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Hamas's Plan to Undermine America's Arab Allies
Hamas's Plan to Undermine America's Arab Allies
Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Apparently, the Arab leaders understand the dangers of allowing Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, to drag their countries into war with Israel.
That is why many Arab countries have banned or outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and recently, Jordan. These countries view the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security and political stability.
If the Trump administration wants to promote peace and stability in the Middle East and protect its Arab allies, it must follow suit and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
"Al-Hayya's statement is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide with the aim of discrediting Egypt's role and disrupting its political and humanitarian efforts to stop the war and alleviate the suffering of [Palestinian] civilians." — Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridi, Sky News Arabia, July 28, 2025.
The Hamas leader's goals are "completely in line with the main objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood: toppling the Egyptian regime and turning Egypt into a quagmire of chaos.... The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the current economic situation in Egypt could be an opportunity to pressure the Egyptian people by mixing religious sentiments with economic conditions, thereby destabilizing the country's domestic situation." — Saeed Okasha, Egyptian expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, almashhad.com, July 28, 2025.
Hamas leaders, who claim they were betrayed by their Arab brothers, now seek to export their group's own crisis and place the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians on other parties, especially the Arab countries.
They are doing so from their safe villas and luxury hotel suites in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.
Were it not for Qatar's backing, Hamas leaders would not have had the courage to incite unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the Trump administration not only to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but also finally to call out Qatar and its Al-Jazeera TV network for promoting Islamist terror groups that target Israel and America's Arab allies.
After rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire-and-hostage deal, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Recently, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who together with his family moved from the Gaza Strip to Qatar before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, called on Arabs to "march toward Palestine by land and sea and besiege the [Israeli embassies in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan]."
Addressing the Egyptian people, al-Hayya said: "O people of Egypt, how can you allow your [Palestinian] brothers near your border to die?" The Hamas official was referring to Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to allow in humanitarian aid.
Al-Hayya's statements reflect the deep disappointment among Hamas leaders with the Arab countries' failure to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the war triggered by the terror group's October 7 atrocities, in which Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and wounded of thousands. On that day, another 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 50 – alive and dead – are still held captive.
One of the declared goals of Hamas's October 7 massacre was to thwart efforts to achieve normalization between Israel and the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Another undeclared goal of Hamas was to instigate unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan, the two neighboring countries that have peace treaties with Israel.
Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials have been indirectly urging Egyptians and Jordanians to revolt against their governments for not cutting their diplomatic ties with Israel and allegedly failing to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Hayya's call on Arabs to "march toward Palestine by land and sea" refers to the two countries that have shared borders with Israel: Egypt and Jordan. Hamas, with its October 7 massacre, has brought death and destruction on the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. According to figures from Gaza's Hamas-controlled ministry of health, tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed and wounded since the beginning of the war. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
Now, frustrated Hamas leaders, leading comfortable lives in Qatar, Turkey and other countries, want to sacrifice Egyptians and Jordanians in their jihad (holy war) to murder more Jews and destroy Israel.
Fortunately, most Arab countries have refused to join Hamas's genocidal scheme. Apparently, the Arab leaders understand the dangers of allowing Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, to drag their countries into war with Israel.
That is why many Arab countries have banned or outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and recently, Jordan. These countries view the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security and political stability.
If the Trump administration wants to promote peace and stability in the Middle East and protect its Arab allies, it must follow suit and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Hamas leader's call on Arabs to use the borders of Egypt and Jordan to attack Israel drew strong condemnations from both countries.
Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridi said:
"Al-Hayya's statement is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide with the aim of discrediting Egypt's role and disrupting its political and humanitarian efforts to stop the war and alleviate the suffering of [Palestinian] civilians. It's clear that these statements are intended to cover up the failures of Hamas's leadership and its intransigence during certain stages of the ongoing negotiations [to reach a ceasefire-and-hostage deal]."
The Hamas leader's goals are "completely in line with the main objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood: toppling the Egyptian regime and turning Egypt into a quagmire of chaos," said Saeed Okasha, an Egyptian expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. According to Okasha, there are a number of reasons that prompted al-Hayya to take a hostile approach to Egypt:
"The major crisis facing Hamas, particularly since it has lost its military power, has been reduced to nothing more than planting mines in the streets of Gaza. Furthermore, Hamas is on the verge of being politically and militarily finished. Al-Hayya's statements are an expression of despair and frustration through which he attempts to create justifications for the failure plaguing his group. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the current economic situation in Egypt could be an opportunity to pressure the Egyptian people by mixing religious sentiments with economic conditions, thereby destabilizing the country's domestic situation."
Jordanians also expressed outrage over the Hamas leader's call for escalating protests against Israel in the kingdom and using its border to "march toward Palestine."
Mohammed al-Musalha, professor of political science at the University of Jordan, said that Jordanians rejected al-Hayya's "shameful and disgraceful" statements.
"Such hollow speeches alienate the Jordanian people from such [Hamas] leaders who do not feel the extent of the catastrophe befalling the Palestinian people, especially the residents of the Gaza Strip. Therefore, they [Hamas leaders] are in dire need of any assistance from all Arabs. Jordan does not accept being stabbed in the back by people with political agendas that are well-known to all."
Jordanian political analyst Khalaf al-Tahat accused the Hamas leader of issuing a call "that goes buying the limits of political absurdity to the limits of mass suicide." Al-Tahat denounced the Hamas leader's call as being "no less disastrous than the scene of death in the Gaza Strip, especially since he called on the peoples of the countries neighboring Palestine to march toward Palestine, besiege Israeli embassies, and severe diplomatic and trade relations [with Israel], as if these people had the luxury of engaging in adventures that lack the simplest forms of rationally and planning."
Hamas leaders, who claim they were betrayed by their Arab brothers, now seek to export their group's own crisis and place the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians on other parties, especially the Arab countries.
They are doing so from their safe villas and luxury hotel suites in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.
Were it not for Qatar's backing, Hamas leaders would not have had the courage to incite unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the Trump administration not only to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but also finally to call out Qatar and its Al-Jazeera TV network for promoting Islamist terror groups that target Israel and America's Arab allies.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
Census Bureau Errors Distort Congressional Representation for the States...errors, cough, cough!
Census Bureau Errors Distort Congressional Representation for the States
Election Law Reform Initiative Manager, Senior Legal Fellow
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration.
SUMMARY
The 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey (PES) revealed significant errors in the 2020 Census count. As a result, certain states will be shorted in their congressional representation until after the 2030 Census, while other states will get more representation than they are entitled to. Congress should investigate the 2020 Census to find out the cause of these errors and mandate changes to minimize, if not eliminate, problems in future counts. An effective investigation should determine why there were no such statistically significant errors in the 2010 Census in contrast to the 2020 Census. Congress should determine if federal funds should be distributed based on the corrected PES numbers, which requires an examination of the accuracy of the PES methods.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Errors in the 2020 Census count may have cost certain states congressional representation, electors, and federal government funding during the next decade.
While litigation challenging the apportionment would likely be a dead end, a focus on federal funding could potentially yield positive results.
Congress should investigate to find out the cause of these errors and mandate whatever changes are required to mitigate such problems in future counts.
In a shocking report that has not received the attention it deserves, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that its 2020 Census count of the American population was incorrect in at least 14 states.1
U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Undercounts in Six States, Overcounts in Eight (May 19, 2022), https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-undercount-overcount-rates-by-state.html.
U.S. Census Bureau, Census Bureau Releases Estimates of Undercount and Overcount in the 2010 Census (May 22, 2012), https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb12-95.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau%20released,were%20overcounted%20in%20the%20census.
As explained below, as a result of these errors, Florida did not receive two additional congressional seats and Texas did not receive one more congressional seat. Meanwhile, two other states, Minnesota and Rhode Island, each retained a congressional seat that they should have lost, and Colorado gained a new seat to which it was rightfully not entitled.3
Mike Schneider, In 2 States, 1 in 20 Residents Missed During US Head Count, Associated Press (May 19, 2022), https://apnews.com/article/texas-minnesota-florida-arkansas-786339c0f7b267abe4d8f4f14c6f713d; Am. Redistricting Project, 2020 Census Count Errors & Congressional Apportionment (June 13, 2022), https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2020-census-count-errors/.
U.S. Const., art. II, § 1, cl. 2.
Schneider, supra note 3.
Applicable Law
The Constitution directs that an “actual Enumeration” be conducted every 10 years “in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct” to determine the number of seats to which each state is entitled in the House of Representatives.6
U.S. Const., art. I, § 2, cl. 3.
U.S.C. § 141(a).
The total number of Members of the House of Representatives was fixed at 435 by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.8
Codified at 2 U.S.C. § 2a.
For an explanation of the “method of equal proportion,” see Kristin Koslap and Steven Wilson, How Apportionment is Calculated, U.S. Census Bureau (Apr. 26, 2021), https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/04/how-apportionment-is-calculated.html.
U.S. Const., art. I, § 2, cl. 3.
Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316 (1999).
Apportionment Under the Original 2020 Census Report
Under the 2020 Census enumeration released on April 26, 2021, the total apportionment population of the United States was reported as 331,108,434. After application of the “method of equal proportion,” five states each gained one new congressional seat: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon. Texas gained two new seats. Due to population decreases, seven states each lost one congressional seat: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.12
U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Apportionment Results (Apr. 26, 2021), Table 1 (Apportionment Population and Number of Representatives by State), https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-data.html.
2020 Post-Enumeration Survey
The 2020 PES is a survey in which the Census Bureau interviews a sampling of households across the country and then compares the results with actual responses from those households in the original 2020 Census records. For the 2020 PES, the Census Bureau completed 114,000 interviews out of a sample size of 161,000.13
U.S. Census Bureau, supra note 1.
Id.
According to Tim Kennel, the Assistant Division Chief for Statistical Methods at the Census Bureau, the PES provides information on “how many people were correctly counted in the census, missed, or erroneously enumerated.” But it cannot be used to explain why these overcounts and undercounts occurred because the “PES was designed to measure net coverage error, but not designed to answer questions about the root causes of coverage error.”15
U.S. Census Bureau, Understanding the Count: A Discussion of the Latest 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey (May 19, 2022), Transcript at 2–3, https://www2.census.gov/about/training-workshops/2022/2022-05-19-pes-transcript.pdf.
The PES was modified “in response to [the COVID-19] pandemic.” The “most visible modification was delaying the field work,” which apparently led to the PES actually “having higher response rates than many other surveys.” “Field work” refers to the “surveys and in-person interviews” that are conducted by the Census Bureau for the PES.16
Id. at 3.
The errors in the original Census cannot be blamed on the fact that, for the first time, the Internet was used extensively by the public to respond to the Census. The majority of Americans, “over 206 million people, were counted in the census through an internet response. Over 96% of these people were correct enumerations,” according to Kennel.17
Id. at 4–5.
Moreover, Kennel said that about 37 million people responded using paper questionnaires and those responses also had “high correct enumeration rates.” Moreover, of the 22 million people who did not initially respond, but later participated after being contacted by the Census Bureau, they also had “low erroneous enumeration rates.” The highest error rate seemed to be with the 15 million people counted through proxy, meaning that information was provided by “a neighbor, or a landlord, or someone else outside the household.”18
Id. at 6.
An innovation of the 2020 Census that was directed by former President Donald Trump “was the use of administrative records,” i.e., existing records on the public in federal agencies and departments, such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Agriculture. The Census did not use those records to determine citizenship status but did use them “to enumerate non-responding households,” and this method of using existing administrative records—despite criticism that it was not technically feasible and would not be accurate—“met the criteria of being correct enumerations.”19
Id. at 7. See Jeffrey Mervis, Why the U.S. Census Bureau Could Have Trouble Complying with Trump’s Order to Count Citizens,” Science (Sept. 16, 2019), https://www.science.org/content/article/why-us-census-bureau-could-have-trouble-complying-trump-s-order-count-citizens.
All of this leaves unexplained the reasons for the errors made in the 2020 Census, particularly when there were no such overcounts and undercounts in the 2010 Census.
The Errors in the 2020 Census
According to the PES, the Census Bureau overcounted the population in eight states and undercounted it in six states. The Census Bureau is unable to identify what groups were undercounted or overcounted in a state or where the error occurred geographically because “sample sizes within most states do not support such estimates.”
The following states were overcounted (with the size of the error) by the Census Bureau:
The following states were undercounted (with the size of the error) by the Census Bureau:20
The population miscount was calculated by applying the percentage error listed in the PES report to the apportionment population listed in U.S. Census Bureau, Table 1. Apportionment Population and Number of Representatives by State: 2020 Census, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/apportionment-2020-table01.pdf.
If the PES survey is correct, then the Census Bureau’s assessment of the “Top Ten Runner-Up States to Almost Gain Another Congressional Seat” is also wrong. Ranked by priority, the Census Bureau listed New York and Ohio as the first and second runners-up, followed by Texas and Florida. New York supposedly only needed an additional 89 individuals to gain another congressional seat. But since New York was overcounted by 3.44 percent and Ohio was overcounted by 1.49 percent, they clearly were not the top two states.21
U.S. Census Bureau, Table B1. Top Ten Runner-Up States to Almost Gain Another Congressional Seat: 2020 Census, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/apportionment-2020-tableB.pdf; U.S. Census Bureau, Additional Apportionment Population Needed for First-Runner-Up State to Gain Another Congressional Seat: 1940 to 2020, Table B2, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/apportionment-2020-tableB.pdf.
Effect on Apportionment
As a result of these errors, Florida did not receive two additional congressional seats, Texas lost out on an additional seat, Minnesota and Rhode Island each retained a congressional seat that should have been lost, and Colorado gained a new seat to which it had no right.
Florida, for example, was undercounted by 761,094 individuals while it only needed “around 171,500 more residents to gain an extra seat.”22
Schneider and U.S. Census Bureau, supra note 3.
Id.
Similarly, Rhode Island would have lost a seat if the Census had counted 19,000 fewer residents; the Census overcount for the state was 55,457.24
Schneider, supra note 3.
Id.
Legal Remedies
There do not appear to be any statutory legal remedies for this problem. As the Census Bureau correctly noted, the errors will not change the officially reported 2020 Census counts or change the apportionment calculation for the states.26
U.S. Census Bureau, supra note 1.
Certainly, under the holding of the Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives,27
U.S. 316 (1999).
Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives. In this 1999 case, both the House of Representatives and four counties, along with residents of 13 states, filed two separate lawsuits (that were consolidated) contesting the Census Bureau’s plan to use statistical sampling in the 2000 Census to help correct any possible undercount. The Court recognized that residents of those states did have Article III standing to sue because they had a concrete injury in the potential dilution of their voting strength due to the loss of congressional representation under the statistical sampling methods the Census Bureau was planning to use, as well as its potential effect on intrastate redistricting.28
U.S. at 331–332.
However, the Court never reached the constitutional issue because it decided that the statistical sampling proposed by the Census Bureau violated the Census Act of 1976. According to the Court, while that Act allows statistical sampling procedures and special surveys when collecting broad demographic data, it does not allow such sampling or surveys to be used “in the determination of population for purposes of apportionment.”29
U.S. at 338.
Thus, while states like Texas and Florida may have standing to sue because of the dilution of the vote of their states’ residents due to the loss of congressional representation, they face the problem that the PES is based on a special survey of a limited sampling of households and is not an “actual Enumeration” of all of the households in the U.S. Under the holding in Department of Commerce, they would have a very difficult time convincing a court, including the Supreme Court, to hold that the 2020 Census was inaccurate based on a sample survey that federal law already says cannot be used to determine the population used for apportionment—although it is possible that the discovery process in the litigation could be used to try to determine the cause of these errors.30
In Utah v. Evans, 536 U.S. 452, 459 (2002), the Supreme Court said that a state would have standing to sue and request revision if the Clerk of the House of Representatives made “a serious mistake” such as “a clerical, a mathematical, or a calculation error, in census data or in its transposition” when the Clerk sends to the chief executive of each state, as required under federal law, a certificate of the number of representatives the state is entitled to under the new Census data. However, that is not the situation here.
Moreover, any remedy would be difficult to fashion since the Census is geared to providing a count of the population of the country on one specific day, in this case April 1, 2020.31
Brynn Epstein and Daphne Lofquist, U.S. Census Bureau Today Delivers State Population Total for Congressional Apportionment, U.S. Census Bureau (Apr. 26, 2021), https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/2020-census-data-release.html.
Federal Funding. But while litigation challenging the apportionment would likely be a dead end, a focus on federal funding could, potentially, yield something positive. The constitutional rules requiring an actual enumeration of the population for apportionment do not apply to the distribution of federal funds based on the 2020 Census population count. There is no prohibition on states trying to use the PES to convince a court that the distribution of a state’s share of federal funds should be adjusted to take into account the errors found by the PES. Furthermore, there is no constitutional prohibition on Congress implementing such a requirement through federal law.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Assuming the accuracy of the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey and the errors it has revealed, certain states will be shorted in their congressional representation until after the 2030 Census, while other states will get more representation than they are entitled to. Fashioning a legal remedy to fix this problem could pose a significant obstacle and may not be practical.
Regardless, though, Congress should investigate the conduct of the 2020 Census to find out the cause of these errors and mandate whatever changes are required to minimize, if not eliminate, such problems in future counts. An essential part of such an investigation would be determining why there were no such statistically significant errors in the 2010 Census in contrast to the 2020 Census.
Congress should also consider changes in federal appropriations law to determine if federal funds should be distributed to the states based on the corrected numbers as determined by the PES, which itself requires an investigation and examination of the accuracy of the methods used in the PES.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is Manager of Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Authors
Hans von Spakovsky
Election Law Reform Initiative Manager, Senior Legal Fellow
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