Editorial illustration
Thursday was a day that should shake every American to their core. While Iran burned oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and launched missiles at Israel — — the terror war came home to American soil, not once, but twice, in attacks that the FBI is now investigating as acts of terrorism on U.S. territory.
In West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, a man armed with a rifle rammed a vehicle into Temple Israel Synagogue and opened fire. The attacker has been identified as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese national who entered the United States in 2011 on an immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and was naturalized in February 2016 — during the Obama administration, according to immigration records. His vehicle was registered to an address in Dearborn, Michigan. Armed security guards at the synagogue engaged the gunman and killed him before he could slaughter the people inside. There were zero injuries among the congregation, thanks entirely to those brave guards who stood between a terrorist and innocent worshippers.
Hours later in Norfolk, Virginia, a gunman opened fire at Old Dominion University, killing one person — a decorated military hero — and wounding two others before being subdued by students who physically tackled him. The shooter has been identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a 36-year-old former Army National Guardsman and migrant from West Africa who was arrested in 2016 for attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. And he was apparently back on the streets and back to killing. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
Two terrorist attacks in a single day on American soil. A Lebanese immigrant targeting a Jewish house of worship. A convicted ISIS supporter shooting up a university. And all of this unfolding while the nation from which Ghazali emigrated — Lebanon, home base of Iranian proxy Hezbollah — was simultaneously launching coordinated attacks on Israel alongside Tehran. The connections here aren’t subtle, and anyone pretending these are isolated incidents is either naive or lying.
The Michigan attack is particularly chilling in what it reveals about the utter failure of the vetting process. Ghazali came in on a standard immigrant visa, sailed through naturalization, and years later drove a vehicle loaded for destruction into a synagogue preschool. How many red flags were missed? How many warning signs were ignored because the system is designed to process applications rather than protect Americans? The Obama-era immigration apparatus that welcomed Ghazali clearly wasn’t asking the hard questions — and Americans nearly paid for that negligence with their lives.
Jalloh’s case is arguably even more infuriating. This is a man who was convicted — convicted — of trying to support ISIS. The justice system had him in custody, knew exactly what he was, and still he ended up free and armed on a university campus. Eleven years evidently wasn’t enough, and whatever “rehabilitation” the system imagined it was providing clearly didn’t take. A military veteran is dead because the system let a known terrorist sympathizer walk.
The political response has been predictably disgraceful in certain quarters. New York Assemblyman Zohrab Mamdani issued a statement on the Michigan synagogue attack that managed to avoid any meaningful condemnation of the perpetrator while performing theatrical horror for social media. Dave Portnoy’s response to Mamdani captured what millions of Americans were thinking — drop the fake outrage from people who’ve spent years excusing anti-Jewish hatred dressed up as political activism. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, chose this exact moment — the very day jihadists attacked the homeland — to block a DHS funding bill.
The armed security at Temple Israel saved lives on Thursday. The courageous students at Old Dominion prevented an even greater massacre. But American citizens should not have to rely on last-line-of-defense heroics to survive their Thursday afternoon. The vetting failures, the revolving-door justice system, the political cowardice that enables both — all of it must be confronted head-on, or Thursday won’t be the last day like this. It’ll just be the one we should have learned from.
Providence watches over the bold.
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