The Israel Lobby in the United States is now implementing an agenda to strip Americans of their free speech rights by falsely claiming it is targeting Islamist groups and using anti-Muslim fear-mongering to justify its crackdown. The Governor of Texas is now leading that charge, as agent provocateurs attempted to stoke tensions between Muslim and Christian Americans.
In my previous article for TLAV, entitled ‘Israel’s Anti-Muslim Hasbara and Its Agenda To Eliminate Free Speech‘, I argued that the sudden rise in anti-Islam rhetoric from the pro-Israel Right in the United States was being used as a pretext to justify a free-speech crackdown—one that would come in the form of legislative initiatives. Now, a week later, this is exactly what is happening.
On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as “foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations”. In response, CAIR—the largest Muslim-American advocacy organization in the United States—denounced the move as unconstitutional, accused Abbott of being “Israel first,” and threatened a lawsuit. CAIR-Texas also added the following in a formal statement:
“Greg Abbott’s disregard for the First Amendment, his obsession with Texas Muslims and his dedication to protecting the Israeli government from criticism apparently knows no bounds. First he tried – and failed – to fire a Texas special education teacher who refused to sign a loyalty pledge to the Israeli government. Then he tried and failed to ban state contracts with a Texas business that refused to sign the same pledge. Earlier this year, he tried and failed to expel Texas college students who criticized the Israeli government.”
In response to the declaration, the Texas Governor stated that the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR “have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” He further accused both organizations of using violence to subvert local laws and supporting or engaging in terrorism around the globe.
Abbott is fiercely pro-Israel and has a record of putting Israeli interests above those of Texans. For example, earlier this year, when the City of San Marcos considered a non-binding resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Abbott had threatened to cut off all state funding to the city.
Back in 2017, he had even signed the state’s original anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) law, known as House Bill 89 (HB 89). Later that same year, when Hurricane Harvey devastated the state and ruined many Texans’ lives, residents of the town of Dickinson who had been affected by the natural disaster were required to sign Israel loyalty pledges—certifying that they would not boycott Israel—in order to receive relief funds. The governor defended his decision to push through this legislation by claiming that “Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies“.
Despite the fact that it had no material impact on Texans, the Republican governor of Texas was also vocal in his opposition to the Iran Nuclear Deal and again asserted his belief that what is good for the Israelis is what is good for Texas. Furthermore, in 2019, when Airbnb had decided to delist properties in illegal Israeli West Bank settlements, Abbott blacklisted the company—a move that particularly impacted university students and their academic field research—weaponizing the state’s anti-BDS legislation to punish Airbnb.
As noted in the previous article, in July the Israeli government initiated a new Hasbara campaign that specifically targeted conservatives in the United States, recognizing that support for Israel among Republicans was rapidly falling.
Part of this propaganda campaign involves pushing anti-Muslim talking points and fear-mongering about threats of “Islamic terrorism”, or “Sharia takeovers”. This has fed into what is now being called the “MAGA civil war”—essentially a split in which the pro-Israel right is clashing with the anti-Israel (or strictly America-First) right. One side insists “America First”, while the other argues that Israel should be placed as a priority, and interestingly claiming that doing so is actually America first.
Therefore, those who are obsessively focused on churning up tensions between American conservatives and American Muslims are these same pro-Israel voices who favor protecting Israel over free speech. The chief anti-Muslim media crusaders, outlets like The Daily Wire, receive backing from a web of Zionist billionaire donors.
Which is where the anti-Muslim march this Tuesday, led by a man named Jake Lang, comes into the fold. Lang is currently contending for Marco Rubio’s previously occupied seat in the US Senate. Lang has attracted a lot of attention after he was pardoned by Donald Trump for his participation in the January 6 storming of the American Capitol building.
Despite only about a dozen anti-Islam protesters showing up to back Lang—who is not from Dearborn, Michigan and had traveled there solely to stage his divisive protest—the series of incidents that occurred that day all went viral on social media, particularly on X (formerly Twitter), where they were heavily promoted by a series of accounts routinely boosted by Elon Musk.
Other videos from that day show protesters draped in American flags having friendly conversations with their Muslim-American neighbors, expressing opposition to Lang’s antics. One video, posted by Hassan Chami on X, featured a conversation between himself and a number of protesters. One of them described Lang’s small group as “provocateurs,” expressing that “he’s not even from here” and “he comes up here to make trouble so we have to fix it when he leaves.” Another protester then commented “we don’t even know that loser.”
Jake Lang later claimed he had been assaulted. However, he arrived in Dearborn—a majority Muslim city—smacking a Quran with a piece of pork meat and attempting to light the Islamic Holy Book on fire. He then proceeded to speak at a Dearborn City Council meeting, where he told Muslim council members that “you guys are outbreeding, insidious parasites on the American way of life“. This kind of behavior is always intended to stoke social tensions and even provoke violence, but ultimately it failed to divide the local community and primarily resulted in a widely publicized media stunt.
However, media stunts like these do work to encourage more of the same. While there is currently no proof that Lang and his small group were paid to pull their stunt, the possibility that they were compensated should not be ruled out. The apparent goal of this agenda is to divert conservative anger away from the issue of Israel’s influence on American politics and redirect it toward Islam. For context, Muslim Americans currently make up just over 1% of the US population, making them an extremely small minority. By comparison, there are roughly twice as many Jews in America as there are Muslims.
Stirring up hysteria about a supposed “Muslim takeover”—which is statistically impossible—or the bogeyman of “Sharia Law” being imposed (which is not happening), also provides the justification politicians need to advance their agendas and further restrict freedom of speech. The messaging used by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Senate hopeful Jake Lang is remarkably similar.
Because there is often little distinction made between Muslim groups, AIPAC and its allies need only purchase politicians in order to have them target Muslim organizations that are vocal on Palestine, such as CAIR. While the push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization has been underway since July (which just so happens to be the month Israel launched its new propaganda campaign), the aim is to go after any and all nonprofit organizations critical of the Israeli government, framing them as terrorists.
This will have broad implications for media outlets, academic freedom, social programs, unions, and the First Amendment rights of individual Americans.
