Former Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush has quietly registered as a foreign agent for a little-known European nonprofit in order to spearhead fact-finding delegations to the West Bank and Gaza, deepening her long-standing alignment with anti-Israel activism even after her defeat at the ballot box.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Bushan ex-member of the far-left Squad who once warned pro-Israel advocates that she was coming to tear your kingdom downhas signed on as an independent contractor for the International Federation for Rights and Development (IFRD), a Brussels-based organization that bills itself as a human rights nonprofit. Her filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) reveals a formal relationship with a foreign entity whose funding sources remain opaque, raising fresh concerns about foreign influence operations targeting U.S. policymakers and public opinion on Israel.
The contract Bush filed shows that IFRD will pay a total of $25,000 to Bush and her longtime ally and campaign manager, Stephany Spaulding, for work running through January. The pair are tasked with coordinat[ing] fact-finding delegations to Gaza and the West Bank in order to elevate the narratives of Palestinian farmers and residents with settlers in the West Bank and other occupied territories, with $6,000 a month in compensation and an additional $7,000 earmarked for FARA compliance.
IFRD is led by Palestinian filmmaker Gamaal El Attar and claims it does not receive money from foreign governments, yet it does not disclose its donors or financial backers. Bushs FARA disclosure offers a rare glimpse into what appears to be a carefully choreographed public-relations campaign aimed at portraying Israeland particularly Jewish communities in Judea and Samariain the harshest possible light.
Bush traveled to the West Bank last month as part of this effort and publicized the trip on social media. On Oct. 8, the day after the third anniversary of the Hamas-led massacre of Israelis, she wrote: Let's go to the West Bank and stand with the Palestinian who are being attacked by (invaders) settlers, adopting the loaded language favored by anti-Israel activists.
She also posted photos from Ramallah showing her husband assisting a Palestinian-American landowner in clearing brush from an olive grove. Bush said they were helping him clear the overgrowth on land he hasn't been able to farm for 3 years because of the threats from invaders, again echoing the narrative of helpless Palestinian farmers besieged by Jewish residents.
That landowner, Yasser Alkam, appears to be central to IFRDs media strategy. Alkam, who previously ran a family law practice in Anaheim, California, until 2022, has hosted multiple American activists and elected officials at his West Bank olive farm and has appeared on U.S. broadcasts to highlight alleged attacks by Israeli settlers on his property.
Social media posts show that Alkam recently welcomed Ben Dziobek, director of Climate Action New Jersey, and climate activist and former New Jersey House candidate Katie Bansil on IFRD-sponsored olive harvesting trips. Bansil claimed that young settlers came and tried to provoke and intimidate us into leaving, while Dziobek asserted that Israeli soldierswhom he disparagingly labeled the Israeli Occupation Forcespointed guns at him and his fellow travelers.
Alkams story has also been amplified by sympathetic American officials. He was featured in a video last month by New York City councilwoman Julie Won, who said the IDF detained her during an olive harvesting visit to the West Bank; IFRD reportedly organized that trip, and Won later told U.S. media outlets that she was shell shocked by the experience.
These olive harvesting excursions have become a favored tactic of international activists seeking to cast Israel as an aggressor and Palestinians as defenseless peasants. The trips are designed to capture video of Palestinians framed as gentle farmers being terrorized by Jewish settlers, even though the on-the-ground reality is far more complex and often involves activists deliberately inserting themselves into volatile flashpoints from which Israeli troops eventually remove them.
Once expelled, those same activistsamong them outspoken anti-Israel figures such as Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.)return home to denounce the IDF and demand international pressure on Israel. The pattern is clear: stage confrontations, film selective footage, and then leverage the imagery to drive a narrative of Israeli oppression and Western complicity.
Bush herself has already begun using her West Bank trip to reinforce that storyline. After returning, she and Alkam appeared on former MSNBC host Joy Reids podcast, where Bush claimed she experienced Jim Crow-style treatment at the hands of the Israeli military, invoking Americas darkest racial history to attack a key U.S. ally.
Alkam, for his part, appeared in September on former Rep. Matt Gaetzs program on One America News Network, where he allegedwithout verificationthat Israeli settlers had burned more than 40 homes and uprooted more than 15,000 olive trees in the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya. Such sweeping claims, presented without corroborating evidence, fit neatly into IFRDs broader messaging campaign.
It remains unclear whether Bush personally recruited the activists who have traveled to Alkams farm or whether she has coordinated with journalists on IFRDs behalf. What is clear from her contract, however, is that she is expected to leverage her political connections to expand the operations reach.
Under that agreement, Bush is tasked with recruiting current and former U.S. senators and House members, along with prominent Democratic Party figures and influential political leaders, to visit the West Bank through January. That mandate underscores the risk that IFRDs agendabacked by undisclosed fundingcould be laundered through the prestige of American officials and then sold to the public as neutral fact-finding.
Given Bushs record of incendiary rhetoric against Israel and its supporters, the impartiality of any such missions is highly doubtful. After losing her Democratic primary in 2024, she lashed out at the pro-Israel group AIPAC, which had supported her opponent, Rep. Wesley Bell, and vowed retaliation.
They're about to see this other Cori, this other side, she told supporters at the time. AIPAC, I'm coming to tear your kingdom down.
She went even further, boasting, All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid, remarks that were condemned by the Biden administration despite its own leftward drift on Middle East policy. For a former member of Congress now operating as a registered foreign agent, such threats raise serious questions about judgment, bias, and the integrity of any investigations she leads abroad.
IFRDs strategy is not unique; other groups have used similar olive harvesting tours as vehicles for anti-Israel propaganda. Protect the Harvest, for example, organized a trip last month for New York City comptroller Brad Landerwho has since been elected to the Housein which Lander claimed on social media that he and several volunteers were detained while simply harvesting olives.
Yet an agenda for that trip, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, revealed that Protect the Harvest explicitly described its goal as building support for international intervention against Israel. That disconnect between public messaging and internal objectives mirrors the concerns now swirling around IFRD and its partnership with Bush.
Neither IFRD nor Bush responded to requests for comment about the nature of their collaboration, the sources of the groups funding, or the safeguardsif anyagainst one-sided advocacy masquerading as objective inquiry. As Bush moves from the halls of Congress into the role of a paid foreign agent, her work with IFRD underscores how foreign-linked organizations can exploit progressive activism and intra-Democratic divisions to undermine Americas closest ally in the Middle East while advancing a narrative that is anything but neutral.
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