Perpetrator in Temple Israel Attack Had Ties to Hezbollah

Consider what I wrote about a couple of days ago concerning Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the man responsible for last week's terrorist attack against Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan:

While Ghazali did not have a previous criminal record, in light of his actions yesterday, one must wonder what his online activity was like or his interactions with his closest of friends. Perhaps this information will come to light in the not-too-distant future. Or perhaps we will never know.

Well, it turns out Ghazali had ties to Hezbollah as per CNN: 

According to law enforcement officials briefed on the matter, Ghazali shows up in federal government databases as having connections to “known or suspected terrorists” associated with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Ghazali, who is a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, is not listed in the government databases as a member of Hezbollah himself, they added.

According to the officials, Ghazali’s last foreign travel was from the United States to Lebanon in 2019. He returned to the US through Atlanta, where he was flagged in DHS systems for “threshold targeting” based on prior records of his contact with suspected Hezbollah members.

In an interview with Customs and Border Protection agents at the time, Ghazali said he had traveled abroad to receive hair transplant treatment. Ghazali’s phone was inspected by CBP, and agents found individuals who were known or suspected Hezbollah members in his contacts, according to the officials. It is not clear who those contacts were, or what Ghazali’s relationship to them was.

Yet I believe it is reasonable to infer Ghazali's Hezbollah contacts included his brother Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali who the IDF identified as "a Hezbollah officer" who was "responsible for managing weapons operations within a specialized branch of the Badr Unit. The IDF added the Badr Unit "is responsible for launching hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilians throughout the war.” 

Yes, let us not forget that Hezbollah launched attacks against Israel the day after the October 7th attacks.

Even if Ayman Mohamad Ghazali was not an official member of Hezbollah, he not only had ties to the group but sympathized with their objectives and was prepared to lay down his life to carry out those objectives. I have little doubt that Hezbollah would view Ghazali's attack against Temple Israel some 6000 miles away as an act of resistance.

Needless to say, headlines from the Detroit News, The Guardian and other media outlets which mention that Ghazali had lost family in an Israeli airstrike without mentioning his family's ties to Hezbollah is not only quite misleading, but it also minimizes his own act of terrorism against Temple Israel. Such headlines and stories also have the effect turning Ghazali into an aggrieved victim seeking vengeance.

This is journalistic malpractice. It is one thing to be critical war of the current military action in the Middle East. Whatever legitimate criticism there might be against the Trump Administration and the Israeli government, we should not accept the word of the Iranian regime and their allies at face value. To do so is to engage in bad faith.