Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency
William Bennett, a former U.S. secretary of education under former President Ronald Reagan, registered in early July as an agent for Qatar, to advocate for the country on education-related issues.
The registration comes as Qatar works to fight back against growing concerns among the pro-Israel community and lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the country’s massive funding of elite U.S. colleges and universities is fueling anti-Israel and antisemitic ideology and activism on campuses.
Bennett, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing first highlighted by analyst Eitan Fischberger, will receive a total of $210,000 over seven months to serve as a “senior education advisor” to the Qatari Embassy to “make efforts to publicize the fact that Qatari higher education efforts to do not support radical Islamicist movements or positions, and his engaging in publicized efforts — potentially including communications to U.S. political office holders — would help dispel contrary notions.”
“The purpose of this engagement is to provide [Bennett] with information relating to American universities offering curriculum in Qatar, to allow him to review and understand funding decisions made by the Qatari government relating to these schools, to promote Western understanding of the nature of these expenditures and the nature of the curriculum, and, most broadly, to promote economic and cultural understanding between Qatar and the United States,” the filing reads.
Bennett, after his time as education secretary, served as drug czar in the George H.W. Bush administration. Currently, he hosts a podcast, “The Bill Bennett Show,” and serves as the chairman of Conservative Leaders for Education, a group that describes itself as “a campaign comprised of leading state lawmakers and education chairs focused on ensuring conservative principles gain traction in state policy decisions as states begin to develop accountability plans under the new Every Student Succeeds Act.”
Bennett did not respond to a request for comment submitted through Conservative Leaders for Education.
The Qatari government pays millions to a vast army of lobbyists to advocate for its interests in Washington.
Bennett wrote in a Fox News op-ed last year, also first highlighted by Fischberger, that claims that Qatari or other foreign funding are connected to antisemitic activity on college campuses are “unfounded, conspiratorial speculation,” and downplayed the scope of Qatar’s involvement in U.S. higher education.
He praised Qatari Sheikah Moza Bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar’s emir who is an outspoken opponent of Israel and has praised the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, as “an impressive Qatari woman.”
“The irony of the false accusations about Qatar’s supposed influence at American universities is that the real foreign influence runs in the opposite direction,” Bennett wrote. “At the Qatari branches of these six American universities there have been no reports of anti-American or antisemitic protests. Some of the main campuses of American universities could learn from their Qatari branches. That would be a better course and a wiser one than denigrating Qatar as it seeks to strengthen its relationship with the United States.”
Recent reporting from the Free Press’ Jay Solomon and Frannie Block concluded that free speech and academic freedom of any kind are suppressed at Qatari campuses of U.S. universities under Qatari law, and that their students have promoted terrorism.
The Free Press also reported that Bennett received two calls from a top Qatari lobbyist days before that op-ed was published.
Bennett has spoken out in the past against antisemitic activity on college campuses, calling it “shameful” that college administrations have failed to adequately respond to antisemitic activity, saying the anti-Israel agitators should be arrested and identified and that colleges should not appease them.
He said that federal funding should be withheld from colleges in response to anti-Israel activity.
A Palestinian walks into a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) office and asks to be removed from its refugee registry. UNRWA says no.
It sounds like the start of a bad joke. But the joke has been going on for nearly a century, and it has been at the expense of Palestinians, Israelis, and international donors.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, neighboring Arab countries failed to smother the nascent Jewish state in the cradle. A refugee crisis emerged, with around 750,000 Arabs fleeing their homes in Mandatory Palestine. The United Nations created UNRWA to address the refugee issue. But instead of resolving the problem, UNRWA has prolonged it.
UNRWA has developed a massive infrastructure over the years. By expanding the definition of refugees under its care to automatically include the patrilineal descendants of refugees — unlike how the United Nations treats all other refugees — UNRWA has ballooned its registry to nearly 6 million, and its budget has swelled to more than $1 billion annually.
Mo Ghaoui is a naturalized US citizen and an UNRWA-recognized refugee. His citizenship would preclude him from refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention — but not so with UNRWA. Ghaoui entered an UNRWA office in Lebanon to pose the question: What if someone wanted to be removed from UNRWA’s list?
“Why?” the employee asked him, in Ghaoui’s account. “There’s nothing to lose. No one does it. No one. We don’t have this procedure.” The UNRWA staffer told Ghaoui that he cannot move past his victimhood identity in the agency’s books.
The enforced permanence of the Palestinian refugee issue is absurd. Thousands of Jews were displaced in the same war that led to UNRWA’s creation, but they neither received their own UN agency nor are they still counted as refugees. The same goes for the 850,000 Jews who were forced from Arab lands in the decades following Israel’s War of Independence.
Moreover, UNRWA was founded just years after the end of World War II, which saw more than 50 million people uprooted from their homes in Europe, including my grandparents. If UNRWA standards were applied universally, I would be a refugee thanks to my father’s birth in a displaced persons camp.
That would be preposterous — just like handing refugee status eternally to the descendants of those displaced in 1948.
For example, real estate developer Mohamed Anwar Hadid, whose father left Nazareth in 1948, is reported to be an UNRWA-recognized refugee even though he now lives in California. This would make his American-born, millionaire model daughters, Bella and Gigi, refugees as well.
The same applies for Zahwa Arafat, the daughter of Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president who reportedly stole billions of dollars from his own people, allowing Zahwa to live in Paris and own prime real estate in London.
But UNRWA isn’t just a slap in the face to common sense — its support for terrorism is an obstacle to peace as well.
Of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, Israeli security documents revealed that 440 are active in Hamas’s military operations and 2,000 are registered Hamas operatives. At least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the October 7 massacre, including at least one who stole the body of a dead Israeli and brought it back to Gaza as a bargaining chip.
In February 2024, Israel discovered a large Hamas data center underneath UNRWA headquarters that ran cables through the UN facility above. Hamas stored weapons in other UNRWA facilities. And a senior Hamas leader eliminated in an Israeli strike in September 2024 was the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon.
IMPACT-se, an international research organization that monitors and analyzes education around the world, has catalogued many cases of UNRWA radicalizing future generations of Palestinians. For example, a textbook used in UNRWA schools praises jihadists, including the perpetrators of October 7, instructing students to count using martyrs as a unit of measurement and teaching pupils the physics behind attacking Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, several UNRWA staffers lauded the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities on social media.
Meanwhile, UNRWA has campaigned alongside Hamas against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-funded initiative to provide aid directly to Palestinians, which prevents Hamas from siphoning the supplies. Rather than engage with GHF, UNRWA has campaigned to shutter this threat to Hamas.
And as Mo Ghaoui’s story demonstrated, UNRWA is in the business of protracting the refugee crisis, not solving it. While the UN Refugee Agency, which oversees all non-Palestinian refugees, offers a variety of solutions to help refugees improve their lives, including resettlement in a third country, UNRWA indulges the Palestinians’ desire to move to Israel en masse and overwhelm the only Jewish-majority country in the world.
The inflated rosters and expanding budgets have taken their toll on UNRWA. Several donor countries pulled funds over UNRWA’s collaboration with Hamas. The agency currently faces a $200 million deficit and is considering cutting services.
UNRWA’s critical services should be transferred to neutral bodies, with the ultimate goal of weaning Palestinians off UNRWA’s unrealistic and ahistorical promises.
Reform is not enough — UNRWA is an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace and must be dismantled.
David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay.
Dr. Aaron Lerner heads IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis, since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations.
“My generation was taught Nazism was the greatest evil; and it was; and colonial crimes should’ve not been omitted,” Albanese stated on X.
“Today, she continued, a state (Israel) starving millions/shooting children for sport, shielded by democracies & dictators alike, is the new abyss of cruelty.”
The UN official concluded her remarks with a question: “How will we survive this?”
Earlier, a disabled Palestinian man, Mohammed al-Sawafiri, died after his health deteriorated due to severe hunger caused by Israel’s blockade.
Also on Sunday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Telegram that Israel’s starvation policy has so far led to the deaths of 86 Palestinians, including 76 children, due to malnutrition and lack of humanitarian aid, which has been blocked from entering Gaza since October 2023.
Fighting has engulfed the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria, leaving over 200 people dead. This week, Druze villages have been overrun by Syrian regime forces and allied Islamist militias under the guise of ‘restoring order’, only for those forces to unleash executions, looting and arson upon Druze neighbourhoods. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 92 Druze were killed (including 21 civilians executed by government troops) in the space of a few days. In one incident, an 80-year-old Druze sheikh had his moustache, a symbol of honour, forcibly shaved by invading fighters. He was reportedly killed shortly afterwards. This is, it appears, the dark reality of ‘national unity’ under Syria’s new rulers.
The Druze of Sweida are not the only minorities being targeted. In March, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, over a thousand Alawite civilians were slaughtered in sectarian pogroms. Jihadist militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army rampaged through Alawite villages, committing mass murder and revenge killings. A Reuters investigation found that nearly 1,500 Alawite men, women and children were killed between 7 and 9 March by Sunni fighters in Alawite areas.
The violence was ostensibly triggered by a short-lived rebellion of loyalists to former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but the response descended into outright collective punishment. There have been killings, looting and arson targeting Alawites at 40 separate sites at least. Nor were the perpetrators rogue outlaws – they included at least a dozen factions now under the command of Syria’s new government. Many of these are notorious Islamist militias, who have long been under international sanctions for prior atrocities. Graffiti scrawled on a ransacked Alawite home declared: ‘You were a minority and now you are a rarity.’ The intent was nothing less than ethnic cleansing.
The Syrian regime in Damascus, led by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa (better known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), a former ISIS and al-Qaeda member, denies any policy of targeting Alawites. But it is impossible to ignore the regime’s fingerprints on these crimes. Reuters has traced a chain of command from the Alawite massacres in March straight to men serving alongside Sharaa. Orders from Damascus to crush the ‘remnants’ of Assad’s old regime were interpreted on the ground as a licence to exterminate Alawites. Sharaa’s government claims to be investigating these crimes, vowing punishment ‘even among those closest to us’, but impunity reigns. No one has been held to account for March’s bloodbath, and now a similar atrocity is unfolding against the Druze.
The optimism that met Syria’s new Islamist-led regime last year now appears deeply misguided. When HTS and other insurgents ousted Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, Sharaa’s ascent to power in December was greeted by many Western leaders and media figures as a fresh start. The jihadist warlord was feted by the commentariat, even cosied up to by the likes of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart on their The Rest Is Politics podcast. But for Syria’s minorities, the regime change has meant a change in the costumes of the rulers rather than a change in their character. Sharaa insists he seeks to ‘unite’ Syria. In practice, his rule has been marked by sectarian score-settling and broken promises.
The most recent bloodshed followed a familiar pattern. In Sweida, militias struck a deal with Sharaa’s forces to enter the city peacefully. As soon as troops moved in, they indulged in savage practices: summarily executing civilians, looting homes and humiliating elders. Sharaa’s office issued a statement decrying unspecified ‘unfortunate violations’ in Sweida and promising to hold those responsible to account. This is almost a replay of the regime’s response after the Alawite massacres in March, when Sharaa similarly condemned ‘shameful acts’ and vowed justice. Back then, as now, officials claimed the bloodletting was carried out by unruly militias beyond the government’s direct command.
This excuse is wearing thin. If these Islamist militias are truly outside Sharaa’s control, then he is either unable or unwilling to rein in his own allies. Both possible scenarios bode ill for Syria. If the president is too weak to stop genocidal violence by forces fighting under his banner, then Syria remains a patchwork of warlords with no real peace. If instead he quietly endorses or tolerates these pogroms, then his government is complicit in crimes against humanity, merely continuing Assad’s legacy of brutality under a different flag. Sharaa’s ‘inclusive’ government has proven to be cold comfort for those not aligned with his jihadist base.
Amid this bloodshed, Israel has initiated a military intervention to defend Syria’s Druze community. Beginning on Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) targeted Syrian troops in Sweida, and struck the Syrian military headquarters in the centre of Damascus. Jerusalem took a firm stance: leave the Druze alone, or face the consequences. Unlike the hollow threats we hear so often from Western countries, Israel’s warning was supported by force. Israeli strikes destroyed Syrian tanks and vehicles near Sweida and targeted over 160 sites in Syria this week. The IDF has also moved two divisions to the Israel-Syria border in case a broader confrontation ensues.
Israel’s intervention is not purely altruistic. From Israel’s perspective, the Syrian regime’s deployment of armed forces into southern Syria posed a direct threat to its border. Furthermore, the Druze community within Israel, an Arabic-speaking minority that serves conspicuously in the IDF, has close kinship ties to the Syrian Druze. The outrage within Israel over the Sweida massacres quickly turned into protests blocking highways. Hundreds of Israeli Druze even crossed into Syria to defend their brethren. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing internal controversies, seized an opportunity to appear tough and decisive. Launching airstrikes in support of the Sweida Druze has proven popular domestically, earning him political points while signalling strength.
Israel’s actions also reflect a broader strategic purpose. Its strikes near Damascus were initially seen as a ‘performative escalation’ – warning shots rather than conclusive strikes. The aim is deterrence: to signal to President Sharaa that any attempt to unify Syria by force, especially by moving armed units into the south, will be met with Israeli firepower.
Some observers argue that Israel simply prefers a weak and divided Syria. By attacking Sharaa’s forces, Israel limits the new regime’s ability to establish control. However, regardless of Israel’s motivation – a mix of realpolitik and solidarity with the Druze – the fact remains that Israeli airstrikes probably saved many Druze lives this week by stopping the advance of sectarian killers.
Israel at least seems to understand what kind of regime it is dealing with in Syria. The contrast with the UK here could hardly be more stark. Barely two weeks before the Sweida massacre, UK foreign secretary David Lammy was in Damascus, shaking hands with President Sharaa and pledging £94.5million in aid to support Syria’s ‘long-term recovery’. With great fanfare, the UK re-established diplomatic ties with Syria after 14 years. Lammy spoke of ‘renewed hope’ and an ‘inclusive and representative’ transition.
Washington has been equally eager to embrace Syria’s post-Assad regime. US president Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Syria in June, and even praised Sharaa as an ‘attractive, tough guy’. He also floated the idea of Syria joining an expanded Abraham Accords peace framework, therefore recognising Israel. The logic was simple: bring Syria in from the cold, peel it away from Iran’s orbit, and declare the 14-year civil war resolved.
That aspiration is now in tatters. The massacres of Druze and Alawites cast grave doubt on the new Syrian government’s credibility and intentions. For all the talk of a fresh start, Syria’s interim rulers have shown a grim continuity with the past: intolerance of dissent, reliance on sectarian militias and a propensity for violence. The West’s willingness to overlook HTS’s jihadist pedigree in exchange for a quick diplomatic win now looks not just cynical, but also dangerously naïve.
Sharaa’s cabinet is literally teeming with individuals and factions under terrorism and human-rights sanctions. Did London and Washington really believe such actors would morph overnight into guarantors of pluralism and human rights? With scattered revenge killings of regime loyalists, crackdowns on minority communities, early signs of trouble were already there, but many Western policymakers and media outlets downplayed them. The result is that Western nations are now awkwardly complicit. British aid and American rapprochement have effectively helped legitimise a government whose associates have now butchered over a thousand men, women and children based on their sect. How will these same leaders credibly condemn atrocities elsewhere when they stayed mum on Syria’s? It is a staggering moral failure.
These events have sobering implications. Regionally, Syria’s ‘new dawn’ is revealing itself as just another nightmare. And far from unifying the country, Sharaa’s reliance on hard-line Islamist forces is deepening its fractures. The Druze, long wary of both Assad and Sunni extremism, may now conclude that they have no place in the new Syria, potentially sparking an exodus or armed self-defence. The Alawites, who already feel betrayed and endangered, could turn to desperate measures, perhaps even inviting foreign protection or forming insurgencies. Sectarian bloodshed on this scale risks reigniting a cycle of vengeance that could unravel the fragile peace achieved. In Lebanon next door, where Druze and Alawite communities also exist, the spillover of sectarian tensions is an ominous possibility. Israel’s direct strikes on Damascus also mark a dangerous escalation, and serve as a reminder that Syria’s war can at any moment ignite regional conflagration.
As the Druze and Alawite tragedies have shown, there is nothing ‘inclusive’ or ‘reformed’ about Sharaa’s new regime.
Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer and an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, specialising in defence and the Middle East.
Question: What do you have to say about the suspicions against you and after consulting with a lawyer?
Answer: First of all, I’m glad you’re giving me a platform to give my side of the event. I want to retract the confession I gave during the Shin Bet interrogation. The confession was extracted from me by force and through aggressive means, and I will elaborate. First, I was arrested violently almost four weeks ago. Although I did not resist, they shackled my hands and feet and laid me down on the floor of a vehicle… Afterwards, they took me into the interrogation facility and interrogated me for hours at a time, day and night. They handcuffed me to a chair by both hands and feet, with my hands behind my back. During the first week, my legs were also shackled. I was deprived of a great deal of sleep. There were times when they interrogated me for almost three days straight. They wouldn’t let me sleep through the night and told me I’d better start talking, because if not, by this time tomorrow I’d definitely start talking. That’s how they kept interrogating me until the following evening.
They gave me two hours of rest and then brought me back in for further interrogation. Four tough and intimidating interrogators entered the room and asked me if I wanted to talk. I maintained my right to remain silent, and an interrogator named William slapped me and said, That’s it, it’s over. You don’t know what a Shin Bet interrogation is. You can’t remain silent and I’d have to start talking. When I continued to remain silent, he wrapped my hands in bandages like bracelets, then handcuffed me with short handcuffs behind my back. He spun me around on the chair and together with another interrogator, forced both my legs under the chair legs and sat me in a position where my back was tilted backwards at a 45-degree angle. I tried several times to straighten up, but they didn’t let me, until after about half a minute, when I simply collapsed backward from exhaustion.
I screamed in pain. My shoulders hurt, my legs, my chest hurt, with especially unbearable, inhuman pain in my lower back. They continued abusing me in this way and ignored my screams. They chatted casually among themselves. From time to time they lifted me up and brought me back down, grabbing me by the shirt. They yelled at me that they were my nightmare and that they would crush my bones. After about twenty minutes I could no longer bear the horrible pain and suffering, and I begged them to stop. I confessed to everything they wanted, all just to end the torment and torture.
Later in the interrogation, when I didn’t give them the answers they wanted, they resumed torturing me on the chair. They used two other methods: they sat me on a chair with my back pressed against a table and my hands cuffed behind my back. They stretched my arms out across the table, which caused severe pain in my shoulder, arms, and elbows. They also made me stand in a position where I had to crouch on the tips of my toes, with my hands cuffed behind my back – a position impossible to maintain for more than half a minute. I kept collapsing onto my back, but they didn’t care and repeatedly forced me back into that position. That was the only reason I agreed to cooperate with them. They raised their hands against me, slapped me, all this after many hours of sleep deprivation and complete isolation from any normal person. All these things caused me to confess to acts I never committed – things I never did – the murder and arson in the village of Duma. I never did those things. I have no connection to them whatsoever. I’ll also add that throughout the rest of the interrogations, they forced me to cooperate while threatening that if I didn’t cooperate in the way they wanted, they would resume the torture.
A brief excerpt from the minor A.’s testimony before the judge describing how his confession was extracted
They tortured me all night. I screamed and cried, and they laughed. I told them: Kill me, just don’t do this to me. ’ I beg you, Your Honor, I can’t take it anymore” (the suspect is crying). Blindfolds, slaps, being forced backward. They stick fingers under my chin and lift it forcibly. My neck hurts and I can’t breathe. They press on my ribs, grab the shoulder muscle, dig their fingers into the muscle. They shake me, scream, curse, and humiliate me. They punch my calves while my back is arched, and that makes the pain worse, until I break and ask, What do you want me to confess to?
Authorization of the Supreme Court that Ben Uliel was subjected to torture. 2022
Judges: Izsak Amit, Yosef Elron, Shaul Shohcat
On 17 December 2015, at 23:40, a “necessity investigation” began, which continued until 7:00 the next morning (hereinafter: the first necessity investigation). During this investigation, “special measures” were applied to the appellant. Shortly after the use of these measures began, the appellant admitted to carrying out the Duma attack. It should be noted that, according to the respondent, the timing chosen for implementing these special measures was based on the results of investigations involving the minor on 15 December 2015 and 16 December 2015, which significantly increased the suspicion of the appellant’s involvement in the attack.
Approximately three hours after the end of the first necessity investigation, the appellant’s interrogation resumed and continued until around 15:00. During this interrogation, the appellant repeated his confession, even though no “special measures” were used. The respondent did not request to admit as evidence the results of this interrogation or those of the first necessity investigation
Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 campaign for New York City mayor, framed as a progressive crusade for economic justice, bears conspicuous similarities to Hamas’s 2006 electoral campaign in the Palestinian legislative and presidential elections. Both Mamdani and Hamas’s campaigns leverage populist economic grievances to mask radical ideological agendas, blending reformist rhetoric with revolutionary objectives. Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, built on promises of economic reform and anti-corruption, offers a playbook that Mamdani appears to follow, consciously or not, in his bid to remake New York—a radical structure anchored in communist and Islamist worldviews. This convergence is not merely tactical but ideological, reflecting the broader dynamics of the Red-Green Alliance—a coalition of far-left socialism and radical Islamism that threatens pluralistic societies with dystopian outcomes.
Hamas’s 2006 campaign under the “Change and Reform” banner promised economic independence, poverty reduction, and infrastructure development. Their manifesto outlined disengaging from Israel’s economy, issuing a Palestinian currency, and reforming fiscal policies to combat unemployment and stabilize prices. These pledges resonated with Palestinians disillusioned by Fatah’s corruption, securing Hamas’s electoral success.
Similarly, Mamdani’s platform appeals to working-class New Yorkers struggling with the rising costs of essentials like chicken, rice, and milk, proposing radical solutions such as city-owned bodegas and fare-free transit. These policies, while pitched as progressive, echo the inefficient, state-controlled systems of the Soviet Union, representing a regressive step toward centralized economic control rather than genuine reform.
Hamas’s economic promises were a gateway to broader political warfare, using socioeconomic grievances to build legitimacy while advancing a radical Islamist agenda. Mamdani’s campaign mirrors this approach, employing what can be termed an “economic intifada” to destabilize New York’s governance structures. His proposals—rent strikes, budget justice, and public ownership of grocery stores—are not just policy goals but tools to erode centrist coalitions and challenge capitalist frameworks. Like Hamas, Mamdani cloaks his agenda in the language of justice, appealing to the oppressed against the powerful, yet his policies risk undermining the economic foundations of a pluralistic city.
Hamas’s 2006 platform combined economic populism with uncompromising rejectionism, delegitimizing Israel while promoting an Islamic state. Mamdani’s campaign similarly blends economic reform with ideological extremism. His full-throated support for the Palestinian cause, often veiled in democratic socialist rhetoric, aligns with Hamas’s narrative. In a 2017 rap track titled “Salaam,” performing as Mr. Cardamom, Mamdani expressed “love to the Holy Land Five,” referring to the leadership of the Holy Land Foundation, convicted in 2008 for funneling over $12 million to Hamas. This drew sharp criticism, with former Governor Andrew Cuomo calling it “disgusting” and raising concerns about Mamdani’s ties to Hamas-linked figures.
Mamdani’s visit to the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge during his 2025 campaign further underscores this alignment. The mosque’s imam, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Barr, has praised Hamas fighters and called for Israel’s annihilation. Mamdani’s social media posts from the visit sparked controversy, highlighting his association with radical Islamist sentiment. These actions suggest an ideological kinship with Hamas’s rejectionist stance, repackaged for a New York audience under the guise of social justice.
Mamdani’s campaign reflects Hamas’s strategy of “globalizing the intifada,” a call to extend the Palestinian campaign of violence and subversion worldwide. His long-standing support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, evident since his 2014 advocacy at Bowdoin College and his 2021 push for local candidates to back BDS, situates New York’s local battles within a global anti-American, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist framework. In 2021, he introduced a state bill to bar New York charities from donating to Israeli settlement organizations, a move critics labeled “purely antisemitic.” In a June 2025 interview with The Bulwark, Mamdani defended the slogan “globalize the intifada” as symbolic of Palestinian human rights, stating, “That is not language that I use … any incitement to violence is something that I’m in opposition to.”
To be clear, the phrase “globalize the intifada” is a call to violence and terror, rooted in the bloody history of the First and Second Intifadas, which involved suicide bombings, lynchings, and attacks by PLO and Hamas terrorists, resulting in the killing of more than 1,000 civilians. “Globalize the intifada” has been chanted at pro-Hamas rallies together with slogans like “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” It explicitly advocates spreading violence and terror globally, not peaceful protest. Unlike terms like “muqawama silmiya” for peaceful resistance, “intifada” evokes jihad and the Islamic notion of martyrdom and armed direct actions, carrying the same dangerous and deadly implications as phrases such as “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase outright drew criticism from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Jewish leaders, signaling his alignment with radical narratives.
This mirrors Hamas’s post-October 7, 2023, strategy, which co-opted global far-left discourses, particularly on American campuses like Columbia University, to fuel anti-Israel sentiment and accusations of genocide at the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. Mamdani’s campaign similarly seeks to remake New York as a battleground for these global struggles, aligning with the Red-Green Alliance’s fusion of socialist and Islamist ideologies.
The Red-Green Alliance unites far-left socialism and radical Islamism in a shared anti-Western, anti-capitalist, and anti-Zionist agenda. Both ideologies reject liberal democratic values, seeking revolutionary change through populist mobilization. Mamdani’s ties to this alliance are evident not only in his own actions but also through his father, Mahmood Mamdani, a member of the Gaza Tribunal’s advisory council, a UK-based group supportive of BDS and sympathetic to suicide bombers. In his 2004 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, the elder Mamdani wrote, “Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” This intellectual framework, which normalizes extremist tactics, informs Zohran Mamdani’s political posture, blending socialist rhetoric with support for radical causes.
The parallels between Mamdani and Hamas are striking:
Economic Populism: Hamas promised subsidies and anti-corruption measures; Mamdani offers city-run bodegas and free transit, both exploiting economic discontent to gain support.
Political Radicalism: Hamas rejected bipartisan politics and security cooperation with Israel; Mamdani delegitimizes centrist governance and security institutions, framing them as tools of oppression.
Ideological Intransigence: Hamas’s anti-Israel stance mirrors Mamdani’s anti-Zionist rhetoric, both cloaked in narratives of resistance and liberation.
Mamdani is merely updating Hamas’s template for New York, replacing religious nationalism with intersectional socialism but maintaining a destabilizing posture that challenges democratic norms.
The Red-Green Alliance’s blend of socialism and Islamism, though packaged as progressive, is inherently destructive. Hamas’s rule in Gaza since 2006 has turned the region into a dystopian landscape of violence and poverty, with Gazans themselves blaming Hamas for their suffering. Mohammed Attalah of Beit Lahia told CNN on March 26, 2025: “Our demand is that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. This chaos that they have created is enough.”
Mamdani’s vision for New York risks a similar trajectory, prioritizing ideological purity over practical governance. His proposal for city-run grocery stores, for instance, recalls the Soviet Union’s inefficient food distribution systems, a regressive policy dressed as progress. The radical extremism of both socialism and Islamism, when unchecked, leads to societal decay, as evidenced by Gaza’s ongoing crisis.
Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign is not merely a bid for office but a case study in political warfare, drawing lessons from Hamas’s 2006 electoral strategy. By blending economic populism with ideological radicalism, Mamdani seeks to globalize the intifada, targeting New York’s civic, economic, and social foundations. The Red-Green Alliance’s destructive ideas, while well-packaged, threaten pluralistic democracy with dystopian violence and destruction, as seen in Gaza. New Yorkers must recognize this campaign for what it is: a totalitarian takeover dressed in the garb of reform.
Hamas Election Manifesto (2006) https://www.hamascase.com/volume-i/06_hamas-manifesto/
Miller, Tim, and Cameron Kasky. “Zohran Mamdani: FYPod Crossover.” The Bulwark Podcast, 17 June 2025, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/zohran-mamdani-fypod-crossover.
NBC News. (2025) Asked to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ Mamdani says mayors shouldn’t ‘police speech.’ Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggV2SeiGrVw (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
New York Post (12 July 2025) Mamdanis dad part of anti‑Israel group sympathetic to suicide bombers. Available at: https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/mamdanis-dad-part-of-anti-israel-group-sympathetic-to-suicide-bombers/ (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
Shorr, T. (2024) Palestinianism and the Red‑Green Alliance: Similarities in the Ideology and Practice of Marxists and Islamists. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Available at: https://jcpa.org/article/palestinianism-and-the-red-green-alliance/ (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
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