Palestine effectively and safely” on Western campuses.

A Co-Founder Who Praises Terrorists

The camp’s co-founder, Samar Saeed, is a Palestinian/Jordanian PhD candidate in History at Georgetown, born and raised in Jordan, who first came to the U.S. in 2004 for her undergraduate studies before heading to Europe — living and working in Zurich and completing an MA in London — and eventually returning to the U.S. in 2017 to pursue further graduate studies at Georgetown. Her visa or citizenship status is unclear.

Saeed has openly celebrated terrorists, hijackings, and “armed struggle” on her social media and in Arabic language interviews. In an interview on the Amman-based Sowt network’s “Eib” podcast — produced in partnership with Ahel.org, the organization founded by PalPrep’s other co-founder Nisreen Haj Ahmad — Saeed made several statements including, endorsing “armed struggle,” elevating convicted terrorists as figures of “Palestinian revolution” worthy of historical recognition, and referring to a terrorist plane hijacking as a “great action.” The following quotes have been translated and time-stamped from the Arabic-language interview:

• At 5:03, endorsing armed struggle: “We will take the reins of things in our hands, and indeed operations began against the Zionist entity from Jordan and from Lebanon, and the banner of armed struggle was raised at that time — that armed struggle is the path to the liberation of Palestine.”

• At 30:02, praising PFLP plane hijacker Leila Khaled: “For example, if you think about Leila Khaled, her name is frequently mentioned in books about Palestine because she carried out an act in the public sphere—a great act: hijacking planes. In this context, such an act was unprecedented, generating significant media and analytical attention, and people were eager to learn about it. But even when you consider Leila's history — the activist Leila, of course, has a very long history, and she continues to struggle — most people remember her primarily for this act...”

• At 1:05:03, responding to the host naming Theresa Halsa, Dalal Mughrabi, and Leila Khaled as Palestinian “female military fighters” and “Palestinian poster women”: “Definitely women were present in military work... Like what we know about Theresa [Halsa] and all the names you mentioned, it means there are women present in the military wing.

Dalal Mughrabi helped lead the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. Theresa Halsa was a hijacker of Sabena Flight 571 in 1972. Leila Khaled was convicted of hijacking TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and attempting to hijack El Al Flight 219 in 1970.

On August 11, 2025, Saeed posted a tribute to Al Jazeera’s Anas Al-Sharif on her personal Instagram (@samarreads), writing “Feels like we lost our younger brother. Heart shattered.”

The IDF published primary documents — including Hamas personnel rosters, training records, and salary slips — showing Al-Sharif headed a Hamas terror cell that conducted rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops. The Times of Israel separately reported that he was receiving a Hamas salary.

A Curriculum That Defines Zionism as “Ethnic Cleansing”

PalPrep explicitly targets international Arab students bound for universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Australia, “or any other Western country.”

PalPrep’s public Instagram account, @pal.prep, publishes the ideological content it teaches. A November 6, 2024 titled, “What is Zionism?” the objective slide declared that “Zionism’s objective is to create an ethno-exclusive Jewish settler society” and that “Zionist founders openly discussed the necessity for violence and ethnic cleansing.”

The caption framed Zionism as “a racist political ideology linked to white-supremacy.” An alumni testimonial promoted by the camp reflected that “If I had PalPrep I would have been better equipped to debunk Zionist narrative on Palestine.”

PFLP Literature on the Reading List

The group’s reading list includes books written by terrorists. In a July 26, 2024 post titled "Our List of Favorite Books," PalPrep recommended Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani — a deceased former leader in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The PFLP itself lists Kanafani as a co-founder alongside George Habash and Wadie Haddad. On May 30, 1972, three Japanese Red Army operatives recruited by the PFLP attacked Lod Airport, killing 26 civilians — including 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico — and injuring 80 others. Kanafani reportedly helped engineer the attack. PalPrep's caption praised its recommended authors as having "all fought and continue to fight for [Palestine's] liberation."

Caricature Presented as Curriculum

An October 28, 2024 post titled “What Is Settler Colonialism?” features a cartoon by Dwayne Booth, who publishes under the name “Mr. Fish” and whose work was publicly condemned by the University of Pennsylvania’s president as antisemitic.

The cartoon depicts a heavyset figure wearing a yarmulke, dark beard, and blue-and-white striped shirt, bearing the placard “1948” and holding keys. The caption explained that “Understanding settler colonialism reveals the truth of ongoing erasure.”

Endorsing the People’s Conference for Palestine

In a June 1, 2024 post, PalPrep enthused about the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, writing it was “SOOO inspired” by attendees and “can’t wait to build relationships with all these amazing groups.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented that the 2024 conference named a ballroom after convicted PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqa, named a room after Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Khader Adnan, and featured speakers who “explicitly named groups like Hamas and PIJ” as deserving support. Sen. Tom Cotton has urged the IRS to investigate the Palestinian Youth Movement for terror ties.

A Pipeline in Plain Sight

PalPrep’s explicit target geography is every Western higher education system. Its curriculum trains teenagers to view Zionism as white supremacy, to read PFLP literature, and to debunk Zionist narrative upon arrival on campus.

As Western universities continue grappling with antisemitic activity often linked to anti-Israel activism, PalPrep appears to represent something distinct: not the radicalization of students at universities, but the pre-radicalization of students before they arrive.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the Regents of the University of California on May 26, 2026, alleging that UCLA was deliberately indifferent to severe harassment and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks.

The complaint seeks repayment of federal grant funds awarded during the alleged period of noncompliance, a demand that could put a substantial share of UCLA’s federal grant funding at issue.

According to the DOJ’s 53-page complaint, UCLA administrators knew Jewish and Israeli students risked physical assault when attempting to go to class or the library, yet the university allegedly took “no serious action whatsoever” until May 2, conduct the DOJ says violated Title VI. The lawsuit is the DOJ’s second antisemitism-related case this year involving UCLA; a February case targeted alleged discrimination against Jewish and Israeli employees.

The Encampment: Physical Barriers and Violence

On April 25, 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators established an encampment in Royce Quad, one of UCLA’s busiest campus areas, that the DOJ alleges obstructed access to Royce Hall, Powell Library and other campus facilities. UCLA later declared the encampment illegal.

According to the DOJ complaint, occupiers fortified the encampment with plywood barriers and metal bicycle racks, then formed “human phalanxes” to physically prevent Jewish and Israeli students from entering academic buildings.

The complaint alleges that one Jewish student was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital with an open head wound, and that other Jewish and Israeli students reported being slapped, kicked, beaten with sticks, and pepper-sprayed.

UCLA’s official response to students who needed campus access was to simply “avoid the area if they wish,” according to the complaint. The university did not clear the encampment until May 2, roughly a week after it was established, when police intervened and arrested 210 people.

‘Over One Hundred Complaints’ Routinely Ignored

The DOJ alleges that UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion received over one hundred complaints about antisemitism and anti-Israeli hostility but “routinely ignored these complaints.” The pattern of discrimination began immediately after October 7, when some UCLA students and faculty openly celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack.

According to the complaint, on October 9, 2023, just two days after the massacre, the UCLA Undergraduate Student Association Council Cultural Affairs Commissioner issued an official statement reading: “Thus, we honor the Palestinians on the frontlines taking their land and sovereignty back! From the River to The Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

The hostile environment intensified throughout the fall. On November 8, 2023, during a UCLA Divest and SJP rally inside Bunche Hall, the complaint says marchers beat a piñata of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while at least one demonstrator chanted “beat the f***king Jew.”

UCLA’s Own Task Force: Leadership ‘Allowed’ Denial of Campus Access

UCLA’s own Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias later concluded that university leaders allowed the encampment, and the related denial of campus access, to continue even after protesters blocked Jews and others from freely reaching classrooms and campus facilities.

The complaint, citing UCLA’s task force report, says university leadership relied on a “de-escalation strategy” while demonstrators were allegedly armed with items including tasers, lumber and a sword.

The report documented Nazi swastikas carved into trees, graffiti reading “die you fucking Jew” and “FUCK ALL Jews,” and a Jewish star drawn on the ground with the words “STEP HERE” written on it.

A federal judge previously ruled in August 2024 that UCLA’s non-response to the harassment was “unimaginable” and “abhorrent,” finding the university likely violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause by excluding Jews from campus buildings and resources.

The Federal Demands

The complaint seeks restitution of federal grant payments made during the alleged period of noncompliance and asks the court to relieve the government of further payments under existing grants, a demand that could put major federal funding at issue.

The lawsuit also demands sweeping policy changes, including requirements that UCLA impose “timely and meaningful disciplinary action” on students or employees who discriminate against Jewish students, work with police to arrest protesters illegally blocking campus access, and promptly investigate all antisemitism complaints.

Additionally, federal officials want a court-appointed monitor to oversee UCLA’s compliance, with authority to audit the university and recommend corrective actions.

“Universities that violate our nation’s civil rights laws by repeatedly failing to shield Jewish students from antisemitism will be held accountable,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Israeli authorities said the Shin Bet and Israel Police exposed and foiled a PFLP-linked East Jerusalem terror network allegedly operated from France by Salah Hamouri. Israeli authorities said Hamouri, a lawyer by training and longtime Palestinian activist, used his ties to Israel as cover while allegedly organizing the group for attacks inside Israeli territory. Two of the suspects, brothers Yazid and Saeed Dadu, were indicted on several terrorism-related charges.

Share

The Architecture of Remote Recruitment

Between 2024 and 2025, Hamouri reportedly met with cell members across multiple European locations and recruited them to establish what Israeli authorities describe as an “infrastructure for carrying out terror activity” in Israel. The operational security measures were deliberate and sophisticated. Hamouri equipped each recruit with encrypted mobile phones for secure communications, and the members executed various preparatory actions advancing terror operations in the Jerusalem area.

According to Israeli authorities, brothers Yazid and Saeed Dado, the two suspects who were indicted in the case, allegedly took part in several meetings in 2024 with other members of the network. Investigators said the group discussed fundraising and weapons acquisition as part of plans to carry out attacks against Israeli security forces.

The security agencies’ investigation found that Hamouri maintained contact with operatives affiliated with the “Shia Axis,” an umbrella term for Iran-linked armed groups, which he coordinated with to direct attacks against Israeli targets.

Hamouri’s Ties to NGOs and U.S. Pro-Palestine Activists

Jewish Onliner previously reported on Hamouri’s PFLP ties and his engagements with Western activist groups. Hamouri worked as a lawyer and field researcher for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO that provides legal services to Palestinian detainees.

However, Addameer itself has been designated as affiliated with the PFLP terrorist organization, according to research by NGO Monitor. In June 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Addameer, saying it had long supported and was affiliated with the PFLP, and designated it for acting for or on behalf of the PFLP.

In March 2026, he served as a speaker at an event organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement for a campaign titled “Freedom for Palestinian Political Prisoners” held at New York City’s People’s Forum. The event promoted an in-person screening of a live webinar billed as featuring “first-hand testimonies from released political prisoners and lawyers.”

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Anera, a Washington, D.C.-based humanitarian nonprofit, announced in November 2024 that USAID had partnered with it on the Gaza Health Recovery Activity, a five-year, $50 million initiative to expand health services and psychosocial support across Gaza. Seven months later, Anera announced that Mahmoud Mohammed Rassrass, its Gaza psychosocial support coordinator, had been killed in an Israeli strike alongside two of his children.

Share

On May 25, 2026, a statement by Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the U.S.-designated Palestinian Islamic Jihad, identified “Mahmoud Muhammad Rasras” as a fallen platoon commander in its Signals Corps, Rafah Brigade.

The apparent overlap raises urgent questions about Anera’s Gaza vetting, USAID oversight, and whether American-funded aid systems can detect militant ties among field personnel operating inside Hamas-ruled territory.

Anera’s Gaza Coordinator

In June 2025, Anera identified Rassrass as its psychosocial support coordinator in Gaza for the previous 14 months. The organization said it hired him in March 2024 as a consultant and that he became part of its education and psychosocial support team, leading daily activities for children and structured sessions for adolescents, parents, and teachers.

In a separate memorial, Anera said Rassrass was born in Gaza in 1986, held degrees in psychological counseling and social sciences, and previously worked with MAAN Development Center, Save the Children, and the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution. Most recently, Anera wrote, he led its efforts to help Gaza children and families cope with wartime trauma.

Anera’s Vetting Claims

Anera has repeatedly said it rigorously screens individuals and agencies against OFAC and SAM.gov databases, signs U.S. anti-terrorism certifications, and does not engage or coordinate with Hamas. In another statement, Anera said it vets and re-vets partner organizations and immediately ceases work if a person or group appears in federal databases tracking terrorist organizations and affiliates.

That makes the Rassrass case a direct test of the system Anera says it operates. The organization has not publicly disclosed whether Rassrass was screened before his March 2024 hiring, whether he was re-vetted after the USAID award, or whether any donor-funded compliance review examined Gaza-based psychosocial staff, facilitators, vendors, or local partners. Anera has also not indicated whether it notified USAID or opened an internal review after Al-Quds Brigades publicly identified a matching name as one of its commanders.

The Broader USAID Risk

Anera had already hired multiple staff and begun partner and community assessments before a USAID stop-work order paused the activity in early 2025.

The case lands amid broader federal concern about aid diversion in Gaza. In May 2026, USAID’s inspector general reported that USAID had 18 active humanitarian awards in the West Bank and Gaza, valued at $650 million, between January 2023 and October 2024. The audit found USAID used partner vetting to check implementers and beneficiaries against public and nonpublic terrorism-related databases, but warned that selective vetting, policy exemptions, and information shortfalls could increase the risk of diversion to entities associated with terrorism.

GAO previously found that USAID generally complied with West Bank and Gaza anti-terrorism procedures during fiscal years 2020 through 2022, but also documented compliance reviews that found missing or late vetting of subawards and unreported subaward activity.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

Handala, an Iran-linked “hacktivist collective” tied by researchers and U.S. officials to Tehran’s intelligence apparatus, is claiming it obtained personal details of 69 Israeli naval personnel allegedly involved in intercepting the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla. But the group’s own framing raises immediate credibility questions: the people it presented as Shayetet 13 naval commandos appear to include women and middle-aged men, a profile that is inconsistent with a current roster of combatants in Israel’s elite naval commando unit.

The episode matters less because the alleged list has been authenticated, it has not, and more because it fits Handala’s documented pattern of turning alleged hacks, partial leaks, misattribution, doxxing, and bounty language into psychological warfare aimed at Israelis, dissidents, journalists, and Jewish communities.

Why the Shayetet 13 Claim Looks Suspect

The alleged Shayetet 13 framing appears shaky on its face. The IDF describes Shayetet 13 as an elite marine commando unit, yet the alleged list reportedly included women, older men, former personnel, and people tied to non-commando naval roles. The Jerusalem Post reported that many of those named appeared to have no link to the unit, while the IDF has previously said Shayetet 13 remains closed to women as combatants. That makes Handala’s list look less like an authenticated roster of naval commandos and more like an unverified, apparently misattributed doxxing package.

The Flotilla Claim

The latest claim centers on Israel’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a convoy that had departed from southern Turkey in another attempt to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Reuters reported that all 50 boats were intercepted and that more than 400 participants from over 40 countries were detained; Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the activists were transferred to Israeli vessels and would be allowed consular access.

Share

Handala then claimed it had obtained information on 69 Israeli Navy officers it said participated in the operation. In a statement circulated online, the group allegedly offered a $100,000 bounty for each officer and warned Israeli officials that actions “on land or at sea” would not go unanswered.

The RedWanted Escalation

The $100,000 bounty claim did not appear in a vacuum. Handala’s RedWanted campaign was a serialized intimidation program that paired doxxing with threats and financial rewards. Archived examples include reward language that moved from $10,000 to $30,000 and then to $50,000 in posts targeting alleged Israeli military, intelligence, and defense-sector figures.

Iran International previously reported that Handala offered $30,000 for information related to Israel’s military sector after releasing material it said identified people involved in designing Arrow and David’s Sling missile-defense systems. The outlet noted that Israeli media had not confirmed whether the information released by the group was accurate.

A State-Linked Entity, not a Conventional Hacktivist Crew

Handala presents itself in pro-Palestinian terms, but multiple public assessments describe it as part of a broader Iranian cyber and influence ecosystem. Check Point Research says Handala (officially “Handala Hack”) is operated by Void Manticore, also known as Red Sandstorm and Banished Kitten, which is affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Check Point says the group combines destructive wiping attacks with hack-and-leak operations.

The Justice Department went further in March 2026, announcing the seizure of four domains it said facilitated MOIS hacking efforts tied to psychological operations and transnational repression. The DOJ said seized domains were used to claim responsibility for hacks, post stolen sensitive data, and call for the killing of journalists, regime dissidents, and Israeli persons.

That description matches the assessment in the uploaded Handala dossier: the group is better understood as a public-facing brand for cyber-enabled intimidation, data leaks, and psychological operations than as a conventional freelance “hacktivist” operation.

Outpost24 similarly assessed that Handala’s operations focus on disruption and psychological impact rather than financial gain, and that the group pairs technical activity with public statements, leak claims, and online messaging to extend pressure beyond the initial compromise.

Built to Survive Takedowns

Handala’s persistence is not accidental. The group’s public operation relies on a rotating mix of websites, X accounts, Telegram channels, alternative services such as Session, and preservation by leak-tracking mirrors.

RansomLook currently tracks 177 all-time Handala official posts and lists two of four monitored URLs as up, underscoring that the group’s web presence has redundancy even when individual endpoints disappear.

That architecture helps explain why law-enforcement action has disrupted but not eliminated the brand. Reuters reported that Handala’s website returned a day after the FBI and Justice Department seized four associated domains. Ari Ben Am, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Reuters that Handala had already had “tens” of Telegram channels, X accounts, and domains taken down without being significantly slowed.

Potential Government Responses

Handala has become a distributed propaganda-and-leak architecture, not merely an account to suspend. Its latest claim shows how an Iran-linked cyber persona can attach an alleged data leak to a fast-moving security controversy, cast private individuals as military targets, and use bounty language to turn uncertainty itself into intimidation.

That means the response cannot stop at domain seizures or account takedowns. Israeli authorities can verify what, if anything, was actually breached, warn affected individuals, and publicly distinguish authenticated military information from material that appears misattributed or fabricated. U.S. authorities, meanwhile, can keep moving beyond infrastructure disruption toward sustained pressure on the people, aliases, hosting networks, and amplifiers that allow Handala to reappear after each takedown.

Join us on WhatsApp!

Subscribe to our Telegram channel!

On May 23, an administrative court in Nantes, France upheld a prefectural order, issued at the request of French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, banning the two-day Rencontre annuelle des Musulmans de l’Ouest hours before roughly 2,000 people were expected to attend.

Authorities said the gathering posed a risk because of the planned presence of speakers, particularly senior figures from Musulmans de France, whose remarks they said could constitute criminal offenses or undermine human dignity, republican principles, and national cohesion. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu praised the decision as "an important step" in the fight against Muslim Brotherhood "entryism,” what French officials describe as a covert, long-term strategy to infiltrate public institutions, schools, and local governments to implement Sharia law and undermine French secularism.

The gathering was organized by the Association Islamique de l’Ouest de la France, or AIOF, which manages the Assalam Mosque in Nantes. The group said after the ruling that it took note of the court’s decision and reaffirmed its attachment to the rule of law.

Musulmans de France Under Scrutiny

One of the figures at the center of the broader controversy is Makhlouf Mamèche, who was elected president of Musulmans de France in November 2025. Mamèche has long been involved in institutions linked to the former Union des Organisations Islamiques de France, or UOIF, which rebranded as Musulmans de France in 2017.

A May 2025 French Interior Ministry report identified Musulmans de France as the main French emanation of the Muslim Brotherhood. The report identified 139 places of worship affiliated with Musulmans de France and another 68 considered close to the federation, spread across 55 departments. It estimated Friday attendance at mosques affiliated with or close to the movement at about 91,000 worshippers, alongside roughly 280 associations and 21 Muslim confessional schools linked to or close to the movement.

The intelligence assessment concluded that the movement poses “a threat to national cohesion” and seeks “to gradually bring about changes to local or national rules,” particularly concerning secularism and gender equality.

Officials also cited the previous year’s gathering at Le Bourget, where speakers advanced “Jewish conspiracy” theories. Authorities also referenced the 2025 Nantes gathering, where a tribute was paid to Hassan Iquioussen, a preacher close to Musulmans de France who was listed as a security concern and expelled from France in 2022.

Parliamentary Pressure Builds

On January 22, the National Assembly voted 157 to 101 for a European resolution calling for the Muslim Brotherhood movement to be placed on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations, citing its “subversive ideology, its backing of terrorist entities like Hamas, its calls for hatred, and its covert action against democratic institutions.”

On May 5, senators adopted 208 to 124 a bill aimed at strengthening the state’s ability to combat Islamist “entryism.” The bill, introduced by former Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, creates a new criminal offense punishable by five years’ imprisonment and a €75,000 fine for anyone who “works to induce a body or group to make decisions contrary to legally established rules, with the aim of seriously undermining the principles of the Republic.”

France has also used dissolution powers against institutions it says promote radical ideology. In September 2025, authorities dissolved the Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines, or IESH, after officials accused it of legitimizing violence and promoting radical teachings, asserting that Muslim Brotherhood figures have led the institution since 1990.

The Nantes ruling shows how France’s campaign against Islamist “entryism” is moving from reports and parliamentary votes into local enforcement, with authorities increasingly targeting events, associations, schools, and religious structures they believe form part of a coordinated ecosystem of Brotherhood influence.

When Ramy Abdu, chairman of the alleged Hamas-linked Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, posted on May 23, 2026 that "inside the mass graves, [Gazans] found children & babies with their hands bound with zip ties," the claim was not new. The image embedded in his post had already circulated on X and Instagram for more than two years, spreading across 71 countries. Jewish Onliner's analysis of 1,221 X posts containing the claim found it had generated more than 294,000 likes, shares, and comments.

Yet the central evidentiary problem remained unresolved. The image is not a forensic document. It is an Instagram graphic produced by Slow Factory, a New York–based fashion-activism nonprofit, with overlaid labels reading “Adult’s wrist,” “Baby’s wrist,” and “Child’s wrist.” No public source has produced forensic documentation, autopsy reports, an independently identifiable victim, on-the-record medical testimony, or chain-of-custody evidence connecting the items in the photograph to bodies recovered at Nasser Hospital, let alone to babies.

This article examines how an unverified claim by a Hamas member was upgraded by a Hamas-controlled Civil Defense spokesman in Gaza, visually escalated by an American activist nonprofit nine days later, then recycled and amplified across 24 months by a network of Pro-Palestinian advocacy figures, anti-Israel commentators, and high-reach social media accounts — many of whom cited each other as if they constituted independent verification.

A Recycled Viral Cycle

Jewish Onliner's X analysis tracked 82,900 posts about the allegation over the past 12 months, generating 294,400 engagements in total. The volume wasn't steady — it arrived in two discrete bursts: a spike of roughly 17,000 posts in mid-December 2025, and a dominant peak around May 21–25, 2026.

A deeper review of 1,221 individual posts starting from October 7, 2023 found that 47% originated from accounts classified as U.S.-based. Engagement was heavily concentrated among a small group of high-reach anti-Israel accounts, including @CensoredMen, @RamAbdu, @caitoz, and @QudsNen. Posts containing skeptical or debunking language made up only 5.3% of the dataset — and generated just 597 engagements. Non-skeptical posts, by contrast, generated 276,217: a ratio of 463 to 1.

The Original Claim

On April 22, 2024 — two days after Palestinian families returning to Nasser Hospital first reported temporary graves dug during the Israeli siege — Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defense in Gaza, told BBC Arabic’s “Gaza Today” programme that the Israeli army had “established a mass grave, pulled out the bodies that were in Nasser hospital, and buried them in this mass grave.”

In June 2025, Bassal was identified as an active terror operative in the Zeitoun Battalion of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing from Hamas’s own military records found in Gaza.

The same day, Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis, told CNN that some bodies had been found with “hands and feet tied.” CNN explicitly stated it was “unable to verify Suleiman’s claims.” Abu Suleiman later described the restraints to Mondoweiss as “plastic tape” — not zip ties.

On April 24, 2024, the UN’s own Palestine office disclaimed the evidence. Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office for the Palestinian territories, told the BBC that while he had seen photographs of bodies with hands tied, “the evidence did not meet the standard of proof required by the UN and so could not be stated as a fact.”

The next day, analyses by the New York Times, Sky News, and open-source verification group GeoConfirmed confirmed through satellite imagery and dated video that Palestinians themselves had dug the Nasser graves between January 22 and February 3, 2024 — weeks before Israeli forces entered the complex on February 15.

The Slow Factory Escalation

On May 1, 2024 — nine days after the original Civil Defense claim — the New York–based nonprofit Slow Factory posted an infographic to its 961,000-follower Instagram account. The graphic overlaid white plastic items with the labels “Adult’s wrist,” “Baby’s wrist,” and “Child’s wrist,” accompanied by the caption: “Inside the mass graves they found children and babies who had their hands bound with zip ties.” The post accumulated nearly 109,000 likes and 502 comments before commenting was restricted.

Slow Factory was founded in 2012 by Lebanese-Canadian designer Céline Semaan and her husband Colin Vernon. The organization describes itself as a “movement organization and knowledge lab” producing “Media Justice & Narrative Change” content. Its tax filings show it has received support from foundations including Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc., the Greater Houston Community Foundation, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, per InfluenceWatch.

On Instagram, the organization has characterized Zionism as “genocide, ethnic cleansing, state-sanctioned terrorism, ecocide, supremacy, settler colonialism, illegal land annexation, fascism, and segregation.” Semaan, in a 2024 interview with Drilled Media, said that “Zionist funders” were “working around the clock to defund the work that we’re doing.”

The Slow Factory graphic introduced three escalations not present in the original Civil Defense claim: the substitution of “plastic tape” with “zip ties,” the addition of “Baby’s wrist” and “Child’s wrist” labels, and the visual presentation of the claim as established fact. The image has since circulated across at least six other Instagram accounts using a standardized caption that names both Slow Factory and Euro-Med as sources.

Closing the Loop

The allegation has been recycled in waves. Between 2024 and May 2026, Ramy Abdu posted the same wording and image at least five separate times on X, per JO's dataset. His Euro-Med has been identified by Israeli authorities in Hamas-related counterterror financing materials; his brother was arrested in Italy in December 2025 in connection with an alleged Hamas financial network. His most viral post generated 17,400 likes and 12,213 reposts, with his May 2026 repost adding another 9,871 likes.

By May 2026, the chain of citation had closed. The visual originated with Slow Factory. The standardized caption attached to it claimed verification by both “the UN (OHCHR) and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.” But the UN’s Palestine office had publicly disclaimed the evidence. Euro-Med’s chairman was the same figure now amplifying the Slow Factory graphic on X — citing his own organization as proof. And the original “plastic tape” reference from a Hamas military operative had been transformed, nine days later by an activist designer in New York, into “zip ties on babies.”

The findings suggest the allegation did not spread because new evidence emerged. It spread because repetition across terrorist, activist, NGO, and social media channels created the appearance of corroboration — even as forensic verification remained, two years on, wholly absent.