Israel365 Action Executive Director warns of coordinated infiltration while celebrating Texas Governor Abbott’s Muslim Brotherhood designation

In a wide-ranging interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room that aired this week, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, Executive Director of Israel365 Action, delivered stark warnings about Islamic extremism’s expanding footprint in America while praising Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s recent decision to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations.

Bannon opened the discussion by describing his own recent experiences in Texas, where he spent five days taking meetings and gathering intelligence on what he characterized as an “Islamic invasion of Texas.” Rabbi Wolicki engaged with Bannon’s concerns, offering his analysis of the broader challenge facing America.

The timing of Abbott’s announcement proved particularly significant, Rabbi Wolicki noted, as it coincided with the Saudi Crown Prince’s visit to Washington. He pointed out the irony that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE have all designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization—yet the United States has historically resisted doing so.

Rapid Mosque Expansion in Texas Raises Concerns

Bannon noted that 48 mosques have opened in the Dallas area alone in just the last 24 months. Wolicki responded by placing this development within a global context.

“This is all over the world. Islam is ascendant and there’s no game plan,” Wolicki warned. “There’s no game plan to push back on it. And it’s a real problem. I mean, I’m worried for America. You see what’s happening in Europe. It’s coming here. It’s here.”

The rabbi emphasized that while Trump attempted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization during his first term, those efforts were unsuccessful—making Abbott’s state-level action all the more significant.

New York’s Mayor: “The Most Dangerous Politician in This Country”

Wolicki reserved his harshest criticism for New York City Mayor Mamdani, whom he described in unequivocal terms as “the most dangerous politician in this country. Full stop. There’s no second.”

Bannon noted that he has been working to denaturalize Mamdani and to brief President Trump on the mayor’s background. Wolicki emphasized the duplicity of Mamdani’s approach to the Trump administration, noting that despite the mayor’s public attempts at outreach, his actual track record tells a different story.

“This guy has said nothing nice about President Trump, nothing good about any kind of cooperation today,” Wolicki observed. “He was talking smack about President Trump.”

The rabbi was emphatic about how the administration should handle the mayor: “This punk has got to be treated like a punk.”

Understanding the Twelver Shia Threat

Rabbi Wolicki explained why Mamdani represents a particularly dangerous strain of Islamic ideology. The mayor, he noted, is a Twelver Shia—the same branch of Islam adhered to by Iran’s mullahs.

“He’s a Twelver Shiite. And that’s a particular sect of Islam, which is the same ideology as the mullahs in Tehran,” Rabbi Wolicki said. “Most of the Middle East aren’t Twelver Shiite. They are the most extreme, most anti-West. And that is the branch of Islam that Mamdani is a part of. And that’s what he adheres to.”

While Twelvers constitute approximately 85 percent of Shia Muslims, the Shia themselves are a minority within Islam. However, their theological framework carries particular implications for confrontation with the West.

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and expert on Islamic theology, has written extensively about Twelver Shiism’s eschatological beliefs. According to Twelver tradition, the Twelfth Imam—a boy who disappeared in 874 AD—will return when the earth is “filled with tyranny and violence.” Spencer notes that this belief system contains “revenge as its core and essence,” with the Twelfth Imam prophesied to return “at a time when the Muslims were oppressed as never before.”

This theological framework, Spencer argues, creates dangerous incentives: “There is no requirement that non-Muslims must be responsible for that violence; Shi’ites filled with religious fervor, like the Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs behind him, could hasten the Twelfth Imam’s return…by, say, launching a nuclear strike against Tel Aviv or some other Infidel outpost.”

Rabbi Wolicki compared Mamdani’s relationship to Iran’s Ayatollah to that of a traditional Catholic looking to the Pope for spiritual guidance, explaining: “For him, the Ayatollah is the spiritual leader of the movement that he is a part of.”

The rabbi also noted that Mamdani’s mother, a filmmaker, has reportedly been financed by Qatar—another troubling connection to actors hostile to Western interests.

The Jewish Vote Paradox

When questioned about why Mamdani received such strong Jewish support despite his openly hostile ideology, Rabbi Wolicki offered a sobering assessment of American Jewish political identity.

“The vast majority of Jews in America identify with the progressive left far more than they identify with Judaism,” he explained. “They don’t practice their Judaism. They’re not attending synagogue. They’re not studying the Torah.”

This stands in stark contrast to Israeli Jews, Rabbi Wolicki noted, pointing to a fundamental divide in Jewish political consciousness between Israel and the Diaspora.

“The vast majority of Jews in America want nothing to do with folks like me,” he said. “They want nothing to do with their own tradition and their religion is progressive left.”

A Call to Defend Texas

Throughout the interview, Rabbi Wolicki repeatedly emphasized that Texas has become a frontline in a broader civilizational struggle—one that Americans ignore at their peril.

“We have to defend Texas because they’ve got New York City,” he declared, drawing a clear line between cities already under what he views as problematic leadership and states like Texas that are mounting resistance.

His warnings echoed throughout the conversation: what happened in Europe is now happening in America, and without a coherent strategy to push back against Islamic extremism’s institutional growth, the challenge will only intensify.

The interview represented Rabbi Wolicki’s continued efforts to sound the alarm on threats facing both America and Israel—threats he argues too many political and religious leaders remain unwilling to confront directly.

As Governor Abbott’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR makes Texas the first state to take such action, Rabbi Wolicki’s message to Bannon’s audience was clear: this is just the beginning of a necessary awakening to the scope of the challenge America faces.