There were two such attacks last week.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanon-born U.S. naturalized citizen, drove a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township on March 12.
After exchanging gunfire with the security guards, Ghazali killed himself. He was the event’s lone fatality, though a security guard was injured while other individuals and children were escorted out safely.
The Israeli Defense Forces posted on X last Sunday that Ghazali’s brother, Ibrahim, was a Hezbollah commander who died in a recent Israeli Air Force strike on a Hezbollah military base. Hezbollah is an Iran-backed Shiite militant group in Lebanon.
A Hezbollah official did not confirm Ibrahim’s status but said Ghazali was acting out of revenge for the loss of four family member during the strike against Lebanon.
On the same day some 700 miles away, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh fired into a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) class at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Two individuals were injured, but the students did subdue the attacker who died before officers arrived.
The shooting is being investigated as an act terrorism. Before firing, Jalloh is reported to have shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which is translated as “God is greater.” He also has ties to the Islamic State, being arrested in 2016 for providing material support in an effort to create an attack similar to one in 2009 in Fort Hood, Texas.
Whether the homeland attacks are directly linked to the war in Iran remains to be seen, Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI agent and Navy SEAL, said on “Washington Watch” Monday.
But they are no doubt related.
The war hitting home
“Well to say that they're directly linked as though they got a phone call from the regime or the intelligence apparatus, maybe not. I don't know. That is still yet to come out investigation,” Gilliam told show host Jody Hice. “But let me show you how this is all tied together, and I don't think it's a great mystery to anyone.”
It’s a deep dive, going back 48 years to when charismatic socialist Jim Jones convinced people to follow him to Guyana, establish the settlement known as “Jonestown” and later kill themselves. That same deadly devotion is what’s happening now, Gilliam says.
“When you see these individuals … we call them lone wolves. I don't really like that definition, but these people are committing revolutionary suicide. They believe in Iran. They believe in Hamas or Hezbollah, but overall, they believe in the caliphate,” he states.
Gilliam says this is where the media and government, including federal agencies, get it wrong. Not only do they not properly educate people, but he wonders if they understand what they’re seeing.
“This isn't just about Iran and us finally taking it to them and eliminating that regime. It's about the caliphate and what these religious zealots believe. And it is a belief that their messiah will come through,” Gilliam informs. “They believe that this caliph (the prophet Muhammad’s successor) will come through, and they have to clear the world.”
It’s not just about a regime that hates Israel, he emphasizes, but it’s about the caliphate. Unfortunately, the belief is that Israel exists where their messiah will end up ruling the world.
“They have a mission, and until we realize that and research that, you're going to hear things like ‘we don't know if these attackers are connected directly.’ It may not just be about Iran and us attacking them.”
A year after the Jonestown Massacre, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, helping bring about the oppressive Islamic government.
Strained relations between the U.S. and Iran have been “happening since 1979, and they believe that they are pushing the caliph forward,” Gilliam explained.
Homeland attacks are made easier by terrorist cells in the U.S., people who are or were part of groups outside the country that have made their way in, he said.
Not only about the mess Biden left
These cells are not only about the open border policy of former President Joe Biden.
“Some of it has to do with the fact that there wasn't a wall, and the Biden administration created this mess that we all know about. But other parts of it have to do with the fact that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and the then Department of Defense (DOD) were not communicating and sharing data,” Gilliam said.
The DOD knew which people were affiliated with terror groups in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the DHS let them through because they did not have access to DOD information, Gilliam said.
So, while the cells are a threat, random attacks in the U.S. will likely be carried out by others.
“It's the force multipliers, the Imams, the radical speakers, the people that work with leftists, the Red Green Alliance, and they go out and create this propaganda and this narrative that divides the country and then motivates individuals to carry out attacks that may not be a part of a cell,” Gilliams says. “Those are the real danger.”
