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A new X account called DSA Watch launched on June 24 to systematically track Democratic Socialists of America officials and candidates — a movement that openly calls to “replace” capitalism with socialism and whose members have advocated for abolishing police, nationalizing airlines, and fighting for the “total eradication of Western civilization.” The monitoring effort, which has amassed over 86,000 followers in just 24 hours, arrives as DSA candidates and candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won multiple democratic primaries in New York and have displayed increasing momentum within the broader party.

Abolishing Police and Dismantling Institutions

DSA Watch’s feed highlights Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and DSA member Francesca Hong’s social media history calling for police abolition. “I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police,” Hong posted in August 2020. In October 2021, as an elected state representative, she wrote: “Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.” When questioned by Fox News about these statements, Hong refused to clarify whether she would move to defund police as governor, saying only “There is no way I want to cut resources for public safety.”

Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed, whom DSA Watch identified as supporting DSA positions like defunding police, quietly deleted thousands of social media posts before launching his campaign. In a June 2020 post, El-Sayed wrote: “Most major US cities spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty & WAY TOO LITTLE on public schools, health departments, recreation departments, & housing to eliminate poverty. Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about.” When CNN pressed him on why he deleted these posts, El-Sayed dodged the question three times, saying “we have to get past the past.”

Nationalizing Industries and Abolishing Border Security

The DSA Watch also documented New York congressional nominee Claire Valdez calling to “abolish pre-check and nationalize the entire airline industry.” DSA Watch similarly flagged Michigan congressional candidate Aisha Farooqi as wanting to “abolish ICE” — a position held by the DSA’s platform, which maintains an “Abolish ICE Commission“ and calls for ending immigration enforcement agencies.

These positions align with DSA’s organizational platform, which states: “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism.” The organization, which claims over 90,000 members, advocates to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation” and lists “defunding the police/refunding communities” as part of its path to socialism.

“Total Eradication of Western Civilization”

Perhaps most striking is DSA Watch’s documentation of DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won New York’s 13th congressional district Democratic primary. Chevalier co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a group that went on to state in a now-deleted Instagram post:

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South.” The post continued: “Our Intifada is an internationalist one — we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people.”

The Jewish Exclusion Requirement

Beyond documenting radical policy positions, DSA Watch’s emergence coincides with growing scrutiny of DSA’s requirement that endorsed candidates must effectively exclude Jewish institutions from political engagement. Metro DC DSA’s endorsement questionnaire asks candidates to pledge to refrain from engaging with “the Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups” — a category that includes the overwhelming majority of Jewish political organizations.

Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, described this as “an antisemitic manifesto” and “an ideological straitjacket” that “rules out ties to a vast majority of synagogues and Jewish institutions because of their Zionist beliefs.” He said DSA is “trying to do in America what [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] seems to do internationally, which is to make being Jewish unacceptable in polite society.”

Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, seeking DSA’s endorsement, wrote in her questionnaire response: “I will refrain from going on any political junkets to Israel. I will also not attend events focused on obfuscating the realities of occupation or promoting Zionism and apartheid.”

The Anti-Defamation League has documented DSA chapters co-sponsoring events featuring antisemitic imagery, including a Houston rally where protesters displayed posters equating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Hitler and the Star of David with the swastika, and a Colorado State University event where participants chanted “There is only one solution; Intifada, revolution” while displaying imagery of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Leila Khaled.

From Fringe to Frontrunner

DSA Watch’s systematic documentation arrives as the movement reaches unprecedented electoral success, with voters in multiple states facing decisions about DSA-backed candidates in upcoming primaries and general elections. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani represents DSA’s highest-profile victory, while the organization has backed winning congressional candidates including Chevalier and maintains endorsements of sitting members of Congress.

DSA Watch’s emergence reflects growing concern among critics that a movement calling to dismantle capitalism, abolish police forces, eradicate Western civilization, and exclude mainstream Jewish organizations from political life has moved from the margins to winning major Democratic primaries carrying an agenda fundamentally at odds with America’s constitutional system and Jewish community inclusion.

The European Parliament has adopted its harshest resolution on Turkey in years, calling on the EU's foreign-policy chief to consider sanctions against Justice Minister Akın Gürlek — the former Istanbul chief prosecutor who jailed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's leading rival and now oversees the country's judiciary.

The June 17 text declares Turkey is consolidating into a "fully authoritarian" state, landing at an extraordinary moment: Ankara hosts NATO's heads of state on July 7-8, and in November it chairs the UN climate summit while freezing out an EU member state. Building on reporting by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the resolution is also a rare institutional record of what a NATO ally's support for Hamas looks like in writing and what Brussels is willing to say about it.

The Prosecutor Who Became Justice Minister

The official Parliament singled out is Akın Gürlek, who as Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor issued the detention warrant for Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and filed a 4,000-page indictment seeking up to 2,430 years in prison on 142 charges of corruption and organized crime. İmamoğlu was detained on March 19, 2025 — the morning his Republican People’s Party nominated him as presidential candidate — alongside 43 others, with no charges yet filed. The European Court of Human Rights has accepted İmamoğlu’s application under its priority procedure. Erdoğan then elevated Gürlek to justice minister in February 2026, a post that also makes him chair of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors — leaving him supervisor of the judges now hearing the very cases he built.

Gürlek’s record stretches back further: he served as presiding judge in proceedings related to the 2007 murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink. The Parliament resolution calls Gürlek “a key actor in the state’s repressive machinery” who “has always been a political actor following a political agenda.” The sanctions call, passed 381 to 107 with 171 abstentions, is non-binding but urges EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas to weigh asset freezes under the bloc’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime.

What Brussels Put on Record About Hamas

The resolution documents what Parliament calls Turkey’s “active support” for Hamas, an EU-listed terror group, and faults Ankara for never condemning the October 7 attack.

The text separately condemns Turkish support for Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated networks and the far-right Grey Wolves movement, and denounces attacks on the country’s Jewish, Christian, and Alevi minorities. Those findings were adopted one week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded Erdoğan an “antisemitic dictator” who backs Hamas.

Squeezing Two EU Member States

The resolution arrives amid escalating pressure on Greece and Cyprus. In May, Ankara unveiled draft legislation to codify its “Blue Homeland” maritime claims across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean — sweeping territorial demands that overlap with zones claimed by both EU member states. Turkey continues to obstruct the EU-funded undersea power cable linking Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, a project Turkish officials warned requires Ankara’s permission in contested waters.

As host of November’s UN climate summit in Antalya, Turkey has frozen Cyprus out of preparatory meetings — even though Nicosia currently holds the rotating EU Council presidency and represents all 27 members. The EU called the exclusion “not acceptable.” A February “calm waters“ summit between Erdoğan and Greek Premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis has slowed none of the pressure. Parliament rapporteur Nacho Sánchez Amor stated that Greece and Cyprus remain inseparable pillars of any future EU-Turkey relationship.

A NATO Ally Brussels Calls Authoritarian

The resolution carries no legal force; any sanctions listing requires unanimous agreement among the EU’s 27 governments. But its timing sharpens a contradiction the West has avoided: in three weeks, Erdoğan hosts NATO’s heads of state; in November, he chairs a UN summit while snubbing an EU member.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Sinan Ciddi has urged Washington to use the NATO gathering to tell Erdoğan that threats against Greece and Cyprus are unacceptable. The deeper question Parliament has now forced into the open is how an alliance of democracies hosts, funds, and relies on a member its own legislature has just declared authoritarian.

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On June 19, 2026, at least seven organizations simultaneously posted social media content linking Black American freedom to “Palestinian liberation” — a coordinated messaging wave that stretched from campus activist networks and Washington, D.C. cultural institutions to a congressional lobbying campaign.

The posts shared a common intellectual framework, recycled the same academic content, and deployed Juneteenth as a recruitment tool for pro-Palestine activism. The organizations behind the posts are not identical, but they share documented institutional ties, overlapping personnel, and a strategic pattern: turning American commemorative holidays into annual Palestine solidarity campaigns.

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A Multi-Organization Wave on June 19

National Students for Justice in Palestine, which claims to support over 400 campus chapters, published a “Commemorating Juneteenth” post declaring “From Ferguson to Gaza, the racialized militarism of the American state connects our people” and collecting the Palestinian and Black liberation movements under a single “struggle for self-determination.” The Institute for Palestine Studies used Juneteenth to re-promote a 2019 academic issue on “Black-Palestinian Transnational Solidarity,” gathering more than 1,800 likes.

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network’s Milwaukee chapter went further: its Juneteenth post declared “Same chains, same cages, same enemy” and promoted a physical table at Milwaukee’s Juneteenth celebrations where attendees could “talk liberation, from the plantation and Jim Crow to Zionist apartheid and genocide in Palestine.”

The Washington D.C.-based Museum of the Palestinian People marked the day with an image explicitly embedding a “From Ferguson to Palestine Occupation is a crime!” protest sign. The People’s Forum NYC, a New York-based organization that the House Ways and Means Committee has been investigating for alleged CCP-linked funding, posted Juneteenth content framing Black liberation as a fight against “capitalist and imperialist exploitation, at home and across the globe.”

A Philadelphia-based campaign targeting pro-Israel Senator John Fetterman, Fridays at Fetterman’s, posted the identical 2019 IPS academic content as @palestinestudies. This content and hijacking of Juneteenth can even be traced back to 2014

Qatar’s official Cultural Attaché Office in the United States — the diplomatic body that manages Qatar’s student scholarship program at American universities and was previously covered by JewishOnliner for its role in Qatar’s higher education influence operations — posted a holiday closure notice under a Juneteenth banner which stated, “Today, we honor freedom, resilience, and the continued fight for equality. Happy Juneteenth!💚❤️🖤.” The hearts were notcibly in the colors of the Palestinian flag and movement.

The Same Content, Distributed

The IPS 2019 Journal of Palestine Studies special issue appearing across multiple unaffiliated accounts on the same date is not a coincidence — it is the content being circulated as a Juneteenth toolkit. Co-edited by Rutgers professor Noura Erakat, who sits on the Journal of Palestine Studies editorial committee, and Temple professor Marc Lamont Hill, the 2019 issue formalized the “Ferguson to Gaza” framework — the political logic that the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and Israeli operations in Gaza that same summer constituted a single, unified phenomenon of state violence against oppressed peoples.

Erakat herself is not merely an outside academic — she has been documented as affiliated with SJP chapters from 2011 through 2023, and she has spoken at People’s Forum-organized rallies. The intellectual and the activist infrastructure share personnel.

The Network Behind the Posts

The organizations active on Juneteenth share documented institutional ties beyond shared ideology. The WESPAC Foundation, a Westchester, New York nonprofit that conceals its donor list, serves as fiscal sponsor for both National SJP and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network — the same organization whose Milwaukee chapter posted the “Same chains, same cages” Juneteenth content. According to InfluenceWatch, USPCN itself claims to have created the National SJP initiative in 2010.

The People’s Forum’s connection to National SJP is operational, not just ideological. People’s Forum, NSJP, and the Palestinian Youth Movement are documented co-conveners of the “Shut It Down for Palestine” coalition — the coalition that organized the 2024 campus encampments and subsequent national disruption campaigns.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the People’s Forum has received roughly $20 million from Neville Roy Singham — an American businessman living in Shanghai who the GWU Program on Extremism has documented funding groups “with anti-U.S. and anti-Israel agendas” through networks consistent with CCP messaging priorities.

Every Holiday, Every Cause

Juneteenth is one entry in a documented annual calendar. As previously reported by NGO Monitor, National SJP claimed Christmas as a Palestinian holiday in December 2025: “This Christmas, we reclaim the indigeneity of the holiday and its roots in the Palestinian land and people.” USCPR maintains a standing Black-Palestine Solidarity toolkit updated each Black History Month. MLK Day has been a similarly recurring target, with USPCN posting Palestinian solidarity content each January.

What changed this year is the institutional breadth. In 2026, the “pro-Palestine” Juneteenth content originated not only from student activist groups — but an academic publisher, a DC museum receiving institutional artifacts from that publisher, a Pennsylvania ceasefire campaign, and Qatar's own cultural diplomatic office.

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Editor's note: This is an 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.

ICNA Relief USA operates seven humanitarian programs across the United States, from food pantries to refugee services, reporting $60.5 million in total expenses, including $56.8 million in program-service expenses. The organization holds a coveted 4-star Charity Navigator rating and participates in the Combined Federal Campaign—allowing federal employees to designate voluntary payroll-deduction donations to the group. It is a member of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD), which coordinates with FEMA and other federal agencies during disasters.

But ICNA Relief is the humanitarian arm of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)—organization number 26 on the Brotherhood’s list—which the Investigative Project on Terrorism describes as “a leading domestic affiliate” of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a South Asian Islamist movement. In 2019, Rep. Jim Banks introduced H.Res.160, which was referred to committee but not enacted; it called on USAID, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies to halt partnerships and funding arrangements with Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated groups, including ICNA and ICNA Relief.

“A Step in the Right Direction”

In May 1991, Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram wrote an internal memorandum titled “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America.” The document, seized by federal investigators and introduced as evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, outlined a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” in which Brotherhood members would work to “eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotage’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”

The memorandum listed 29 organizations as part of the Brotherhood’s network in North America. Number 26 on that list: ICNA—the Islamic Circle of North America. But the document went further than simply naming ICNA. In discussing the strategy of “absorbing Muslims and winning them” for the settlement project, Akram wrote: “Here, two points must be noted; the first one: we need to comprehend and understand the balance of the Islamic powers in the U.S. arena. The second point: what we reached with the brothers in ‘ICNA’ is considered a step in the right direction, the beginning of good and the first drop that requires growing and guidance.”

The language is revealing. The memorandum distinguished between “our organizations”—those directly under Muslim Brotherhood control—and “the organizations of our friends”—allied groups with shared ideological goals. ICNA appears in the memo not as a group founded by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but as an allied organization the memo’s author viewed as useful to the Brotherhood’s broader “settlement” strategy in North America.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Connection

The Islamic Circle of North America was established in 1968 with a stated goal: “to achieve the pleasure of Allah through the establishment of the Islamic system in this land.” The organization’s ideological roots trace directly to Jamaat-e-Islami founder Maulana Syed Abdul A’la Maududi, who preached that Muslims must “strive to change the wrong basis of government, and seize all powers to rule and make laws from those who do not fear God.”

An early ICNA leader, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, served as a commander in a JI militia group during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. In 2013, a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal found Khan guilty of murdering 18 Bangladeshi intellectuals and sentenced him to death in absentia.

Congressional testimony from 2018 identified ICNA as part of a network of “legacy groups” in America whose agendas are “consistent with this global support and theocratic, theo-political activist process and network of the Muslim Brotherhood.” The testimony noted that “While the MB hatched groups like ISNA and NAIT, Mawdudi’s Jamaat-e-Islami hatched similar groups like the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). There has always been major overlap between leadership and organizational ideologies.”

The Humanitarian Arm

ICNA Relief USA operates as a legally separate 501(c)(3) organization from its parent ICNA, but the connection is explicit. The organization’s own website describes it as operating “under the Islamic Circle of North America” and working to “assist and empower underprivileged Americans through sustainable social services.” According to the organization’s 2024 Form 990 tax filing, ICNA Relief USA reported total revenue of $58 million, with $57.9 million coming from contributions and grants. The organization reported $60.5 million in total expenses—including $56.8 million in program-service expenses—resulting in a deficit of $2.5 million for the year.

The organization’s largest program expense is hunger prevention, which consumed $28.2 million in 2024. Refugee services accounted for $11.2 million, while health services cost $5.7 million. The filing shows ICNA Relief reported 404 employees and approximately 1,941 volunteers nationwide. CEO Abdul Rauf Khan received $110,264 in compensation, while a second officer, Maqsood Ahmad, received $129,641.

Notably, the 2024 Form 990 indicates that ICNA Relief received $28 million in non-cash contributions—likely food and supplies distributed through its hunger prevention programs. ICNA Relief states that it operates only within the United States, and its public Form 990 reports no foreign grants, no international operations, and no payments to foreign individuals or organizations. The organization states explicitly on its website: “ICNA Relief, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that only operates and provides services within the United States of America and its territories.”

Government Access and Mainstream Legitimacy

ICNA Relief’s integration into mainstream disaster response and federal charitable giving systems raises questions about due diligence in vetting charitable partners. The organization is a member of NVOAD, which coordinates with FEMA and other government agencies during disasters. ICNA Relief’s disaster relief team has participated in FEMA’s Voluntary Organization Partnership meetings. The organization is also approved for the Combined Federal Campaign, meaning federal employees can designate ICNA Relief to receive portions of their charitable contributions through payroll deduction.

CEO Abdul Rauf Khan’s biography notes that his efforts “helped ICNA Relief gain the status of the largest Muslim-run non-profit, working exclusively within the USA” and that his “contributions have earned personal recognition and prestigious awards for ICNA Relief, including the White House Community Service Award during the Obama Presidency.” Khan holds a Master’s degree in Business Management and previously earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Karachi in Pakistan.

The organization’s leadership structure reveals deep ties to the broader ICNA network. Khan serves on boards for “various national and local Islamic organizations” and holds “leadership positions in the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, Young Muslims, Garden of Sahaba Academy, Youth Coalition of South Florida, ICNA South East Region, and is a National Shura member of ICNA.” Young Muslims is ICNA’s youth division, established to cultivate the next generation of Islamic activists.

The Ideological Ecosystem

The parent organization, ICNA, has repeatedly drawn criticism from researchers and watchdog groups over extremist content at its conferences and its affiliations with radical figures. In 2010, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement denouncing ICNA for hosting speakers who attacked Jews from the stage at its 2009 conference. At ICNA’s 2019 conference, the organization featured a representative of Turkey’s Islamist authoritarian government. In September 2021, ICNA joined other American Islamist organizations in hosting a memorial ceremony for Pakistani Islamist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a sympathizer of Osama bin Laden.

In 2000, ICNA leader Mohammad Yunus wrote that one of ICNA’s goals was to establish an Islamic state in the U.S., which would “pave the way for the reestablishment of the Caliphate.” As recently as 2019, then-ICNA president Zahid Bukhari called on Muslims to establish Islam as a way of life in the United States.

The interconnected nature of the Brotherhood network becomes apparent in ICNA Relief’s choice of public endorsers. The organization prominently features Dr. Yasir Qadhi on its website under “See What Scholars Have To Say,” where he states: “I see that this organization is indeed interested in feeding the hungry, in helping the poor, in finding space for widows and orphans to live, in doing what our religion requires us to do.” What ICNA Relief doesn’t mention is that Qadhi serves as chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America—another organization listed in the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum as number 17 under its previous name, “ISNA Fiqh Committee.” The Fiqh Council describes itself as a body of Islamic scholars. Its predecessor name, “ISNA Fiqh Committee,” appears as number 17 in the same 1991 memorandum, making Qadhi’s endorsement another point of overlap with entities named in the document.

ICNA is a founding member of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), which also includes the Muslim Ummah of North America. The USCMO brings together a range of American Muslim organizations under a coordinating umbrella to amplify their political influence.

The Pattern Continues

ICNA Relief’s model mirrors that of other Islamist-linked charitable organizations: provide genuine humanitarian services to vulnerable populations while operating under the ideological umbrella of organizations that have historically advocated the establishment of an Islamic system of governance. This dual-track approach—legitimate social services combined with a contested ideological history—creates a challenging dynamic for policymakers and the public.

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ICNA Relief’s public Form 990 reports no foreign grants or international operations, and the organization states that it works only inside the United States. Yet its structural and ideological ties to ICNA, and through ICNA to both Jamaat-e-Islami and the broader Muslim Brotherhood network, raise fundamental questions about whether U.S. government agencies and federal employees should be directing resources—and legitimacy—to organizations linked to Islamist networks that the Brotherhood itself identified as allies in the project to “eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within.”

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The Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC recently released an important report systematically dismantling accusations that Israel carried out genocide or deliberately starved Gaza, arguing that those claims were built on manipulated Hamas casualty data, staged media imagery, aid-diversion realities, and coordinated disinformation.

The meticulously documented 80-page analysis, Manufacturing a Modern Blood Libel: Genocide, Starvation, and the Language of Dehumanization, marshals extensive evidence demonstrating that Hamas inflated death tolls and diverted up to 90% of humanitarian aid. The report documents how Hamas-origin casualty figures moved from Gaza’s Ministry of Health and Government Media Office into UN reporting, NGO statements, and global media coverage, giving militant-controlled data the appearance of neutral international consensus. It provides the most comprehensive counter-narrative to date against claims that have dominated international discourse since October 7, 2023.

Statistical Red Flags in Hamas Casualty Reports

The document details systematic problems with figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH), which Western media outlets and UN agencies have widely cited as authoritative. According to the Embassy’s analysis of Gaza Ministry of Health data through November 10, 2025, approximately 32,000 men aged 18 to 59 were killed compared with roughly 10,000 women in the same age group, a 3-to-1 disparity that undermines claims of indiscriminate civilian slaughter and points instead to a casualty profile dominated by military-age males.

Professor Abraham Wyner of the University of Pennsylvania identified statistical patterns he said were incompatible with normal wartime casualty reporting, including implausibly uniform daily death counts of roughly 200 to 300 per day and a lack of correlation between reported male, female, and child fatalities. In mass-casualty urban warfare, the report notes, deaths among family members would normally rise and fall together when homes or shelters are struck. Internal Hamas documents recovered by Israeli forces instructed operatives to refer to anyone killed as an “innocent civilian” and avoid publishing images of dead combatants.

The report estimates that at least 11,000 to 12,000 natural deaths during the two-year period were folded into Israeli-caused fatality totals, further inflating the death count attributed to Israeli military action. In March 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health updated its casualty list and removed 6,394 previously listed names, including duplicate entries, questionable records, and cases requiring further verification. The revision reinforced the Embassy’s central finding: Gaza casualty data had been treated as authoritative long before it was stable, verified, or internally consistent. The most revealing shift came in May 2024, when the UN stopped relying on Hamas’s Government Media Office and used Ministry of Health data instead. The reported share of women and children among the dead fell from 69% to 52% overnight, exposing how much of the global narrative had depended on inflated or unstable Hamas-supplied figures.

Starvation Imagery and Missing Medical Context

The Embassy report shows that some of the most widely circulated starvation images omitted critical medical context. A Free Press investigation found that 12 viral images used to symbolize Gaza starvation involved children with serious preexisting conditions, including cystic fibrosis, rickets, cerebral palsy, and genetic diseases.

The most prominent case was 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, whose image appeared on the front page of The New York Times on July 25, 2025. The report notes that the image was presented as evidence of Israeli-induced starvation while omitting that the child suffered from cerebral palsy and hypoxemia, and that his healthy three-year-old brother had been cropped out of the frame.

German outlets including Bild and Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that an Anadolu Agency photographer staged scenes of Gazans holding empty pots for the cameras, creating imagery that visually suggested famine conditions. Five-year-old Osama al-Raqab’s viral image, presented as evidence of starvation, actually depicted a child with a serious genetic disease; Israel later coordinated his evacuation to Italy for treatment.

Aid in Abundance and Hamas Control

According to official COGAT data cited in the report, approximately 2.2 million tons of aid entered Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025, including 1.7 million tons of food. The Embassy calculates that this amounted to roughly 3,000 kilocalories per person per day, above the 2,100 kcal/capita/day international minimum used for conflict zones. The report’s conclusion is blunt: the central problem was not the absence of food entering Gaza, but Hamas’s control, diversion, taxation, and manipulation of aid distribution. Israeli intelligence cited by the report estimates that Hamas diverted up to 90% of humanitarian supplies, generating approximately $500 million through taxation, smuggling, resale, and physical control of distribution networks.

The report alleges that the UN significantly underreported the number of aid trucks entering Gaza and that UN agencies distributed only about 30% of aid between May and September 2025, leaving thousands of trucks standing inside Gaza. Hamas operatives were found hoarding infant formula and nutritional supplements while placing operatives in senior positions at NGOs to control aid flows.

Unprecedented Civilian Protections

The Embassy report details an extensive civilian-warning system: tens of millions of geographically targeted text messages, tens of millions of phone calls before strikes, millions of air-dropped leaflets, evacuation corridors, nonlethal “roof-knocking” warnings, and color-coded digital maps updated in real time. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, wrote that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.”

Before the Rafah operation, Israel relocated more than one million residents after issuing advance warnings. The report notes that Hamas’s own casualty data showed fatalities declined by 25% after the evacuation, evidence that Israel’s operational design reduced civilian deaths rather than maximizing them.

A Campaign With Consequences

Ambassador Yechiel “Michael” Leiter writes in the foreword that the genocide libel has not remained confined to diplomatic forums or newspaper pages. He cites the May 21, 2025 murders of Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, arguing that the alleged gunman was steeped in the same modern blood libel the report seeks to expose.

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The report describes a three-stage propaganda pipeline: Hamas generates or manipulates casualty claims, UN agencies and NGOs launder those claims into institutional language, and international media outlets amplify them as verified fact. The document traces the ideological lineage of Hamas’s antisemitism through the Muslim Brotherhood to Nazi propaganda, noting Israeli forces recently recovered annotated Arabic translations of Mein Kampf among Hamas operatives’ belongings.

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A June 17 CODEPINK webinar on “Challenging Zionism in Schools” showed how anti-Israel classroom materials promoted by CODEPINK-linked educators are being distributed through Share My Lesson, the American Federation of Teachers’ online resource platform for educators.

A review by NAVI K-12 Extremism Tracker found that Share My Lesson has hosted materials that frame Palestinian protest art as “resistance,” present anti-Zionist definitions of Zionism alongside neutral reference definitions, and, according to NAVI, include a separate lesson built around Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America.”

The June 17 session listed Marcy Winograd, coordinator of CODEPINK’s Drop the ADL campaign and chair of CTA Jewish & Allied Educators 4 Palestine, alongside Lupe Carrasco Cardona, chair of the Association of Raza Educators and a founding member of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Coalition. The key finding is that some of these materials are hosted on AFT’s Share My Lesson platform, giving activist-created curriculum a union-branded distribution channel to a site that describes itself as serving nearly 2.3 million educators.

AFT Platform Hosts User-Uploaded Anti-Israel Lessons

Winograd has uploaded lessons to Share My Lesson, AFT’s free educator-resource site. One lesson, “Palestine Art as Resistance: Graffiti on the Apartheid Wall or Separation Barrier,” asks students to analyze murals on what the lesson calls “Israel’s ‘apartheid wall’” and what Israel describes as the “separation barrier,” then write an essay on whether the protest art is justified.

According to NAVI’s review of the webinar, Winograd addressed the argument that Israel built the barrier in response to Palestinian terror attacks by saying, “there would not be problems if it were not for Israel’s colonization and ethnic cleansing.”

Another Winograd lesson on Share My Lesson presents students with two definitions of Zionism side-by-side. The Encyclopedia Britannica’s factual definition as “political support for the creation and development of a Jewish homeland in Israel,” and the Palestine Policy Network’s characterization as “a settler-colonial ideology aimed at establishing a Jewish state in historic Palestine by eliminating the indigenous Palestinian people.”

NAVI also identified a separate Share My Lesson resource on Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” which NAVI said was authored by a New York public school teacher and had been downloaded more than 200 times. NAVI reported that the lesson has students read bin Laden’s justification for 9/11 and answer questions including “What religious group does he blame for much of the problems [in] Palestine?” and “Why do you think Osama bin Laden hates Jews so much?” NAVI also said the lesson’s author is followed on the platform by Kelly Booz, Director of Share My Lesson.

The AFT claims it cannot screen all content uploaded to the site but can remove lessons that violate AFT policy or are “harmful or objectionable.” Yet these materials remain accessible.

Teaching Students to Produce Anti-Israel Content

The webinar’s theme was “Literature and Art as Tools for Resistance,” and according to NAVI’s review, both presenters framed their goal as extending beyond education to activism. Carrasco Cardona, who trains teachers through the California Teachers Association’s Human Rights Department, explained that ethnic studies lessons must “critique empire” and “challenge imperialist colonial hegemonic beliefs,” or they’re merely “diversity lessons,” not true ethnic studies.

Her lesson plan on Edward Said’s “Orientalism” for grades 7-12 shows students a short film about a Palestinian girl who learns from her grandfather that her family is from Jaffa (a city in Israel, which he calls Palestine) and that they will “return” one day. The girl returns to school wearing a keffiyeh and a necklace depicting “Palestine,” with Israel erased. Students are not asked to critically examine Said’s theories but to adopt them, then create “social media memes” based on Said’s quotes about Orientalism.

“These lessons are supposed to really be about helping students to name these things and then helping them to find whatever it is that is what they were meant to do, what they feel like is their place in the world to take action,” Carrasco Cardona said. The point is explicit, transform students from passive learners into activist content producers.

How Jewish Identity Gets Reframed

Throughout the webinar, according to NAVI’s review, presenters and participants characterized Jewish claims to Israel as religious supremacism. When asked how to counter the argument that “this is Jewish land” that “has been Jewish land for thousands of years,” Winograd dismissed it as “an excuse for privilege, for the privilege to ethnically cleanse.” CODEPINK’s Palestine campaigner Jenin Mahdi added that the conflict is “an issue rooted in just supremacist ideology,” not a religious issue, but one of “settler colonialism and really dangerous nationalism.”

Carrasco Cardona, who was filmed at a 2024 UTLA leadership conference suggesting Israel placed the Star of David on its flag to deflect criticism as antisemitism, claimed she would defend any group facing dehumanization “but right now, that’s not the case.” After October 7, 2023, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, NAVI’s review found that Carrasco Cardona’s public social media remained silent about the attack, and that two weeks later she began posting about genocide. Her UTLA colleague Jessica Rodarte was more direct, posting on October 10, 2023 “Liberation doesn’t just look like reading and writing. It isn’t always without bloodshed.”

Winograd also criticized California’s AB715, a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to strengthen K–12 enforcement against antisemitism and discrimination, arguing that it “conflates criticism of Israel as a Jewish state, a supremacist state, with antisemitism.” That claim sits uneasily with the IHRA definition’s own caveat that criticism of Israel comparable to criticism of any other country is not antisemitic.

Deep Ties to Teacher Union Infrastructure

The influence these activists wield extends far beyond a single webinar. Winograd leads a pro-Palestine caucus within the California Teachers Association. Carrasco Cardona ran for UTLA AFT vice president in the 2025–2026 election, losing narrowly with 49.24% of the vote, 118 votes behind the winner. She works in the CTA’s Human Rights Department training educators on “social justice” and received the CTA’s Human Rights Award in 2022 for developing the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

Her colleague Ron Gochez, a founding member of Union del Barrio and recipient of the CTA’s Cesar Chavez Human Rights Award, was cited by the Department of Homeland Security for remarks at an anti-ICE protest, “They [ICE] are not the only ones with guns in this city. Don’t forget that.” In a 2002 letter to a student newspaper, Gochez wrote about the “Jewish-owned media” that “continue[s] to blind the masses with propaganda.”

CODEPINK has separately faced Republican congressional scrutiny over alleged foreign-influence ties, including questions about Neville Roy Singham-linked funding networks, and Medea Benjamin has denied wrongdoing while acknowledging scrutiny over a March 2026 Cuba trip.

The Pathway Into Classrooms

Share My Lesson provides a national, AFT-branded distribution channel for user-uploaded classroom materials, including activist-created lessons promoted through the CODEPINK webinar. By allowing unvetted uploads from activists like Winograd, the platform gives radical materials the imprimatur of a national teachers union representing 1.8 million members. The materials go beyond neutral background instruction, presenting anti-Zionist advocacy in classroom-ready form and, in at least one lesson discussed during the webinar, asking students to create social media-style content around the assigned political framework. And they do it under the banner of America’s second-largest teachers union.

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A new academic study published in Modern Judaism, an Oxford University Press journal, finds no evidence for an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was involved in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. The theory gained traction online around the March 2025 release of JFK assassination records, falsely alleging that AIPAC orchestrated Kennedy’s murder to avoid being forced to register as a foreign agent.

The study, authored by Kobby Barda, examines the 1963 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings led by Senator J. William Fulbright and concludes that the available record contains “no evidence whatsoever linking AIPAC, its leadership, or any pro-Israel group to the assassination.”

The conspiracy theory hinges on temporal proximity: In 1963, Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee examined the Jewish Agency’s U.S. activities, its relationship with the American Zionist Council, and whether payments connected to Isaiah Kenen’s Near East Report raised FARA-registration issues for the pro-Israel organizational network.

Three months later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Antisemitic conspiracy theorists have since claimed AIPAC orchestrated the killing to prevent regulatory action against the broader pro-Israel organizational network.

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What the Declassified Files Actually Reveal

Barda’s study argues that the available archival record contains no evidence linking AIPAC, its leadership, or any pro-Israel group to Kennedy’s assassination. The declassified materials that conspiracy theorists promoted as potential proof contain no connection to Kennedy’s death, according to multiple independent analyses. One widely circulated claim cited a 1954 memo about CIA officer James Angleton’s work with Israeli intelligence, which predated the assassination by nearly a decade and contained no relevant information.

The Fulbright hearings focused on whether the American Zionist Council served as a “conduit” for the Jewish Agency, which Fulbright considered an arm of the Israeli government. Between 1955 and 1962, the AZC received $1.5 million from the Jewish Agency. Of particular interest to investigators: $38,000 the Jewish Agency paid for subscriptions to the Near East Report, a newsletter founded by Kenen that became a key information source for members of Congress and journalists covering Middle Eastern affairs.

The FARA Question: Examining the Organizational Structure

The hearings examined Kenen’s dual role as executive director of AIPAC, originally organized as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AZPAC) and his financial relationship with the AZC. Kenen testified in a written affidavit that he ceased working for the AZC in July 1960, ending his $100-per-week salary as a lecturer. AZC purchases of Near East Report subscriptions ended in 1962, before the hearings began on August 2, 1963.

Barda’s research examined whether the organizational relationships required FARA registration by analyzing four questions: whether AIPAC operated under Israeli government control, whether the Near East Report served as a money-laundering mechanism, whether AIPAC functioned independently from the AZC and Jewish Agency, and whether intentional coordination existed to circumvent registration requirements.

The study found that subscriptions purchased by the AZC never exceeded 23% of the Near East Report‘s total circulation at its peak, indicating the publication operated with diverse revenue sources. A 1957 report shows Kenen actively pursuing individual subscriptions and organizational sales to groups like the Histadrut labor federation, treating the newsletter as a commercial product rather than a funding conduit.

The Case for FARA Registration

Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, has argued that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent based on the 1963 hearings. Smith’s research, which helped declassify the hearing transcripts through transparency laws, contends the Jewish Agency’s funding of AZC activities—including the $38,000 for Near East Report subscriptions—constituted foreign government support that mandated FARA registration for organizations in the network.

During the hearings, Senator Fulbright questioned Jewish Agency director Isadore Hamlin about the payment structure. When Fulbright asked why $38,000 went to the Near East Report, Hamlin insisted the agency paid the AZC for subscriptions, not Kenen directly. Fulbright’s sarcastic response—”You are geniuses, far beyond any person I have ever seen”—suggested skepticism about the organizational separation.

Barda’s study found evidence of institutional independence: AIPAC was established in March 1954 with its own leadership structure, including representatives from Hadassah, Hapoel Hamizrachi, the Labor Zionist Organization, and other groups. The organization also demonstrated policy independence from Israeli government preferences, including a documented 1952 instance when Kenen rejected Ambassador Abba Eban’s recommendation for direct earmarked aid, favoring instead a broader regional approach to secure congressional support.

Why This Conspiracy Theory Emerged Now

Unlike traditional JFK assassination theories involving the CIA, mafia, or anti-Castro Cubans—which emerged in the 1960s—the AIPAC theory appeared decades later in the social media age. The conspiracy gained traction specifically around the March 2025 release of declassified files, with antisemites searching documents “for any mention of Jews or Israel being involved.”

Another recurring claim cites a JFK record involving Homer S. Echevarria, a Cuban exile involved in illegal-arms discussions, whose reported remark about “new backers” has been used online to imply Jewish involvement. But the House Select Committee on Assassinations treated the episode as part of anti-Castro Cuban threat leads, not as evidence of AIPAC, Israeli, or Jewish involvement in Kennedy’s murder.

AIPAC’s Strategic Founding

Kenen founded AIPAC with a deliberate strategy to avoid FARA registration. He established the organization as a non-profit ineligible for tax-deductible donations—allowing it to register as a domestic lobbying group rather than a foreign agent. The founding principle: “Embassies talked to the State Department, and American voters talked to their congressman. An American lobbyist should work for an American Organization.”

The Barda study concludes that AIPAC continued operating as a domestic lobbying organization without registering under FARA, directly contradicting the conspiracy theory’s premise that the organization faced imminent loss of its lobbying license in 1963.

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The Justice Department unsealed a five-count criminal complaint on June 17, 2026, charging Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, 38, of San Diego — a naturalized U.S. citizen — with terrorism, sanctions-evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements in connection with a scheme that allegedly raised $600,000 through fraudulent humanitarian appeals and funneled the proceeds to Hamas.

According to the complaint, Sabassi exploited the October 7, 2023, massacres to solicit donations from around the world including donors in the United States and New York, then sent approximately $116,000 directly to a Hamas member while attempting to convert another $382,000 into cryptocurrency for transfer through Gaza Now — the Hamas-linked propaganda and fundraising network.

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“Ikram”: A California Nonprofit Linked to Terror Funding

Since at least 2022, the complaint alleges, Sabassi operated a California-registered nonprofit called Ikram — The Arab Charity Foundation Inc. as the public face of his fundraising operation. Records with the California Secretary of State’s Office list Sabassi as the organization’s chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and secretary — its sole officer. “Ikram” is an Arabic word meaning honor, hospitality, or generosity: a name calibrated to signal legitimacy to international donors moved by Gaza’s suffering.

In practice, according to federal prosecutors, it was a vehicle for something else entirely. Sabassi used the Ikram banner across social media platforms and crowdfunding websites to solicit donations he claimed would deliver humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. Court documents reviewed by the FBI reveal that Sabassi and an unnamed co-conspirator privately joked about naming their fundraiser after Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, before choosing the less conspicuous Ikram brand to avoid scrutiny.

Following the Money

Between December 2023 and February 2024, the complaint states, Sabassi raised approximately $600,000 through online campaigns. Federal prosecutors trace the money along three documented outflows, each documented in the criminal filing.

The most direct transfer sent approximately $116,000 to a Hamas operative, according to the DOJ press release. The second and largest channel attempted to convert $382,000 in funds into cryptocurrency for transmission to Hamas through Gaza Now — a platform the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity in March 2024, alongside its founder and two UK-based partner companies. A third channel, identified in the complaint, directed a portion of donor funds to Sabassi’s own expenses.

The Gaza Now Network

The DOJ press release notes that Gaza Now and two of Sabassi’s alleged co-conspirators were designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists in March 2024. Those co-conspirators are Mustafa Ayash — founder and director of Gaza Now, a Palestinian national who operated from Linz, Austria — and Aozma Sultana, the UK-based director of Al-Qureshi Executives and Aakhirah Limited, two companies that donated thousands of dollars to Gaza Now and co-promoted its Hamas fundraising campaigns.

As Jewish Onliner reported in September 2025, Ayash’s Gaza Now network exploded in reach after October 7, 2023, growing from roughly 344,000 Telegram subscribers to nearly 1.9 million by November of that year. Blockchain analysis by Chainalysis revealed that Gaza Now’s designated cryptocurrency wallets — spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, and multiple USDT addresses — had received nearly $4.5 million in digital assets before the US and UK crackdown. Ayash was detained by Dutch authorities at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in September 2025 and faced extradition to Austria.

Propaganda, Arrests, and What Comes Next

The complaint documents Sabassi’s role as a Hamas propagandist alongside his fundraising operation. Prosecutors allege he produced a one-hour video compilation of the October 7 massacres and posted it to at least two social media accounts — and republished it on the attacks’ two-year anniversary.

The investigation involved the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces in both New York and San Diego, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The prosecution is being handled by the SDNY’s Illicit Finance and Money Laundering Unit alongside its National Security and International Narcotics Unit, with assistance from the DOJ’s National Security Division Counterterrorism Section.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant exploited the barbaric acts of terror perpetrated on October 7, 2023, to attract donors to his fraudulent ‘humanitarian’ causes,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “He allegedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through this scheme, which he then funneled to Hamas to help finance that group’s terror and violence and to line his own pockets.”

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Editor's note: This is the inaugural 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.

Tarbiyah, the Islamic Circle of North America’s program for spiritual growth, learning, and service, operates within ICNA, which appears as entry 26 in an appendix to a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum titled “A List of Our Organizations and the Organizations of Our Friends.”

Founded in 1968 as Halqa-e-Ahbab-e-Islami and renamed the Islamic Circle of North America in 1977, ICNA emerged from a South Asian Muslim network that researchers have linked to Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami movement. ICNA says it now holds weekly or monthly events via its 300 NeighborNets across the United States and Canada.

A 2010 ICNA Sisters Wing members’ handbook describes a five-stage model of Islamic movement work that culminates in “the establishment of a Khilafah [Caliphate].” The document presents Tarbiyah as a long-term process of religious education, personal development, and collective organizing in pursuit of what ICNA’s charter calls Iqamat-ud-Deen, or the establishment of an Islamic system of life across individual, social, economic, and political spheres. The 2010 handbook also included works by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, ideologue Sayyid Qutb, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The Tarbiyah Machine

The Tarbiyah Department provides members with what it calls “essential knowledge of the Quran, Sunnah, Fiqh, Arabic, Islamic history, the Islamic movement and similar subjects.” That last phrase — “the Islamic movement” — appears throughout ICNA’s internal documents as shorthand for the global Islamist project to replace secular governments with Islamic states governed by Sharia law.

In its review of a 2010 ICNA Sisters Wing members’ manual, the Investigative Project on Terrorism described a structured process through which prospective members advance through reading assignments, peer follow-up, personal evaluation forms, and an oath for Members of the General Assembly.

IPT characterized portions of the reading material as extremist and argued that the system was designed to reinforce commitment to ICNA’s stated goals and methodology.

Stage One: The Extremist Reading List

Entry-level ICNA members face a striking curriculum. The organization’s required reading list for basic members includes texts by figures whose works have inspired violent extremism worldwide:

Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, was among the authors included in the 2010 ICNA Sisters Wing manual’s reading lists. The manual listed his Towards Understanding Islam under “Eman & Faith.” In its discussion of jihad, the book states that if no Muslims undertake it, “everybody is guilty,” adding that this obligation applies collectively except when an Islamic state is attacked by a non-Muslim power.

In 2010, Bangladesh’s government ordered mosques and libraries to remove Maududi’s works, with officials citing concerns that the books encouraged militancy and extremism.

Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose movement the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum identified ICNA as part of. ICNA’s 2003 Leadership Development Seminar featured a session titled “Gone but Not Forgotten: Imam Hassan al-Banna and Mawlana Mawdudi,” praising them as “two gigantic Islamic figures of this century that revived Islam and attracted millions of youth across the globe.”

Shamim Siddiqi, ICNA’s former Director of Dawah and Publications, whose book The Commitment — mandatory for all members — declares: “Islam denies all authorities other than Allah.”

Siddiqi’s text argues that Muslims living in America have only three valid options: establish Islam personally and socially, join a group struggling for “Iqamatuddin” (establishment of Islamic rule), or specifically join ICNA. “It would be a crime,” he writes, “to remain indolent for Islam and be the integral part of the BATIL [falsehood] society.”

Members also study Fathi Yakan’s To Be A Muslim, which the Investigative Project on Terrorism notes “declares that ‘true commitment requires every Muslim to dedicate his or her life in a jihad to establish and maintain a system of Islamic governance.’”

Stage Two: The Oath and Advanced Texts

Those who advance to become Members of the General Assembly (MGAs) — ICNA’s inner circle — must take a formal oath that include: “I affirm that the establishment of Allah’s Deen in this world is the goal of my life. I am joining ICNA for the achievement of this very purpose. I have no other objective in mind except the attainment of Allah’s pleasure and the success in the Hereafter.”

For prospective Members of the General Assembly, the 2010 manual directs participants to read at least two works from each category on an expanded reading list. Among the titles listed are Sayyid Qutb’s In the Shade of the Qur’an and Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase. Qutb was a Muslim Brotherhood writer whose ideas later influenced jihadist figures including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported that a 2003 Tarbiyah guide, then hosted on ICNA’s website, reproduced passages from Qaradawi’s book, including a section describing “the Work of Struggle (Jihad)” as aimed at “liberating Muslim land” and fighting forces opposed to “the Islamic Call and the Muslim Nation.”

A System of Peer Accountability

The 2010 ICNA Sisters Wing manual describes a buddy system and personal-evaluation process through which participants tracked aspects of their religious practice, received follow-up from peers, and submitted reports for guidance from unit leaders.

The Buddy System (Muwakha): Members are paired as a “single unit” to “monitor and help each other.” The 2010 manual instructs buddies to conduct weekly follow-ups, “detect shortcomings,” and provide “nasiha” (advice) to encourage “repentance or behavioral correction.” Experienced members mentor newcomers, creating a hierarchical monitoring network throughout the organization.

Individual Report Forms: The 2010 manual instructs members to complete monthly personal-evaluation forms tracking religious practice and movement participation, including daily prayers, Quran recitation, study, memorization, Dawah activity, and engagement in collective programs. The forms were shared with a Unit Coordinator for advice and comments and included a category for “Native Sisters,” which the manual defines as American, non-immigrant women and says should receive particular attention in efforts to incorporate them into the Islamic movement.

Taken together, the forms provide unit leaders with a record of participants’ religious practice, study, Dawah activity, and engagement in the organization’s collective programs. They also illustrate how the 2010 manual linked individual religious development to broader participation in ICNA’s stated movement objectives.

The Five-Stage Plan

The 2010 ICNA Sisters Wing manual lays out what it calls “Levels of work by the Islamic Movement” — a five-stage plan to achieve a global caliphate:

Stage 1 — Individual Level: Members undergo the “Tarbiyah Process,” studying the extremist texts outlined above. The manual explains this stage involves “radical literature promoting Islam in place of Western systems.”

Stage 2 — Family Level: Members work to establish Islamic rule within their households, described as “the second level of Iqamat-ad-Deen.”

Stage 3 — Societal Level: At the societal level, the manual describes ICNA’s work as combining public outreach, social services, and Dawah directed toward non-Muslims. It identifies WhyIslam as a subdivision of the Dawah Department that “works to promote Islam among non-Muslims,” while also instructing members to describe the initiative’s public purpose as building “a bridge of understanding” with non-Muslims.

Stage 4 — State Level: When “a good part of the society’s thinking individuals join the movement,” the manual states, “Then it may move to establish an Islamic society, obedient to Allah’s commands.”

Stage 5 — Global Level: “Wherever the Islamic movement succeeds to establish true Islamic society,” the handbook declares, “they will form coalitions and alliances. This will lead to the unity of the Ummah and towards the establishment of a Khilafah [Caliphate].”

ICNA describes itself as part of a global phenomenon: “Islamic movements are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America.”

The Elite Training Ground

For members who progress through Tarbiyah’s basic stages, ICNA operates advanced leadership programs. ICNA Chicago’s Murabbi Development Program describes itself as a three-year course in Islamic literacy and activism, with about five hours of weekly study. Separately, ICNA’s education page says its Chicago Islamic Studies program was based on the curriculum of Al-Azhar’s Secondary College, located in Cairo.

The program explicitly trains for “activism,” not just religious education. Its goal is to develop “Islamic literate activists” who can “lead community efforts” and engage in “activist work to benefit the community, spread the message of Islam, and combat anti-Islamic efforts.”

Students spend five hours per week studying Hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, theology, and — tellingly — “Islamic Personality Development,” a subject focused on cultivating the character traits ICNA deems necessary for its movement work. The program has been taught by scholars including Imam Suhaib Webb and trains what ICNA describes as “a new caliber of Muslim leaders.”

ICNA’s Islamic Learning Foundation, which oversees these programs nationally, has reached more than 75,000 people across the United States through seminars, workshops, and intensive classes.

The Organizational Framework Behind Tarbiyah

ICNA’s Tarbiyah materials portray a structured framework of study, personal evaluation, peer accountability, and leadership formation in service of Iqamat-ud-Deen. Placed alongside ICNA’s listing as entry 26 in the appendix to the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum, those materials show how the organization’s approach to member formation draws on concepts long associated with Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Islamist organizing in North America.

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On May 19, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions targeting individuals and organizations affiliated with Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The designations targeted leadership of the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA)—which OFAC designated as a Hamas front organization on January 21, 2026—as well as leaders of Samidoun, designated as a PFLP front group.

A review by Jewish Onliner identified public-facing accounts associated with several designated individuals and entities that appeared accessible as of June 18, 2026. Their continued visibility raises questions about how major platforms identify, restrict, and review accounts connected to OFAC-designated parties.

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Accounts Linked to Sanctioned Figures Remain Accessible

Saif Abukishek, a Spanish-Swedish national and member of the PCPA’s General Secretariat, maintains an Instagram profile bearing a blue verification checkmark. Abukishek also operates a Facebook profile and an X account opened in September 2015 and based in Catalonia, Spain.

Hisham Abu Mahfuz, who OFAC identifies as the acting Secretary General and President of the PCPA based in Jordan, maintains two personal LinkedIn profiles, as well as a public Facebook account. LinkedIn is operated within Microsoft’s corporate structure, while Facebook is part of Meta’s family of applications.

Jaldia Abubakra Aueda, identified by OFAC as Samidoun’s coordinator in Madrid and instrumental in establishing a Samidoun partner organization in 2021, maintains a public Instagram account.

The Palestinian Scholars Association (PSA), designated by OFAC for having acted on behalf of Hamas, operates multiple active accounts: a YouTube channel, an X account bearing a blue checkmark, a WhatsApp contact associated with a Turkish phone number (+90 535 974 7464), and a public Facebook page. The organization also maintains a website hosted by Cloudflare.

Business Operations of Saif Abukishek

Spanish corporate records show that Cyber Neptune S.L. began operations in Barcelona on May 13, 2025. The company was initially registered for real-estate activities. On August 22, 2025, Saif Abukishek was appointed sole administrator, and the company’s corporate purpose was changed to maritime cargo and passenger transport. OFAC separately identified Abukishek as a member of the steering committee of the flotilla targeted in its May 19 action.

According to Abukishek’s Facebook, he also maintains employment as a customer service manager at Cooltra Mobility, a European electric scooter and bicycle fleet operator with tens of thousands of vehicles across Europe.

Platform Compliance Requirements Under Sanctions Law

An OFAC designation generally blocks all property and interests in property of a designated person or entity that are in the United States or within the possession or control of U.S. persons. Unless an exemption or OFAC authorization applies, U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions involving those blocked persons or their property interests.

That framework can extend to services provided by U.S. persons, including services performed in the United States or by U.S. persons abroad. For major technology companies, services such as paid verification, monetization, advertising, promotional tools, cloud services, account-management products, and other business offerings may therefore create sanctions-compliance concerns when provided to an OFAC-designated individual or entity.

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When the Hamas front group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor announced the closure of its Gaza office on June 16 after nearly 15 years of operations, it claimed that an Israeli campaign of “threats, defamation, and punitive measures” had made field operations untenable.

Euro-Med framed each contraction as a response to Israeli hostility, even as the timing aligned with mounting scrutiny of the organization’s alleged Hamas ties and a European terrorism-financing case that pointed back to its founder, Ramy Abdu.

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A Multi-City Retreat in Three Weeks

The scale of Euro-Med’s retreat was broader than the Gaza announcement alone suggested. On May 27, after Israeli authorities moved to bar nearly 40 Euro-Med staff members and affiliates from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories, the organization announced what it called “exceptional and involuntary measures.” Those measures included staff reductions, suspension of its central office in Geneva, closure of its offices in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, a reduction in field activity, and a shift toward virtual operations.

The institutional retreat began in the weeks after Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism released a May 13 report arguing that Euro-Med operates as a “multi-channel mechanism” for Hamas-linked influence operations, combining legal advocacy, media campaigns, and digital activism.

Italian Case Files Pointed Back to Euro-Med’s Founder

The Israeli ministry report arrived while a separate legal proceeding in Europe had already produced its own disclosures. In December 2025, Italian authorities arrested nine people linked to Hamas-financing charities based in Genoa and Milan, on charges of funneling approximately €7–8 million to Hamas.

Reporting on the Italian case also identified Mohammed Saleh Ismail Abdu, Ramy Abdu’s brother, as a figure prosecutors allegedly linked to the alias “Abu Khaled.” Prosecutors allege he transferred €462,700 to Hamas and sought to arrange meetings in Doha with then-Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh. The network allegedly operated through the Palestinian Solidarity Charity, or ABSPP, whose president, Mohammad Hannoun, was sanctioned by the United States as an Italy-based Hamas financier accused of using the charity to bankroll Hamas’s military wing.

The Tribunal of Genoa’s pre-trial detention order, documented by NGO Monitor, named Ramy Abdu as Euro-Med Monitor’s founder and listed his place of residence as Istanbul, Turkey — not Geneva, where the organization is officially registered and where it has now suspended operations.

HonestReporting further found that a file on the ABSPP’s server, believed to reference Abdu, showed more than $1.1 million received and approximately $1.2 million transferred outward through the network. The Istanbul listing is notable because U.S. sanctions materials have separately identified Hamas-linked financial activity involving Türkiye. Euro-Med Monitor has not publicly addressed the court filing or the Istanbul residence listing.

A Predecessor Entity Already Designated Terrorist

A detail that received little attention when the current scandal broke: according to NGO Monitor, Euro-Med’s leadership traces back to a closely related predecessor entity, Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, which Israel banned in 2015 as an “unauthorized association” and later designated under its Counter-Terrorism Law.

That history allowed Euro-Med Monitor to operate internationally under a separate name while a closely related predecessor entity carried an Israeli terrorism designation, a record that NGO Monitor says went largely unrecognized in mainstream coverage of the organization.

Euro-Med’s Response

Euro-Med’s response to the mounting scrutiny has followed a consistent pattern: recast the allegations as part of an Israeli-orchestrated defamation campaign. Its June 16 statement dismissed the accusations as “baseless political accusations,” while its May 27 announcement claimed the organization was facing “a systematic Israeli campaign of disinformation, defamation, incitement, and direct and indirect threats.”

Board chair Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton, published an open letter calling the Hamas allegations “false” — without addressing the Italian court proceedings, the predecessor organization’s terrorism designation, or the Istanbul residence disclosure. Neither Falk’s letter nor any Euro-Med statement has directly engaged this documented record.

The practical consequences of the reframing strategy have been significant. HonestReporting said it documented 104 citations of Euro-Med as a credible source across 28 major outlets — including CNN, the Associated Press, and The New York Times — between March 2025 and May 2026.

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Jewish Onliner’s Discord is a space for readers to follow important developments as they unfold and connect with a community committed to thoughtful discussion and meaningful action around antisemitism, extremism, disinformation, and related issues.

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Five men charged in an alleged plot to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House discussed targeting pro-Israel lawmakers and circulated images that federal investigators said appeared to come from TrackAIPAC.com, an anti-AIPAC database that tracks lawmakers’ support from pro-Israel political groups.

The FBI disrupted the alleged scheme ahead of the June 14 event, which drew President Trump, thousands of spectators, and multiple lawmakers to the White House South Lawn. According to federal complaints, Ohio defendant Tycen Proper, 19, identified Senator Marsha Blackburn as a possible target because of her support from the “pro Israel lobby,” while other filings referenced a broader list that included Senator Tom Cotton and West Virginia Delegate Tristan Leavitt.

Proper later shared images of Senator Jim Justice, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Representative Carol Miller, and Representative Riley Moore that investigators said appeared to include TrackAIPAC data on money received from pro-Israel PACs.

From TikTok to Target Lists

The plot began in March 2026 when members of a TikTok group called “Vanguard of the Old” migrated to the encrypted app Signal to plan what they called a revolution. A signal chat with approximately 19 participants organized themselves into military-style “tiers” — ground operators, drone pilots, logistics personnel, and social media influencers — and began mapping an attack on Washington, D.C.

On May 13, Proper messaged the group: “I got a possible target Marsha Blackburn is senator for Tennessee.” When asked why they should target her, he responded: “She’s taken money from the Israel pro Israel lobby and supports them.”

Two weeks later, Proper sent images of four more targets: Senator Jim Justice, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Representative Carol Miller, and Representative Riley Moore. According to the FBI affidavit, “The four images of these members of Congress appear to have been taken from the website ‘TrackAIPAC.com’ and appear to include information about how much money each Congressperson received ‘from pro-Israel PACS.’”

The conspirators’ broader target list included Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Elon Musk, and multiple members of Congress — focused on those with ties to the pro-Israel lobby.

The Plan: Drones, Snipers, and “High Value Targets”

According to federal complaints, the group discussed staging a “demonstration” near the White House as part of a broader attack plan involving drones, explosives, and sniper positions around the event area. Investigators allege the plan envisioned using drones to trigger an explosion and force attendees to flee, at which point armed members of the group would target “high value targets,” including politicians and wealthy attendees.

FBI agents discovered the plot on June 10 after Proper’s mother contacted local police, alarmed by her son’s recent firearms purchases and communications with an online extremist group. Proper had spent approximately $3,000 of graduation money on tactical gear, body armor, rifles, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Family members told investigators he had recently made sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posted antisemitic remarks on Facebook.

Search warrants executed across four states yielded weapons, ammunition, tactical equipment, and detailed maps showing sniper positions and drone launch points around the White House. The alleged tactical leader, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez of Nebraska — known online as “Shepherd” — had identified an old church as a potential safe zone.

Meet Track AIPAC: The Squad-Linked Database

Track AIPAC launched in April 2024 as an anonymous X account and quickly amassed over 100,000 followers with viral “red card” graphics featuring politicians’ faces against blood-red backgrounds alongside dollar amounts received from “pro-Israel lobby” groups. The platform tracks contributions from AIPAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, the Republican Jewish Coalition, J Street, and related organizations.

Co-founders Cory Archibald and Casey Kennedy operated anonymously until November 2025, when they revealed their identities after alleged doxxing threats. Archibald disclosed she had worked as a campaign staffer for Ocasio-Cortez, Bush, and Bowman — all members of the anti-Israel “Squad” who have faced primary challenges heavily funded by AIPAC.

Horseshoe Theory in Action

The case highlights an unusual overlap between violent anti-government extremism and anti-AIPAC activist data. Federal investigators allege that members of the group discussed accelerationist ideas, including the belief that violence could help trigger broader societal collapse, while also drawing on publicly available material from TrackAIPAC, an anti-AIPAC platform tied to progressive Democratic campaign circles.

Track AIPAC has faced criticism for inflammatory rhetoric, including calling pro-Israel politicians “Israel First traitor[s] to America” and describing Israel as an “evil, malignant force.” After American-Israeli soldier Itay Chen’s remains were released from Gaza, the account posted: “Itay Chen was an American-Israeli citizen who chose to join the Israeli military to partake in ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

Instagram suspended TrackAIPAC’s account in February 2026, reportedly over an intellectual-property complaint, before later restoring it.

“We Will Not Be Deterred”

Senator Marsha Blackburn, whom Proper specifically named as a target, called the threat “chilling” but vowed to continue serving. “I will not let maniacs like this one deter me from celebrating or serving this great nation, and I am grateful to law enforcement for keeping us safe,” she wrote.

FBI Director Kash Patel praised the multi-state investigation: “Thanks to the rapid action of this FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold.”

The five defendants face varying federal charges, including conspiracy-to-murder-related counts. DOJ said convictions on conspiracy to commit murder could carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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Pakhuis de Zwijger, a prominent Amsterdam venue, listed Saif Abu Keshek as a speaker at its June 11 program, “Solidarity in Sync: Navigating a Unified Strategy.” Less than a month earlier, the U.S. Treasury had sanctioned him as a leader or official of the U.S.-designated Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, also known as the PCPA, and identified him as a central figure on the flotilla’s Steering Committee.

Dutch journalist Carel Brendel pointed out that Amin Abou Rashed was present at the event alongside Abu Keshek. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Abou Rashed in June 2025, describing him as a “top Hamas operative in Europe” responsible for raising millions of dollars for Hamas through sham charities.

A Mainstream Venue, a Strategic Activist Forum

Pakhuis de Zwijger described the event as a “crucial convergence” designed to connect “politicians, legal minds, academics and grassroots organisers” into a coordinated strategy for the “global Palestine movement.”

The venue’s page said the evening would welcome home the “Sumudees,” the participants of the Global Sumud Flotilla, and would connect their “seafaring resistance” to political and legal advocacy.

In addition to Abu Keshek, other listed speakers included Gerard Jonkman, director at The Rights Forum; Diederick van den Ende of Greenpeace Netherlands; and musician Rana Hmeida.

Treasury’s Allegations Against Abu Keshek

The U.S. Treasury announced sanctions on May 19 against four individuals it said were associated with what it called a “pro-Hamas flotilla” organized by the PCPA, which Washington had already designated. Treasury said Hamas relies on “a diverse web of international partners” to expand political influence and support its activity abroad.

In the same release, Treasury identified Saif Hashim Kamel Abukishek as a Spain-based member of the PCPA General Secretariat and “a central figure” in the flotilla, serving on its Steering Committee. The designation blocked property under U.S. jurisdiction and generally prohibited U.S. persons from transactions involving him.

The Abou Rashed Connection

Abou Rashed’s appearance alongside Abu Keshek added a controversial dimension to the event. OFAC sanctioned Amin Abu Rashed on June 10, 2025, identifying him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist linked to Hamas.

Treasury separately alleged that Amin Ghazi Abu Rashed was a “top Hamas operative in Europe” responsible for raising millions of dollars for Hamas through sham charities. The release focused on the Netherlands-based Israa Charitable Foundation Netherlands, which Treasury said was part of the Union of Good, a U.S.-designated umbrella organization accused of generating revenue for Hamas under humanitarian cover.

A Sanctions Gap in Plain Sight

The Amsterdam event underscores a practical limit of U.S. sanctions: designation by Washington does not automatically bar a person from attending public events in Europe. That leaves institutions and organizers to assess whether sanctioned figures were invited, registered, paid, reimbursed or otherwise supported through event-related services.

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A three-part online workshop series titled “Karbala and the Ethos of Shi’i Resistance” will examine how historical Shi’i narratives are framed as a “living moral and political framework” for contemporary struggles, led by a speaker whose social media posts have connected the Karbala framework to the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and Lebanon.

The series, scheduled for June 21, June 28, and July 5, 2026, will be led by Jalees Hyder, a Portland-based writer and New York University graduate, and organized by the anonymous collective Workshops4Gaza.

All proceeds are slated to go to the Sameer Project, a London-based Gaza aid initiative whose April 2024 GoFundMe campaign was shut down after raising $250,000. According to The Progressive, GoFundMe told founder Hala Sabbah the campaign violated its terms of service and refunded the donations.

In Instagram posts promoting the workshops, Hyder has featured images of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Imam Musa al-Sadr—a cleric who mobilized Lebanon’s Shia population in the 1970s—and other figures associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the ideological foundations of Hezbollah.

The Upcoming Workshop Series and Its Ideology

The workshop materials describe the series as exploring “the origins and enduring ethos of Shi’i resistance, a framework rooted in the spirit of Karbala.” Participants will be told they are examining “martyrdom, sacrifice, steadfastness” and learning “how a historical stance against injustice transformed into a living moral and political framework.” The promotional posts explicitly state that attendees will receive “anti-imperialist readings” on Shia history.

The workshops will focus on the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE, when Imam Hussain refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazid and was killed along with his companions. In Shia Islam, this event symbolizes resistance against tyranny and has been invoked by various movements, including Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Hyder has drawn explicit contemporary connections in a series of Instagram posts that have received over 31,000 likes. The posts feature images of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic; Imam Musa al-Sadr, whose disappearance in 1978 came after he helped organize Lebanon’s Shia community; and Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, executed by Saddam Hussein in 1980.

One promotional slide featured an image of Hassan Nasrallah, the late Hezbollah secretary-general, followed by another with text stating: 'Shia resistance did not begin with Iran, Hezbollah, or any modern state. It began in Karbala, in 680 CE, when Imam Husayn ibn Ali (AS) refused to give allegiance to Yazid.' The post accumulated over 31,000 likes.

“Shia resistance did not begin in Tehran. It began in Karbala,” Hyder wrote in February 2024. “When Shias stand with Palestine, Lebanon, Bosnia, or Armenia, this is not a foreign policy calculation. It is Karbala’s logic moving through history.”

The Anonymous Collective and Its Network

Workshops4Gaza has described itself as an anonymous collective, writing in one Substack post: “We are a collective. We are anonymous on purpose.” The group has also said its members work remotely from different cities and that it is not a business, charity or nonprofit. Since May 2024, the group has raised over $300,000 through various workshops and events.

The collective actively directs supporters to Open Books: A Poem Emporium through a “bookstore” link on their main website. The Seattle-based poetry shop operates a dedicated “Bookshop for Gaza“ page that channels all proceeds to the Sameer Project. Among the works available are books by Ghassan Kanafani, who was a spokesman, founder, and chief propagandist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terror group.

As a key member of the PFLP's political leadership, editor-in-chief of its Al-Hadf magazine, and right-hand man to founder George Habash, Kanafani shaped the group’s ideology through his Marxist essays, which justified terrorism as a form of “armed struggle.” Kanafani drafted the PFLP’s 1969 platform officially adopting Marxism-Leninism and appeared in photographs with the perpetrators of the 1972 Lod Airport massacre shortly before his death.

Other Workshop Instructors

While Hyder will lead the upcoming Karbala series, Workshops4Gaza has featured other controversial instructors in past events. In May 2025, the collective hosted Eric King, an anarchist activist who pleaded guilty to using explosive materials to commit arson after throwing Molotov cocktails at Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City office in 2014. DOJ said King was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in federal prison without parole.

Internal Controversies and Broader Connections

In October 2025, Workshops4Gaza faced internal controversy within activist circles after Eric King and other activists accused them of mishandling funds intended for political prisoner Kojo Sababu. The group published a lengthy defense, providing receipts showing they eventually transferred $2,500 to Sababu through the Jericho Movement after initial Western Union payments showed as “in progress” for months without confirmation.

Hyder has also been promoted as a speaker for a “Kashmir-Palestine solidarity” teach-in organized with MIT Taara and other partners. He is listed as a contributor to Cartography of Darkness, a platform that has also featured Mahmoud Khalil, whom the site identifies as a “Palestinian student organiser and negotiator in the 2024 Columbia Encampments for Palestine.” Khalil was detained by ICE in March 2025 and later released in June 2025 while his immigration case continued.

The documented connections span a London-based Gaza aid initiative whose GoFundMe campaign was terminated after raising $250,000, an anonymous workshop collective that says it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, a Seattle bookstore selling works by a PFLP spokesman, and instructors whose materials connect Shia resistance ideology to the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. Taken together, the overlap raises questions about transparency, oversight, and ideological framing inside the rapidly expanding Palestine solidarity fundraising ecosystem.

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The Australian Jewish Association recently shared a two-part ABC Misinformation Report compiled by the Independent Research Group and formally submitted to Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

According to the report, one of the clearest examples of the ABC’s failures involved its reliance on Euro-Med Monitor in coverage of false claims alleging that Israeli forces used dogs to sexually assault Palestinian detainees. The report argues that the broadcaster introduced Euro-Med to Australian audiences as a human rights source while omitting background information about the organization’s leadership and its alleged ties to Hamas.

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The Euro-Med Case

When ABC News cited Euro-Med Monitor in a report on alleged Palestinian prisoner mistreatment, Australian audiences were told the allegations came from a human rights organization. What the article did not disclose, was that Euro-Med founder and chairman Ramy Abdu appeared on a 2013 Israeli list of Hamas “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.

NGO Monitor has also documented Abdu’s participation in Gaza events alongside senior Hamas officials, including Osama Hamdan. Euro-Med’s Chief of Programmes and Communications, Muhammad Shehada, has also publicly posted a photograph of himself with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to NGO Monitor.

How Hamas-Linked Claims Become Human Rights Sourcing

The ABC Misinformation Report presents this as part of a wider pattern it terms “Layered Attribution Obfuscation,” or LAO: the mechanism by which claims tied to Hamas or Hamas-linked sources are repackaged through NGOs, cited by international bodies, and then amplified by mainstream media until the original source becomes difficult for audiences to identify.

By the time the claim reaches Australian audiences, it has acquired the appearance of multiple independent authorities. But the report argues that, in many cases, those authorities did not generate the underlying information themselves.

The Bassal Example

The same pattern, according to the report, applied to Mahmoud Bassal, a Gaza Civil Defence figure frequently cited in media coverage of the war. The report says the ABC had acknowledged Bassal’s Hamas affiliation in at least one article, but elsewhere continued to identify him primarily as a Civil Defence spokesperson.

The report argues that this allowed casualty claims and battlefield accounts to reach Australian audiences with the credibility of an emergency official rather than the context of a source representing a terrorist organization.

“The source is obscured. The credibility is transferred,” the report states.

About 76 Percent of Complaints Received No Substantive Response

The report’s accountability findings are equally damaging. According to the Independent Research Group, it lodged 37 formal complaints about ABC coverage after October 2023 and received no substantive response to 28 of them, a non-response rate of about 76 percent. When the Ombudsman did respond, the report argues, the pattern was often deflection rather than accountability.

The Genocide Scholars Dispute

One example involved ABC coverage describing the International Association of Genocide Scholars as a leading body of genocide scholars. The report criticized the ABC’s reliance on the group after concerns emerged about its membership process and the vote behind its Gaza genocide resolution.

ABC later corrected its reporting to clarify that only 28 percent of IAGS members participated in the vote, with 86 percent of those voters supporting the resolution. Critics, including the American Jewish Committee, argued that IAGS membership was open to non-scholars, while IAGS itself acknowledged that its membership system had been targeted by fake-name spam.

The report argues that the ABC failed to adequately explain those weaknesses to its audience. “By protecting this fraudulent report,” the dossier states, “the ABC actively promoted a group of bogus anti-Israel interlopers presenting them as world authorities to legitimise a false narrative.”

The Randa Abdel-Fattah Controversy

Part II of the report also examines the ABC’s handling of the Adelaide Writers’ Week controversy.

According to the report, several ABC-linked journalists and commentators withdrew from the festival amid a wider boycott following the removal of activist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah. Public reporting has confirmed that the festival was cancelled after a mass boycott involving roughly 180 writers and speakers.

The report names John Lyons, Laura Tingle, Louise Milligan, Jonathan Green, and David Marr among those who withdrew from the event. It argues that the withdrawals occurred in the same broader protest environment as a campaign defending Abdel-Fattah, whose public rhetoric after October 7 had drawn serious criticism.

According to the report, Abdel-Fattah celebrated the October 7 massacre on social media, adopted a Hamas paraglider image as her profile photograph, and was accused of sharing material connected to the 2024 leak of a private WhatsApp group of Jewish creative professionals. After that leak, affected members reported threats, professional consequences, business closures, and discrimination.

ABC Editorial Director Gavin Fang responded to the formal complaint by saying there was “no proof” the five withdrawals were coordinated. The report describes that response as evidence of “a protective culture that refuses to hold staff accountable for political bias.”

The report argues that the issue was not merely whether the withdrawals were formally coordinated, but whether senior ABC figures were permitted to participate in a political pressure campaign without meaningful institutional scrutiny.

Rewriting “Intifada” After Bondi

The report’s most striking example of reframing involves Grace Tame, who drew criticism in February 2026 for leading a “globalise the intifada” chant less than two months after the December 14, 2025 Bondi Beach attack, which killed 15 people at a Jewish community event. Tame also faced criticism for comments describing reports of sexual violence against Israeli women on October 7 as propaganda. The report argues that rather than confronting the full political and historical meaning of the chant, ABC coverage softened the term.

At least one ABC archive item from 2002 described the Second Intifada as “a war of suicide bombers and targeted assassinations,” linking the term directly to Hamas terrorism and the campaign of mass-casualty attacks against Israeli civilians. In 2026, the report says, the ABC recast “intifada” primarily through its Arabic meaning of “shaking off” and described it as a term associated with violent Palestinian protest.

Disproportionate Editorial Focus

The report also presents statistical evidence of disproportionate editorial focus. According to the Royal Commission submission, the report’s authors counted 539 ABC Instagram captions in 2025 about the Israel-Gaza conflict, making it the third most-covered topic on the platform.

By comparison, the report says ABC posted 197 Instagram captions about Russia-Ukraine, while Sudan, Nigeria, and other major international crises received far less attention. The report argues that the Israel-Gaza conflict received more ABC Instagram attention than every domestic issue except Donald Trump and the federal election.

A Call for External Scrutiny

AIJAC Executive Director Dr. Colin Rubenstein has welcomed the Commission’s scrutiny of the ABC, warning that “when reporting is distorted, context is omitted, or antisemitic narratives are amplified and allowed to spread unchecked, the consequences can be profound, and even lead to violence.”

The Commission’s final report is due December 14, 2026, one year to the day after the Bondi attack. The Independent Research Group’s assessment of the institution responsible for the coverage it has documented is direct: “The ABC will not fix itself. It requires serious external intervention.”

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Editor's note: This is the inaugural 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.

Young Muslims (YM) is the youth division of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which appears as item #26 in the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum on the Brotherhood’s strategic goals in North America.

Archived Young Muslims materials from before 9/11 show the organization promoted a youth event titled “Jihad Camp,” circulated reading lists featuring Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood-linked ideologues, and hosted texts containing anti-Jewish and anti-gay passages, including one describing Jews as “an avid enemy of Islam” and another defending execution for homosexual conduct to “maintain the purity of Islamic society.”

In December 2009, five young men from ICNA's Arlington, Virginia chapter traveled to Pakistan seeking to wage jihad against U.S. forces in Afghanistan — all five were convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 10 years in a Pakistani prison.

In its own charter, Young Muslims said its goal was to “seek the pleasure of Allah by educating, training and developing the Muslim youth to be Islamic workers for Iqamat-ad-Deen in North America,” a term its archived materials defined as “the Establishment of Islam in its totality.”

Taken together, Young Muslims’ archived materials, reading lists, and later controversies point to a youth network shaped by ideological currents that overlapped with broader Islamist and jihadist movements.

“Jihad Is Our Way”

Young Muslims was established in the early 1990s as ICNA’s youth wing, operating through local cells called “NeighborNets” across the United States and Canada. The “YM Personal and Collective Development Plan” describes jihad as “the highest act; sacrificing everything.” The development plan directed NeighborNet coordinators to provide members with background on “Major Islamic Events of the past and present,” including “The Jihad in Afghanistan,” the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Islamic movements in Pakistan and India, and the Muslim Brotherhood of the Arab World.

Prior to September 11, 2001, Young Muslims operated what it openly called “Jihad Camp” for youth in Pennsylvania. The organization’s internal documents state that members should be “movement oriented” — willing to “go to any spot in the world, and be able to evaluate the situation and start working accordingly” with their “priorities set, with Islamic Work on the top.”

A Reading List for Radicals

The recommended reading list for Young Muslims reveals the ideological foundation. The list included works by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, widely described as one of the Brotherhood’s leading intellectual and spiritual figures, and Jamaat-e-Islami founder Abul A‘la Maududi.

Among the materials promoted on Young Muslims’ website was Maududi’s “Towards Understanding Islam,” which frames jihad as mandatory worship: “Jihad is a part of this overall defense of Islam… in the language of the Shari’ah this word is used particularly for the war that is waged solely in the name of Allah and against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice of lives devolves on all Muslims.”

Qaradawi’s “Priorities of the Islamic Movement,” hosted in full on the Young Muslims website, calls for supporting violent jihad movements worldwide: “It is a duty to defend every land invaded by infidels… all Muslims must support them with money, arms and men as required until all their land has been liberated.”

Bigotry as Doctrine

Texts found on Young Muslims’ website included “The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam,” which suggests that executing homosexuals “maintains the purity of Islamic society and keeps it clean of perverted elements.” Another text, “The Amazing Quran” by Gary Miller, states: “It is true that many Christians and many Jews have become Muslims, but as a whole, the Jewish community is to be viewed as an avid enemy of Islam.”

The DC Five: From Arlington to Afghanistan

The five men who became known as the DC Five all knew each other from the ICNA Center mosque in Arlington, Virginia. Ramy Zamzam, 22 at the time of his arrest, was a dental student at Howard University who had worked with the mosque's youth director, Mustafa Abu Maryam, on fundraising for a new mosque. Ahmed Abdullah Minni had been on his high school wrestling team. Waqar Khan, Umar Farooq, and Aman Hassan Yemer rounded out the group. All had grown up attending youth activities at the ICNA mosque, according to reporting by NBC.

In late November 2009, the five disappeared from their homes. Before leaving, they created a farewell video titled “A Final Message” in which Zamzam’s voice declared: “When Muslim lands are invaded, when Muslim children are terrorized, when Muslim women are raped, when our brothers and sisters are attacked and killed… jihad becomes, by the consensus of the scholars, an individual obligation.”

According to an FBI affidavit, three of the men departed Dulles Airport on Nov. 28, 2009, and the remaining two left the following day, with Pakistan as their destination. Their families contacted the FBI on Dec. 1 after finding a farewell video and realizing they had disappeared. Once in Pakistan, the group sought contacts who could help them reach Afghanistan, including by approaching a mosque in Hyderabad they believed was associated with Jaish-e-Mohammed, which the affidavit described as a designated foreign terrorist organization in Pakistan. They were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities in Sargodha on Dec. 9, 2009.

Pakistani authorities charged them with conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks, planning attacks in Afghanistan, and directing others to commit terrorism. In June 2010, a Pakistani court convicted all five on terrorism charges and sentenced each to 10 years in prison. In April 2023, Zamzam pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to a terrorism charge after he and his co-defendants had spent nearly 13 years in Pakistani prison.

At his January 2010 court appearance in Pakistan, Zamzam shouted to reporters: “We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”

Not an Isolated Case

In 1997, ICNA’s publication The Message International honored Jibril Abu Adam (born Lawrence Nicolas Thomas), a young American convert killed fighting in Kashmir. The article, titled “Actions Speak Louder than Words,” celebrated his radicalization and martyrdom. At ICNA’s 1997 Southeastern Regional Convention in Atlanta, the organization presented a plaque to his family reading: “In recognition of Jibril Abu-Adam for his devotion to His Creator and his ultimate sacrifice on behalf of his fellow Muslims in Kashmir.”

ICNA’s Response

Following the DC Five arrests, ICNA and Young Muslims claimed they had no role in radicalization. Local youth director Mustafa Abu Maryam, who had worked with Zamzam on fundraising, stated: “Our group discussion never talked about politics, never talked about ongoing conflicts, never talked about fighting against anyone, indirectly or directly.”

Yet the organization’s own documents, reading lists, and history tell a different story. As Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy told the Investigative Project on Terrorism: “This theo-political ideology is the gateway drug toward violent Islamism for susceptible Muslims.”

Young Muslims continues to operate today, describing itself as “a pioneering national youth organization” focused on “companionship, mentorship, education, and service.” The most explicit archived materials cited in this article appear to be no longer accessible on the organization’s current public platforms. Yet the historical record remains significant, showing how the group once embedded youth programming in ideological frameworks influenced by Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood ideologues.

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Germany recorded 6,548 antisemitic hate crimes in 2025, marking a 5 percent increase from the previous year’s 6,236 incidents, according to newly released federal crime statistics published by the German Interior Ministry. The data reveals a troubling pattern of antisemitic offenses recorded across multiple politically motivated crime categories, including offenses connected to the Israel-Palestine conflict

The statistics cover all 16 German states and were compiled through the Criminal Police Reporting Service for Politically Motivated Crime, known as KPMD-PMK. They document the scale and distribution of police-recorded antisemitic offenses, providing a comprehensive official picture of hate-crime trends in Europe’s largest economy.

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Antisemitism Across Multiple Ideological Categories

The antisemitic offenses were recorded across several categories in Germany’s Politically Motivated Crime system, known as PMK. Offenses classified as right-wing politically motivated crime accounted for the largest share, at 46.67 percent. They were followed by offenses classified under foreign ideology, at 35.02 percent, a category used for foreign-origin ideological motivations and conflict-related political activity. Offenses classified under religious ideology, which can include Islamist motivations, accounted for 9.36 percent.

The distribution underscores how antisemitic offenses in Germany cut across multiple ideological milieus, from right-wing extremism to foreign-ideology and religious-ideology contexts. While right-wing politically motivated crime remains the largest category, the data shows that antisemitism is not confined to one extremist current.

Pro-Palestine Activism and Antisemitic Hate Crimes Overlap

The data documents a significant category of incidents classified as “resonance crimes” related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In total, 7,073 politically motivated crimes were recorded under the “Israel/Palestine” thematic field in 2025, down 3.48 percent from 7,328 in 2024. However, 68.61 percent of these incidents were attributed to “foreign ideology.”

Critically, 3,089 of the 7,073 Israel-Palestine related incidents also carried the antisemitic classification, indicating substantial overlap between pro-Palestine activism and antisemitic hate crimes.

Within this subset, police recorded 540 violent incidents in 2025, down from 793 in 2024. These included 157 assaults and 291 acts of resistance against police during demonstrations. The data indicates protest activity with significant violence potential, particularly during peak periods following major international events.

Hamas-Related Offenses

German authorities documented 880 criminal offenses under the “Hamas” thematic field in 2025, a 9.59 percent increase from 803 in 2024. The vast majority—66.48 percent—were classified as “religious ideology” motivated crimes, while 26.48 percent fell under “foreign ideology.” These crimes centered on propaganda distribution (469 cases) and property damage (149 cases), alongside 82 instances of threatening communications.

The rise indicates an increase in police-recorded offenses carrying a Hamas reference or thematic marker, especially propaganda-related offenses, with 833 of the 880 Hamas-related incidents also tagged with Israel-Palestine thematic markers.

Digital Radicalization

The statistics reveal that 10,542 politically motivated crimes were committed via “hate posting” on the internet in 2025, a 1.77 percent decrease from 10,732 in 2024. However, the data shows marked increases in certain categories: left-wing activists’ hate posts jumped 67.62 percent year-over-year, and religious ideology-motivated posts rose 20.20 percent. A subset of 3,216 of these online incidents were classified as incitement to hatred, and 3,436 as insults and harassment.

Violent Extremism Trends

Across all politically motivated crime categories, 4,156 violent incidents were recorded in 2025, a 1.19 percent increase from 4,107 in 2024. Within the antisemitism category, authorities documented 156 violent incidents in 2025, down 9.83 percent from 173 in 2024, though the absolute numbers remain concerning given that violent antisemitic hate crimes represent one of the most serious threat vectors.

The report notes that 2,508 individuals were injured by politically motivated violence in 2025, a 6.68 percent increase from 2,351 in 2024. Of these, 1,146 were injured in offenses classified as right-wing politically motivated crimes, 486 by left-wing actors, and additional victims suffered injuries from foreign ideology and religious ideology-motivated violence.

Institutional Targeting

German police recorded 7,884 crimes against “religious representatives” in 2025, a 5.06 percent increase from 7,504 in 2024. Of these, 75.24 percent (5,932 incidents) were specifically tagged as antisemitic. Authorities separately recorded 57 synagogue-related offenses in 2025, up from 41 in 2024, an increase of roughly 39 percent. Police also recorded offenses targeting religious symbols and religious facilities.

Broader Context

The 2025 data provides quantitative evidence of what Jewish community organizations have documented anecdotally: a multi-vector assault on Jewish life in Germany combining street-level violence, institutional targeting, digital harassment, and organized extremist activity.

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The “Block the Merger” campaign publicly framed its opposition to Paramount Skydance’s planned $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery as a fight over media consolidation, labor protections, creative independence and consumer choice. The Justice Department cleared the transaction on June 12, 2026, removing the deal’s biggest federal antitrust hurdle, though FCC review and possible state litigation remained unresolved.

But the campaign also drew participation from a wider progressive advocacy ecosystem. While the official effort focused on antitrust and Hollywood consolidation, some supporters and adjacent groups connected the merger fight to broader nonprofit and ideological networks, including organizations and funders that have also been active in anti-Israel advocacy or are now under congressional scrutiny.

The Ellison Factor

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and the father of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, is also a prominent pro-Israel donor. His Israel ties became central to CODEPINK’s anti-merger messaging, which used the campaign moment to attack the Ellison family directly.

CODEPINK circulated a petition to California Attorney General Rob Bonta urging him to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The petition did not limit itself to antitrust concerns.

CODEPINK framed the deal as a transfer of media power to “Trump-aligned tech billionaires” and singled out Ellison’s support for Israel as a reason the transaction should be stopped. CODEPINK’s intervention illustrated the ideological current running alongside the public antitrust campaign.

Disney acquired Fox for $71.3 billion. Amazon bought MGM. Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Unlike those earlier deals, the Paramount-WBD fight also became a vehicle for attacks on the Ellison family’s politics and Israel ties, most explicitly in CODEPINK’s petition.

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The Public Campaign

The official “Block the Merger” campaign is led by the Future Film Coalition, which describes the effort as a campaign to protect independent film, local cinemas and public-interest storytelling. Its website lists more than 230 allies and more than 30 organizations opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal.

The anti-merger campaign’s policy infrastructure included several major progressive organizations: Free Press, Open Markets Institute, American Economic Liberties Project and Democracy Defenders Fund.

These groups publicly framed the merger fight through the language of competition policy, media consolidation, press freedom and democratic accountability. They helped turn a corporate transaction into a broader public-pressure campaign aimed at regulators, state attorneys general and lawmakers.

Democracy Defenders Fund played a visible role. In April 2026, the group promoted the open letter from entertainment figures opposing the merger and quoted co-founder Norm Eisen warning that the deal would “erode the very bedrock of our democracy.” Two months later, House Oversight Chairman James Comer sent Eisen a letter demanding records from State Democracy Defenders Fund.

Soros, Arabella and the Anti-Israel Funding Trail

The anti-merger network sits inside a broader progressive nonprofit ecosystem funded by major institutional donors. Several of those donors have also financed organizations active in anti-Israel advocacy.

That donor ecosystem includes George Soros’s Open Society network, Pierre Omidyar-linked funding, the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and Arabella Advisors-linked vehicles such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund and New Venture Fund.

Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, said it gave $14.3 million in 2023 to groups working on Israel and Palestine, excluding an additional $3.3 million emergency fund. Its own statement said many of its partners were at the forefront of pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Among the organizations OSF has supported is Al-Haq, a West Bank-based NGO that Israel designated as a terrorist organization in 2021 over alleged ties to the U.S.-designated terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). On September 4, 2025, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Al-Haq to the Specially Designated Nationals list under an International Criminal Court-related sanctions authority.

OSF separately gave $225,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized pro-Palestinian campus encampments across the country.

The Arabella-managed New Venture Fund also funded the Alliance for Global Justice, which served as fiscal sponsor for Samidoun. Reporting on tax filings shows New Venture Fund gave AFGJ $501,500 in 2022 for ‘environmental programs.’ New Venture Fund later said it would discontinue grants to projects hosted by AFGJ and said it does not support terrorism.

In October 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Samidoun as a “sham charity” and international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

According to Washington Examiner reporting, PayPal, Stripe, Salsa Labs and Deluxe stopped working with AFGJ in 2023, after scrutiny over AFGJ’s fiscal sponsorship of Samidoun.

What the Campaign Revealed

The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal raised real questions about consolidation in Hollywood. But the campaign against it also showed how public-interest antitrust advocacy can overlap with donor networks, ideological pressure groups and activist campaigns that bring their own political agendas into major media transactions.

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Students at the University of Washington are promoting a June 20 webinar featuring Hussein Mughniyeh, son of Imad Mughniyeh, the former Hezbollah military commander U.S. officials have linked to attacks that killed more Americans than any terrorist before 9/11.

Imad Mughniyeh, widely known as “the Ghost,” was one of Hezbollah’s most notorious military commanders. U.S., Israeli, and Argentine authorities have linked him to some of the deadliest anti-American and anti-Israeli attacks before 9/11. Those include the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. service members, and the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, which killed 63 people, including CIA Near East Division chief Robert Ames. He was also linked to the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 29. The U.S. offered up to $25 million for information leading to his capture. He was killed in Damascus in 2008 in an operation later reported to have been carried out jointly by the CIA and Mossad.

Now his son, who also currently writes and translates for a U.S.-sanctioned Hezbollah media network, is being platformed by University of Washington students to discuss “generational sacrifice and resistance, the role of the international student/youth movements, the current situation in Lebanon, and combatting defeatism.”

A Hezbollah Propagandist’s Pen

Al-Manar has published Hussein Mughniyeh’s writing and translations. In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Hezbollah television station as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, describing it as an arm of Hezbollah’s terrorist network.

In February 2026, on the 18th anniversary of his father’s death, Mughniyeh published an emotional tribute titled “Imad: The Fabric of a Legend.” The poetic reflection deified his father, describing him as “a gallery no mortal hand could assemble. A gallery that could only be wrought by God.“

The article romanticized Imad Mughniyeh’s clandestine operations, celebrating his multiple aliases: “You bore many names, each fitted like a different garment... Jihad. Ahmad. Mortada. Ellie. Ridwan. Smoke. Wolf. Fox. Ghost. Names chosen for necessity. Names adopted for terrain.”

Hussein described his father’s military command in artistic terms: “Purple, the flash of your hand as it descended in decisive command... Maestro. Painter. Writer. Architect of motion.“ He concluded: “A tapestry you were. Not chaotic. Not improvised. Woven with intention across time.“

The man Hussein is glorifying has been linked by U.S. officials to the kidnapping and torture of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, and to the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which U.S. Navy Seabee diver Robert Stethem was tortured and murdered.

Glorifying October 7

Hussein Mughniyeh’s published work for Al-Manar extends beyond memorializing his father. In January 2026, he translated an article by Soummaya Al-Ali titled “Palestine in 2025... The Enemy Never Saw a White Flag,” which glorified the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre as “the heroic ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation.”

The article, made accessible to English-speaking audiences by Mughniyeh, characterized the attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took roughly 250 hostages into Gaza—as “nothing more than the inevitable culmination of accumulated injustice and oppression inflicted upon the Palestinian people.”

Consistently referring to Israel as “the enemy” and “the enemy entity,” the piece praised how “the resistance succeeded in ‘shattering the myth of strategic deterrence and the claims of Israeli security superiority,’“ crediting “the support fronts in Yemen, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the resistance in Iraq and Lebanon”—a direct reference to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iranian-backed militias.

The article quoted Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya and celebrated that “the enemy found itself compelled to negotiate exclusively with the resistance in order to secure the release of its prisoners.”

The Organizational Web

The June 20 event’s promotional material lists registration through Tariq el-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, with SUPER UW (Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return) as a collaborator. SUPER UW’s Instagram bio openly lists affiliations with both “@masarbadilmovement” and “@tariq_el_tahrir.”

Tariq el-Tahrir describes itself as the “youth wing” of Masar Badil (Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement). Masar Badil, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is led by Khaled Barakat, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on October 15, 2024, as a Specially Designated National for acting on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Masar Badil is closely tied to Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which was designated by both the United States and Canada in October 2024 as a “sham charity” that serves as an international fundraiser for the PFLP.

Masar Badil has hosted webinars featuring senior Hamas leaders Basem Naim, Sami Abu Zuhri, and Osama Hamdan. In a September 2024 webinar, Abu Zuhri referred to Masar Badil as “friends” and supporters, stating: “We appreciate their role and their effort to work on the streets to stand behind the Palestinian people, behind the Palestinian resistance.”

In an April 2026 speech at a Palestinian Prisoners Day rally in Vancouver, a Seattle coordinator for Tariq el-Tahrir identified as Sana’a said the group is the “youth wing of the Masar Badil” and emerged from the 2024 “Global Student Intifada.” She praised Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for the “’Flood of the Free’” prisoner exchange and concluded: “Glory to our martyrs, freedom for our prisoners, and glory to the resistance.“

Campus Connections and Consequences

SUPER UW has a documented history of destructive activism at the University of Washington. In May 2025, the group occupied an engineering building, leaving nearly $1 million in damage, according to local reporting. The university suspended 21 students and banned them from campus.

UW later allowed the suspended students to re-enroll, but in March 2026 prosecutors charged 33 people with first-degree misdemeanor criminal trespass.

City Journal reported that Tariq el-Tahrir has fostered connections between activists and U.S. adversaries, including sending delegations to the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations. One participant, activist Calla Walsh, later appeared at Iran’s Sobh Festival, where she publicly chanted “Death to America, Death to Israel.”

In October 2024, SUPER UW and Tariq el-Tahrir jointly organized a webinar series titled “Path of Liberation.” One session featured Osman Bilal, a Hamas member allegedly involved in planning a lethal bombing attack, who told attendees that “all tools,” including “violent work,” “armed resistance,” and “armed struggle,” “must be employed.”

Another session featured Khaled Barakat, the now-sanctioned Masar Badil founder and senior PFLP member, who laid out his vision for what he called the “revolutionary wing” of the student movement.

A Pattern of Platforming Terrorists

The June 20 webinar featuring Hussein Mughniyeh fits an established pattern. According to ADL research, Masar Badil has repeatedly hosted online events with members of Hamas and the Houthis since October 7, 2023.

In a February 2024 interview with senior Hamas leader Basem Naim—who was later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury—Masar Badil Executive Committee member Mohammed Khatib described October 7 as a “holy day for us today.”

Masar Badil has released statements mourning the deaths of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, hailing them as “great leaders” and “martyrs.” The statement on Nasrallah’s assassination concluded: “Death to the enemies and the racist Zionist entity, Victory to the resistance.”

The Broader Implications

The University of Washington’s handling of SUPER UW now faces a sharper test. The June 20 webinar is not an isolated campus controversy. It illustrates how a student group can become publicly aligned with activist networks whose leaders, affiliates, and partner organizations have drawn U.S. sanctions and terrorism-related scrutiny.

The chain is documented in public-facing materials: SUPER UW to Tariq el-Tahrir, Tariq el-Tahrir to Masar Badil, and Masar Badil to figures and organizations tied by U.S. authorities to the PFLP. Each layer can be framed as activism, education, or solidarity. But the practical effect is that UW students are being exposed to speakers, media platforms, and activist networks that have glorified or justified violence against Americans and Israelis.

Jewish Onliner contacted the University of Washington for comment, and a university spokesperson said the group “has no affiliation with the University of Washington, regardless of what they call themselves.”