Author Robert Inlakesh

Lurking behind an ongoing campaign to drive fear of an alleged Muslim terrorism threat is a legislative initiative that seeks to use terrorist designations to silence those critical of Israel, led by pro-Israeli influencers and think tanks. Not only is this a disinformation effort aimed at salvaging Israel’s image amongst conservatives, but it is also designed to attack free speech.

In July, the Israelis initiated a new propaganda campaign that clearly sought to capture the minds of right-wingers, particularly in the United States. This followed the release of Pew Research data in April, which found that 50% of Republicans under the age of 50 had unfavorable views of Israel.

Free Speech

The strategy began to unfold in three separate parts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu organized an appearance on the Nelk Boys podcast, attempting to revive his image amongst younger conservative audiences. He then lined up a series of interviews on corporate broadcast networks, followed by a string of other right-wing mainstream alternative media shows like the PBD Podcast and other YouTube channels.

Simultaneously, back in July, a legislative push was also underway. A bill called H.R. 4397, or the “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025” was introduced to Congress and had been lobbied in favor of by pro-Israeli Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Christians United for Israel (CUFI).

Another element of this strategy had been inviting influencers on paid trips to Israel and paying them to post propaganda. Also in July, Haaretz News revealed that the Israeli foreign ministry was planning to fund 16 right-wing influencers to go on propaganda tour trips to Israel, with the aim of bringing around 550 in total on such trips by the end of the year.

By October, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft then published a story that revealed how Israel had been “paying a cohort of 14–18 social media influencers around $7,000 per post to promote the country’s image in the American public.” This campaign was nicknamed the ‘Esther Project’, a title eerily similar to the infamous ‘Project Esther’ of the Heritage Foundation — the think tank that is known to be the most influential over the Trump administration.

The Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism document was published on October 7, 2024, and lays out a range of initiatives to achieve its goals of collapsing the pro-Palestine movement in the United States. The following is the summary to that document:

“America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American “pro-Palestinian movement” is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel. Supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency. The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism intends to enlist all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort to combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States.”

Immediately upon taking office, Donald Trump created the so called National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. His administration also appeared to follow other recommendations made in Project Esther that sought to crackdown on academic institutions, individuals, and media networks that criticize Israel. Beginning under the Biden administration but escalated under President Trump, this constituted the largest crackdown on academic freedom in US history, deciding to directly impose the US government’s will on individual studies departments and leverage federal funding in order to control academic discourse on campuses across the country.

Muslim Brotherhood

Yet this free speech crackdown has run into major legal hurdles and pushback along the way, which is where the legislative push against the Muslim Brotherhood comes into the picture. It is something that not only the Israel Lobby is throwing its weight behind, but also the United Arab Emirates (UAE) too.

One of the vocal supporters of the bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in the United States has been none other than Elise Stefanik, who openly bragged about her role in getting a number of Ivy League university presidents removed from their posts. She was also nominated by Trump earlier this year to be US ambassador to the United Nations, yet didn’t receive the position over concerns that her withdrawal from Congress would impact the Republican Party.

Stefanik stated in August, “I strongly support the Trump administration in designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Long overdue. Thank you President Trump for this important and decisive leadership to protect our national security.” She just so happens to have been granted the ‘Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award‘ by the Zionist Organization of America, an award named after Donald Trump’s top donors.

Meanwhile, close Trump administration ally, Laura Loomer, has been at the forefront of an anti-Muslim campaign that constantly drives irrational fear about a looming 9/11-style attack. This tactic recycles the Iraq War playbook of fear mongering about Al-Qaeda attacks, predicting that such atrocities are coming soon to a town near you, and this has been used by those like ex-CIA operative, Sarah Adams, who has now been transformed into a self-styled pseudo whistleblower. In the event that any terrorist attack does happen around the time they constantly predict, then they can suddenly claim to have warned everyone and that they knew, despite repeatedly predicting such attacks and consistently getting it wrong time and time again.

 

 

Just as the pre-2003 invasion of Iraq propaganda attempted to brainwash the public into believing that Al-Qaeda was working with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, today those like Laura Loomers and Sarah Adams of the “new media” are claiming that such terrorist networks are connected to Hamas and the Palestinians. Just as Saddam Hussein hated Al-Qaeda, Hamas has fought bloody battles to eliminate both Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Gaza.

This does not matter for such propagandists, however, as they play on the ignorance of their audiences and treat them as fools. The line of anti-Muslim rhetoric now espoused by these influencers, which you can also hear from Israeli-backed British right-wing personalities like Tommy Robinson, is that Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood are all on the same team. From there they advocate explicitly for banning the Muslim Brotherhood.

Laura Loomer even let the cat out of the bag completely in the following post on X (formerly Twitter):

 

 

Before going further, it is first important to address the case of the Holy Land Foundation and its five members who were given prison sentences of up to 65 years. Right-wing influencers are using this as means to go after Zohran Mamdani, claiming it represented a “smoking gun” when the Holy Land Foundation was declared a terrorist organization. It is actually a representation of what a completely unfair and unjust government crackdown on a charitable organization looks like.

“The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was shut down by the Bush administration and designated as a terrorist organization in the wake of 9/11, even though it donated money to Palestinian charities that the U.S. government itself supported”, Human Rights Watch stated on the issue. They then go on to clarify the following key details:

“The defendants in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case were never accused of directly funding terrorist organizations or terrorist attacks, nor were the Palestinian charities they funded accused of doing so. Nonetheless, they were prosecuted under US “material support” legislation on the notion that the social programs they financed help win the “hearts and minds” of Palestinian people for Hamas. The U.S. government’s case was based in part on evidence obtained through FISA wiretaps as well as evidence obtained via questionable foreign intelligence from Israel, faulty translations, and accusations by anonymous Israeli military witnesses who claimed that charities receiving funding from the HLF – and from the U.S. government itself – were involved in “terrorism.””

If we now link the legislative push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization to the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, the agenda becomes even more clear. The targeted organizations in the United States that are considered to be part of a so-called “Hamas Support Network” are clearly groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). The document also goes on to make another designation that could then be attributed more broadly to anyone supporting Palestinians, calling them “affiliated Hamas Support Organisations (HSO)”.

The mere fact that specific acronyms were created by the Heritage Foundation – HSN and HSO – to designate particular American nonprofits and organizations as being affiliated with Hamas, is a serious cause for public concern. As the unconstitutional crackdowns continue and the weaponization of ICE to detain people based upon their criticism of Israel expands – the most infamous example being that of former student Mahmoud Khalil – these crackdowns will likely grow exponentially as the Muslim Brotherhood is designated a terrorist organization.

This is a key component to the Zionist campaign, aimed at cracking down on First Amendment rights, as the Muslim Brotherhood is being actively linked to organizations across the United States. As Laura Loomer mentioned, the Holy Land Foundation case is in fact the model to be followed here. Except this time it will mean a purge of independent media organizations, charities, social organizations, and perhaps even academic institutions.

As this is happening, pro-Israeli propagandists are working overtime to convince the public that such a crackdown is necessary and that banning the Muslim Brotherhood is about keeping Americans safe from Al-Qaeda or ISIS. To anyone with even a basic understanding of the Middle East or Muslim groups, this excuse almost seems so unserious that it is laughable.

Do not forget that the US public was misled and made to believe that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda and 9/11.

It is the exact same “War On Terror” playbook, and this narrative is also coming from people who are funded by the same Zionist billionaires, pro-war think tanks, and organizations like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, all of which were at the forefront of fear-mongering about “Islamic Terror” as a means of justifying the invasion of Iraq and broad crackdowns on American civil liberties around that time. Just because the individual propagandists may be working for The Daily Wire, or it is now Palantir that is at the forefront of the technological crackdown, doesn’t mean it is being funded by different people.

While many have focused solely on Israel’s push to takeover social media outlets, this is an issue that threatens every American.