Terrorism
February 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Israel Bitton engaged ChatGPT to get its take on the continuing Palestinian terrorism against Israeli men, women, and children. He asked about Palestinian support for terrorism and the supposed ancient roots of Palestinian people. He found the responses documented in a long Twitter thread “eye-opening.” The thread is accessible here. Seeking to replicate Bitton’s exchange this morning, I started off with his opening request: “Explain why Palestinians celebrate terrorist attacks
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January 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Wall Street Journal Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead writes today about Senator Tom Cotton’s new book Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power. I know from Senator Cotton himself, by the way, that he is a great fan of Mead’s Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. (Walter only observes in passing that Senator Cotton “mentions my work in the text.”)
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December 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The 1988 bombing of a PanAm 747 as it passed over the Scottish village of Lockerbie was one of the seminal acts of Islamic terrorism. All 259 people on board the airplane, and 11 on the ground, were murdered. Until now, only one person, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, has been charged and convicted in the attack. But now, 33 years after the event, a second defendant is in
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September 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Albania has announced another cyberattack by the Iranian regime, this time on one of its border systems. The AP reports the story here. The AP story quotes a statement released by Albania’s Interior Ministry as well as Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Twitter feed. As I understand the translation of Rama’s tweet below, the system is back up and running: “The systems of the border points have been in operation since
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September 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I first wrote about Rick Rescorla in 2003 after finishing James Stewart’s Heart of a Soldier, the book based on Stewart’s New Yorker article “The real heroes are dead.” (“The real heroes are dead” is what Rescorla would say in response to recognition of his heroism on the battlefield in Vietnam.) It’s a good book that touches on profound themes in a thought-provoking way: life and death, love and friendship,
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September 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The Times attributes authorship of these artful profiles collectively to Kirk Johnson, N.R. Kleinfeld, David Barstow, Barbara Stewart, Jane Gross, Neela Banerjee, Constance L. Hays, Lynette Holloway, Janny Scott and Somini Sengupta. We can’t capture the magnitude of the loss, or the meaning of who and what we lost, but the
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August 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden took off his mask and emerged from isolation to announce that the CIA had zapped al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zahawiri in a drone strike conducted by the CIA on his Kabul balcony over this past weekend. The White House has posted the transcript of Biden’s remarks here. Reuters has a good story on the drone strike here and more on the operation here. Biden said the strike occurred
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June 9, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Defendants Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman arrived at a plea agreement with the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York to resolve charges deriving from their participation in the New York edition of the George Floyd riots, this one involving the distribution of Molotov cocktails to the crowd. Indeed, Rahman tossed one of the Molotov cocktails into a police car. On October 20, 2021, Judge Brian Cogan
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June 7, 2022 — Scott Johnson
…and love domestic terrorism. That is the heading of the Washington Free Beacon editorial addressing the latest Biden Department of Justice outrage. Readers of a certain age may recall the classic movie from which it derives: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The Beacon editorial comments on a story that deserves wider attention. I am taking the liberty of posting it below the
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April 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
You no doubt recall that the Navy Seals who executed Osama bin Laden also made off with a treasure trove of al Qaeda documents. Whatever happened to them? The Telegraph recounts the story: With their strict 30-minute deadline almost up, the Seals requested more time on the ground because they had found “a whole s— ton of computers and electronic gear on the second floor”. Permission was granted, and during
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March 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I commented briefly on United States v. Tsarnaev over the weekend in Dzhokharman. The Court’s opinions in the case were appended to my post. I blew off the First Circuit decision that the Supreme Court reversed and the dissent by Justice Breyer as obvious pretexts for ideological opposition to capital punishment. Thus my labored use of “Jokerman.” The Supreme Court decision reinstated the jury verdict imposing the jury’s capital sentence.
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February 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker
On Monday the Department of Homeland Security released a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin. There aren’t many such bulletins, so in theory this is a rather big deal. The title is Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland. It begins, presumably, with what is most important: The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives
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January 17, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
In a briefing about the terrorism at a synagogue in Texas, an FBI spokesman said the demands of the hostage taker, Malik Faisal Akram, were “specifically focused on an issue not directly connected to the Jewish community.” There is a sense in which this is true. The issue the terrorist specifically focused on was the imprisonment of a jihadist, Aafia Siddiqui. He demanded her release. That issue obviously has implications
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January 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The man who could not be named as the perpetrator of the terrorist seizure of Congregation Beth Israel is Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British national. I took it from the audio recording of the services he interrupted that he is a native of Pakistan. I believe that to be the case, although I don’t find it reported in the stories on the incident. Clueless Joe Biden appears to have
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January 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Thanks to all the local, state, and federal law enforcement officers — some 200 in total — who rescued the rabbi and others taken hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas yesterday. The “hostage taker” interrupted Shabbat services that were live streamed over Facebook yesterday morning to demand the release of Lady Al Qaeda. Within ten hours law enforcement conducted an operation that resulted in the rescue of the
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January 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Jillian Becker is the esteemed author and founder of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism. I became friendly with her through my interest in the subjects of her expertise. She has forwarded this first-hand account of the loss of her institute’s terrorism archive: A University Has Lost an Archive The University of Leicester has lost the archive of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism (IST). I founded the
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December 8, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history may recall that the Associated Press was holed up in a Gaza high-rise building that Israeli intelligence identified as hosting Hamas assets and offices, unbeknownst to the news hounds using the building when the IDF bombed it during the hostilities last May. The AP story on the bombing vehemently denied that the AP knew anything, in the best Colonel Klink Sgt. Schultz style. Today the AP
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