{"id":1516,"date":"2026-08-15T07:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T07:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2026-08-15T07:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T07:37:12","slug":"how-hamas-attack-on-israel-is-transforming-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1516","title":{"rendered":"How Hamas\u2019 Attack on Israel Is Transforming American Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Dr. Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s victory in the Democrats\u2019 U.S. Senate primary in Michigan last Tuesday was the latest sign of an emerging kingmaker in U.S. politics\u2014a little-known super PAC that has tapped the wealth of a new cadre of Muslim-American mega-donors to support far-left candidates.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1514\">MAGA and the DSA, Part One: Similarities Between These Populist Antagonists<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since it was launched just six months ago, American Priorities has channeled millions of dollars,\u00a0primarily\u00a0from\u00a0donors with Arab, Muslim, and\/or Middle Eastern backgrounds, to a string of winning candidates in high-profile races.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the entity-supported candidates are running on various\u00a0\u00a0such as single-payer health care, abolishing ICE, and slashing the military. But one area in which all candidates are aligned, consistent with the PAC\u2019s mission, is in their antagonism towards Israel.<\/p>\n<p>With several such candidates considered locks for the U.S. House in deep blue districts and potentially Michigan\u2019s Senate seat in November, the independent expenditure vehicle is at the forefront of an increasingly politically influential and growing Muslim-American community\u2014one that has ascended as the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict has become a central U.S. political issue following Hamas\u2019 massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n<p>In some ways, this is a very American story: As new groups of immigrants establish themselves in America, they eventually seek room for their voice in politics and culture. The key issues that have mobilized Muslim-Americans and the positions held by associated organizations, however, are seen by some as radical. Polls show such voters are significantly more hostile towards Israel and Jews and tolerant toward groups and ideas the U.S. government has linked to terrorism than the general public\u2014views reflected by the insurgent crop of leftist candidates they are increasingly backing.<\/p>\n<p>A recent Senate Judiciary Committee\u00a0hearing convened by Sen. Ted Cruz raised a more chilling issue. The Texas Republican alleged, and witnesses concurred that\u2014in a\u00a0 to what has transpired in countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom\u2014the Muslim Brotherhood, a subversive transnational Islamist organization, has cultivated an \u201centrenched institutional network\u201d in America of NGOs, advocacy groups, and political organizations to advance its leaders\u2019 recorded mission to \u201cdestroy \u2026 Western civilization from within.\u201d That network, terrorism expert Kyle Shideler found, has actively partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America, as part of what Cruz called a \u201cRed-Green Alliance,\u201d that Shideler said is \u201cunited around a revolutionary objective advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.\u201d Democrats on the panel boycotted the hearing in protest, claiming in a statement\u00a0the Texas senator was \u201c[s]capegoating Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While such partisan conflicts simmer, Muslim-Americans, who represent meaningful percentages of the population in dark blue New York and purple Michigan alike, are buoying the leftists increasingly dominating the Democrat Party. All indications are that this bloc is positioning itself not only to play an outsize role in shaping the next Congress but also in defining the 2028 presidential contest and America\u2019s future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pro-Palestinian Leftists<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>American Priorities was founded in February as a self-styled \u201ccountervailing force\u201d to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Though the largest such group, it is just one of several relatively new PACs with overlapping donors centered on opposition to Israel (see sidebar). The super PAC is led by Hannah Fertig, a strategist self-identifying\u00a0as Jewish who figured prominently in the 2020 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who is also Jewish and a backer of staunch anti-Zionist candidates. The group\u2019s treasurer is Mark Hanna, an assembly district leader in New York who began his political career as an organizer\u00a0focusing on Muslim-related issues, including through forming Yalla Brooklyn, an NGO dedicated to mobilizing Arab and Muslim voters. American Priorities has pledged to put up $10 million this cycle to elect Democratic candidates who believe the party establishment is too pro-Israel. AIPAC and its affiliates have also poured tens of millions of dollars into recent election cycles as support for the Jewish state generally has declined\u2014a\u00a0long\u2013term\u00a0trend\u00a0among Democrats correlating with the rise of the anti-Israel progressive left. To support its political claims, American Priorities cites polls showing a majority of Democratic voters\u00a0oppose\u00a0U.S. military aid to Israel, are more sympathetic to Palestinian Arabs than Israelis, and shun candidates who accept AIPAC support.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the super PAC\u2019s top donors are first-generation Muslim immigrants who have made their fortunes in the U.S. They include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><!--[endif]-->Hussein \u201cSam\u201d Mahrouq, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan and later grew a single car dealership in Texas into Mahrouq Enterprises International, a conglomerate\u00a0encompassing 25 companies, spanning 3 continents, and employing more than 650 people across the automotive, technology, and real estate sectors.<\/li>\n<li><!--[endif]-->Idris and Haroon Mokhtarzada, brothers who as children fled Afghanistan with their family amid Russia\u2019s invasion before settling in the U.S. They became serial entrepreneurs, most notably founding personal finance app Truebill in 2015\u2014which six years later was sold to the Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion and became today\u2019s Rocket Money.<\/li>\n<li><!--[endif]-->Nazar Khan, born in India and who likewise immigrated to the U.S. as a child, commencing a journey that would take him from the University of Pennsylvania to the perch where he sits today as co-founder and chief technology officer of AI energy infrastructure developer and operator Tera Wulf, valued at around $9 billion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are highly successful immigrants who, by all accounts, have lived the American dream. Nevertheless, the super PAC they have written six-figure checks to is\u00a0partnered\u00a0with groups advocating far-left social and economic policies aimed at fundamentally transforming America, including Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Leaders We Deserve, and the IMEU Policy Project.<\/p>\n<p>RealClearInvestigations could not reach or did not receive responses to a series of questions posed to Mahrouq, the Mokhtarzada Brothers, Khan, and other top American Priorities donors about their views.<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Mahrouq told CNN in connection with a July 2026\u00a0report\u00a0that he believes in \u201ca U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that respects the dignity of all people in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy focus is not partisan politics, but rather promoting policies that strengthen America, encourage opportunity, and serve the interests of American citizens. I believe decisions affecting our country should be made based on what is best for the United States, independent of pressure from any foreign government, foreign interest group or partisan agenda,\u201d he told\u00a0Jewish Insider\u00a0via a spokesperson earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Some on the right in the U.S. and Israel alike have advocated for phasing out aid\u2014on good faith grounds that it would redound to both countries\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast to those boosters of the U.S.-Israel relationship, nearly every candidate backed by American Priorities has characterized Israel as an \u201capartheid\u201d state engaged in \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza, downplayed or rationalized the violence of its jihadist foes, and disparaged their primary opponents by accusing them of being \u201cbought and paid for,\u201d directly\u00a0or indirectly, by the Jewish state.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the candidates it has supported thus far\u2014many of which its donors have also contributed to individually\u2014include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><!--[endif]--><strong>Abdul El-Sayed<\/strong>, the Democrat\u2019s candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, boosted by\u00a0 of support from American Priorities. An Egyptian-American, during the Arab Spring in 2012, he signed a\u00a0letter\u00a0backing Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi against his opponents. In 2022, he\u00a0compared\u00a0a proposed ballot measure in Oklahoma prohibiting judges from considering Islamic law in rulings to \u201cthe Trail of Tears,\u201d which followed comments in 2021 in which he drew equivalence between the War on Terror and \u201cthe decimation of Native Americans, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow segregation, [and] Japanese interment (sic).\u201d He\u00a0refused to address the U.S. military\u2019s assassination of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader\u2014who had authorized the killing of perhaps 42,000 Iranian protesters in February\u2014so as not to inflame the many \u201cpeople in Dearborn [Michigan] who are sad.\u201d This past spring he also suggested that a jihadist attack on random members of a West Bloomfield, Michigan, synagogue in March made sense on one level because several of the attacker\u2019s family members\u2014including a brother who was a commander of the terrorist group\u2014had been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon. El-Sayed frequently appears with the antisemitic,\u00a0terror-sympathizing, and\u00a0Mao-revering streamer Hasan Piker, dismissing criticism of Piker\u2019s assertion that \u201cAmerica deserved 9\/11\u201d as an example of\u00a0\u201ccancel culture.\u201d\u00a0El-Sayed\u2019s father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, a contributor of $200,000 to a super PAC backing his son-in-law, has\u00a0reportedly served on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) since at least 2007. ISNA was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the then-largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history, concerning the Hamas-funding \u201ccharity,\u201d the Holy Land Foundation. The organization emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has also helped birth Hamas and other jihadist groups. El-Sayed previously served as vice president of the University of Michigan\u2019s chapter of the Muslim Students\u2019 Association (MSA), an organization that also has Brotherhood roots\u00a0and helped birth ISNA. He made his \u201cTrail of Tears\u201d remarks in front of the Council on American-Islamic Relations\u2019 Oklahoma chapter. The candidate has spoken before the national organization at\u00a0multiple\u00a0events. CAIR, another unindicted co-conspirator in the\u00a0<em>Holy Land Foundation\u00a0<\/em>case, has been designated as a terrorist organization in several Arab countries along with the states of Florida and Texas. Fox News\u00a0reported that some 41 individuals linked to CAIR have contributed over $115k to El-Sayed. Sen. Cruz and the witnesses collectively identified each of these entities\u2014ISNA, Muslim Students Associations, and CAIR\u2014as part of what Cruz called an \u201centrenched institutional\u201d Muslim Brotherhood that sits \u201c[b]ehind El-Sayed\u2019s political rise.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><!--[endif]--><strong>Dr. Adam Hamawy<\/strong>, the Democrat\u2019s nominee for Congress in New Jersey\u2019s 12th District, boosted by $1.5 million of support from the super PAC\u2014slightly more than he raised from all direct contributors as of this writing. An Egyptian-American, as a young man the future plastic surgeon sat in on the lectures of, traveled with, and served as a translator for the \u201cBlind Sheikh,\u201d Omar Abdel-Rahman. In 1995, Dr. Hamawy would testify, potentially untruthfully, on his behalf during the terrorism trial linked to the first World Trade Center bombing that resulted in the cleric\u2019s conviction for, among other things, conspiring to bomb six New York landmarks. A year prior, he\u00a0volunteered as a doctor in Bosnia during the height of the jihadist insurgency there, under the auspices of an NGO in the Benevolence International Foundation, subsequently identified as an Al-Qaeda front group. Most recently, he served for several weeks in 2024 at Gaza\u2019s European Hospital, which he called \u201ca completely benign civilian hospital with no tunnels underneath it\u201d\u2014only to be disproven\u00a0when Israeli forces identified a military base underneath the facility and eliminated senior Hamas leaders operating there, including commander Mohamed Sinwar, brother of October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar. Like El-Sayed, Hamawy has defended Piker\u2019s 9\/11 comments, stating, \u201cI think we have to put it all in perspective,\u201d and that \u201cI still love the guy.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><!--[endif]--><strong>Daria Avila Chevalier<\/strong>, the Democrat\u2019s nominee for Congress in New York\u2019s 13th District, boosted by $1.3 million of support from the super PAC, including spending in opposition to her primary opponent\u2014matching what she raised from all direct contributors as of this writing. A self-described\u00a0\u201cworking-class Dominican New Yorker who has been organizing in upper Manhattan for a fairer, more equitable, and more affordable New York City since she was a teenager,\u201d Chevalier joined an anti-Israel\u00a0protest in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, where participants openly celebrated Hamas\u2019 atrocities from the day before. While an undergraduate, she co-founded the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, which has endorsed the \u201ctotal eradication of Western civilization\u201d; she later led the anti-Israel and antisemitic takeover of the campus after the Hamas attack. Chevalier converted to Islam, she says, as a byproduct of her experience interning in Nablus and being surrounded by Muslim activists. The Democrat nominee, who is\u00a0said\u00a0to have \u201coriented her whole adult life around\u201d Palestinian activism,\u00a0tweeted\u00a0that \u201cIsrael doesn\u2019t exist\u201d amid a series of since-deleted posts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Democrat Establishment Fears Antisemitic Takeover<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Opponents see such candidates\u2019 anti-Zionism as ultimately indistinguishable from\u00a0antisemitism, with their rhetoric aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing a free and democratic Jewish state. They hear the\u00a0AIPAC attacks as dog whistles for age-old tropes about cabals of wealthy Jews controlling policymakers and as insinuating Jewish dual loyalty\u2014ginning up Jew-hatred and sowing domestic discord.<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman has been perhaps the senior-most party official to make this case, indicating, \u201cI\u2019m deeply alarmed by the way the Democratic Party is going after Israel and allowing just rank anti-Semitism to just flourish, you know, on the left and on the campuses too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His lower-chamber colleague, Jewish New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, one of the few other non-lame ducks in Congress to speak out, recently wrote in the\u00a0Free Press\u00a0that \u201cAbdul El-Sayed\u2019s victory\u2026is only the latest evidence that my party is being overrun by antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joel Rubin, the Jewish outreach leader on Bernie Sanders\u2019 2020 presidential campaign, has likewise\u00a0said that \u201cI think what Sanders and the Sanders operation have done is shove into our system the most categorically anti-Israel, antisemitic candidates that we\u2019ve seen in a generation\u2014if ever, certainly within the Democratic Party\u201d\u2014a reference to the Vermont socialist\u2019s leadership on the left.<\/p>\n<p>Outgoing New York Rep. Dan Goldman expressed similar concerns. A noted progressive who is Jewish, Goldman\u2019s primary contest came to be defined in part by his pro-Israel positions and AIPAC ties, which his Jewish opponent, American Priorities-endorsed Brad Lander, seized on critically, en route to a 66-34 trouncing of the former Trump impeachment manager. Lander, like many left-wing Reform Jews, has\u00a0argued\u00a0that his\u00a0progressive principles\u00a0flow from his faith. In contrast to Goldman, speaking before a Queens mosque in May, Lander\u00a0told\u00a0worshippers that Israel is committing \u201cgenocide in Gaza\u201d and \u201cpotentially\u201d in Lebanon, vowing to cut military assistance and partner with the likes of anti-Israel Muslim Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in Congress. The former New York City comptroller also\u00a0disavowed\u00a0AIPAC and pressed Goldman to sign a pledge to avoid taking such outside political support. An event in the waning days of the campaign illustrated its tenor. Goldman patronized a Brooklyn coffee shop with an activist owner. Upon realizing it had served him, the cafe\u00a0wrote\u00a0in a public social media post that it does not serve \u201cgenocide enablers,\u201d and it would have turned him away had it known. \u201c[W]e don\u2019t need your money (it\u2019s probably coming from AIPAC anyways),\u201d the since-deleted diatribe read. In Goldman\u2019s concession speech, he\u00a0lamented that \u201cantisemitic tropes and stereotypes, some of which I heard personally on this campaign, will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don\u2019t lean in and speak out\u2014even if it\u2019s not politically expedient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In advance of a recent failed House vote forced by renegade Republican Rep. Thomas Massie to cut foreign military assistance to Israel, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee,\u00a0decried the \u201ctactics used by those on the far left to advocate for cutting off aid to Israel,\u201d indicating he had had his home \u201cvandalized,\u201d his driveway set on fire, and that a staffer had been \u201cphysically assaulted.\u201d Smith revealed this intimidation campaign in a post explaining why the avowed \u201csupporter of Israel\u201d would nevertheless be voting in favor of the amendment. Nearly half of House Democrats\u2014more than 100 in all\u2014joined him, in a marked historical shift. Rep. Massie, the sole Republican to vote in favor of the amendment, is one of the few GOP members to receive direct or indirect contributions from American Priorities supporters, alongside anti-Israel former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.<\/p>\n<p>Dana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general in Michigan\u2014and first Jewish American to hold that post\u2014has raised similar concerns. She recently indicated\u00a0at an event organized by the Anti-Defamation League that she will not attend her party\u2019s next convention, after a prior one resulted in its selection of a pro-Hezbollah candidate over a pro-Israel Jewish incumbent for Michigan University regent, and attendees heckled El-Sayed primary opponent Rep. Haley Stevens. \u201cI don\u2019t feel safe going,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have profound fears about what is going to happen to this state, and what is going to happen to this country if we don\u2019t have a significant change of course,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>For their part, most of the American Priorities-supported and adjacent candidates have denied that they are antisemites, claiming instead that there is a distinction between Jews, the Jews\u2019 ancestral and biblical homeland where nearly half of the Jewish people live today, and its Jewish leaders. \u201cAIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people,\u201d El-Sayed has\u00a0said. \u201cI love Judaism and I love the Jewish people\u2026And the single most dangerous thing that they\u2019ve tried to tell us is that somehow they can extend the definition of anti-Semitism to include a foreign government and its leaders.\u201d Virtually every candidate has likewise run on some variation of the argument that, as El-Sayed put it in a recent\u00a0interview, \u201cwe send our money abroad to Israel to drop bombs on other people\u2019s kids. That money should be spent here at home.\u201d The Michigander has also called for cutting aid\u00a0specifically to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE\u2014all countries that have designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1512\">JD Vance and RFK Jr. Refer Hundreds of Hospitals and Clinics to Justice Department For Criminal Investigation into Transgender Health Fraud<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Mamdani Effect<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These candidates are following in the footsteps of, and in some cases with the blessing of, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2014whose rise captured the attention and support of several of American Priorities\u2019 donors prior to its launch, including its two biggest backers, Mohamed Waqas Javed and Omer Hasan. Both have contributed over $1 million to the super PAC to date. While little is publicly known about them, they and a third donor, Tariq Afaq Ahmed, who has contributed $500,000, were pre- and post-IPO employees at AppLovin, today one of the world\u2019s most valuable ad tech companies, from which they likely made a fortune. AppLovin has come under scrutiny\u00a0for, among other things, its funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals and entities. Javed and Hasan burst onto the scene as power players when they each contributed $250,000, the largest such donations, to New Yorkers for Lower Costs, an independent expenditure vehicle supporting Mamdani\u2019s election. Ahmed would contribute $25,000 to the mayor\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n<p>In the final hours of the Democrat primary, brothers Haroon and Idris Mokhtarzadeh would donate $189,000 to Mamdani. Haroon has created Islamic-centric\u00a0businesses\u00a0and\u00a0participated\u00a0in\u00a0explicitly Muslim business forums, and sits on the board of the likes of\u00a0Israel\u2013hostile\u00a0Mehdi Hasan\u2019s Zeteo, and Drop Site News, co-founded by\u00a0jihad-sympathetic\u00a0journalist Jeremy Scahill. His brother Idris has taken a lower profile, albeit likewise seeking to promote Muslim businesses, via his\u00a0involvement\u00a0in\u00a0Collective Continuum, a group that seeks to \u201cempower 1,000 Muslim-led ventures by 2030.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>American Priorities\u2019 treasurer, Hanna, previously served alongside Mamdani in the 2017 campaign of Palestinian-American Rev. Khader El-Yateem. Mamdani\u00a0said\u00a0that El-Yateem \u201ctransformed\u201d his life, in part by connecting him\u00a0with \u201ca political movement that understood Palestine as being a central part of the struggle, which is something that I had often struggled with\u2026all of these politicians I had admired\u2026found every way to not address Palestinians when it came to their seemingly universal struggles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Mamdani campaign, which emerged from the city\u2019s\u00a0Muslim Democrat establishment\u00a0and made Israel and the Palestinian Arabs a major focus, appears to have catalyzed Muslim donors nationally, while demonstrating a proof of concept for how targeted contributions could dramatically increase their political clout going forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter Mamdani\u2019s upset victory over the presumed favorite, [former Gov. Andrew] Cuomo, some of those who supported Mamdani told ABC News they felt their contributions toward his victory could forecast a rise in a larger network of Muslim Americans fundraising in national politics, which they say might influence who will run, and who might win,\u201d the outlet\u00a0reported\u00a0at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed, the former AppLovin employee turned angel investor,\u00a0called\u00a0the groundswell of national Muslim support behind Mamdani perhaps \u201cthe infancy of something to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Palestinian Cause Binds American Muslims and the Left<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Israel-Palestinian conflict is seen as a unifying issue among a\u00a0\u2013aligned\u00a0but\u00a0\u00a0 Muslim American community estimated at somewhere between\u00a03.5\u00a0(by Pew) and\u00a08 million (by CAIR)\u201460 percent of whom are immigrants. Writing in City Journal, Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder of the American Muslim League, says that for her co-religionists, \u201cthe Israel-Palestine conflict has become a defining aspect of their identity, though it directly affects only a tiny portion of the community. No one assumed that <em>all<\/em> Catholics supported the IRA. By contrast, the Palestinian cause attracts millions of Muslim Americans who have nothing to do with the conflict but who have been told by\u00a0clerics,\u00a0community leaders, and\u00a0professors to think of it as a religious duty.\u201d The war in Gaza ranked as the second most important issue for American Muslims after the economy, at 35 percent, according to a 2025 Institute for Social Policy &amp; Understanding . Likewise, a survey of Muslim-American voters in the 2024 election produced by CAIR\u00a0found\u00a0that of all Muslim-related foreign policy issues during that cycle, the most important one to respondents was \u201cIsraeli Genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suwaij made her assertion in response to polling of Muslim Americans commissioned by her organization. That survey found that among respondents, some 66 percent support the Muslim Brotherhood, 35 percent support Hamas, and 17 percent harbor unfavorable views towards Jews. The Hamas figures dovetail with a Pew poll indicating 44 percent support among American Muslims\u2014in line\u00a0with polling of Palestinian Arabs themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, leader of the Atlantic Council\u2019s Realign for Palestine project,\u00a0says, \u201cBased on countless interactions, trends, and observations since October 7, this number is almost certainly an undercount.\u201d Like Suwaij, he has written that \u201cMany parents import rigid political narratives from their countries of origin and pass them to their children, leaving first\u2011 and second\u2011generation Muslim Americans trapped between inherited dogma and their own attempts to think more broadly. The near-absence of healthy institutional infrastructure then reinforces that foundation. National organizations like CAIR, AMP [American Muslims for Palestine], SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], and MSA have filled the vacuum with grievance\u2011based politics, enforced conformity, and a culture where dissent is punished as betrayal.\u201d Sen. Cruz and his witnesses also assessed that, like CAIR and MSA, AMP and SJP are Muslim Brotherhood-linked. Shideler, during the Cruz-led hearing, likewise identified Emgage PAC, the self-described largest Muslim American PAC, as linked to the Brotherhood\u2019s U.S. network, noting it \u201cwas created by a former CAIR member who at one time was on a terror watch list and was also a consultant to convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian.\u201d American Priorities donor Khan, among his other Islamic\u00a0philanthropic\u00a0pursuits, sits on the board of\u00a0, that organization\u2019s lobbying and advocacy arm.<\/p>\n<p>The Pew\u00a0poll also showed that Muslims have a more favorable view of Palestinian Arabs than any other religious cohort at 78 percent and a less favorable view of Israelis than any other religious cohort at 26 percent support. Following the October 7 attack, nearly 58 percent of American Muslims surveyed found that Hamas was at least somewhat justified in carrying out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust \u201cas part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Each year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) surveys populations around the world using questions to assess animus towards Jews via acceptance of derogatory stereotypes. Globally, in its 2025 survey, the ADL found that 46 percent of adults harbored antisemitic attitudes. In the predominantly Muslim Middle East and North Africa\u2014comprised of nations rendered virtually <em>judenrein<\/em> during the 20th century after hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled or fled under antisemitic threat\u2014that figure rises to percent. There is little polling on American Muslim views of Jews, but ADL figures from 2017  that 34 percent of Muslim Americans held antisemitic views\u2014more than two times the rate of non-Muslims. More recently, a Heritage Foundation poll from September 2024 found that American Muslims believe Jewish people have \u201ctoo much power\u201d by a rate of 57 percent to the general public\u2019s 17 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, the son of Muslim immigrants, has identified what he sees as two problematic \u201cideological tendencies\u201d among American Muslims that are of increasing relevance as Islam is set to surpass Judaism as America\u2019s second largest religion within the next generation and as Muslims\u2019 political power grows. The first is \u201cIslamism\u201d and its violent manifestation in jihad. The second that he hypothesizes persists among upwardly mobile, educated, and often relatively secular Muslims is their rejection of \u201cthe quiet gratitude that one associates with immigrants and their children of earlier eras.\u201d This, he says, is not so much due to the dictates of their faith as they understand it but due to \u201c\u2018anti-West westernization\u2019 or \u2018adversarial assimilation\u2019: a process by which incorporation into American institutions produces not attachment to patriotic narratives of American freedom, individualism, and benevolence but hostility toward them.\u201d He says that this cohort is in thrall to \u201cThird Worldism,\u201d which Salam defines as \u201ca fusion of anti-Zionism, anti-Westernism, and anti-capitalism that places the sacralized victimhood of Palestinian Arabs at the center of a larger struggle against American imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of the two tendencies, \u201cin important respects,\u201d he argued recently in the Sapir Journal, Third Worldism \u201cpresents the more consequential long-term ideological challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere jihadism targets American civilians as part of a larger struggle to overthrow \u2018apostate\u2019 regimes in the Muslim world, Third Worldism endeavors to transform the nation\u2019s ideological-intellectual milieu, shaping how Americans\u2009\u2013\u2009well beyond the Muslim minority\u2009\u2013\u2009understand their country and its place in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This \u201cThird Worldism,\u201d as I detailed in a 2020 book on the growing nexus between Islamic supremacism and the left in the U.S., titled \u201cAmerican Ingrate,\u201d can be traced in part to the Soviet Union\u2019s championing of the Palestinian Arab cause, and the terror fomented by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, during the Cold War\u2014which became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bres of the global left.<\/p>\n<p><strong>From the Uncommitted Movement to the 2028 Presidency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Muslim community\u2019s influence on U.S. politics this electoral cycle comes on the heels of the so-called Uncommitted National Movement during the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>Led by Lebanese-American political strategist Abbas Alawieh and Palestinian-American activist Layla Elabed, the protest group organized some 700,000 voters to oppose then-President Biden and Vice President Harris in the primary over policies perceived to be too pro-Israel with respect to the war in Gaza. That movement started with 10,000 mostly Arab and Muslim Michigan voters, a swing state consisting of nearly 250,000 Muslims, and grew across the country. El-Sayed himself was among them,\u00a0supporting\u00a0the cause. Alawieh ran for state senate in Michigan as a Democrat this cycle and won the nomination. Harris, who is expected to once again seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, just\u00a0endorsed\u00a0El-Sayed.<\/p>\n<p>President Trump\u00a0courted\u00a0such\u00a0disaffected voters with his own anti-war platform,\u00a0cutting into\u00a0Democrats\u2019 generally dominant margins among Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan and helping him win the state in the 2024 election.<\/p>\n<p>A small but loud cohort on the right has sought to put an America First spin on anti-Israel and what some see as antisemitic activism, in advocating against the U.S.-Israel alliance, railing against the so-called \u201cIsrael lobby,\u201d and insinuating that Israel and pro-Israel Jews are manipulating U.S. policy to Israel\u2019s benefit. American Priorities-supported Democratic nominee for the U.S. House from Colorado Melat Kiros, who\u00a0says\u00a0\u201cthere is no greater concern for me than ending the occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine and guaranteeing Palestinians right to self-determination, statehood, the right to return, and reparations for Israel\u2019s crimes,\u201d has\u00a0bemoaned\u00a0that when the Democratic Party \u201crefuses to lead morally on this issue, they are \u201cleav[ing] a vacuum for those on the far right\u201d and \u201cletting antisemites on the right co-opt the movement for Palestinian liberation while giving fodder to AIPAC talking points.\u201d But while prominent on the podcast scene and on social media, there are few successful\u00a0candidates\u00a0reflecting such views.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, as Waleed Shahid, former spokesman for the Justice Democrats and Bernie Sanders, now working for Mayor Mamdani, recently\u00a0tweeted,\u00a0\u201cThe politicians who were supportive of Uncommitted\u2019s primary campaign (Mamdani, [New York congressional nominee Claire] Valdez, Darializa, Lander, Abdul, [Wisconsin Gubernatorial Candidate Francesca] Hong) are ascendant.\u201d Among those candidates running since American Priorities\u2019 establishment, it has supported all of the names referenced by Shahid save for Hong.<\/p>\n<p>In the run-up to the U.S. Senate primary in Michigan, and specifically touting that race, CAIR launched a \u201cMuslims.Vote\u201d platform as a \u201cone-stop hub for civic engagement.\u201d It\u00a0noted\u00a0that \u201cWith more than 8 million Muslims in America and over 3 million registered voters, our community already has the power to shape elections, especially in key swing states. But millions more eligible Muslim voters must register, show up, and make their voices count.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hamawy and Chevalier are slated to serve as the\u00a0keynote speakers\u00a0at its forthcoming annual gala.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, American Priorities has made its ambitions clear. In a press release following El-Sayed\u2019s victory, it\u00a0wrote: \u201cAfter a string of eight House victories this cycle, the Michigan primary marks [the] first direct statewide challenge to the Democratic establishment with national implications. El-Sayed\u2019s win tonight will force a reckoning within the party over its backward-looking foreign policy and relationship to Israel\u2014just as the contours of the 2028 presidential cycle come into focus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1510\">Trump Administration Urges Supreme Court to Review Mail-In Ballot Executive Order<\/a><\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<div><em>This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s victory in the Democrats\u2019 U.S. Senate primary in Michigan last Tuesday was the latest sign of an emerging kingmaker in U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-warfare"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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