In week two, the war against Iran and Hezbollah came home to America.
Naturally, much of the media were on the wrong side.
The battle on the homefront has been simmering since the first bombs fell in the Mideast on Feb. 28, but violence in America reached a chilling new ferocity during two more terror attacks last Thursday.
One took place at a college in Virginia and another at a synagogue in Michigan.
In both cases, the assailants were Muslim immigrants who had become naturalized American citizens.
But each man also had a known or suspected history of ties to terror groups in his native countries.
One had served seven years in federal prison after authorities proved his links to Islamic State terrorists and that he was plotting a deadly attack on an American military base.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a native of Sierra Leone, carried out a version of that sick fantasy at Old Dominion University, when he barged into an ROTC class, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” shot and killed the instructor, and wounded two other people.
Heroic cadets jumped him and stabbed him to death before he could fire again.
The slain instructor, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, was a decorated chair of the school’s military science department.
He served several army tours in the Mideast, including in Iraq, where he was a helicopter pilot.
FBI director Kash Patel hailed the students, saying their actions “undoubtedly saved lives.”
Thankfully, the only fatality at the Michigan synagogue was the attacker, with officials saying he shot himself in the head after driving his pick-up truck into the building’s entrance.
Ayman Mohamed Ghazali (pictured), a native of Lebanon, who lived about 40 miles away from Temple Israel synagogue (inset), had filled his truck with commercial-grade fireworks and cans of gasoline.
He obviously intended to detonate his cargo inside the building, but got stuck in the entrance and couldn’t move.
As he exchanged gunfire with security guards, his truck’s engine started smoking and burst into flames.
The building filled with smoke, but none of the 106 children and 30 staff members at an early childhood center were injured.
One guard was hit by the truck but is expected make a full recovery.
The attack raised the already high concerns about violent antisemitism to new heights at a time when Israel and America are carrying out joint military operations against Islamist extremists in Iran and Lebanon.
Ghazali had been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2019 for possible connections to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, who are trained and funded by Iran.
Hate taints coverage
Ghazali was questioned by federal authorities that year in Atlanta when he returned from a trip abroad, The Post reports.
His case points up another disturbing issue — much of the homefront media coverage can’t be trusted.
The problem is that the legacy outlets’ hatred of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has metastasized into warped coverage of the war in Iran and Lebanon.
As a result, their reports are often more like disinformation than information.
Consider how the headline on a New York Times’ account of the synagogue attack drips with bias and misleads the reader about a possible motive.
Saturday’s print edition reads, “Synagogue Attacker Lost Family Members In Lebanon Airstrike.”
That’s true as far as it goes, but in leaving out key facts, the Times turns reality upside down and makes the attacker the victim.
In the Gray Lady’s distorted vision, the heart of the problem is the war being waged by America and Israel.
The paper has campaigned against the war and essentially declares it a failure everyday.
It is unmoved by the fact that terrorists in Iran and Lebanon have sworn to eliminate the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan.”
Likely because the Times is always on guard for the bogeyman of Islamophobia, it neglected to tell its readers the full truth about Ghazali’s family.
For sources about his family being struck in Lebanon, the Times cited a Detroit-area imam who said Ghazali “lost four relatives in an airstrike there last week.”
It also quoted a Lebanese official who requested anonymity “because he feared reprisals.”
The paper doesn’t say why the official would fear reprisals, but it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that Hezbollah gangsters are the reason.
Shame on the Times for not saying so.
Unfortunately, many of the usual media suspects echoed the same distortions, likely because The Associated Press also held a pity party for the attacker.
Telling omission
It cited a local official in a Lebanon town who said Ghazali’s two brothers, a niece and a nephew were all killed at their home in an airstrike as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Touching if true, but the sob story is shredded next to reports in The Post and elsewhere that paint a very different picture of the family.
A Thursday headline in The Times of Israel got straight to the point:
“Michigan synagogue attacker’s brothers said to be Hezbollah members killed in IDF strike.”
It cited a CBS report saying that a Lebanese journalist told the outlet that Ghazali’s two brothers were members of a Hezbollah rocket unit in south Lebanon.
CNN and NBC also cited a possible link between the attacker and Hezbollah, the Iranian terror proxy army based in Lebanon.
Both outlets reported that federal authorities had long-standing concerns about Ghazali’s connections, but had not concluded he was an actual member of Hezbollah.
Misleading media coverage aside, the two incidents point up the need for law enforcement to be on its toes around America.
The possibility of self-radicalized lone wolves and terror sleeper cells cannot be ignored.
In that context, it’s worth remembering the March 1 attack in Austin, Texas, where a naturalized citizen from Senegal started firing a pistol from his car at people on a busy street, killing three and wounding 13 others.
That was the day after the bombing in Iran began.
The shooter, Ndiaga Diagne, who was killed by police, was wearing a hoodie that featured large letters saying, “Property of Allah.”
A Quran was found in his car and CNN reported he was also wearing a T-shirt that carried an Iranian flag design.
The latest attacks recall the ISIS inspired attack by two Pennsylvania teens outside Gracie Mansion, the official Upper East Side Manhattan residence of Mayor Mamdani.
The suspects, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, made and tried to throw two homemade lethal devices containing bolts and screws and an explosive powder toward a small anti-Islam march by far-right extremists.
Although neither device exploded, the two were quickly apprehended by the NYPD and confessed they were inspired by ISIS.
One, asked by cops if he hoped to copy the Boston Marathon bombing, allegedly responded, “No, even bigger. It was only three deaths.”
Beware America, there are enemies among us.
The post The far-left media sympathizes with extremists who come to the US to cause chaos appeared first on New York Post.
