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Weinstein approached me ‘Jew to Jew’: Jodi Kantor opens up on the ‘She Said’ movie’s Jewish moments
(JTA) — When the New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor was reporting the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story that earned her a Pulitzer prize, the powerful Hollywood producer and his team tried to influence her by using something they had in common: They are both Jewish.
“Weinstein put [Jewishness] on the table and seemed to expect that I was going to have some sort of tribal loyalty to him,” Kantor told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a video call from the New York Times newsroom. “And that was just not going to be the case.”
Now, that exchange has been immortalized in “She Said,” a new film adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name by Kantor and her collaborator Megan Twohey that details their investigation into Weinstein’s conduct, which helped launch the #MeToo movement.
The film, directed by Maria Schrader with stars Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey, is an understated thriller that has drawn comparisons to “All the President’s Men” — and multiple subtle but powerful Jewish-themed subplots reveal the way Kantor’s Jewishness arose during and at times intersected with the investigation.
In one scene, the Kantor character notes that a Jewish member of Weinstein’s team tried to appeal to her “Jew to Jew.” In another, Kantor shares a moving moment with Weinstein’s longtime accountant, the child of Holocaust survivors, as they discuss the importance of speaking up about wrongdoing.
Kantor, 47, grew up between New York and New Jersey, the first grandchild of Holocaust survivors — born “almost 30 years to the day after my grandparents were liberated,” she notes. She calls her grandmother Hana Kantor, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor, her “lodestar.” Kantor — who doesn’t often speak publicly about her personal life, including her Jewish background, which involved some education in Jewish schools — led a segment for CBS in May 2021 on her grandmother and their relationship. Before her journalism career, she spent a year in Israel on a Dorot Fellowship, working with Israeli and Palestinian organizations. She’s now a “proud member” of a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn.
Kantor spoke with JTA about the film’s Jewish threads, the portrayal of the New York Times newsroom and what Zoe Kazan’s performance captures about journalism.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
JTA: How did you feel having Zoe Kazan, who is not Jewish, play you? Kazan has played some notably Jewish characters before, for example in the HBO miniseries “The Plot Against America.”
JK: I feel Zoe’s performance is so sensitive and so layered. What I really appreciate about her performance is that she captures so many of the emotions I was feeling under the surface in the investigation. You know, when you’re a reporter and especially a reporter handling that sensitive a story, it’s your responsibility to present a really smooth professional exterior to the world. At the end of the investigation, I had the job of reading Harvey Weinstein some of the allegations and really confronting him. And in dealing with the victims, I wanted to be a rock for them and it was my job to get them to believe in the investigation. And so on the one hand, you have that smooth, professional exterior, but then below that, of course you’re feeling all the feelings. You’re feeling the power of the material, you’re feeling the urgency of getting the story, you’re feeling the fear that Weinstein could hurt somebody else. You’re feeling the loss that these women are expressing, including over their careers. And so I think Zoe’s performance just communicates that so beautifully.
What Zoe says about the character is that there are elements of me, there are elements of herself, and then there are elements of pure invention because she’s an artist, and that’s what she does.
I think the screenplay gets at a small but significant line of Jewish sub-drama that ran through the investigation. It went like this: Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew. And they’ve done this more recently, as well. There have been times when Harvey Weinstein was trying to approach me “Jew to Jew,” like almost in a tone of “you and I are the same, we understand each other.” We found dossiers later that they had compiled on me and it was clear that they knew that I was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and they tried to sort of deploy that. So speaking of keeping things under the surface, I privately thought that was offensive, that he was citing that. But your job as a reporter is to be completely professional. And I wasn’t looking to get into a fight with Weinstein. I just wanted to find out the truth and I actually wanted to be fair to the guy. Anyway, even as he was approaching me “Jew to Jew” in private, he was hiring Black Cube — sort of Israeli private intelligence agents — to try to dupe me. And they actually sent an agent to me, and she posed as a women’s rights advocate. And she was intimating that they were going to pay me a lot of money to appear at a conference in London. Luckily I shooed her away.
To some degree I can’t explain why private Israeli intelligence agents were hired to try to dupe the Hebrew speaking, yeshiva-educated, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. But it’s not my job to explain that! It’s their job to explain why they did that.
Then the theme reappeared with Irwin Reiter, Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years, who kind of became the Deep Throat of the investigation. I quickly figured out that Irwin and I were from the same small world. He was the child of survivors, and had also spent his summers at bungalow colonies in the Catskills just down the road from mine. I don’t bring up the Holocaust a lot. It’s a sacred matter for me, and I didn’t do it lightly. But once I discovered that we did in fact have this really powerful connection in our backgrounds, I did gently sound it with him – I felt that was sincere and real. Because he was making such a critical decision: Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years is still working for the guy by day and he’s meeting with me at night. And I felt like I did need to go to that place with him, saying, “Okay, Irwin, we both know that there are people who talk and there are people who don’t. And we both grew up around that mix of people and what do we think is the difference? And also if you know if you have the chance to act and intervene in a bad situation, are you going to take it?”
We didn’t talk a lot about it, because I raised it and he didn’t want to fully engage. But I always felt like that was under the surface of our conversations, and he made a very brave decision to help us.
That was a very powerful scene in the film, and it felt like a turning point in the movie that kind of got at the ethical core of what was motivating your character. Was that a scene that was important to you personally to include in the film?
What Megan and I want people to know overall is that a small number of brave sources can make an extraordinary difference. When you really look at the number of people who gave us the essential information about Weinstein, it’s a small conference room’s worth of people. Most of them are incredibly brave women, some of whom are depicted, I think, quite beautifully in the film. But there was also Irwin, Weinstein’s accountant of all these years, among them. It’s Megan and my job to build people’s confidence in telling the truth. And as we become custodians of this story for the long term, one of the things we really want people to know is that a tiny group of brave sources, sometimes one source, can make a massive difference. Look at the impact that these people had all around the world.
Did you feel the film captured the New York Times newsroom? There’s a kind of great reverence to the toughness and professionalism in the newspaper business that really came through.
Megan and I are so grateful for the sincerity and professionalism with which the journalism is displayed. There are a lot of on screen depictions of journalists in which we’re depicted as manipulative or doing things for the wrong reasons or sleeping with our sources!
We [as journalists] feel incredible drama in what we do every day. And we’re so grateful to the filmmakers for finding it and sharing it with people. And I know the New York Times can look intimidating or remote as an institution. I hope people really consider this an invitation into the building and into our meetings, and into our way of working and our value system.
And we’re also proud that it’s a vision of a really female New York Times, which was not traditionally the case at this institution for a long time. This is a book and a movie about women as narrators.
“Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew,” Kantor said. (The New York Times)
There have been comparisons made between this movie and “All the President’s Men.” One of the striking differences is that those journalists are two male bachelors running around D.C. And this film has scenes of motherhood, of the Shabbat table, of making lunches. What was it like seeing your personal lives reflected on screen?
It’s really true that the Weinstein investigation was kind of born in the crucible of motherhood and Megan and my attempt to combine work with parenting. On the one hand, it’s the most everyday thing in the world, but on the other hand, you don’t see it actually portrayed on screen that much. We’re really honored by the way that throughout the film you see motherhood and work mixing, I think in a way that is so natural despite our obviously pretty stressful circumstances.
I started out alone on the Weinstein investigation, and I called Megan because movie stars were telling me their secrets but they were very reluctant to go on the record. So I had gone some way in persuading and engaging them, but I was looking to make the absolute strongest case for them. So I called Megan. We had both done years of reporting on women and children. Mine involved the workplace more and hers involved sex crimes more, which is part of why everything melded together so well eventually. I wanted to talk to her about what she had said to female victims in the past. But when I reached her, I could hear that something was wrong. And she had just had a baby, and I had had postpartum depression myself. So we talked about it and I gave her the name of my doctor, who I had seen. Then she got treatment. And she not only gave very good advice on that [initial] phone call, but she joined me in the investigation.
I think the theme is responsibility. Our relationship was forged in a sense of shared responsibility, primarily for the work – once we began to understand the truths about Weinstein, we couldn’t allow ourselves to fail. But also Megan was learning to shoulder the responsibility of being a parent, and I had two kids. And so we started this joint dialogue that was mostly about work, but also about motherhood. And I think throughout the film and throughout the real investigation, we felt those themes melding. It’s totally true that my daughter Tali was asking me about what I was doing. It’s very hard to keep secrets from your kid in a New York City apartment, even though I didn’t tell her everything. And Megan and I would go from discussing really critical matters with the investigation to talking about her daughter’s evolving nap schedule. It really felt like we had to get the story and get home to the kids.
And also, we were reporting on our own cohort. A lot of Weinstein victims were and are women in their 40s. And so even though we were very professional with this and we tried to be very professional with the sources, there was an aspect of looking in the mirror. For example, with Laura Madden, who was so brave about going on the record, it was conversations with her own teenage daughters that helped her make her decision.
We didn’t write about this in our book because it was hard to mix the motherhood stuff with this sort of serious reporter-detective story and all the important facts. And we didn’t want to talk about ourselves too much in the book. But the filmmakers captured something that I think is very true. It feels particular to us but also universal. When Zoe [Kazan] is pushing a stroller and taking a phone call at the same time, I suspect lots of people will identify with that. And what I also really like is the grace and dignity with which that’s portrayed.
It must have been surreal, seeing a Hollywood movie about your investigation of Hollywood.
I think part of the power of the film is that it returns the Weinstein investigation to the producer’s medium, but on vastly different terms, with the women in charge. Megan and I are particularly moved by the portrayals of Zelda Perkins, Laura Madden and Rowena Chiu — these former Weinstein assistants are in many ways at the core of the story. They’re everyday people who made the incredibly brave decision to help us, in spite of everything from breast cancer to legal barriers.
Working with the filmmakers was really interesting. They were really committed to the integrity of the story, and they asked a ton of questions, both large and small. Ranging from the really big things about the investigation to these tiny details. Like in the scene where we go to Gwyneth Paltrow’s house and Megan and I discover we’re practically wearing the same dress — those were the actual white dresses that we wore that day. We had to send them in an envelope to the costume department, and they copied the dresses in Zoe and Carey’s sizes and that’s what they’re wearing. There was a strand of extreme fidelity, but they needed some artistic license because it’s a movie. And the movie plays out in the key of emotion.
—
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Northwestern University Demands Dismissal of CAIR Lawsuit Targeting Antisemitism Prevention
People walk on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
Northwestern University on Wednesday submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which aims to cancel an antisemitism prevention course.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CAIR — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — sued Northwestern University over the matter last month, arguing that the course in question violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that it serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
In its filing, Northwestern University argued that CAIR’s claims are political, not legal, and preclude adjudication in a court of law.
“Plaintiffs fail to allege facts showing intentional race, ethnicity, or national origin discrimination,” a copy of the motion obtained by The Algemeiner said. “Plaintiff’s allegations, even accepted as true, describe ideological disagreement, not actionable discrimination.”
Filed on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group, the suit arrived in federal dockets with a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the course, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it.
The suit primarily takes aim at Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
“Plaintiff, GW4P lacks standing to sue,” Northwestern argued in Wednesday’s motion. “The complaint does not allege facts establishing organizational or associational standing, and the allegations center on ideological alignment rather than protected characteristics.”
Several lawsuits have challenged universities’ quelling riotous anti-Zionist activity on other grounds, such as Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) unsuccessful lawsuit against Columbia University last year, but none have argued that allowing antisemitism to thrive is inclusive of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian identities and that fighting it is discriminatory.
However, CAIR argued that the IHRA definition is anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, discriminating against both cultures while being hostile to CAIR’s vision of Palestinian self-determination.
“Northwestern requires students to complete a training course elaborating on that definition and requires them to attest that they to abide by conduct policies that incorporate that discriminatory definition,” CAIR’s complaint said. “The training course and attestations discriminate against Arab students whose racial and national origin identities are fundamentally incompatible with this definition.”
This is the latest CAIR activity in a long line of initiatives that have prompted a storm of controversy, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. In September, for example, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed materials which CAIR distributes in its local activism — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — to spread its beliefs. Some of it attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
Additionally, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CAIR’s chapter in Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
CAIR has extensive links to jihadist groups which suppress freedom and promote hate, according to some experts.
“CAIR itself has a long history of terrorist ties in particular to the Muslim Brotherhood, illustrated by the fact that in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing trial, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator, and evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity,” Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner last month. “This tactic of trying to turn antisemitism on its head in order to deflect from the nefarious activities of groups who have actual ties to terrorism is part of a larger strategy we see employed by Palestinian groups on campus such as the SJP. All of the above validates why the State Department is considering designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that the United States was actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a key ideological backer of Hamas that has been linked to CAIR, as a foreign terrorist organization.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told Just the News that an official designation is forthcoming, a comment confirmed by the White House the following day.
Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state-level designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Former Hamas Hostages Visit Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York
Four former Hamas hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel on Nov. 22, 2025. Photo: Provided
Four freed Israeli hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York, on Saturday night together with their families.
Segev Kalfon, Matan Angrest, Nimrod Cohen, and Bar Kuperstein prayed at the gravesite and expressed gratitude for their return home as well as the support they received from the Chabad movement during their 738 days in the captivity of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As is customary at the Ohel, the freed hostages and their families gave charity, lit candles, and wrote personal notes for blessings that they left by the Rebbe’s mausoleum. They also recited Psalm 100, giving thanks for their return from captivity after being abducted from Israel during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Until now, our families prayed here for us to come home,” said Angrest, 22. “Today, I came only to say thank you.”
“I was here exactly two years ago and many times throughout the last two difficult years, we went to pray at the Ohel, and every time we would come back strengthened to continue our efforts,” shared Kalfon’s father. “Now, that we were successful, we came to the Rebbe to say thank you and reflect on the power of all the mitzvot that were done in their merit.”
The former hostages also prayed for the return of the remaining captives, all deceased, still held in the Gaza Strip.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky hosted the visit on behalf of Chabad World Headquarters, and the evening was arranged by Rabbi Mendy Naftalin in coordination with both Yaron Cohen from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and Yael Goren-Hezkiya, head of the Government Policy and Foreign Relations Division in the Kidnapped, Missing, and Returnees administration in Israel.
Naftalin noted that the gathering at the Ohel on Saturday night symbolized a full circle moment after two years of praying for the return of the hostages. “Here, we cried, we prayed, and we strengthened each other,” he said. “To be able to return with you all is so moving; we are closing the circle.”
“We are only here because of our forefathers, who gave us this strength to withstand all challenges,” added Rabbi Simon Jacobson, the publisher of The Algemeiner who joined the group on Saturday night. “The Ohel connects us to our roots. You all are living proof of that resilience and eternality of the Jewish people.”
The four ex-hostages were released from captivity in October during the first stage of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Angrest, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped near the Nahal Oz military base and faced injuries and severe torture during his captivity. His captors agreed to give him Jewish prayer books and tefillin, small leather boxes with straps traditionally wrapped on one’s head and arm at the start of weekday morning prayers.
“I prayed three times a day, morning, afternoon, and night,” he said. “It protected me; it gave me hope.”
Kuperstein was an IDF soldier on leave working as an usher at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped. During his time in Gaza, his mother lent his tefillin to thousands around the world and urged Jews to wear it in his merit. Bar said he recited the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael often in captivity and prayed using Hebrew prayers that he had memorized.
Several former Hamas hostages – including Omer Shem Tov, Agam Berger, Sasha Troufanov, Eli Sharabi, Noa Argaman, and Edan Alexander – have visited the Ohel in recent months. In November 2023, 170 relatives of hostages chartered a flight from Israel to New York to pray at the Rebbe’s Ohel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s wife Sara, and other Israeli public figures also prayed at the Ohel during the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump visited the Ohel last year on the first anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. He was joined by a group that included Alexander’s family members. In a letter marking the anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing, Trump wrote: “When Edan Alexander was returned earlier this year, the entire country felt the power of the Ohel and the Rebbe’s enduring example.”
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Trump Set to Blacklist Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Group, in Move Hailed by Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the Islamist group “endangers stability.”
“TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the White House’s social media account on X posted, above a screenshot of a New York Post headline with the same wording.
TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. pic.twitter.com/Zwt61sRRuI
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025
The post came after Trump, in an interview with the Just the News outlet published on Sunday, was cited as saying that the “final documents are being drawn” to enact the designation.
“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said.
Trump’s comments followed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announcing last week a state-level designation of the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
The interview also came several months after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill seeking to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Lawmakers in the US House also reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that a federal designation was “in the works,” noting that the legal process requires examining each of the Brotherhood’s regional branches individually.
If finalized, the designation would mark a significant shift in US counterterrorism policy, criminalizing support for the Islamist group and potentially triggering sanctions on its global affiliates.
As of this writing, the White House has not yet confirmed the report beyond its social media post.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has made recent headlines over allegations of theft and corruption. Several Arab governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have banned the Brotherhood or designated it a terrorist organization. The Hamas terror group has long been affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a research center that has long sounded alarms about the Brotherhood, welcomed Trump’s reported commitment to the designation, saying the group has functioned as an “intellectual incubator” for jihadist movements, spreading doctrines that inspire terrorist organizations even if the Brotherhood’s official chapters claim to disavow violence.
Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, told The Algemeiner that the Brotherhood has learned to exploit the freedoms of open societies, the values of pluralism, and rights discourse “as instruments to weaken the very system that protects them.”
Trump’s statements on Sunday “reflect a growing recognition of the scale and seriousness” of the threat of the Brotherhood, Small said, and formalizing it as a terrorist designation would mark “an essential first step” to confront the group’s presence in the United States.
But he warned that the designation should not be treated “as an end in itself.” Real progress will require “sustained, evidence-based policy, rigorous scrutiny of affiliated organizations and funding networks, and long-term investment in strengthening democratic resilience against ideological infiltration already underway.”
A report released by ISGAP last week found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.
The 200-page report, unveiled last week in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.
“This is not a conventional political movement. It is a transnational ideological network that has learned to mimic the language of democracy while steadily corroding its foundations,” Small told The Algemeiner.
Dalia Ziada, co-author of the report, also welcomed Trump’s comments but cautioned against complacency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not just a Middle Eastern movement but an ideological export that has adapted itself to Western institutions, language, and freedoms in order to hollow them out from within,” Ziada told The Algemeiner. She added that she has “seen how its networks operate, how they marginalize moderate Muslim voices, and how state actors like Qatar amplify this project through money, media, and education.”
A US designation would be “a crucial signal of clarity,” she said, but “it must be followed by rigorous policy, real oversight of affiliated organizations, and sustained investment in protecting democratic culture.”
Netanyahu on Sunday applauded Trump’s decision “to outlaw and designate the Muslim Brotherhood … as a terrorist organization.”
“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he said, noting that Israel has already outlawed part of the movement and is working to “complete this action” soon.
The announcement could complicate matters for the Israeli Arab Ra’am party, which was part of the previous coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and is aligned with the Southern Islamic Movement — a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate seen as more moderate than its northern counterpart, which was outlawed in 2015. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu’s comments on Monday, saying that his party is “evaluating the legal situation.”