Changing Jewish Life: a New Jihadi Wrinkle

L.A.'s Thwarted Terror Spree by Daniel Pipes, New York Sun, September 6, 2005, [NY Sun headline: "L.A. Terrorists Threaten American Jewry"]

The Jewish High Holidays this year fall in early October, and that's when a massacre was planned against two Los Angeles synagogues, as well as other targets, according to an indictment just handed down against four young Muslim men.

Law enforcement traces the origins of this plot to 1997. That's when Kevin Lamar James, a black inmate at New Folsom Prison, near Sacramento, Calif., founded Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam" and known as JIS). JIS promotes the sort of jihadi version of Islam typically found in American prisons As the indictment puts it, James, now 29, preached that JIS members have the duty "to target for violent attack any enemies of Islam or ‘infidels,' including the United States government and Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel." [. . . . ]

The emergence of a primarily African-American Islamist terrorist cell signals a new trend. Native-born Americans have taken part in terrorist operations before, but (again, as in London), this case this marks their first large-scale plot.

Terrorist plans that fail don't make headlines, but they should. This was a near-miss. Home-grown radical Islam has arrived and will do damage.

There was a plot against the Jews of Montreal (Outremont, I think) by Ahmed Ressam and his cohort. It was a plan abandoned in favour of bombing LA airport and fortunately, because of an alert female customs officer, Ressam was caught.

As above, seldom is this jihadi activity against Jews mentioned in the media; it is as though everyone thinks that if it is kept relatively quiet, the jihadis will behave. Stupid!

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