Author Robert Inlakesh

Donald Trump is implementing an Israel Lobby plot to eliminate nonprofits critical of Israel and to crack down on the First Amendment rights of his citizens, under the guise of targeting Muslim Brotherhood organizations. This insidious conspiracy is part of a carefully calibrated plot to silence all dissent and is being carried out using the same justifications used during the so-called “War on Terror.”

In Parts One and Two of this series, I laid out the details of a coordinated Israeli campaign designed both as a propaganda strategy to rescue support for Tel Aviv, and as a simultaneous effort to silence those critical of Israel in the United States. The primary means of achieving this goal is through an anti-Muslim Brotherhood legislative push, which will inevitably be followed by targeted lawfare and the weaponization of federal security forces.

On November 18, Texas Governor Greg Abbott took the step of designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a terrorist organization, but he did not target it alone; he also stated that he was proscribing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The American Muslim group, which had previously won legal challenges against the governor’s past decisions, pointed out that Abbott does not have the power to simply proscribe groups as he just did. This decision was covered in more depth in part two of this series.

However, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, does have the power to take action against groups he is advised to designate as terrorist organizations. On November 24, he did just that through his executive order: “The Designation of Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” The order initiates a process, set to take place over 45 days, to designate chapters of the MB as terrorist organizations and thus implement sanctions against them.

This did not come out of the blue. In fact, just days before Trump’s executive order was issued on November 19, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released a report. The ISGAP analytical briefing was a comprehensive 183-page document entitled, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into Western Society: A Systematic Analysis,” which argued that the Muslim Brotherhood must face a U.S. government crackdown in order to stifle an alleged centuries-long Islamic conspiracy to infiltrate the West.

ISGAP is directly funded by the Israeli government. In August 2020, The Forward revealed that the registered nonprofit had failed to disclose a six-figure grant from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. It was also reported that in 2018, approximately 80% of ISGAP’s funding came from the Israeli government, and that in 2019 it received a three-year grant totaling $1.3 million.

Its board of directors includes the links of Abraham Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)—a pro-war think tank frequently accused of functioning as an extension of the Israel lobby.

This influential group—funded by the Israeli government and with ties to a who’s who of the broader Israel lobby in the United States—just happened to release a major report on the Muslim Brotherhood mere days before the president took action.

The report itself is also indicative of the broader agenda at play here. It provides little evidence to substantiate its various claims and reads like a conspiracy-theory manual—the likes of which would be condemned as hate speech by ISGAP itself one were to simply replace the words “Muslims” and “Islam” with “Jews” and “Judaism.”

Apart from this, it argues that the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to encourage the spread of Islam in the United States, promote “Muslim causes,” and even has a segment entitled, “Building Alliances with Non-Islamic groups.” In addition, there is also an attempt to link the alleged MB agenda to Iran. The following is a quote from page 121 of the “analytical briefing”:

“Informal networks of aligned social media accounts systematically promote content advancing Brotherhood perspectives while attacking opposing viewpoints. By coordinating seemingly independent accounts, Brotherhood networks achieve greater reach and impact than their actual numbers would suggest. Examples include the mass promotion of hashtags such as #FreePalestine and #GazaUnderAttack after October 7, 2023, cross-campus message discipline through the National Students for Justice in Palestine’s “Day of Resistance” toolkits that were replicated across multiple US universities, and the social-first production model of AJ+, a Qatari state-backed media outlet, which facilitates the rapid recycling of identical clips across platforms. These operations are further reinforced by bot and troll networks, including Iranian state-aligned cyber-enabled influence campaigns, which artificially boost Islamist aligned narratives while suppressing or reporting opposing voices.”

The reason this is all important is that it justifies a crackdown—not only on Muslim organizations, nonprofits, and individuals under the guise of a “Muslim Brotherhood crackdown,” but also “non-Islamic” groups portrayed as affiliated with alleged MB-aligned organizations.

It is not just ISGAP that has been advocating against the Muslim Brotherhood. On the same day that Texas Governor Abbott issued his statement declaring CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organizations, the Washington-based pro-Israel think tank WINEP published a policy analysis entitled, “A More Effective Approach to Countering the Muslim Brotherhood.” It argued that “adding the group to a legacy designation authority targeting the Palestine Liberation Organization, as the Senate bill proposes, runs up against the reality that the PLO has a centrally run leadership, whereas the Muslim Brotherhood does not.”

Instead, the WINEP piece argues for more targeted action and taking the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood to the next level. It references the US government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), once the largest Muslim charity in America, asserting that the MB uses its influence with such nonprofit groups to do its bidding and particularly to support Hamas.

As covered in Part One of this series, Human Rights Watch described the HLF case as follows:

“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’.”

The Israel Lobby and its band of pro-Israeli influencers—such as Laura Loomer—who obsessively push for a crackdown on so-called Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations in the United States, repeatedly cite the HLF case as a model for further action against pro-Palestine groups across America. This would enable a wholly unjust crackdown on groups merely accused of Muslim Brotherhood ties, making it far easier than pursuing alleged Hamas affiliations, given how broad the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella is and how easily someone with membership in one of its many chapters can be linked to a wide range of Muslim and non-Muslim organizations.

The pro-war think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has also been churning out anti-Muslim Brotherhood content, especially in the past month or so, even pushing legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to designate the group a terrorist organization. It publishes pieces comparing the rise of the MB to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, while also alleging close ties between the Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Targeting the Muslim Brotherhood has two distinct purposes. The first is an anti-Muslim fearmongering campaign designed to convince American conservatives that the 1% of the US population who are Muslims pose an existential threat, and that, through the Muslim Brotherhood, they are part of a grand Islamic crusade-style conspiracy. This narrative diverts attention away from Israel and redirects it toward all of Tel Aviv’s enemies. It is a propaganda campaign built on outright lies, distortions, and fearmongering.

The second purpose—and a direct result of this manufactured hatred of Muslims—is that the Trump administration can continue pursuing the Heritage Foundation think tank’s blueprint for silencing criticism of Israel, as laid out in the Project Esther document published on October 7, 2024. Trump has treated this agenda as a clear priority since his first week in office.

If the Trump White House gets away with carrying out this planned crackdown—one that both Israel and the Israel Lobby in the US are encouraging—it will represent one of the greatest attacks on American free speech rights in history. Not only will it inevitably instill fear in Muslims and Islamic organizations, but also in non-Muslim organizations and individuals advocating on behalf of Palestinians. It is almost certain that this chilling effect will be the desired outcome, as students and academics at Ivy League universities have already been effectively silenced through intimidation following last year’s encampment movement.

To be clear, this agenda has little to do with the Muslim Brotherhood itself; rather, it is about dismantling pro-Palestine movements and imposing total censorship on those critical of the Israeli government. As you read this article, the agenda continues to unfold with almost no popular opposition, because most Americans remain unaware of what is happening. Some conservatives are even supporting it, under the mistaken belief that they are fighting to protect their freedoms from a largely illusory Muslim threat.