Two Attempts to Attack Jews Inside the United States

Sometimes life sends along a little something to cheer us up. It did so on November 6, with a news item about a Muslim woman who was determined to harm — possibly even kill — Jews, because she was disturbed at the IDF’s campaign to destroy Hamas. She got in her car, drove to what she thought was a Jewish school because it had a crudely drawn Star of David on its outside door, and proceeded to smash her car right into it. The police soon arrested her. But she then discovered that the object of her murderous hate wasn’t a Jewish school at all. It was a center run by a bizarre group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, an antisemitic group of black Americans whose members believe that they are the true Jews and so-called “white Jews” are fakers, falsely claiming a Jewish identity. More on her tragicomical error can be found here: “US woman drives car into antisemitic group’s building, mistaking it for Jewish school,” Times of Israel, November 6, 2023:

A woman was detained after she drove her car into an Indianapolis residential building used by an antisemitic group on Saturday, mistakenly believing it was a Jewish school.

Ruba Almaghtheh, 34, drove her vehicle into a house used by a sect of the Black Hebrew Israelites…

A local Fox News affiliate said Almaghtheh told police she drove her car into what she referred to as the “Israel school” on purpose after watching news coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas, and that she had referred to “her people back in Palestine.”

The building had a “semblance of a Star of David on the front door” and the words “Hebrew Israelite” on a sign, apparently leading the suspect to believe that the building was connected to the Jewish community or Israel, according to the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council.

Fox 59 said the building housed the “Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge,” and several adults and children were inside when Almaghtheh backed her vehicle into it. The outlet said Almaghtheh was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness, while CBS 4 said she faced a preliminary charge of intimidation, which would be a felony if the threat is for an act of terrorism….

Her act was much more serious than mere “recklessness.” She deliberately drove her car into the building, hoping at the very least to terrorize the “Israelites” inside, and ideally, to injure them. Of course it was an “act of terrorism,” even if she happened, out of her own ignorance, to have chosen exactly the wrong target. Let’s hope she gets the book thrown at her.

Not funny at all, however, was the case of one Sohaib Abuayyash, a Jordanian who has just been arrested for planning to attack a Jewish gathering; the Jordanian had high hopes of dying as a “shahid” or “martyr.” More on his plans, and his likely punishment, can be found here: “Jordanian man planning to attack Jews indicted in Texas,” Jerusalem Post, November 5, 2023:

The incident came amid spiking antisemitism as Israel fights the Hamas terror group in the wake of the terror group’s murderous assault on southern Israel communities last month.

In Houston, a Jordanian man was arrested last month for “plotting to attack a Jewish gathering,” a law enforcement source told CNN.

The report said a federal judge in a court order noted that Sohaib Abuayyash, 20, had discussed “martyrdom.”

CNN cited the order of detention pending trial document filed on October 24, in which a judge wrote that Abuayyash “has viewed specific and detailed content posted by radical organizations on the internet including lessons on how to construct bombs or explosive devices; and that Defendant has made statements to others that support the killing of individuals of particular religious faiths.”

Abuayyash had also been studying how to build bombs and posted online about “killing Jews” and about the stabbing death of a six-year-old Muslim boy in Illinois by his landlord, a murder being investigated as a hate crime.

Abuayyash, who was in the US on an expired nonimmigrant visa but had applied for asylum, was ordered detained, pending trial….

Abuayyash’s application for asylum is without merit; he is not fleeing persecution or war in Jordan. His visa had expired and at that point, he ought to have been promptly deported back to Jordan. It’s a failure of our immigration system that he managed to remain in the country after his visa had expired. Now he’ll be in this country for many years as a prisoner, and constitute an expensive drain on the system. The average cost to the government of upkeep for each prisoner is more than $70,000. Assuming a ten-year sentence, and excluding the very great cost of court-appointed lawyers for both the trial and appeals, Abuayyash will cost taxpayers $700,000, before he is freed and deported to Jordan.

Antisemitism- the “oldest hate” — is irrational hatred and fear of Jews. Cabals of powerful Jews are said to control the world’s media, or the financial system, or both, though if they are so powerful, one wonders why they were unable to prevent the Holocaust, or the anti-Israel kangaroo court at the UN.

Similarly, Islamophobia should refer only to “irrational hatred and fear of Muslims.” But the term is applied to anyone, however rational either his hatred or his fear of Muslims may be, who is critical of Islam. Throughout Europe, where tens of millions of Muslims now live, the behavior of Muslims has led to both “fear and hate.” It is reasonable, not irrational, to hate those Muslims who took part in, or gleefully support, the atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7. It is not irrational to hate Muslims who carry out crimes of every kind — street robberies, house burglaries, stabbings and rapes — against the indigenous non-Muslims in whose countries they now live, while taking full advantage of the welfare benefits offered to them in European countries, and at the same time refuse any semblance of loyalty to the Western countries they now live in. Why wouldn’t non-Muslims “fear and hate” Muslims who now openly predict that through demographic jihad, Muslims will eventually take over their countries and impose Sharia? It is reasonable to both “hate and fear” the thousands of Muslims in the U.K., whose grooming gangs have blighted the lives of tens of thousands of young and vulnerable English girls. These reactions do not constitute “Islamophobia.” It’s a weasel word designed to shut down criticism of Muslims and of Islam. Those who fling that epithet “Islamophobic” should be challenged on every occasion.