Former Milwaukee talk radio host Mark Belling used to say that rationalization is the second strongest human drive (I'll let you decide for yourself what the first one is). That being said, this attempt to justify and rationalize Thursday's terror attack at the Temple Israel Synagogue and school in Michigan is as breathtaking in its audacity as it is short-sighted.
Islamic terrorist Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove his vehicle into the synagogue and, armed with a rifle, planned to kill as many Jews, including children, as he was able to. Unfortunately for Ghazali, but fortunately for the rest of the civilized world, no children were present on Thursday, but armed security was. They dispatched Ghazali, thankfully, and he will never harm another person ever again.
But Dearborn Heights Mohamad Baydoun, a Muslim, basically said the Jews at Temple Israel had it coming because Ghazali lost family in the attack. The media, of course, was all too happy to push.
The mayor of Dearborn Heights said that the suspect involved in the shooting and vehicle-ramming attack at a Detroit-area synagogue had “lost several members of his own family … in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon."
— ABC News (@ABC) March 13, 2026
Read more: https://t.co/20neXf2B6p pic.twitter.com/5a8uyHspxZ
Except there's a bit of pertinent information missing from this. Turns out Ghazali's brothers were members of Hezbollah.
The two brothers were Hezbollah terrorists. The story should be that the U.S. allowed a foreigner from a Hezbollah family to enter the country and eventually be naturalized, and he launched a terrorist attack against a synagogue. https://t.co/tfP6s0TJRI
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) March 13, 2026
That, of course, brings up another question: Ghazali was naturalized, yet our system missed this. That's not comforting for many reasons, including the realization that Ghazali is not the only one who got through the system. But is the media and the Left going to argue that a) we can't kill the terrorist family members of naturalized citizens and b) we have to tolerate the family members of terrorists living in our midst? Good luck with that one coming into the midterms.
It also puts forth a fun new legal standard: we can now retaliate against people who harm us?
Do these people realize they're justifying an attack on a mosque now? https://t.co/Bgly9SpdlR
— RBe (@RBPundit) March 13, 2026
There are 3,000 families who lost loved ones on 9/11 who didn't retaliate against Muslims.
They do not realize that, of course, and if they do, they assume they'll be protected by prosecutors and the Left if they are targeted for attacks. Look no further than Daniel Penny in Manhattan.
There’s no excuse for terrorism, and there’s certainly no excuse for trying to dress it up as something understandable or justified. The moment you start arguing that civilians deserved to die because of something someone else did halfway around the world, you’re not condemning terrorism—you’re endorsing it.
And that’s a dangerous road to travel. Because once that logic takes hold, it doesn’t stop at synagogues. It applies everywhere, to everyone. A society that accepts collective punishment as moral justification for murder is a society that has abandoned the very idea of civilization.
The good news is that the people who actually showed up at Temple Israel understood that. The armed security who stopped Ghazali didn’t rationalize terrorism. They ended it.