Public Embrace of a Most Unholy Trinity Resulted in Beth Israel Terrorist Attack: Colleyville Terrorist, Lady al-Qaeda, and Islamist Activist Antisemitism

How many more attacks will it take for Jewish safety to matter before a tragedy?

Image of Beth Israel Synagogue from an early U. S. Sun article on the terrorist event.

Tragedy struck this weekend on Shabbes preceding the Jewish “New Year for Trees,” Tu B’Shvat and Martin Luther King jr. Day when a terrorist took hostages at Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Not even 24 hours later, the focus of this antisemitic event has shifted from the Jewish survivors to Islamophobia. This is the very rhetoric that set the stage for this attack, and the lack of courage to address antisemitism head-on and center Jewish life and safety in hate crimes against us will only lead to more Jewish blood shed. There were three main factors that set the stage for this event, all of them steeped in antisemitism:

1. The Colleyville Terrorist himself (may his name be blotted out),
2. Lady al-Qaeda (may her name be blotted out), the terrorist whose release he demanded via a Rabbi in New York, and
3. Islamist activist groups’ propagation of antisemitism, especially in the form of conspiracy theories, promoting terrorism as resistance, and framing terrorists as victims.

Let me be clear: the Colleyville Terrorist bears the ultimate responsibility for this. Had he not chosen this course of action, none of this would have happened. The other two elements have created an environment reducing his responsibility and reframing terrorists as the real victims of their choices. “Peaceful” Islamist activist groups agitating for “social justice” have just so happened to demand the release of Lady al-Qaeda before, infantilizing her as an innocent casualty, rather than respecting her as a human being with agency. Removal of agency plus victim blaming equals how we got to a place where Islamophobia takes center stage every time Jews are attacked.

Let’s break this down from micro to macro. I’m doing this to demonstrate how this isn’t an individual problem but an overarching systemic one.

The Colleyville Terrorist (may his name be blotted out)

Let’s get this out of the way first: mentally ill people can be evil, too. Mentally ill people can be criminals. To deny this is to infantilize us and remove our agency. A wound won’t heal faster because it was inflicted by a mentally ill person.

The Colleyville Terrorist’s family is framing him as mentally ill. However, he managed to fly to the USA from the United Kingdom, stay in a homeless shelter, pose as homeless to increase his likelihood of gaining entry to the synagogue, and hold off an FBI SWAT team, Colleyville law enforcement, top US security agencies, and robots for hours on end.

He stated over and over again that he would not make emerge from the event alive, and he chose the release of a high-value target, Lady al-Qaida, as his condition for ending the event. Though this might sound bonkers to Western ears, suicide or death as a combatant in Islamist Holy War is a victory for the terrorist. The ultimate defeat for the Colleyville Terrorist would have been 1. to be captured alive and prevented from further action, or 2. killed by someone who might deprive him of some reward, perhaps by a woman. Despite our victory of hostages surviving with no terrorists released, the Colleyville Terrorist still won.

It doesn’t end there. The Colleyville Terrorist demanded Lady al-Qaeda released through a rabbi in New York. Why? He thought Jews in New York had that much power, the power to release a terrorist being housed on a military base in a different region of the country. This is a textbook antisemitic trope, that Jews have a staggering amount of power in the government and dictate world events.

Lady al-Qaeda (may her name be blotted out)

The Colleyville Terrorist demanded the release of the terrorist Lady al-Qaeda, who is currently serving an 86-year sentence for attempted murder of military personnel and FBI agents who arrested her for involvement in an al-Qaeda plot to poison water (this is a common Islamist tactic, yet throughout history Jews have been falsely accused of poisoning wells, hm), destroy water treatment facilities, and sabotage gas stations and underground tanks. This was after she’d relocated her family to the Middle East in the wake of 9/11 and grew to support al-Qaeda, contributing to the destruction of her first marriage; she remarried a suspected al-Qaeda operative and nephew of one of the architects of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.

During her trial, Lady al-Qaeda told the judge she suspected all the jurors were Jewish Zionists and Israelis. She demanded they submit to Jewish DNA testing and be removed should they test positive. Evidently, she doesn’t consider Jews her peers, and the mere suspicion of a Jewish presence is enough for her to allege a persecution narrative. This is also rooted in antisemitic trope of collective guilt, wherein Jews worldwide are considered agents of the Israeli government. She’s so antisemitic she didn’t even bother to shield herself by splitting the hairs between Judaism and Zionism.

It’s not her fault she played the stupid game of going out of her way to join a war as a terrorist and won the stupid prize of going to prison for terrorism. No, it’s the Jews’ fault, America’s fault, Islamophobia’s fault. Don’t take my word for it: take Islamist activist groups’.

Islamist Activist Groups’ Antisemitism

A number of Muslim groups and individuals denounced the Beth Israel terrorist event immediately and as it was happening, but many of those same groups and individuals had advocated for Lady al-Qaeda’s release, alleging she was a victim of Islamophobia after 9/11 and subsequently framed in a US governmental conspiracy. Her supporters made a whole PDF document to debunk “lies and inconsistencies,” and the “proof” of Lady al-Qaeda’s innocence boils down to the Afghan government’s account is different than the US’ so the US’ must be lying. This was released on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s website. CAIR is antisemitic to the core and has numerous ties to terrorists and prolific antisemites, including Lady al-Qaeda herself, and released a condemnation of the “hostage taking” from the “Free [Lady al-Qaeda] Movement].” That is, after they denied any relation between Lady al-Qaeda and the Colleyville Terrorist (Muslims often call each other “Brother” and “Sister”).

This is gross. CAIR promoted an antisemitic terrorist as an innocent victim of Islamophobia for years and now swoops in and condemns an antisemitic terrorist attack while still defending their chosen terrorist? Does CAIR think we’re all stupid?

Needless to say, in addition to bona fide terrorists, CAIR is in bed with the Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), most of whom have condemned Islamophobia, some of whom have demanded restraint, and some of whom have referenced the terrorist. That’s just a fraction, and this is only the day after the attack. These groups are extremely popular with the youth activist crowd, many of whom are extremists, but some of whom are actual do-gooders, and they backdoor antisemitism behind a shield of social justice. These antisemitic groups have backdoored their agenda in schools and worked for decades on an international scale to modernize and upgrade their Holy War. It’s been mainstreamed to the point it can be hard to find progressive faith organizations, including non-Orthodox synagogues, that have not “committed” to backdoor Islamist “social justice” as part of their “duty as Jews.” Activism feels good, and nobody wants to seem Islamophobic — the hottest ticket since 9/11 — and to condemn antisemitism is a great way to put yourself at odds with the dominant social narrative right now, so the public has embraced the comfort of stillness in the face of antisemitism.

This is particularly terrible as a feature, not a bug, of Islamism is that the Muslim’s rage at the infidel is always the fault of the infidel’s mere existence, and the victims of the Islamist Holy War are to blame for not being Muslims, and Muslims will continue to victimize others until there is not one infidel remaining.

This mentality has evolved into faulting the victims of Muslim attackers. Every time a Muslim attacks someone, there’s a whole list of questions that amount to But what was she wearing?

BUT was the victim welcoming?

BUT did the victim support Israel?

BUT did the victim indicate she feared the terrorist?

BUT did the victim attempt to communicate in the terrorist’s language?

BUT did the victim assume the terrorist spoke a language other than English?

BUT was the victim’s skirt culturally offensive to the terrorist?

BUT did the victim assume the terrorist would find a short skirt offensive?

BUT did the victim understand the terrorist might be offended by diversity?

BUT did the victim run from the terrorist?

BUT did the victim automatically interpret the terrorist’s actions as offensive?

Even President Joe Biden shied away from condemning antisemitism immediately, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence to determine why the Colleyville Terrorist chose to attack a synagogue. The FBI took it’s own dump on the situation by claiming the terrorist was singularly focused on getting Lady al-Qaeda released, not enmity towards the Jewish community. When the public-facing top of the US Government is soft on antisemitism, how is the rest of the country supposed to react? What message does that send?

The Islamist “social justice” advocacy groups go into overdrive after antisemitic attacks, wanting both the goodwill accolades for condemning antisemitism and to bolster their status as uniters in stark opposition to pesky Jewish dividers, who desperately need society to address antisemitism on its own. “Don’t let Islamophobia divide us!” after an antisemitic event erases antisemitism, prevents it from being addressed, and therefore perpetuates it. Even worse, many of the antisemitic orgs mentioned add on anti-law enforcement screeds, claiming Jewish self-defense is racist — but never offering an alternative to armed security in the face of constant antisemitic physical assault.

These groups want good, silent, disarmed Jews to fade quietly into the dark night. That just won’t happen: in the form of a self-contained, peaceful, loving, non-expansionist ethnoreligion, Jews are the most likely to survive Islam, just as Beth Israel survived the Colleyville Terrorist. B”H.

You may have noticed I mentioned President Joe Biden as soft on antisemitism earlier. His statement feeds the problem: he universalizes antisemitism by offering the toothless platitude that we all have to treat each other “like us,” and not “the other.” There’s no reason to treat people who haven’t been victimized by antisemitism as victims, because they aren’t and will be fine. Doing so only sends the message that one’s antisemitic culture makes him a victim of antisemitism and he must be shielded from criticism and self-improvement. Hate crimes are about the targeted community, not the perpetrator’s. From the top down, from the bottom up, the institutional choice to lightly mist the whole street rather than to fight the Jewish house in flames only helps the fire rage on.

Beth Israel already treated everyone “like us,” yet it was Beth Israel attacked this time. How many more Jews have to be attacked or murdered for Jewish safety to matter before a tragedy?