Editor’s note: This is the latest article in a series examining alleged Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States—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 U.S. government focus on Brotherhood networks and recent congressional scrutiny, this series investigates the documented connections between these groups and their historical advancement of Brotherhood strategic objectives in America.

When the Muslim Brotherhood outlined its North American strategy in the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum,” it included an attachmenet that listed 29 organizations it described as part of the movement’s “comprehensive settlement” infrastructure.

Number 21 on that list appears as “MISC = MALASIAN [sic] ISLAMIC STUDY CROUP,” an apparent misspelling or transcription error referring to the Malaysian Islamic Study Group, commonly known as MISG. The same list includes ISNA, MSA, NAIT, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the United Association for Studies and Research, the Occupied Land Fund, ICNA, and IIIT.

MISG is not as publicly familiar as ISNA, MSA, CAIR, or ICNA. But historical records place it inside the same early North American Islamist student ecosystem. A recent George Washington University Program on Extremism report states that MSA developed professional and ethnic-origin subgroups, including the Islamic Medical Association, the Islamic Association of Scientists and Engineers, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, and the Malaysian Islamic Study Group.

MISG Today

MISG Pro’s own website describes it as “a forum for Malaysian Muslim individuals and families in the USA to stay connected,” and says it is registered in Texas as a nonprofit with 501(c)(3) status granted in December 2019.

ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer lists MISG Pro Corporation as a Spring, Texas-based 501(c)(3), EIN 84-3529825, tax-exempt since December 2019. Its 2024 filing summary shows $47,522 in revenue, $49,332 in expenses, and $67,409 in net assets. Listed officers include Zabidi Yusof as president, Abdul Saleh as vice president, Usamah Zaki as secretary, and Mohdzamri Amin as treasurer, all with zero reported compensation.

From MSA to MISG

MISG’s own current convention materials trace the group’s founding to Illinois in 1976. The IMSA-MISG Muktamar website says MISG was founded “to unite Malaysian students who were active in campus-based Islamic study,” and that Indonesian Muslim students later became involved in MISG activities beginning in 1990. According to the same page, the Indonesian Muslim Student Association, later the Indonesian Muslim Society in America, was established in 1998 in Missouri at a MISG annual convention.

That history aligns with Islamic Horizons, ISNA’s official magazine, which says MSA helped create both the Muslim Arab Youth Association and MISG in response to the number of Gulf and Malaysian students studying in the United States during the 1970s. The same article says MSA sponsored the first MISG camp in Peoria, Illinois, in 1976.

Islamic Horizons also places Anwar Ibrahim, now Malaysia’s prime minister, at that founding-era MISG camp. According to the article, Anwar was invited to the first MISG camp in Peoria so he could connect with attendees. During the same period, the article says, he was appointed regional representative of the Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth, or WAMY.

That detail places MISG’s early history not only inside the MSA orbit, but also near the broader transnational Islamist youth infrastructure of the period. The Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt later described WAMY as closely linked to the Saudi government and alleged that it had “documented links to international terrorism,” citing concerns involving Hamas leader Khaled Mishal, militant funding allegations from Indian and Philippine officials, and extremist literature allegations.

This does not mean MISG itself is accused of WAMY’s alleged conduct. But it does show that MISG’s founding-era milieu overlapped with the same global Islamic youth networks that later drew terrorism-finance and extremism scrutiny.

An “Ikhwan-Modeled” Malaysian Student Network

The GW Program on Extremism report adds another important historical detail. In a section discussing the continuity of alleged Brotherhood-linked organizations in the United States, the report cites a former Islamic Horizons editor’s description of internal ISNA factional politics in 1986. That account says Malaysian students were split between members of ABIM, the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, and what it called the “Ikhwan-modeled MISG.”

The report frames MSA, ISNA, ICNA, IIIT, MAS, and related organizations as a cluster of entities whose alleged Brotherhood connections are sometimes contested, but whose founders and early leaders often came from Brotherhood-linked circles. It also notes that, over time, many American organizations tracing their origins to the Brotherhood evolved independently, sharing the movement’s general philosophy while becoming less operationally connected to the Middle East.

That caveat is important. The available evidence does not show that MISG Pro Corporation is sanctioned, charged, or accused by U.S. authorities of illegal activity. The significance of MISG is historical and network-based: it appears in the 1991 Brotherhood memorandum, it emerged from the MSA ecosystem, and it was described in a cited account as “Ikhwan-modeled.”

Current Mission Language

MISG’s present-day public language still emphasizes da’wah, Islamic centers, campus work, and society-building goals. The IMSA-MISG Muktamar website says MISG’s primary goal is to develop individuals who have “Islamic personalities,” integrate “common knowledge with Islamic knowledge,” and possess “a vision of establishing an Islamic society in Malaysia and Indonesia.”

The same page says MISG focuses on “the development of intellectual and Islamic morality through da’wah centered in the Islamic Center and the university campuses,” and says it works to build relationships with “halaqah” organizations throughout North America.

That language is not evidence of illegality or current Brotherhood control. It is relevant, however, because it reflects the same broad categories emphasized in the 1991 memorandum: Islamic centers, campus networks, religious education, and long-term institution building.

Annual Convention Infrastructure

MISG’s most visible current activity appears to be the IMSA-MISG Muktamar, an annual convention organized with the Indonesian Muslim Society in America. The 2025 Muktamar website describes the gathering as a multi-day program for adults, youth, young adults, students, children, and women, with sessions on Islamic identity, family life, da’wah, zakat, suicide awareness, seerah, and community impact.

The convention also provides a window into MISG’s contemporary speaker and organizational ecosystem. The 2024 IMSA-MISG Muktamar sponsorship proposal listed Anas Hlayhel as a speaker and described his former CAIR-AZ leadership role.

CAIR is one of the most controversial U.S. Muslim advocacy organizations in the broader Brotherhood-network debate. In the Holy Land Foundation case, federal prosecutors listed CAIR among individuals and entities described as members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations. The list was part of the government’s unindicted co-conspirator and joint venturer filing.

A speaker tie to a former CAIR-AZ chairman does not establish control by CAIR or misconduct by MISG. But it does show that the IMSA-MISG convention platform intersects with other major organizations and personalities in the U.S. Muslim advocacy ecosystem.

A Small Group with a Larger Historical Meaning

MISG is not a household-name organization. Its current financial footprint is modest, and its public programming appears centered on Malaysian Muslim families, students, professionals, religious education, and community events.

But in the context of the 1991 Brotherhood memorandum, MISG’s importance lies in its placement inside a broader infrastructure. It was listed as number 21 among the memorandum’s “comprehensive settlement organizations.” It was born from the MSA ecosystem. It was linked in historical accounts to Anwar Ibrahim, ABIM, WAMY, ISNA, and IIIT. And today, it remains active through MISG Pro and the IMSA-MISG Muktamar convention.

A new episode of China Uncensored argues that anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracy narratives are increasingly being used online to discredit critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including voices whose primary focus is Beijing rather than Israel.

The episode, hosted by Chris Chappell, opens with examples of hostile comments accusing China Uncensored of being a “Zionist” account, despite the show’s focus on China and the CCP. Chappell claims the campaign intensified dramatically after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, when bot-like accounts began systematically flooding his content with antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories.

The video does not argue that Beijing invented anti-Israel sentiment in the United States. It argues that the CCP benefits when that sentiment is redirected into a broader narrative casting Israel, rather than China, as the main threat to U.S. sovereignty and foreign-policy independence.

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The TikTok Algorithm Advantage

The most scrutinized tool in China’s influence ecosystem is TikTok, the ByteDance-owned platform whose recommendation algorithm has been at the center of U.S. national-security concerns and Chinese technology-export scrutiny. A December 2023 report by the Network Contagion Research Institute analyzed hashtag ratios between Instagram and TikTok, revealing a stark pattern. While hashtags for pop culture and general politics followed expected user ratios of roughly 2 to 1 between the platforms, topics sensitive to Chinese government interests showed dramatically different distributions.

Pro-Israel hashtags were underrepresented on TikTok by a ratio of 6.2 to 1 compared to Instagram. Pro-Ukraine hashtags showed similar underrepresentation on TikTok compared with Instagram, with an 8.5-to-1 ratio in NCRI’s dataset. Meanwhile, pro-Kashmir independence hashtags, which align with China’s interest in destabilizing India, were overrepresented by a staggering 600 to 1.

The “standwithkashmir” hashtag alone generated over 225 million posts on TikTok, dwarfing even the massive Black Lives Matter movement’s peak of 50 million posts on Twitter. The researchers assessed a “strong possibility” that TikTok content is amplified or suppressed based on whether it aligns with the interests of the Chinese government.

The findings raised concerns about what young users were being shown. A December 2023 Wall Street Journal investigation created accounts registered as 13-year-olds and reported that TikTok could quickly feed young users intense, polarized, and hard-to-verify videos about the Israel-Hamas war, including content reflecting often extreme pro-Palestinian positions.

From Digital Manipulation to Campus Chaos

The social-media environment coincided with large and sometimes disruptive pro-Palestinian campus protests. Some of that protest infrastructure has been linked by congressional investigators and outside researchers to Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. businessman based in Shanghai whose network has funded groups including The People’s Forum.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith alleged that The People’s Forum received more than $20 million from Singham-linked funding, justified Hamas’s October 7 attack within hours, and helped incite disruptive protests on U.S. campuses and elsewhere.

State Media and Social Media Amplification

Chinese state and state-aligned media have carried sharply anti-Israel and anti-U.S. messaging since October 7. China Daily published an editorial accusing Washington of “blindly backing Israel” and standing on the “wrong side of history” in Gaza. Brookings found that Chinese state-owned media used the crisis to cast Washington as the driver of instability in the Middle East. Freedom House reported that CCTV aired a segment claiming that Jews represent 3 percent of the U.S. population but control 70 percent of its wealth. On October 11, 2023, days after Hamas’s deadly attack, a Chinese state-linked outlet spread unverified claims that Israel used white phosphorus against civilians while using photos that were reported from Syria years earlier.

The Epstein Conspiracy and Democratic Demoralization

The influence campaign has helped amplify conspiracy theories aimed at delegitimizing American democracy itself.

CCP-aligned voices have promoted Epstein-related claims suggesting Israeli intelligence controls U.S. politicians through blackmail, with one pro-CCP personality claiming that if the list is suddenly released, Israel has no control anymore. The message is that voting is futile because Jewish and Israeli interests allegedly control American politics.

An Institute for National Security Studies report found that Chinese cyber campaigns tied to state bodies spread antisemitic messages to U.S. audiences about alleged Jewish and Israeli control of American politics ahead of the 2024 election.

Graphika likewise reported that China’s state-linked Spamouflage operation sought to sow division in the United States by amplifying divisive narratives, including around the Israel-Hamas war, although Graphika said most of the accounts it identified failed to gain significant traction in authentic online communities.

The Strategic Endgame

China currently sits on the UN Human Rights Council, whose independent Commission of Inquiry said in 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Beijing holds that seat despite a 2022 UN Human Rights Office assessment finding that China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in Xinjiang may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.

The goal, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, is not primarily to harm Israel, but to weaken the United States. “China does not promote anti-Israel narratives in order to harm Israel directly,” the report concluded, “but rather it seeks to harm the United States.” In that framework, Israel becomes collateral damage in a campaign to convince Americans that their government is controlled by foreign interests, their votes do not matter, and U.S. global leadership is illegitimate.

Chappell’s experience illustrates the tactic in practice. A critic of the CCP is recast as an Israeli agent, then targeted with claims about paid pro-Israel influence, Epstein-related blackmail conspiracies, and alleged Zionist control. The intended effect is to make warnings about Chinese influence appear less like national-security concerns and more like foreign propaganda. If that message convinces Americans that their own political system is captured and their global leadership is illegitimate, Beijing stands to benefit.

A new analysis from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) documents Hezbollah’s decentralized global financial infrastructure, identifying account holders and intermediaries operating across Europe, North America, Africa, and South America.

In their May 3, 2026, study, researchers Noam Binstok, Orna Mizrahi, and Esteban Klor synthesize data from a 2020 leak of al-Qard al-Hassan’s internal databases, U.S. Treasury OFAC designations, and Lebanese diaspora voter registration records to map the organization’s international financial reach.

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The Database Leak and Scale

A 2020 data breach exposed nearly 400,000 accounts within al-Qard al-Hassan, which INSS describes as Hezbollah’s primary financial institution and, effectively, its banking system. INSS argues that, given the size of the leaked database relative to Lebanon’s adult Shiite population, al-Qard al-Hassan appears deeply embedded in civilian economic life, making it difficult to isolate through military means alone.

Cross-referencing al-Qard al-Hassan account data with Lebanese diaspora voter-registration records, Binstok, Mizrahi, and Klor examined overseas Lebanese voter populations across Europe, North America, Africa, and the Gulf states. INSS says those voter lists included more than 51,000 registered voters in Europe, more than 34,000 in North America, more than 9,500 in Africa, and more than 12,500 in the Gulf states.

Within that broader dataset, the analysis identified hundreds of individuals in those countries holding accounts linked to Hezbollah’s financial system, while thousands more maintained familial or business ties with account holders. Some accounts, the study says, were explicitly marked as belonging to Hezbollah members.

Diaspora Remittances as Financial Backbone

By 2023, diaspora remittances reached roughly one-third of Lebanon’s GDP, among the world’s highest ratios, according to World Bank data cited in the study. The researchers state that roughly 95% of remittance transfers bypass Lebanon’s banking system and move through the country’s cash economy, including money-transfer operators and informal channels.

This informal infrastructure provides ideal conditions for Hezbollah’s financial integration within legitimate economic flows. The organization exploits these channels by embedding its funding operations within diaspora communities, leveraging trusted relationships and established remittance routes to move money internationally with minimal regulatory friction.

Hawala Networks and Trade-Based Laundering

Hezbollah’s financial architecture incorporates hawala—informal cross-border transfers facilitated through intermediaries settling accounts via trade arrangements rather than direct financial transactions. These networks leave minimal records and operate outside formal regulatory frameworks.

According to the researchers, Hezbollah’s illicit revenue, including proceeds from drug trafficking in Latin America and globally, is first laundered through trade-based mechanisms, such as the purchase and resale of legitimate goods, and then transferred internationally via hawala networks. This structure provides what Binstok, Mizrahi, and Klor describe as “high adaptability” and rapid reconstitution when specific financial nodes are targeted.

International Evasion Mechanisms

INSS argues that Lebanon’s FATF gray-list status does not significantly hinder Hezbollah because the organization can exploit diaspora networks and informal financing channels to route funds through jurisdictions with stronger financial reputations, thereby avoiding scrutiny.

According to the researchers, recent U.S. sanctions highlight that Hezbollah’s financial activity does not depend on a single institution, but on a network of interchangeable nodes, including companies, money changers, and intermediaries across multiple jurisdiction.

Policy Recommendations

The researchers propose five coordinated strategies to disrupt Hezbollah’s financial network. They recommend expanding financial cooperation with the United States, European countries, and key African states where Lebanese diaspora communities are present. They also call for targeting financial intermediaries, including money changers, hawala brokers, and trade-based laundering networks, rather than focusing only on al-Qard al-Hassan.

The study further recommends greater oversight of diaspora-linked financial flows, especially in countries with large Shiite communities. It also calls for a permanent Israeli interagency task force combining intelligence, legal, financial, and law-enforcement expertise.

Finally, the researchers urge Israel and its partners to use economic diplomacy to pressure Lebanon’s government to take concrete action against Hezbollah’s financial infrastructure, including by conditioning international assistance on measurable steps.

The INSS team identifies this decentralized and socially embedded structure as a central reason Hezbollah’s financial system is difficult to target. Because the network is spread across diaspora communities, informal transfer systems, legitimate economic activity, companies, money changers, and intermediaries, disruption of any single node is unlikely to produce lasting strategic effects.

On May 6, 2026, a Brussels-based organization calling for the suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement released a policy study estimating that such a move could cost Israel billions of euros in trade losses.

The organization behind the study, the European Palestinian Council for Political Relations (EUPAC), is a Brussels-registered association sans but lucratif (ASBL), Belgium’s nonprofit association structure, that presents itself as a bridge between European policymakers and the Palestinian cause. Its top officers, however, are Majed Al-Zeer and Mohammad Hannoun, two men the U.S. Treasury sanctioned on October 7, 2024, for what it described as prominent roles in Hamas’s international fundraising network.

Al-Zeer has also been reported to be the subject of a German European arrest warrant over allegations tied to Hamas activity in Europe. Hannoun, meanwhile, was arrested in Italy in December 2025 as part of a nine-person investigation into an alleged Hamas financing network that prosecutors said moved roughly €7 million through ostensibly humanitarian channels.

Despite the U.S. designations and subsequent law-enforcement actions, EUPAC’s website continues to list Al-Zeer as chairman and Hannoun as deputy chairman.

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A U.S.-Sanctioned Figure Pushes Into the EU Trade Debate

On May 6, 2026, roughly one year after Al-Zeer was reported to be wanted under a German European arrest warrant and just over four months after Hannoun’s arrest in Italy, EUPAC released a study from Brussels analyzing the potential suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement. The paper argues that Israel, “as an occupying power,” should be subject to WTO standards, including standard customs tariffs on Israeli goods, which it says would have an immediate effect on their competitiveness and overall cost.

EUPAC’s study estimates potential Israeli losses at approximately €2.15 billion annually under partial suspension and around €14.3 billion in the first year under full suspension. Al-Zeer is quoted throughout as EUPAC chairman, despite public reporting that he is wanted under a German European arrest warrant.

A Front Hidden in Plain Sight

According to the Belgian Official Gazette, EUPAC was established as an ASBL in 2022, formally registered for sports and cultural activities tied to Morocco. On its public-facing website, however, it describes itself as the “European-Palestinian Council for Political Relations,” dedicated to influencing European “political, scientific, cultural and civil society” engagement with the Palestinian cause through conferences, reports, and “bilateral and group meetings with actors in the European and Palestinian arenas.”

In February 2024, Belgian Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt acknowledged, in response to MP Michael Freilich, that groups in Belgium were operating on Hamas’s behalf through lobbying and fundraising. He did not publicly name specific organizations, but warned that dissolving such groups “is not simple according to Belgian law,” a position Freilich called “a disgrace.”

Al-Zeer: U.S.-Designated Hamas Representative in Germany

The U.S. Treasury identified Al-Zeer as “the senior Hamas representative in Germany” and a figure who “has played a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising.” Israel had already designated him a Hamas operative in 2013, and German intelligence publicly named him Hamas’s secret representative in Germany.

In May 2025, the Jerusalem Post, citing Swedish reporting, reported that Al-Zeer was wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by Germany over allegations that he coordinated Hamas activity across Europe, including fundraising and attack planning. Before founding EUPAC, Al-Zeer chaired the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, which Israel declared an “unlawful association” in 2010 over its Hamas ties. On social media, Al-Zeer has characterized the October 7 massacre — in which 1,200 people were murdered and 240 taken hostage — as an act of “self-defense.”

Hannoun: Treasury-Designated Figure in Italian Hamas Financing Case

EUPAC’s deputy chairman, Mohammad Hannoun, founded the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (ABSPP), which the U.S. Treasury described as “a sham charity in Italy which ostensibly raises funds for humanitarian purposes, but in reality helps bankroll Hamas’s military wing.” Treasury assessed that Hannoun “sent at least $4 million to Hamas over a 10-year period.”

On December 27, 2025, Italian anti-terrorism prosecutors arrested Hannoun and eight others, alleging the network “diverted to Hamas-linked entities around 7 million euros” raised through ostensibly humanitarian channels. Police seized more than €1 million in cash from charity offices and suspects’ homes, alongside material supportive of Hamas.

Brussels’ Blind Spot

EUPAC’s continued operation underscores a striking gap between U.S. enforcement and Belgian legal practice. As the Treasury noted, “Hamas considers Europe to be a key source of fundraising,” and the group may be receiving “as much as $10 million a month” through donations channeled via front charities.

Yet EUPAC, a Brussels-registered ASBL whose top officers include two men designated by the U.S. Treasury as Hamas-linked fundraisers, continues to publish policy material and seek influence in the European debate over Israel. The organization has become a test case for the gap between U.S. sanctions enforcement and Belgium’s slower legal process for addressing groups suspected of operating within Hamas’s European support infrastructure.

The White House released its 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy this week, marking the first comprehensive CT doctrine of President Trump’s second term. The document outlines the Muslim Brotherhood as “the root of all modern Islamist terrorism” and vows to pursue FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) designations against Brotherhood branches from the Middle East and other regions, aiming to dismantle the movement’s operations worldwide.

The document frames the Brotherhood designation campaign as a key counterterrorism priority alongside dismantling cartel networks and neutralizing Iranian-backed proxies, elevating the nearly century-old Islamist movement to the top tier of U.S. national security threats.

Earlier this year, the U.S. designated four Muslim Brotherhood branches under counterterrorism authorities the Lebanese, Egyptian, Jordanian, and Sudanese branches.

As previously documented by Jewish Onliner, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and others, there are various other branches of the movement harboring terror ties. Below is a list of Brotherhood-linked entities that could be next in line for designation.

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Yemen’s Al-Islah

The Yemeni Brotherhood affiliate was co-founded by Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who the U.S. designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2004 for serving as a “spiritual leader” to Osama bin Laden. A federal lawsuit identifies Zindani as coordinating the 2000 USS Cole attack that killed 17 United States Navy sailors. In 2013, Treasury noted Zindani issued “religious guidance in support of AQAP operations.”

Libya’s Hizb al-Watan

Libya’s Hizb al-Watan is another Islamist party cited as a possible target for scrutiny because of its Brotherhood-linked leadership networks. The party has been led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which the U.S. and U.N. designated for al-Qaeda links, and by cleric Ali al-Sallabi. Belhaj and Sallabi were also placed on terrorism-linked lists by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain in 2017.

Malaysia’s PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia)

Malaysia's oldest and largest Islamist opposition party advocates transforming Malaysia into an Islamic state. "PAS is held up by the Muslim Brotherhood as a model of a successful Islamic party that can win elections and rule," chief executive officer of the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) told Al Jazeera.

In January 2025, PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang publicly declared what he called an "early victory for Hamas," praising the group's "tactical wisdom" and describing Palestinian militants as "mujahidin."

Today, PAS holds 43 seats in Malaysia’s 222-member Parliament and is the country’s largest single parliamentary party, giving it significant influence inside the opposition Perikatan Nasional bloc. PAS also governs or helps govern the conservative northern states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, and Perlis, making it one of Southeast Asia’s most politically successful Islamist movements.

Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood

Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood became one of the Assad regime’s central Islamist rivals after the Baath Party consolidated power. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Brotherhood endorsed armed struggle against Hafez al-Assad’s government and aligned with the Fighting Vanguard, an Islamist militant offshoot linked to assassinations, bombings, and attacks on state and Baath Party targets. The confrontation culminated in the 1982 Hama uprising and the regime’s brutal assault on the city, which killed or disappeared thousands and forced much of the Brotherhood into exile.

After 2011, the exiled Syrian Brotherhood sought to regain influence through opposition bodies, humanitarian networks, and anti-Assad organizing. Congressional testimony in 2018 alleged that Syrian Brotherhood-linked advocacy networks in the United States, including figures associated with the Syrian American Council, helped normalize U.S. support for radical Islamist factions in Syria, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. The testimony alleged influence and ideological sympathy, but does not by itself prove direct terrorist financing by the Syrian Brotherhood or SAC.

Turkey and Qatar—The State Sponsors

The 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy explicitly names Iran as the “world’s number one state sponsor of terror.” Beyond individual Brotherhood chapters, various observers and experts, characterize Qatar and Turkey as state-level sponsors of the global network. FDD identifies both as state sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey provides asylum to Brotherhood members and hosts Hamas operatives. Qatar funds the Brotherhood through “bottomless energy wealth” and its Al Jazeera network.

The January actions enable the U.S. to sanction "people, businesses, nonprofits, and networks" supporting designated chapters, a framework that could expand rapidly as more branches are targeted.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released a detailed factsheet in May 2026 identifying specific government agencies, militia groups, and officials across 14 countries as potential targets for U.S. sanctions over severe religious freedom violations. The document, titled “Targeted Sanctions in Response to Violations of International Religious Freedom,” draws from the commission’s 2026 Annual Report to name entities ranging from China’s Communist Party United Front Work Department to India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as perpetrators warranting visa bans and asset freezes under existing U.S. legal authorities.

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The factsheet identifies “Chinese government agencies, entities, and officials, including the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department and the public security and state security apparatus” as sanctions targets. The designation points to the United Front Work Department’s role in implementing policies against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang, as well as restrictions on Christian churches and Tibetan Buddhist communities. In 2021, the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada jointly imposed targeted sanctions against senior Chinese officials responsible for abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, marking the first coordinated human rights sanctions by these partners since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

For India, the commission named “individuals and entities, such as India’s Research and Analysis Wing and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)” as potential targets. The RSS is the Hindu nationalist parent organization of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP party. The factsheet notes that the only officially acknowledged use of religious freedom visa sanctions involved Modi himself—his tourist and business visa was revoked in 2005 when he served as chief minister of Gujarat, following “sustained pressure from civil society and members of Congress to hold him accountable for his alleged role in inciting religiously motivated violence.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) appears on the list as the commission identifies “Russian government agencies, including the Federal Security Service (FSB), and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom” as targets. The designation comes amid Russian crackdowns on religious minorities and independent congregations.

Cuba’s Caridad Diego Bello, head of the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), is specifically named in the factsheet. In July 2025, the State Department designated Cuban judicial and prison officials under Section 7031(c) for their involvement in the detention and torture of July 2021 protestors, “which included a number of FoRB victims.”

Afghanistan’s “Taliban officials, including high-level officials of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MPVPV)” are identified as targets. The factsheet notes that in 2023, the U.S. government issued Global Magnitsky sanctions against Taliban officials for “religious-inspired human rights abuses committed against women and girls in Afghanistan.”

Azerbaijan’s targets include “government agencies, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Main Department for Combating Organized Crime (also known as Bandotdel), and officials.” For Eritrea, the commission names “government officials, including those in the police, judiciary, and correctional system.”

Iraq’s “Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and other militia members or leaders” are identified as perpetrators. In Libya, targets include “nonstate actors and officials within both the Government of National Unity (GNU) and the Government of National Stability (GNS).” Syria’s entry specifies “Syrian actors—whether nonstate or affiliated with the transitional authorities—responsible for religious freedom violations.”

Kyrgyzstan’s “Kyrgyz officials, such as those from the State Committee on National Security” and Uzbekistan’s “State Security Service officials and judges who repeatedly arrest individuals or issue administrative or criminal penalties for peaceful religious activities” round out Central Asian targets.

Nicaragua’s entry identifies “Nicaraguan officials responsible for exiling or otherwise violating the human rights of religious adherents.” In February 2026, the State Department designated the director of Nicaragua’s La Modelo prison under Section 7031(c) for involvement in gross violations of human rights—the prison has held numerous religious freedom victims.

For Nigeria, the commission recommends targeting “Nigerian government and military officials who tolerate religiously motivated violence and/or violence against religious communities, or those who are complicit in attacks on these communities.” In December 2025, the State Department announced a new visa restriction policy focused on individuals who have “directed, authorized, significantly supported, participated in, or carried out violations of religious freedom” in Nigeria and globally.

The factsheet outlines multiple legal authorities available for imposing these sanctions. The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, permanently reauthorized in 2022, has been used to sanction 744 individuals and entities for human rights abuses or corruption since 2016. Additional authorities include Section 212(a)(2)(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—which makes foreign officials responsible for particularly severe religious freedom violations ineligible for U.S. visas—and Section 7031(c) of the State Department’s appropriations law, which authorizes visa restrictions on foreign officials involved in gross human rights violations.

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The commission emphasized that “imposing new targeted sanctions, on top of existing human rights sanctions, in direct response to a CPC designation could serve as a distinct tool to address IRF violations and increase pressure on foreign governments by making clear that religious freedom abuses are being singled out.” The factsheet notes that in countries like Burma, China, Iran, and North Korea, the U.S. has used “double-hatted sanctions”—repurposing existing sanctions as the official response to religious freedom violations rather than imposing new measures.

The May 5, 2026 Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) commentary, authored by Benjamin Jensen, Nico Vacca, and Jose M. Macias III, argues that Iran mounted an aggressive information counteroffensive after U.S.-Israeli strikes that CSIS says sank large portions of Iran’s naval capability and set back its ballistic missile and nuclear programs by years, if not longer.

Within hours, coordinated networks began flooding social media with AI-generated and false battlefield content. Over the first month of the war, two pro-Iran networks identified by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue generated more than 1 billion views on X.

The CSIS researchers highlight that “free societies will never control information as tightly as Iran, and they should not try to do so. Their advantage lies elsewhere—in credibility, alliances, and the ability to expose coercion rather than conceal it.”

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Iran’s Digital Arsenal

The CSIS report documents how Iranian state media and coordinated networks saturated platforms within hours of the February 2026 strikes. Jewish Onliner previously documented the mechanics of these AI-generated disinformation campaigns during Operation Epic Fury.

Two coordinated networks identified by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, cited in related research, generated over 772 million and 370 million views respectively. According to the CSIS analysis, fabricated claims included a downed U.S. B-2 bomber with captured crew, over 650 American casualties, and the death of Benjamin Netanyahu, with some related content amplified by Iranian state-linked outlets and verified Iranian or Russian diplomatic accounts.

The report notes that “the fabrications do not need to be believed outright to be effective. Their purpose is to amplify a contested information environment by making U.S. and Israeli battlefield dominance feel disputed.”

Exploiting American Divisions

Jensen and his co-authors argue that one of Iran’s most effective lines of attack was exploiting pre-existing American grievances. pro-Iranian regime accounts framed the conflict as “a costly war driven by corrupt elite interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.”

The CSIS Futures Lab found in a separate analysis that narratives targeting America’s “distaste for forever wars” generated the strongest engagement, outperforming both content celebrating Iranian battlefield success and anti-Israel messaging. Iranian-linked narratives paired unverified or fabricated claims about a Trump family member purchasing oil futures with messages warning that ordinary Americans would pay the price for another Middle East war.

CSIS Recommendations

Jensen and his co-authors argue that democracies need to move beyond reactive debunking and compete earlier in the information environment: establishing the dominant account quickly, exposing hostile networks before false narratives harden, and sustaining enough public trust for battlefield reality to shape public perception.

Three Chicago aldermen aligned with Chicago’s democratic socialist politics are backing a resolution calling on DHS and ICE to release Salah Sarsour, a Milwaukee mosque president and whom DHS describes as suspected of funding terror organizations, accused of lying on immigration forms, and previously convicted in Israel for throwing Molotov cocktails at homes of Israeli armed forces.

The May 7 hearing on Resolution R2026-0024891 is being promoted by AMP-Chicago, CAIR-Chicago, and allied groups. The campaign places Chicago aldermen alongside organizations facing separate scrutiny: AMP is under a Virginia Attorney General investigation involving terror-financing allegations, CAIR has been targeted by state-level terrorist-designation actions in Texas and Florida, and a March 2026 House committee report described groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine as “ringleaders” of campus antisemitism.

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The Resolution and Its Sponsors

The sponsors include Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez and Byron Sigcho-Lopez, members of the City Council’s Democratic Socialist Caucus, and Anthony Quezada, who describes himself as a democratic socialist.

Resolution R2026-0024891, introduced on April 15, calls on DHS and ICE to “immediately release Salah Sarsour” and frames his detention as an abuse of federal immigration enforcement. Rodriguez-Sanchez, who chairs the Health and Human Relations Committee, signed the agenda placing it for a vote. Sigcho-Lopez, who is currently running for U.S. Congress, and Quezada, who represents the 35th Ward, joined as primary sponsors.

The Federal Allegations

DHS says Sarsour’s initial U.S. visa application was denied due to Israeli convictions for throwing Molotov cocktails and attempting to possess weapons and ammunition. The agency says he obtained his green card in 1998 by lying about his criminal history and is “suspected of funding terror organizations.”

Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis described Sarsour as “a terrorist convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” DHS and Sarsour’s attorney have said the government is relying in part on a determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Sarsour’s presence could pose a “serious adverse foreign policy” concern.

Sarsour was profiled on Canary Mission as a “Hamas activist and financier” in posts dating back to 2019. The site cites a 1999 Israeli police report containing a transcript in which Sarsour’s brother Jamil reportedly told investigators that the two had sent money from their Milwaukee business to a Hamas leader. A separate 2001 FBI memo on the profile claims Sarsour raised money for the Holy Land Foundation — the Muslim charity whose leaders were later convicted of funneling money to Hamas in what federal prosecutors called the largest terror financing case in U.S. history.

The Coalition’s Legal Issues

The aldermen’s resolution is being publicly promoted by the broader coalition that organized an April 20 Capitol Hill press conference for Sarsour: American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), CAIR, the Muslim American Society, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, and the Muslim Legal Fund of America.

AMP, where Sarsour serves as a board member, is the subject of a Virginia Attorney General investigation over alleged terror financing and is the defendant in Boim v. American Muslims for Palestine, a federal civil case in which plaintiffs argue the group functions as the “alter ego” of a defunct nonprofit found liable for a Hamas terror killing.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have issued state-level actions seeking to treat CAIR as a terrorist-linked organization.

A Municipal Body, A Federal Case

Chicago has no authority to order DHS or ICE to release Sarsour, and no power to decide his federal immigration case. The resolution is therefore symbolic, but not insignificant. By lending the city’s institutional voice to Sarsour’s release campaign, despite DHS’s allegations and the legal controversies surrounding several advocacy groups backing him, the three aldermen are making a clear political choice. The May 7 hearing will show whether the broader Chicago City Council is willing to join them.

The Israel Innovation Authority and the AI Directorate of the Prime Minister’s Office have released a draft national AI strategy that abandons any pretense of competing with Washington or Beijing on raw capital and compute, and instead stakes Israel’s future on four pillars: AI-native applications, infrastructure “enablers,” Physical AI, and geopolitical alignment through the U.S.-led Pax Silica alliance.

The April 2026 document arrives months after Israel joined Pax Silica and nearly a year after the Trump administration moved to rescind the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule, which had placed Israel outside the top tier for advanced AI chip access.

The strategy openly argues that Israel should not try to compete with the United States and China on scale, capital, or compute, but should instead lead in domains where specialization, speed, and integration matter more.

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The “Excellence Over Scale” Doctrine

The strategy’s central premise is blunt. “The United States will continue to lead in developing large-scale models and infrastructure. China will lead in industrial deployment,” the document states, before carving out Israel’s lane: “domains where innovation, specialization, and speed matter more than size.”

The Authority points to a near-doubling of Israeli AI companies from 1,250 to 2,350, $15.6 billion in venture capital in 2025, and $82 billion in M&A — figures inflated by Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz. Israel’s ranking in the government-strategy pillar of the Tortoise Global AI Index, now the Observer Global AI Index, climbed from 47th in 2023 to 14th in 2025.

Pillar Four: The Geopolitical Bet

The most consequential pillar is geopolitical. The document argues that “access to advanced AI resources is increasingly determined through geopolitical alliances such as Pax Silica,” and sets a five-year target of “Tier 1 equivalent” status under whatever framework replaces the rescinded Diffusion Rule.

That matters because Israel was classified as Tier 2 under the Biden rule, capping its access to advanced GPUs. The Trump administration scrapped that framework in May 2025 but has not yet replaced it — leaving an open negotiation that the Innovation Authority wants Jerusalem to win.

Israel formally joined Pax Silica in late 2025, and on January 16, 2026, Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. officials signed a bilateral AI partnership in the City of David in Jerusalem — making Israel the first of the alliance’s nine leading nations to formalize ties with Washington. The State Department has announced that it intends, working with Congress, to allocate $250 million in foreign-assistance funding for a new Pax Silica Fund.

Physical AI and the Defense Edge

The third pillar — Physical AI — leans heavily on Israeli defense capabilities. The strategy states that “Israel’s defense industries are developing operational AI systems at a scale few countries can match” and proposes channeling that operational experience into civilian regulatory pathways through a new Physical AI Institute and sector-specific sandboxes.

The plan sets a target of putting at least one Israeli company among the top three global leaders in Physical AI within five years, alongside ten new startups in AI chip design and ten or more AI-native unicorns.

Infrastructure and Talent

Underwriting the strategy is the National AI Program launched in November 2021 with a budget of roughly NIS 1 billion. The National AI Program, launched in November 2021, had a budget of roughly NIS 1 billion. Its flagship compute project, operated by Nebius, involved total investment of more than half a billion shekels, including NIS 150 million from the program budget.

The Nebius-operated infrastructure includes roughly 4,000 NVIDIA B200 accelerators, about one quarter of which are subsidized through the TELEM program for startups and academia. The Innovation Authority opened discounted access to 1,000 B200 accelerators, with 70 percent reserved for industry and 30 percent for academia. The new strategy adds an “AI Visa” for international experts, expanded reskilling pipelines for STEM graduates, and the RIKMA project for opening government datasets.

The Regional Dimension

The document also identifies the Abraham Accords as a platform for “systematic AI partnerships with the UAE,” and calls for technological ties with at least three Pax Silica members beyond the United States. That tracks with reports of an emerging Israel-UAE framework for AI supply-chain coordination and deepening defense-tech cooperation.

The Broader Significance

The draft strategy is Israel’s attempt to answer a strategic question facing smaller, export-driven technology economies: in an AI landscape increasingly shaped by U.S. capital, infrastructure, and frontier models on one side, and China’s scale and industrial deployment on the other, where can Israel build durable advantage?

The Innovation Authority’s answer is that Israel fits inside the Western bloc — as the indispensable specialist in cybersecurity, edge computing, semiconductors, and defense-linked autonomous systems that the strategy argues are central to Israel’s comparative advantage.

On May 16–18, the Muslim Association of Canada is scheduled to host its fifth annual convention at Toronto’s Enercare Centre, a City-owned facility at Exhibition Place governed by Exhibition Place’s Board of Governors.

Jewish Onliner reviewed the speaker lineup and found multiple speakers with publicly documented associations, past positions, or institutional links involving Hamas-linked figures, Muslim Brotherhood branches, or organizations designated under terrorism-related authorities by the United States, Israel, the UAE, or other governments.

Several of the speakers appear to have had ties with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the now-deceased spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who advocated for suicide bombings against Israelis and was banned from entering the United States and several European countries before his death in 2022.

The convention's three-day agenda includes sessions titled "The Art of Dawah—How did Gaza Call Humanity to Islam," "Lessons from Gaza," and "From Rubble to Revival: Gaza, the Ummah, & Our Shared Responsibility."

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Anas Altikriti - Prominent Muslim Brotherhood Figure in U.K.

The convention features Anas Altikriti, CEO and founder of the London-based Cordoba Foundation. According to Islamist Portal, an Arabic-language site that tracks Islamist movements and figures, some Arab and foreign media outlets have described Anas Altikriti as the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “intelligence service” and as leader of its alleged “intelligence arm” in Europe.

In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated the Cordoba Foundation as a terrorist organization. Altikriti has been described as "a key spokesman and lobbyist for the Brotherhood in Britain" and has personally acknowledged his Muslim Brotherhood connections, stating in a 2005 interview: "My family is Muslim Brotherhood."

His father, Osama Tawfiq Altikriti, headed the Iraqi Islamic Party—the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—before serving in Iraq’s Council of Representatives. Altikriti co-founded the British Muslim Initiative in 2007 alongside Mohammed Sawalha, whom the BBC identified as a senior Hamas figure and “one of the architects of Hamas’s political and military strategy,” and Azzam Tamimi, who has been characterized as a Hamas “special envoy.” Altikriti has also been photographed alongside former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

In December 2023, Altikriti made statements rejecting the British government's classification of Hamas as a terrorist group, stating: "Allegations of rape made by Israel are false. It's a lie. Just like every other allegation made by Israel turns out to be a lie, including the mass slaughter of Israeli citizens on the 7th of October. That too was a lie."

Scheduled Speaker Expelled from the United States in March 2025

Among the scheduled speakers is Ebrahim Rasool, a former South African ambassador to the United States. In March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool “persona non grata” and expelled him from the U.S.

According to the Middle East Forum, Rasool has maintained longstanding contacts with Hamas-linked figures and has publicly praised Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

His office served as a regular meeting point for visiting Hamas dignitaries, including Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas political bureau member whom the U.S. government designated in 2024 as a key official involved in representing Hamas’s interests to international audiences.

Speakers Linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Multiple speakers have held positions in, or have been publicly linked to, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s political ecosystem. In January 2026, OFAC designated the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, citing its alleged material support for Hamas.

Hussein Elkazzaz, listed as "Former advisor to Egyptian presidency" on the event's website, served as an economic advisor to the Freedom and Justice Party—the political wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

A 2014 article in Almasry Al-Youm, one of Egypt's largest newspapers, described Elkazzaz as "the most dangerous member of the Qazzaz family inside the presidential palace" and noted he "was head of the International Brotherhood Organization in the United States of America, and liaison officer between the American administration and the Muslim Brotherhood organization."

Khaled Al-Qazzaz, another speaker, served as foreign relations secretary under Mohammed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and president of Egypt. During the Egyptian military coup on July 3, 2013, Al-Qazzaz was detained alongside Morsi and spent approximately nine months in solitary confinement in Tora Prison's Scorpion wing before his release.

Khaled Al-Hanafy, an event speaker, was described in 2015 as a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party by the Atlantic Council. A report by Israel's Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Antisemitism identifies him as Assistant Secretary General of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), classified by German authorities as part of the Muslim Brotherhood network.

Reporting at the time quoted Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution describing Euro Fatwa, an app launched by the ECFR, as “a building block in the process of radicalisation.” Critics said the app promoted antisemitic content and encouraged users to prioritize Islamic rulings over European law. The app was eventually removed from Google’s online store.

Speakers Named in the Holy Land Foundation Case and the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum

Mohamad Masfaka (Abu Ratib), listed as a speaker, is identified in FBI records and court documents as Mohamed Mustapha Ali Masfaka, who was sentenced in 2010 to 12 months and one day in federal prison for making false statements under oath in naturalization proceedings. According to federal indictments, Masfaka “was employed by HLF [Holy Land Foundation] in 1997 and 1998 and ran the HLF operations in the Detroit area to include organizing and participating in fundraising events for the HLF.”

The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case became one of the most significant U.S. terrorism-financing prosecutions, ending in 2008 convictions of the foundation and five leaders for providing material support to Hamas.

The scheduled speaker, Hamed Ghazali, appears to match the Hamed al-Ghazali named in the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, entered as evidence in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation. The memorandum identifies “Hamed al-Ghazali” as allegedly operating a center forming part of the Muslim Brotherhood's North American da'wa infrastructure.

Speaker Was Listed by Prosecutors in 1993 WTC Bombing Case

Siraj Wahhaj, who is a scheduled speaker at the convention, appeared on a federal prosecution list of individuals who “may be alleged as co-conspirators” in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000. Multiple individuals connected to the attack had ties to Wahhaj’s Brooklyn mosque, Masjid At-Taqwa, according to reporting at the time.

Though never charged, the imam publicly defended the convicted bombers after the attack, characterizing U.S. intelligence agencies as “the real terrorists.” He also provided character testimony for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheikh” later convicted of seditious conspiracy for orchestrating a broader terrorism plot targeting New York City landmarks.

Members of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) Among Speakers

Some of the scheduled speakers are members of the Qatar-based International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a global network founded mainly by Muslim Brotherhood clerics. Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani sponsored the IUMS's creation in 2004, with Yusuf al-Qaradawi serving as founding chairman. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt jointly placed the IUMS on a terrorism blacklist in 2017, accusing it of promoting extremism under religious cover. The organization has provided public support for Hamas since the October 7 massacre, even featuring the former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at IUMS events.

Scheduled speaker Fadel Soliman of the Bridges Foundation is an IUMS member and a former member of Egypt's Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, according to his LinkedIn page. A 2012 article in Lebanon's Al-Balad daily described him as "from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt."

Soliman previously directed the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) office for North and Central America from 2000-2004. According to a 2002 brief published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, WAMY had "documented links to international terrorism," and Romanian intelligence identified WAMY as a Hamas front. The FBI assessed WAMY was "closely associated with the funding and financing of international terrorist activities."

On February 23, 2025, Soliman reshared a Hamas propaganda video on X, showing the group's military wing parading Israeli hostages, writing: "I've watched this creative masterpiece twice so far. This video should be taught in Psychological Warfare courses at every military academy."

Jasser Auda, a founding member of the IUMS, also appears on the speakers roster. An article on the IUMS official website from 2022 describes him as a member of the "Board of Trustees" of the IUMS. In 2022, Auda hosted an event connected with the Muslim Association of Canada titled "Legacy of Sh. Yusuf Qaradawi," and was described in the promotional flyer for the event as a "student" of al-Qaradawi.

Speaker Named in French Intelligence Report

Marwan Muhammad, founder and former spokesperson of the CCIF (Collective Against Islamophobia in France), is listed as a speaker at the convention. He is named in a French parliamentary report filed on December 10, 2025 on the Muslim Brotherhood's influence in France. The report notes Muhammad speaking in a video where he explains that Muslims cannot be forbidden from dreaming that France will one day become an Islamic society. The report further states that "Muhammad's discourse perfectly corresponds to the statements made in Brotherhood circles since the 90s."

Additional Speaker with Alleged Brotherhood and Terror-Links

Another event speaker, Franck Amin Hensch, is a former president of the Ligue des Musulmans de Belgique. According to the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, the organization was previously known as the Ligue Islamique Interculturelle de Belgique, identified by a 2001 Belgian parliamentary intelligence committee report as one of multiple Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations.

In 2005, Hensch was appointed secretary for Al Aqsa Humanitaire, the Belgian branch of the Al Aqsa International Foundation, but was later removed. The U.S. Treasury later designated the Al-Aqsa Foundation in 2008 as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity for funneling charity money to Hamas.

Convention Sponsor Tied to Scrutinized Islamic Relief Network

The convention’s sponsor list features Islamic Relief Canada as a “gold sponsor.” Islamic Relief Worldwide-affiliated organizations have faced scrutiny over alleged terror-financing concerns. Israel banned IRW from operating in the West Bank in June 2014, with then-Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon calling it “one of the sources of Hamas’s funding.” The UAE designated IRW and its UK branch as terrorist organizations in 2014.

Islamic Relief USA, the American-based nonprofit affiliate, has been under investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee for its affiliation with Islamic Relief Worldwide. In 2026, IRUSA filed a lawsuit against IRW in the Southern District of New York regarding attempts to sever their relationship. The lawsuit cites the Committee’s multiple referrals to the Internal Revenue Service for investigation of IRUSA’s tax-exempt status.

Institutional Context

The George Washington University Program on Extremism’s January 2025 report highlighted how the Canada Revenue Agency investigation into MAC revealed “a greater level of coordination, with constant communication and requests for action coming from the East towards their counterparts in the West.”

The report noted that MAC’s relationship to Middle Eastern Brotherhood branches “resembles that of a student transferring from one campus to another within the same university system,” with ease of membership transfer between the organization and international Brotherhood entities. The CRA’s investigation identified that MAC leadership simultaneously held senior positions in the Egyptian Brotherhood during the Morsi government while directing MAC’s activities.

The May 2026 convention proceeds as MAC continues to operate with its charitable status intact in Canada, despite the CRA’s preliminary recommendation for revocation. Canadian courts rejected MAC’s attempts to suppress the CRA audit in 2023 on grounds of prematurity. The speaker lineup adds new scrutiny to MAC’s public-facing activities as the organization remains under unresolved regulatory scrutiny.

Jewish Onliner reached out to Enercare Centre for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

A new INSS special publication alleges that a veteran English Wikipedia editor, operating under the name Iskandar323, spent nearly 12 years making thousands of edits that systematically reframed Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity, Hamas and the October 7 attacks.

The report, written by researcher Shlomit Lir, examines 25,909 article-space edits across 7,979 unique pages and argues that the editor’s influence came not mainly through falsehoods, but through selective wording, omission, reorganization and passive phrasing. The case matters, Lir argues, because English Wikipedia functions as a major gateway to public knowledge, and many of the edits remained embedded even after the editor was sanctioned and eventually banned.

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A Pattern Built Through Procedure, Not Fabrication

In the Report, Dr. Shlomit describes Iskandar323 as one of roughly 100 pseudonymous editors whose activity, in the report’s assessment, reflected a recurring anti-Israel pattern. It says his work shows how bias can be introduced through routine editorial language: “trimming,” “summarizing,” “splitting,” “reducing undue weight,” or “improving structure.”

The report’s central claim is that “knowledge poisoning” does not require fabricating facts. It can occur when accurate facts are arranged in a way that narrows interpretation, removes context, or makes one moral framework appear neutral and authoritative.

In one instance the report found that edits may look technical when it shortens a lead paragraph, but if it removes documented atrocities while retaining broader political context, it drastically changes how readers perceive the event.

The Scale: Core Pages, High Survival Rates

In her INSS article, Dr. Shlomit Lir identifies substantial activity on several high-profile Wikipedia pages, including 205 edits to “Israel,” 50 to “Zionism,” 49 to “Jews,” 87 to “Gaza war,” 58 to “Hamas,” and 36 to “October 7 attacks.” It also tracks what it calls the survival rate of those edits, meaning the share that was not later deleted or reverted and remained part of the article. According to the report, 89.8% of Iskandar323’s edits to “Israel” remained intact, along with 92% of his edits to “Zionism,” 85.7% to “Jews,” 86.2% to “Gaza war,” 89.7% to “Hamas,” and 97.2% to “October 7 attacks.”

The report cautions that edit counts alone do not prove significance. A single wording change can matter more than dozens of minor edits. But it argues that high survival rates can indicate lasting influence, because the wording was not merely inserted temporarily, it became embedded in the articles over time.

That matters because many of the pages at issue are gateway articles. A wording change in “Jews,” “Zionism,” “Israel,” or “Hamas” does not sit on a marginal page. It can shape the first layer of explanation encountered by readers searching for basic definitions.

October 7: Removing the Language of Atrocity

In her INSS article, Dr. Shlomit Lir argues that the most direct examples concern the October 7 attacks. In one November 2023 edit to the “October 7 attacks” article, INSS says Iskandar323 removed material stating that militants were prepared for scenarios including killing hostages, burning homes and using hostages as human shields. The report also says he removed a cited note found on a militant’s body that contained explicitly dehumanizing language.

In a later edit, the report says he removed from the lead an Associated Press description of the attack as an “atrocities-filled rampage,” along with a Physicians for Human Rights–Israel statement that the attack included widespread sexual and gender-based crimes. INSS argues that the effect was to dull the perceived cruelty, planning and ideological violence of the massacre.

The same pattern appears in the “Gaza war” article. The report says an edit described as technical shortening removed detailed references to sexual violence, torture, victims burned alive, forensic findings and testimony shown to foreign journalists.

Jewish Identity: From Peoplehood to “Cultural Community”

The report also identifies edits that affected the foundations of Jewish identity. On September 3, 2023, according to INSS, Iskandar323 changed the “Jews” article’s short description from “ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Levant” to “ethnoreligious group and cultural community.”

That change removed two concepts from a highly visible framing line: Jewish nationhood and geographic origin. The report says he also removed language treating “the Jewish people” as synonymous with “Jews,” and later changed wording to say Jews “claim descent from the ancient Hebrews,” a formulation INSS argues weakens historical continuity by presenting it as subjective assertion.

Example: A reader encountering “cultural community” receives a different first impression than one encountering “nation originating from the Levant.” The first suggests culture; the second signals peoplehood, history and place.

Zionism and Ancient Israel: Flattening Complexity

On the “Zionism” article, INSS says Iskandar323 removed a lead paragraph explaining that Zionism was never a uniform movement and included political, liberal, revisionist, cultural and religious streams. The report argues that the deletion weakened the historical context of Zionism as a plural movement shaped by antisemitism, Jewish self-determination and attachment to an ancestral homeland.

The report also cites numerous edits to ancient-history articles. In “Israelites,” it says he deleted a sentence stating that Israel and Judah were adjacent kingdoms with capitals in Samaria and Jerusalem. In “Ancient Israel and Judah,” it says he removed a “Language and Literature” section describing the emergence of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

Together, INSS argues, those edits weakened the political, territorial and linguistic markers linking Jews to ancient Israel.

Hamas and Terror Victims: Moving, Renaming, Depersonalizing

The “Hamas” article receives similar scrutiny. According to INSS, three days after October 7, Iskandar323 moved a large portion of material on Hamas antisemitism, anti-Zionism and violent rhetoric from the main “Hamas” article into a secondary article titled “Criticism of Hamas.” The report says the moved material included explicit calls for the destruction of Jews, quotations from senior Hamas officials, references to antisemitic “blood libels,” and Hamas opposition to Holocaust education in UNRWA schools.

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INSS says the edit also removed material from the main article concerning Hamas’s alleged use of human shields, rocket fire from populated areas, mosques and schools, the use of hospitals as headquarters, and Hamas’s condemnation of the killing of Osama bin Laden. In the report’s view, placing that material under “criticism” reframed core ideological and operational information as external opinion rather than central context about the organization.

The report also cites a November 20, 2023 edit in which Iskandar323 removed a photograph from the “Hamas” article showing weapons that the caption said were found in a mosque during Operation Cast Lead, according to the IDF. INSS argues that the removal erased visual evidence supporting claims that religious buildings were used for military purposes.

On May 4, 2026, Iran fired 15 ballistic missiles and four drones at the United Arab Emirates, renewing attacks on the Gulf state for the first time since a fragile ceasefire took effect nearly a month earlier. According to a source speaking to CNN, cited by the Times of Israel, an Israeli Iron Dome system deployed in the UAE shot down one Iranian missile fired at the Gulf state.

The attack appeared to come in response to President Trump’s “Project Freedom” effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after U.S. forces said they had escorted commercial ships and sunk six Iranian small boats during related operations.

The use of an Israeli system during an Iranian attack on the UAE, including a strike that sparked a fire at Fujairah, may be one of the most consequential security developments in the post-ceasefire Gulf. The reported interception appears to reinforce JINSA analyst Ari Cicurel’s argument that the Abraham Accords have moved beyond diplomacy and are beginning to operate as a regional defense framework tested under Iranian fire.

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A Deployment Born of Necessity

The Iron Dome battery did not arrive in Abu Dhabi through routine channels. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally ordered the IDF to dispatch the system and “several dozen” operators after a direct call with Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed early in the war. Axios reported that, according to a senior Israeli official, this marked the first time Israel had sent an Iron Dome battery to another country and the first use of the system outside Israel or the United States.

The decision carried unusual risk. Hezbollah had launched over 10,000 projectiles at Israel and JINSA data tracked more than 560 Iranian ballistic missiles targeting the Israeli home front. Netanyahu nonetheless allocated scarce interceptors to help defend a partner that had not formally entered the conflict.

Why the UAE Bore the Heaviest Fire

JINSA data shows that Iran directed 38 percent of its total wartime projectiles — 2,256 drones, 537 ballistic missiles, and 26 cruise missiles — at the UAE, more than any other country, including Israel itself. In JINSA’s view, the pattern reflected a punitive message to Abu Dhabi over normalization with Israel and its growing security alignment with Washington and Jerusalem.

Despite fielding two THAAD batteries and nine Patriot batteries, the UAE faced a documented gap in lower-tier defenses against Shahed drones launched from pickup-truck rails, fiber-optic-guided drones immune to electronic jamming, and jet-powered variants compressing engagement timelines. Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptors, which Israel has used to neutralize thousands of projectiles up to 70 kilometers away, helped fill that gap.

The Strategic Reckoning JINSA Predicted

Cicurel’s argument is that the UAE’s prior “omni-alignment” approach has been exposed by the war: engagement with Tehran did not spare the Emirates from Iranian fire, while U.S. and Israeli systems helped defend Emirati infrastructure.

The UAE announced it would leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1, officially citing its long-term strategic and economic vision, while analysts and news reports framed the move against the backdrop of the Iran war and widening Gulf energy tensions.

Recommendations to Washington

Cicurel argues that the United States should convert the ad hoc Iron Dome deployment into formalized CENTCOM-led integrated air and missile defense, expand Tamir interceptor production capacity, and use the episode as leverage to bring Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states into the Abraham Accords framework. He also recommends acquiring Iron Dome for the U.S. “Golden Dome” homeland defense initiative.

Christopher Helali, International Secretary of the American Communist Party and a journalist affiliated with DD Geopolitics, met with Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei in early May 2026, in a visit that appears to fit the Islamic Republic of Iran’s broader pattern of granting access to sympathetic foreign media figures during an active period of U.S.-Iran negotiations.

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A report by NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre identified DD Geopolitics in the context of Russian information operations and described parts of that ecosystem as frequently echoing Kremlin narratives.

The Public Diplomacy Architecture

Baghaei’s dual role as both Foreign Ministry spokesperson and head of Iran’s Center for Public Diplomacy is central to understanding the nature of Helali’s access. The Center for Public Diplomacy, established as part of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serves as a key vehicle for the Islamic Republic’s cultural outreach and narrative shaping with foreign audiences.

Official Iranian sources confirm that when Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appointed Baghaei in October 2024, he specifically designated him as both spokesperson and head of the public diplomacy apparatus, creating an integrated communications structure. The dual role places Baghaei at the intersection of official diplomatic messaging and Iran’s public-facing outreach to foreign audiences.

The visit occurred during a crucial diplomatic window. Throughout April and early May 2026, Pakistan was mediating talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad, with multiple rounds of ceasefire negotiations taking place. Iran’s Foreign Ministry publicly acknowledged delivering proposals through Pakistani intermediaries during this period—making the timing of foreign media access particularly strategic.

Pattern of Curated Access

Helali’s visit appears to fit a documented pattern of Iranian outreach to foreign journalists, influencers, and media activists. Iran has organized multiple foreign-facing media and diplomatic access events in 2026, bringing journalists, influencers, diplomats, and media representatives to Tehran to attend public events, tour damaged sites, and engage with official narratives.

According to investigative reporting by ASL19, at least one such 2026 tour was linked to the Sobh Media Center, an initiative associated with IRIB’s international division. That division is led by Ahmad Noroozi, a U.S.-sanctioned official tied by Washington to IRIB’s airing of forced confessions.

In February 2026, Iran brought at least five foreign media figures to Tehran for Revolution Day commemorations, including British-Pakistani activist Bushra Shaikh, American political activist Calla Walsh, and journalist Patrick Henningsen. In April, reports emerged of another cohort of foreign journalists arriving in Iran, with coverage appearing across Iranian state media platforms.

Helali’s Ideological Alignment

Helali describes himself as an “American Conservative Marxist-Leninist” and co-founded the American Communist Party with Jackson Hinkle, a self-described “MAGA Communist” who promotes a fusion of Marxism-Leninism with appeals to culturally conservative voters.

In a May 2025 interview with Iran’s Quds News, Helali praised slain Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as “martyrs,” described Iran as “undoubtedly the dominant regional power in Southwest Asia,” and stated that Raisi had provided “necessary material support” to Palestinian resistance forces.

In January 2026, MEMRI reported on circulated Iranian-linked media showing Helali filling out what was described as a “martyrdom seeker” volunteer form for Kata’ib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and expressing readiness to defend Iran.

The DD Geopolitics Network

During his Iran visit, DD Geopolitics reposted Helali’s photo with Baghaei, amplifying the image of a Western activist-journalist receiving access to Iran’s Foreign Ministry. The image of the meeting was also reposted by Iran’s Embassy in Norway, demonstrating how Iran leverages sympathetic foreign voices across diplomatic channels.

From Vermont to Moscow

Helali’s trajectory from Vermont politics to Moscow-based activism provides context for his ideological positioning. He was elected High Bailiff of Orange County, Vermont in 2024 as a write-in candidate and later relocated to Moscow. In a September 2025 interview with Vermont’s Our Herald, Helali said he feels safer in Russia than in the United States. Helali has also claimed that U.S. authorities detained him multiple times after 2013.

Strategic Timing

Helali’s early May meeting with Baghaei came at a moment when Western-facing validation of Iran’s negotiating posture would have been useful to Tehran’s public diplomacy efforts. Speaking on Russia Today from Isfahan on April 26, Helali told viewers that Iranians believed they had military advantage and should continue fighting rather than accept what they saw as Western betrayal in negotiations.

By early May, his presence at the Foreign Ministry provided visual confirmation of Western access and engagement—imagery that Iranian state media could deploy across multiple platforms.

The Broader Ecosystem

Helali’s Tehran access reflects Iran’s sophisticated understanding of modern information ecosystems. Iran has shown a willingness to engage ideologically aligned Western figures who can present pro-Iranian narratives with apparent independence. The result can function as a form of narrative laundering: state-aligned messaging is repackaged through foreign figures who present themselves as independent journalists, activists, or analysts.

The strategy extends beyond individual visits. In April 2026, Iran’s Sobh Media Festival announced its fourth edition focused on “Media and the New World Order,” offering prizes from €1,000 to €5,000 for content promoting themes including resistance discourse, anti-imperialism, and challenges to “dominant Western narratives.” The festival specifically targets journalists, filmmakers, and media activists who present the Iranian regime’s narratives to international audiences.

Unanswered Questions

The substance of Helali’s meeting with Baghaei has not been publicly disclosed, and available evidence does not establish whether it was a formal briefing, informal discussion, or another form of access.

It also remains unclear whether Helali’s visit was coordinated with other foreign media activity in Iran during the same period. What can be documented is that Helali received access to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, publicized the meeting, and saw the content amplified through Iranian state-linked and ideologically aligned media channels.

Major press freedom organizations devote significantly more social media attention to Israel and Gaza than to several countries with worse press freedom records, according to a new Jewish Onliner analysis of posts by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.

The findings raise questions about whether social media attention by press freedom groups tracks the severity of repression, or whether it is also shaped by conflict salience, audience engagement, and geopolitical news cycles.

Jewish Onliner examined eight years of social media posts from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders on X. The dataset of 1,648 X posts spanning February 2018 to April 2026 reveals that Israel/Gaza received 271 posts, more than any other country cluster examined, despite ranking 116th out of 180 countries on RSF’s own 2026 World Press Freedom Index.

Israel’s RSF ranking also appears to be heavily affected by Gaza-related journalist-casualty assessments, an area where the underlying classifications are disputed. A study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, reported by the Jerusalem Post, examined 266 Palestinians identified as journalists or media workers killed in Gaza and found that 157, roughly 60%, were members of or affiliated with terrorist organizations or affiliated outlets.

Afghanistan Disparity

The disparity becomes most striking when comparing Israel coverage to countries with documented severe repression. Afghanistan, which ranks 175th on the 2026 press freedom index with a score of just 19.51, making it the fifth-worst country globally for press freedom, received only 179 total posts.

The analysis identifies Afghanistan as the most systematically underrepresented country relative to its press freedom conditions throughout the eight-year study period, despite the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and the severe deterioration in Afghan media freedom that followed.

The Post-October 2023 Shift

The data show a sharp shift in coverage patterns after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.. Israel/Gaza posts nearly doubled in the post-conflict period, moving from fifth place to first by a wide margin with 180 posts. Saudi Arabia, ranked 176th, saw coverage decline from 157 posts before October 2023 to 32 posts afterward.

CPJ demonstrated particularly stark prioritization of Israel. Out of all Israel/Gaza posts analyzed from both organizations, CPJ published 183 compared to RSF's 88, more than double the coverage. This represents CPJ’s sharpest organizational divergence in the entire dataset, with the group devoting 67.5% of all Israel/Gaza coverage despite accounting for only 49.3% of total posts analyzed.

China and Iran: Worse Rankings, Less Coverage

China and Iran both rank near the bottom of RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index, yet both received fewer posts than Israel/Gaza. China ranked 178th and was described by CPJ as the world’s worst jailer of journalists, while RSF said 121 media professionals were behind bars there. Iran ranked 177th, with RSF citing systematic pressure on journalists and their families. In Jewish Onliner’s dataset, China received 221 posts and Iran 173, compared with 271 for Israel/Gaza

The Middle East and North Africa region is characterized by RSF as “the worst zone in the world for press freedom, with 18 out of 19 countries classed as being in a ‘very serious’ or ‘difficult’ situation.” Yet countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, with documented journalist executions and systematic imprisonment, received less sustained attention than Israel once Gaza coverage began.

Engagement Patterns

The analysis also examined audience engagement metrics, revealing that China content generated the highest per-post engagement despite ranking only third in volume. This suggests that organizations may be responding, at least in part, to what performs with their X audiences rather than distributing attention solely according to the severity of repression.

Afghanistan’s double deficit, least covered and lowest engagement, indicates the country’s press freedom crisis is systematically less legible to the Western audiences these accounts address, according to the analysis.

The Displacement Effect

Gaza coverage appears to have coincided with reduced attention to several other crises. Egypt, Myanmar, and Afghanistan all saw declining coverage in the post-October 2023 period, despite ongoing systematic repression. The pattern is consistent with a finite-attention dynamic, in which high-profile conflicts absorb a larger share of organizational posting.

The findings raise questions about whether social media advocacy by press freedom organizations is shaped not only by press freedom conditions, but also by audience engagement, geopolitical salience, and the news cycle.

A new Jewish People Policy Institute report says UN Secretary-General António Guterres referred to Israel more often — and more negatively — than Iran, China, Russia, North Korea or Qatar in an analysis of 1,146 UN-published statements, press encounters and readouts from 2017 through April 14, 2026.

The findings land as Guterres is in the final year of his current term, which ends on Dec. 31, 2026, and as his role in the Israel-Hamas war remains fiercely contested. JPPI says it reached its findings by collecting UN-published statements, press encounters and readouts from the Secretary-General’s official website, then using keyword filtering, language filtering and AI-based sentiment analysis to classify country references.

The dataset behind the finding

JPPI’s researchers said they collected statements from the UN Secretary-General’s official website, searched for country references, removed duplicates, filtered out non-English text and excluded references made by speakers other than Guterres. The study then classified the tone of each remaining country reference as negative, neutral or positive.

The report found 278 references to Israel, more than any other country examined and nearly three times Iran’s 105 references. More than half of the statements about Israel — 50.7% — were classified as negative, compared with 42.1% neutral and 7.2% positive.

Tone on Israel worsened over time

The trendline on page 6 of the report shows that Guterres’s average annual sentiment toward Israel moved from slightly positive in 2017 to deeply negative in 2024, 2025 and early 2026. The same page shows a sharp rise in Israel-related statements during the Oct. 7 and Gaza war period, with annual totals increasing from 13 in 2022 to 37 in 2023, 66 in 2024 and 60 in 2025.

JPPI highlights Guterres’s Oct. 13, 2023, remarks as a key example. In that statement, he opened by saying Gaza had reached “a dangerous new low,” condemned Hamas’s massacre in Israel, called for hostages to be released and urged leaders to oppose antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and hate speech. But the report argues the remarks quickly shifted toward criticism of Israel’s military evacuation order and the humanitarian conditions inside Gaza.

China and Qatar drew a different profile

JPPI found no negative-toned statements about China in the analyzed dataset. The report describes Guterres’s treatment of China as “lenient,” including in a May 2020 press conference where he avoided directly addressing questions about Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law, which criminalizes what it describes as “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorist activities” and “collusion” with a “foreign country,” with the gravest offenses carrying penalties up to life imprisonment.

Qatar received the most favorable treatment in JPPI’s analysis, with 85.9% of references classified as positive and none classified as negative. In March 2023, Guterres praised Qatar’s partnership with the UN, including its “extremely valuable” contribution to counterterrorism work. JPPI included Qatar as a comparator partly because of the 2017 Gulf diplomatic crisis, when Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar over its support of terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Acknowledging Analytical Limitations

The report is strongest as a documented pattern in Guterres’s public language, not as proof of motive. Sentiment analysis can identify tone, frequency and trends, but it cannot fully measure context: Israel has been at the center of a prolonged war since Oct. 7, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine generated its own UN crisis, and some countries may appear in statements for diplomatic or humanitarian reasons rather than direct criticism.

Guterres and the UN have also pushed back against claims that he has ignored Hamas. In June 2024, Reuters reported that Guterres said he had condemned Hamas 102 times, including 51 times in formal speeches or statements. The JPPI report itself acknowledges that Guterres recognizes Israel’s legitimacy and security needs, condemned the Oct. 7 attack, met with hostage families and called for hostages’ immediate release.

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A Consistency Question for the UN

The Secretary-General’s office carries unusual symbolic weight. The UN Charter defines the Secretary-General as the organization’s chief administrative officer. Article 100 says the Secretary-General and UN staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or external authority and must refrain from actions that could reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the organization.

JPPI’s notes that its central claim is not that Israel should be exempt from criticism. Rather, it is that the volume and tone of criticism directed at Israel appear disproportionate when compared with how Guterres publicly discusses authoritarian states and governments facing extensive rights allegations. As JPPI President Prof. Yedidia Stern put it, the study “does not seek to rule out criticism of Israel,” but raises a question about consistency.

A new Nordic Monitor investigation details how Aspan Petrokimya, a Turkish company reportedly controlled by a U.S.-sanctioned Iranian national Mahdieh Sancoulli/Sanchuli, became entangled in an alleged oil-smuggling network that U.S. prosecutors said helped Iranian state-linked actors, including the IRGC, monetize sanctioned crude shipments.

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The report examines a U.S. federal forfeiture case that culminated in an April 21 appellate ruling affirming the judgment over more than 700,000 barrels of Iranian crude oil seized in the Mediterranean and later sold for more than $50 million.

Aspan Petrokimya’s Reported Ownership Structure

According to Nordic Monitor’s review of Turkish trade registry records, Aspan Petrokimya Ticaret Anonim Şirketi was registered in Istanbul’s Şişli district on February 20, 2020. The report notes the company was granted an unusually broad commercial mandate covering petrochemical trading, oil and fuel activities, international logistics, financial transactions including lending and borrowing, and the establishment of partnerships and joint ventures.

Nordic Monitor identified Zumrad Urazajiyeva, a Kazakhstan-linked individual, as a founding figure with significant control over the company’s initial operations. The investigation documents a significant ownership change in May 2023 when control transferred to Mahdieh Sancoulli, an Iranian national who declared residence in the United Arab Emirates. The report highlights that in a February 2025 filing, Sancoulli requested amendments to his identity records, listing the nationality as a UAE national rather than Iranian, suggesting an attempt to obscure his background while operating within a sanctions-sensitive network.

The Sanctioned Figure Reportedly Behind the Company

Nordic Monitor’s investigation details that Sancoulli is far from an ordinary businessman. The report cites US Treasury Department documents showing he was designated in July 2022 under Executive Order 13846 for materially supporting Naftiran Intertrade Company, the marketing arm of Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company.

According to Treasury records reviewed by Nordic Monitor, Sancoulli has partnered since 2019 to export Iranian crude oil and petrochemicals, serving as a representative of UAE-based companies Petrogat FZE and Emerald Global FZE, both also sanctioned entities. The designation documents show Sancoulli purchased crude oil shipments worth tens of millions of dollars from NICO and facilitated payments for multiple oil shipments from Iran to East Asia.

The Alleged Smuggling Operation Documented in Court Filings

Nordic Monitor’s examination of US District Court documents describes a carefully orchestrated deception designed to conceal Iranian oil origin at every stage. The report details how crude was initially loaded at Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export terminal, in October 2020 before being transferred through multiple ship-to-ship operations.

The investigation documents that vessels deliberately disabled their Automatic Identification System transponders to evade maritime tracking systems during these transfers. Nordic Monitor notes that satellite imagery cited in court filings visually confirmed vessels positioned side by side in the Persian Gulf during covert transfer operations. The report emphasizes that falsified shipping documents fraudulently identified the cargo as originating from Oman rather than Iran.

According to the court complaint reviewed by Nordic Monitor, the cargo amounting to more than 733,000 barrels remained onboard for months and traversed the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Suez Canal, and Mediterranean. The report highlights that the oil cargo transited the Bosporus Strait under Turkish jurisdiction, underscoring Turkey’s geographic exposure to sanctions evasion schemes.

The Legal Challenge and Court Ruling

Nordic Monitor reports that rather than Iranian entities openly challenging the seizure, it was Aspan Petrokimya that filed a legal claim in April 2022, asserting ownership of the seized oil and seeking to recover proceeds from interlocutory sales exceeding $50 million. The investigation notes that US prosecutors argued the evidence demonstrated NIOC’s ownership and control, with Certificate of Origin documents produced by NIOC identifying the company as the consignor.

According to Nordic Monitor’s analysis of the DC Circuit Court ruling, the court held that ownership must be assessed at the time of the underlying illegal conduct and found available evidence plausibly demonstrating NIOC’s control. The court also noted that NIOC’s coordination with the IRGC supported the inference that transactions were intended to support activities targeting the United States government.

Turkey’s Pattern as Sanctions Evasion Hub

Nordic Monitor places the Aspan case within a broader pattern of Turkish companies serving as sanctions evasion conduits. The report references the Halkbank prosecution, which first surfaced during 2013 corruption probes and demonstrated how the Turkish state-owned bank facilitated laundering of $20 billion on behalf of Iran. U.S. prosecutors presented evidence alleging that the schemes were approved at senior levels of the Turkish government.

The investigation notes that since the Halkbank case, dozens of Turkish companies have faced criminal scrutiny in the United States, while the US Treasury and State Department have designated numerous Turkey-based entities for facilitating illicit trade. Nordic Monitor argues that the findings highlight structural vulnerabilities exposing Turkish companies to secondary sanctions and reinforce perceptions that Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan increasingly serves as a conduit for sanctions evasion networks supporting terrorist financing.

Editor’s note: This is the latest article in a series examining alleged Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States—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 U.S. government focus on Brotherhood networks and recent congressional scrutiny, this series investigates the documented connections between these groups and their historical advancement of Brotherhood strategic objectives in America.

When the FBI seized the Muslim Brotherhood's 1991 strategic memorandum from an Annandale, Virginia basement in 2004, it recovered a roster of 29 American organizations the Brotherhood described as "our organizations and the organizations of our friends" — entities tasked with "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." Listed as item #11 was the Islamic Centers Division (ICD).

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Today, ICD is not defunct, dissolved, or rebranded. It remains listed on the North American Islamic Trust’s website as one of its services A 2025 Ohio appellate case involving NAIT has brought renewed attention to how at least one mosque property agreement placed major governance decisions inside a waqf framework, with trustee consent required for property sales and disputes routed through religious arbitration. In practice, NAIT’s own description of the model treats the donor’s intent as permanent, meaning later mosque boards may have limited power to alter the property’s religious or governance terms.

What ICD Actually Does

NAIT publicly markets ICD as a service that simply “Safeguards Mosques & Islamic Schools.” A CUNY Graduate Center/Center for the Study of Philanthropy paper described ICD as the NAIT sector primarily responsible for making NAIT serve as a waqf for Islamic centers and said ICD provides legal and fundraising assistance to Islamic organizations.

NAIT-linked Islamic Horizons materials also emphasize mosque bylaws, board governance, election rules, legal services, dispute resolution, and the use of waqf structures to prevent local institutions from being diverted from their founding religious purpose.

The Perpetual Lock

NAIT says mosque boards may be “tempted” to change a property’s use, use it as collateral, prohibit accepted worship practices, or permit “un-Islamic” activity. But for properties in the NAIT Waqf Family, NAIT states that “none of such actions would be feasible.”

NAIT describes the model as perpetual and tied to the “unalterable sanctity” of the donor’s will. A 2025 Ohio appellate case involving NAIT showed one such trust agreement requiring the property to follow “Islamic Rules of Conduct and Code,” with certain religious disputes sent to a trustee-appointed FIQH Committee.

The Ohio Case That Revealed the Mechanism

In August 2025, Ohio’s Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s refusal to compel arbitration in a property dispute between Masjid Oumar Al-Foutiyou and NAIT. The case exposed the language of one NAIT trust agreement, including arbitration before NAIT’s FIQH Committee and “cessation event” provisions.

The mosque alleged that NAIT improperly obtained a 50% property interest through a May 2015 quitclaim deed filed without authorization. The appellate ruling addressed whether the dispute had to go to arbitration, not whether the fraud allegations were true.

When the mosque later sought to sell, NAIT refused consent and moved to compel arbitration before a trustee-appointed “FIQH Committee,” whose decisions the agreement described as “final and binding.” The court denied NAIT’s motion, but the appellate record revealed the agreement’s religious-arbitration clause, “cessation event” provisions, and trustee-consent process for property sales.

Federal Court Evidence

In the Holy Land Foundation case, federal prosecutors listed NAIT among entities they said were or had been members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.

The court order states that, during the early years of the Occupied Land Fund, later renamed the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, OLF raised money and supported Hamas through an account held with ISNA and NAIT.

The order further states that some checks deposited into that account were made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahadeen,” which it describes as the original name of Hamas’s military wing.

NAIT’s current board lists Dr. Gaddoor Saidi as chairman. The HLF unindicted-co-conspirator attachment includes the name “Gaddor Ibrahim Saidi” in its list of individuals/entities described as members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and again in a category of individuals/entities allegedly used by Mousa Abu Marzook as a financial conduit for Hamas.

Arabic-Language Reports Link ICD to Brotherhood Networks

Egypt’s Islamist Movements Portal — a major Arab-world tracker of Brotherhood activity — lists “شعبة المراكز الإسلامية” (Islamic Centers Division) among 39 Brotherhood-affiliated entities operating in the United States, alongside CAIR, ISNA, MSA, ICNA, and IIIT.

A separate Arabic analysis identifies NAIT as “particularly important to the Muslim Brotherhood network in Canada” for “establishing mosques, student houses, and Islamic centers” — a cross-border footprint English-language reporting often overlooks.

Scale and Significance

NAIT-linked Islamic Horizons reported in 2023 that the trust had grown into a “comprehensive solution provider” with more than 400 waqf institutions in the United States and Canada. According to 2015 reporting in the New York Post, NAIT has held title to more than 300 mosques and helped finance more than 500 Islamic centers in America.

The report also identified several controversial NAIT-linked mosques whose worshippers or attendees later included individuals involved in terrorism cases, including the Islamic Society of Boston, the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, and Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center.

Of the 29 entities the Muslim Brotherhood listed in 1991 as its allied network, few have remained as institutionally intact, as legally entrenched, or as quietly active as Item #11. As the Trump administration targets certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters and subdivisions for FTO and SDGT designations, renewed scrutiny is falling on U.S.-based organizations identified in historical Brotherhood-linked documents.

Since launching Jewish Onliner at the end of 2024, we’ve:

• Exposed pro-terror professors on college campuses — even members of actual terror groups working on college campuses

• Tracked the spread of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese propaganda across social media and into the minds of Western audiences

• Revealed that EU-based Hamas front groups are systematically manipulating Wikipedia

• Exposed how the Muslim Brotherhood-linked CAIR is spreading anti-American and antisemitic propaganda in K-12 schools

• Performed data-driven analyses on hundreds of thousands of social media posts to expose the hypocrisy of “human rights organizations” that target Israel

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James “Fergie” Chambers, a self-described communist and Cox family heir who has publicly financed direct action pro-Palestine activism, used an April 30, 2026 thread on X to accuse the Party for Socialism and Liberation of suppressing Palestine Action U.S. shortly after its launch in October 2023 and channeling activist energy into a more tightly managed protest apparatus.

The thread broadens Chambers’ earlier allegation that PSL “wholly funds, staffs, and controls” The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, and ANSWER Coalition by adding a new claim: that PSL not only overlaps organizationally with those groups, but also intervened strategically to restrain direct action against Elbit Systems in the United States.

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From Network Claims to Tactical Accusations

The new thread followed Chambers’ earlier post alleging that PSL sat at the center of a tightly managed network involving The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, ANSWER Coalition, and the International People’s Assembly. In that earlier post, Chambers also shared a hand-drawn diagram he said was made in 2023 by BreakThrough News editor-in-chief Ben Becker and Tricontinental’s Vijay Prashad, placing PSL at the center of the ecosystem.

In the April 30 thread, Chambers shifted from structural allegations to operational ones. He said that at the height of his connection to Roy Singham, PSL, and The People’s Forum, he helped launch Palestine Action U.S. in October 2023 to support direct action against Elbit and other weapons firms through media and legal backing.

The law-enforcement concern around Palestine Action U.S. was already visible in October 2023, when Los Angeles Magazine reported, citing two law enforcement officials, that federal agencies had “received intelligence” that the group could pose a homeland-security threat because it was “well-funded with Chambers money.”

Chambers Says PSL Tried to Rein In the Campaign

Chambers wrote that PSL leadership moved quickly to stop Palestine Action U.S. from developing into a sustained direct-action effort. He said leaders urged him to convince activists not to proceed and claimed local PSL chapters were instructed not to participate in or even show solidarity with Palestine Action U.S. events. He also said that before the first Cambridge action, “the Beckers/Manolo” tried to quietly fly him and Calla Walsh to New York to meet with local and national leadership at The People’s Forum in an effort to de-escalate the action.

That reference to Calla Walsh is one of the thread’s more concrete details. Walsh later became one of the most visible defendants tied to Palestine Action U.S. actions. She was among the activists arrested on the roof during the November 2023 action at Elbit’s Merrimack, New Hampshire facility, according to NBC. The case was later resolved through misdemeanor guilty pleas and jail sentences, with most of the one-year sentence deferred, according to New Hampshire Public Radio.

In March 2026, The Free Press’ Jay Solomon reported, citing U.S. officials, that Walsh had been placed on a suspicious-persons watch list over what the outlet described as her dealings with Cuba, Iran, and U.S.-designated terrorist groups; Solomon’s article also characterized her as having aligned herself with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Merrimack as the Breaking Point

Chambers’ thread argues that the split became unmistakable after the Merrimack action. He said that when Palestine Action activists were arrested there, PSL, BreakThrough News, and their “tentacles” stayed silent, while allied influencers publicly denounced the activists as “adventurist” and accused him of conspiracy and grooming. He added that those arrested in Merrimack, along with activist Casey Goonan, “would not have been abandoned by mass movement” if PSL had used its full organizational, legal, and financial apparatus on their behalf.

NBC Boston, citing Merrimack police, reported that protesters blocked the driveway, three people were arrested on the roof, and officers found spray paint, smashed windows and skylights, HVAC damage, and smoke linked to an incendiary device or similar device.

“Shut It Down for Palestine”

Chambers claims that shortly after Palestine Action U.S. launched and began attracting attention, PSL leaders convened an emergency “direct action” meeting with select coalition partners. He says that meeting produced “Shut It Down for Palestine,” which he described as an effort to redirect enthusiasm for militant direct action into repetitive, lower-risk street mobilization.

Publicly, the campaign was being promoted by early November 2023 by The People’s Forum and partner groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, ANSWER Coalition, and the International Peoples’ Assembly.

Entrapment Allegation Broadens the Dispute

Near the end of the thread, Chambers added another allegation that widens the dispute beyond protest tactics. He wrote that he had not even addressed what he described as an attempted “digestion” of his land project, and claimed that one national leader in the Singham-linked network who was “former military” tried to entrap him through text messages about “illegal gun shipments.” Chambers did not identify the individual or publish the messages in the thread.

That allegation stands out because it introduces a possible security and law-enforcement dimension to what had otherwise been framed as a political and organizational dispute. At this stage, however, Chambers presented it as a personal claim without documentary evidence attached publicly in the thread.

Funding Questions Remain in the Background

Chambers also mocked The People’s Forum’s current effort to raise money for a permanent Manhattan space, writing that the organization now wants supporters to provide the $5 million needed for renovations because “Roy doesn’t want to pay for that.” The fundraiser says the group has purchased a building in New York City and needs to raise $5 million in total, with an immediate goal of $2 million from individual donors by December 2026.

Israeli authorities brought Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Ávila to Israel for questioning after naval forces intercepted more than 20 Global Sumud Flotilla vessels in international waters off Crete on April 30, separating the two activists from the roughly 175 others who were transferred to Greek authorities.

Israeli officials identified Abu Keshek as a leading Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA) member and alleged that he served as a liaison between senior Hamas officials and international actors and assisted financial transfers to Hamas. The U.S. Treasury designated PCPA as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity on January 21, 2026, saying it was “clandestinely controlled by Hamas,” operated “at Hamas’s behest,” and had backed several Gaza flotillas.

Abu Keshek was previously arrested in Egypt and deported in June 2025, and faced prior detention in Tunisia for questioning related to money laundering and financial irregularities. The ministry also alleged that Ávila “operates with” PCPA and is suspected of illegal activity.

The case now places the Global Sumud Flotilla under sharper scrutiny: not simply as another anti-blockade protest, but as a campaign whose senior organizers, vessel ownership structure, and fundraising networks have drawn allegations of Hamas-linked involvement, financial irregularities, and internal misconduct.

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Questions Surround Abu Keshek’s Role in the Flotilla

A May 1 statement from the Global Sumud Flotilla claimed that “Abukeshek was on an observer boat, which was never intended to go to Gaza.” The claim raises questions about where he was headed, what purpose the observer boat served, and why a senior flotilla figure was traveling on a vessel that, by the flotilla’s own account, was not bound for Gaza.

Official Aid Channels Were Already Operating, Israel Says

According to Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), aid through official channels has averaged roughly 600 trucks per day since the October 2025 ceasefire, including more than 1.5 million tons of food and 12,500 tons of medical supplies.

The Board of Peace condemned the flotilla as “performative love-boat activism of people who know nothing of and care even less for the condition of Gazans.” Since the October 2025 ceasefire, “food aid is reaching 3 times more people than before.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry released footage it said showed condoms and drugs among items found aboard the flotilla vessels. Israeli officials stated that “the driving force behind the flotilla provocation is Hamas—joining hands with professional provocateurs—with the aim of sabotaging President Trump’s peace plan.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry also released footage showing some flotilla activists smiling, playing games, and doing cartwheels aboard Israeli Navy vessels during transport. Israeli authorities transferred most activists to Greece within 24 hours.

Money Laundering Investigation in Tunisia

In March 2026, Tunisian media and the Associated Press reported that authorities detained several Global Sumud Flotilla figures, including Wael Naouar, as part of an inquiry into suspected money laundering, fraud, and alleged misuse of donation funds. Jewish Onliner had previously documented Naouar meeting with senior officials from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), all of which are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.