Israel poised for Muslim Brotherhood ban as Netanyahu aligns with US effort

(JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, buoyed by US President Donald Trump’s move to ban Muslim Brotherhood chapters in the United States, has announced his intention to do the same in Israel.

“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond the Middle East as well,” Netanyahu said on Sunday. “Therefore, the State of Israel has already outlawed part of the organization, and we are working to complete this action soon.”

By “part of the organization,” Netanyahu referred to the Israeli Security Cabinet’s November 2015 ban of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement. Led by Sheikh Raed Salah, the faction rejects Israel’s right to exist, seeks to replace Israel with an Islamic caliphate and does not recognize its governing institutions.

The Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel was left untouched by that ban. It takes a more practical approach, recognizes the State of Israel and participates in its politics.

The Southern Branch is represented in the Knesset by the United Arab List, or Ra’am, an Islamist party that helped form the “Change Government” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in 2021.

Ra’am’s platform calls for a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital, the dismantling of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and the “right of return” of Palestinian Arab refugees, a move all sides of the Israeli political spectrum agree would spell the demographic demise of the Jewish state.

Ra’am Party leader Mansour Abbas leads a faction meeting at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, June 5, 2023. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

In 2009 and 2019, the Knesset Central Elections Committee banned Ra’am from running due to its extremism, only to have the rulings reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Ra’am’s elimination from the Knesset (it currently holds five seats), would likely be the most dramatic effect of a ban. “It should have been done long ago,” said Mordechai Kedar, an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.

“They should have been declared illegal immediately” following the revelation in 2024 that a Ra’am-linked charity, Aid 48, had sent large sums to Hamas, Kedar told JNS.

Kedar could not explain why Netanyahu has waited until now to act, especially as the Muslim Brotherhood has already been banned in several Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The Northern and Southern Branches in Israel differ only in their methods, Kedar added. They want the same goal as do all Muslim Brotherhood groups—Islamic conquest.

“They try to take over countries. Turkey is run by [President Recep] Erdoğan and his party. They are motivated by Muslim Brotherhood goals. The Brotherhood succeeded in Gaza thanks to Qatari money. And, for a while, they succeeded also in Egypt, when Mohammed Morsi was the president between mid-2012 and 2013,” he said.

Kedar pointed to a document found during the investigation in the 1990s of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The foundation was shut down by the US government in December 2001 for funneling money to Hamas.

The document, dated May 22, 1991, and titled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” speaks of a “civilization-jihadist process,” and provides a six-point plan, the last of which is to establish a “global Islamic state,” of which the United States would be a part.

“The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions,” the document states.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank that focuses on foreign policy and security issues, agreed that the Holy Land Foundation text is a prime example of what the Muslim Brotherhood wants, as are its founding documents (the group was founded in 1928).

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s approach differs depending on circumstances, covering a spectrum from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ methods. It does what it can get away with,” he told JNS. “In places like Gaza, it pursues violent jihad, but in America it goes for gradualist infiltration and influence.”

Fitton-Brown is encouraged by Trump’s announcement, which he said was “overdue.”

There are several reasons why Trump is acting now, he surmised. One is legislation making its way through Congress, titled the “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025.” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) introduced it in the House of Representatives and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the US Senate.

Probably most significant were the pro-Hamas campus protests during the Gaza war. Republicans see American academia as having been significantly penetrated by the progressive left and Islamist groups. Targeting Islamists is a more effective, and politically palatable, way to confront the problem than challenging people for holding progressive views, he said.

On Nov. 18, likely in anticipation of Trump’s announcement, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations.

“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement announcing the move.

What, at least in part, woke the state’s leadership up to the danger of “Islamic separatism” were plans for the development of a Muslim community in North Texas by the East Plano Islamic Center, Fitton-Brown said. It was to be a development of 1,000 residential units on 402 acres in the city of Josephine, about 40 miles outside Dallas.

In September, Abbot signed into law House Bill 4211 banning residential developments, like EPIC City, from creating “Sharia compounds.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ceremonially signed House Bill 4211 into law to ban residential property developments, like EPIC City, from creating Sharia compounds and defrauding and discriminating against Texans, Sept. 12, 2025. Credit: Office of the Texas Governor.

While the United States may have been slow to react to the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Europe, where Brotherhood organizations have made the most inroads, has still less excuse.

Fitton-Brown explained: “I would say complacency about the seriousness of the problem, coupled with misplaced colonial guilt and fear of fueling ‘radicalization,’ as well as causing a backlash (allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ are quite a disincentive these days),” are behind the phenomenon.

There are also limited resources, he said. “I recall being told that London agencies and departments were too busy to deal with ‘non-violent Islamism.’”

However, there are signs of an awakening, he said. The United Kingdom proscribed Palestine Action as a terror organization in July. In November, Germany banned the Islamist group Muslim Interaktiv. So far, only one European country, Austria, has banned the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I hope more European countries, including the United Kingdom, will be galvanized by US action, also Canada and Australia,” Fitton-Brown said.

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