Although they’ve spent the last four years pretending that “white supremacists” constituted the nation’s biggest terror threat, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center took some time Wednesday to try to strengthen their increasingly tenuous acquaintance with reality. They issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning that Islamic jihadis might “engage in violence” on Monday, Oct. 7, the first anniversary of Hamas’ jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis.
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The agencies did not, of course, call them “Islamic jihadis.” As far as the federal government is concerned, there is no such thing as Islamic jihad, and Islam is no more likely to incite its adherents to violence than any other faith, including that of the Amish. Instead, as CBS News reported Wednesday, the feds warned that the Oct. 7 anniversary “as well as any further significant escalations” in Israel’s defensive war “may be a motivating factor for violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators to engage in violence or threaten public safety.”
“Violent extremists.” Right. You know, like all those “white supremacist” terrorists. The term “violent extremists” is convenient for these agencies, as it has absolutely no content and can be applied to any group that falls out of favor with the regime. That’s what makes it so ominous. In this case, however, it was clear that the feds were talking about jihadis who might take the opportunity of the anniversary of their strike against the Little Satan to lash out at the Great Satan.
The intelligence bulletin asserted that “the expansion of the conflict further into the region could serve as motivation for violence against Jewish, Israeli, or American targets in retaliation for civilian deaths, and we cannot preclude the possibility that threat actors in the United States will react with violence to the death” of Hizballah top dog Hassan Nasrallah.
That’s reasonable. Nasrallah shared his Iranian masters’ hatred for the U.S., as he made abundantly clear as far back as 2002: “Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute…. Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, ‘Death to America’ will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: ‘Death to America.’”
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Hizballah is also stepping up activities in South America. Oil Price News noted in August 2024 that “Hezbollah’s sizable but overlooked presence in Latin America poses significant risks. It gives the militants access to lucrative illicit economies along with the ability to strike soft targets in a region lacking robust counter-terrorism capabilities. In the wake of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s fraudulent electoral victory, Hezbollah will expand its South American presence as Iran ramps up support for the murderous regime to counter stricter U.S. sanctions.”
The jihadis are not in Venezuela because it is deeply interested in Venezuela. They are in Venezuela as a stepping stone to get to the United States. We will, unfortunately, quite likely be hearing from this group in the near future, if not on the Oct. 7 anniversary.
The bulletin added that the Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s defense against the jihadis “have been cited as sociopolitical grievances influencing some individuals’ mobilization to violence in the United States.” It also said that “hate crimes surged shortly following the attacks and have decreased over the past several months to levels consistent with reporting prior to the conflict, a trend that mirrors hate crimes following previous international conflicts or events.”
Related: Love Ya, Big Guy: Media Heaps Praise on Slain Hezbollah Top Dog Nasrallah
Understandably, however, after devoting so much of their attention to hunting for nonexistent “white supremacists” and demonizing prolifers and angry parents at school board meetings as terrorists, the feds are not exactly sharp in dealing with a real threat. One “senior DHS official” said to CBS: “I don’t know that we’ve got a crystal clear assessment on that at this point. We are literally in the earliest days of trying to understand what exactly Iranian intentions might be. We do, though, assess that Iran has a global capacity and a global capability, that it can draw, that it can target U.S. interests around the world – that it certainly has the reach and capacity to do, to carry out, to engage with individuals here inside the United States in ways that present a potential threat to the United States, here in the homeland.” Maybe Old Joe Biden and Kamala Harris should send the mullahs another $10 billion.
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That would fix everything. Wouldn’t it?