Former Israelli ambassador calls on West to label Muslim Brotherhood terrorist

In a recent op-ed for the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel criticised Western governments, and the US in particular, for not declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation and for failing to view the movement as a significant threat to their countries, unlike the Arab Gulf monarchies.

Mazel claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly keen to recruit Arab and Muslim citizens of the US and Europe, tracing this back to Saudi Arabia’s financial support for the World Islamic League, which he says was established by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1962 in order “to propagate Islam in the West and set up Islamic centres and mosques in Europe and in the US. That is how, with Saudi funding, the Brotherhood laid the foundations of its world organisation, which recruited new members among Arab minorities in the West with a view to infiltrate and undermine regimes from within.”

Since then, Saudi Arabia reversed course and the movement is now banned in the Kingdom. Mazel attributes this to the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York City, which were perpetrated by Saudi citizens, even though the Muslim Brotherhood had nothing to do with them and have consistently denounced terrorism and political violence.

Mazel, who works as an “expert” at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, an Israeli think tank, praises British Prime Minister David Cameron for launching an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities and chastises the US for not acting. However, he still criticises the UK for allowing the Muslim Brothers to operate in London at all.

The former ambassador also strongly criticises Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood after the coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi, and applauds “Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates, which are pouring financial help onto the new regime in Egypt”.

In the op-ed, he implies that Western countries should take their lead from Gulf monarchies because they know the true danger of the Muslim Brotherhood after letting the movement’s members “establish local branches” where they allegedly “started subversive activities”, referring to the movement’s civic organising and social welfare activism.