As Shiraz Socialist says, Fascists still want to kill Jews. The Al Qaeda plot to bomb two synagogues in Chicago is unnerving - although fortunately only that, since the bombs were found on cargo planes a long way away from Chicago.
One of the targeted synagogues is a GLBT synagogue, Congregation Or Chadash. It's certainly not the biggest or most prominent synagogue in Chicago, so I wonder how or why it was picked. Did someone in Al Qaeda in Yemen used to live in Chicago? (Anwar al-Awlaki, who is one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, is an American and used to live in the Washington area; his side-kick is Samir Khan who is also an American).
Some bizarre articles have come out about this in the Jewish press online already. Lee Smith published an odd one in Tablet whose point I really cannot figure out (it seems to be blaming President Obama for doing something bad - but since all the president has done is to work as hard as possible against this threat, I don't understand what he's done wrong). And the Yeshiva World website headlined their story "Bomb was addressed to Chicago 'Toeiva Synagogue.'" This is an ultra-Orthodox website that apparently cannot bring itself to utter the word "gay." (The word "toeiva" means "abomination"). Disgusting.
The government (and the UK government) now claims that, notwithstanding the mail address on the bombs - what I like to call, labeling the bombs with the word "bomb" -, they were not intended to reach their stated addresses but to blow up in planes. I find such stories difficult to believe but the press has not been asking what, to me, seem like obvious questions.
ReplyDeleteAmong them, why would someone from Yemen look to conceal a bomb on a plane by basically painting the bomb with a signs that read "bomb" - i.e. the address - on it? How many packages a year go from Yemen to any Jewish institution, much less a not so well known institution? I bet the answer is pretty close to zero, until now.
I would think that the government, looking to stop copy-cat crimes has a vested interest in downplaying the address and making up a story. Then again, maybe the terrorists do not care where the bomb goes off. What a mess.
Or perhaps for the terrorists it was a twofer - if the bombs had blown up in mid-air, then there would have been two spectacularly successful attacks. And if not, and the bombs are found, the Jews are terrorized. I doubt it was an either/or.
ReplyDeleteRebecca,
ReplyDeleteYou are certainly making sense.
I note and highly recommend an article from the CIF comment section of today's UK newspaper The Guardian by someone named Martin Rivers. I usually dismiss articles in CIF as more BS than factual but this article was all factual, so far as I can see and it is just terrifying. The most interesting part follows:
“Even when our security apparatus was tipped off about the UPS bomb, even when we were spoon-fed the tracker number of the offending package, and even when our bomb disposal experts stared the device squarely in the eyes, still we gave it the all-clear. That has never happened before. That is a game-changing development in the threat we face.”
This is really scary stuff and the authorities may have decided to calm fears in the face of a threat not previously fully appreciated and about which we currently have no sufficient countermeasure. That may be why we keep hearing that the authorities are not sure they stopped all the bombs.