Islamic Jihad Against U.S. Jews

Mohammed Alshamrani, the Pensacola Naval Air Station shooter, appears to have been “motivated,” in part, by an obsession with jihad against Israel. Just prior to the Dec. 7 attack, a threat was posted to Alshamrani’s alleged Twitter account: “You will not be safe until we live it as reality in pleastain [sic].” This was a reiteration of a threat against the United States made by Osama bin Laden  in a January 2010 audio message over American support for Israel’s right to self-defense.

Although Alshamrani’s lethal attack did not directly target Jews or Israel, jihadi terrorism directed unequivocally at U.S. Jews, and their institutions, has been a continuous phenomenon since Sept. 11, 2001. Moreover, the scope of this ongoing threat has not been enumerated, while the canonical Islamic religious incitement animating it—and the resulting disproportionate 2.4-fold rate of extreme anti-Semitism within the U.S. Muslim community, i.e., 34 percent of Muslims vs. 14 percent of non-Muslims—are almost entirely ignored.

I recently documented six successful and 16 thwarted Muslim attacks specifically targeting U.S. Jews—typically accompanied by an open profession of an Islamic jihadist, anti-Semitic motivation—since the 9/11 jihad carnage. The six successful attacks resulted in eight deaths and seven serious injuries.

The following are summary descriptions of representative examples of two of the six lethal attacks and two of the sixteen thwarted ones.

• July 2002, Los Angeles Airport — Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayat, an alleged member of Assad Eben Furat Mosque Association, whose mission was to “understand truly and apply Islamic law in the 20th century under any circumstances,” killed two Jews, Victoria Hen and Yaakov Aminov, at the El Al ticket counter, and wounded two others. Hedayat was slain during his murderous assault. When police investigators arrived at Hedayat’s apartment after the attack, “they found a note on the door saying, ‘Read the Koran.’” U.S. Justice Department investigators determined that “religious and political beliefs were the primary motivation for the attack.”
• July 2006; Seattle, Washington — Naveed Afzal Haq forcibly entered the Jewish Federation of Seattle, by taking a 13-year-old girl hostage. Once inside, he killed one woman and wounded five others, three seriously. Haq purchased weapons and ammunition, chose the Seattle Jewish Federation as his target, then drove over 200 miles from his home in Pasco, Washington, to Seattle, to carry out the attack. Before firing his weapon Haq announced, “I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel.” Upon surrendering to the police, Haq declared, “This is about the Jews and what they are doing.” He further stated in phone calls to his parents, “I got the Jews … They were enemies. I did it purposely. Now I’m going to heaven.”
• July 2005; Los Angeles and Orange County, California — Cell members of Jami’at Al-Islam Al-Sahih (JIS), “The Association of Authentic Islam,” a domestic jihad terrorist organization comprised of converts to Islam and established by Kevin James, aka “Shakyh Shahaab Murshid” (and multiple other Islami aliases was prevented from carrying out terrorist attacks against El Al, the Israeli consulate, and Los Angeles-area synagogues. Their leader, James, “preached the duty of JIS members to target for violent attack any enemies of Islam or ‘infidels,’ including Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel.” He also drafted a “JIS Protocol document,” which called for the “establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the U.S. that followed Islamic law.” JIS conducted surveillance, gathered weapons, and planned attacks on Los Angeles area synagogues to coincide with the Jewish high holidays, particularly Yom Kippur, thus potentially maximizing the number of Jewish victims.
• December 2018; Toledo, Ohio — Convert to Islam Damon Joseph, aka “Abdullah Ali Yusuf,” expressed a generalized hatred of non-Muslims, with an intense animus toward Jews. Joseph celebrated the October 2018 Tree of Life Pittsburgh synagogue carnage, and conveyed his own desire to “wage jihad” against Jews in Toledo, Ohio, preferably on a Sabbath, to cause more casualties.

Unrelenting in tempo, five potentially catastrophic attacks were prevented between August, 2018, and April, 2019.

The preaching of popular Irving, Texas, Imam Omar Suleiman is pathognomonic of what fuels such incessant Jew-hatred among U.S. Muslims. Granted the privilege of delivering an opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives in May, Suleiman’s public “lecture series” validates the permanent, dehumanizing Koranic (5:60) epithet for Jews as “apes and pigs”—so-called “punishment” for their inveterate deceit—while demanding “humiliation,” of the state of Israel and all Jews who support its right to exist.