Terrorists attack 2 US schools on the same day
Most school shootings are not terrorism. But right now the warning lights are blinking red because the US war on Iran has created an extremely high terrorism threat within the United States.
Yesterday was the first time since September 11, 2001, that the United States experienced terrorist attacks in two different locations on the same day:
Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia: Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former Army National Guard member who pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to aid the Islamic State opened fire inside a classroom full of ROTC students. The shooting killed an ROTC instructor who was a professor of military science and left two students wounded.
Temple Israel, which includes an early childcare center and school, in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan: Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon and became a US citizen in 2016, ramming a vehicle loaded with explosives into the building and opened fire on security guard. Prior to the attack, the suspect told people he had four family members killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last week.
The 9/11 Commission Report found that the most important failure was one of imagination because our leaders didn’t understand the gravity of terrorist threats or the danger from Bin Ladin. Pre-9/11, al Qaeda was not even a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress in the 1990s. For those of your who have followed my work for the last few years, I wrote about both domestic and international terrorism as threats schools aren’t considering back in the spring of 2024.
History repeats itself as the President’s 2026 State of the Union address only mentioned terrorism twice during the longest version of this address in US history (once in the context of Iran’s government and once in reference to Mexico and immigration). For comparison, President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union referenced terrorism 36 times and President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union following the Boston Marathon bombing made eight references to terrorism including seven paragraphs about al Qaeda, Hezbollah, radicalization, and homegrown violent extremism.
The US airstrike on an Iranian Elementary School and the subsequent lack of compassion for human life shown by US officials who refuse to admit blame or wrongdoing is very likely to fuel retribution by terrorist groups.
Does the United States bombing an elementary school and refusing to say it was a mistake signal to terrorist groups that schools and children are legitimate targets for attacks?
Just last year, ISIS-affiliated group ISKP used Tiktok and Telegram to post an operative manual for a “jihad” encouraging followers to attack Israel, the US, and allied western countries using whatever weapons they could find. Users of TikTok are already inundated with graphic images of dead Palestinians and Iranians which drives online recruitment by terrorist groups. The more a user interacts with violent content, the more social media algorithms push them towards even more radical content.
Over the past year, ISIS (umbrella Jihadist group that has taken the role of AQ) is operating in more countries than al Qaeda was pre-9/11. Twenty-five years of the US ‘war on terrorism’ has resulted in better funded and more organized terror groups than before the war started.
Just like September 10, 2001, I do not believe that our elected federal officials understand the gravity of the threats that students may face in the present and very near future. Failing to imagine, acknowledge, or address these threats is not an excuse because the cost of inaction is too high.
Prior terrorist attacks at US school
In December 2024, an adult scheduled a campus tour to discuss enrolling a student at Feather River School of the Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, CA. The school has 5 staff members and 33 students in k-8 classes. A tiny, rural school with open air hallways between classrooms doesn’t have the resources for a “secure entry”. Even if they did, this guy had a reason and permission to be on campus.
Campus tours happen at public and private schools across the country every day. Nobody expects a man who looks like this to pull a gun from under his sweater and shoot two kindergartners. Just like most school shooters and mass shooters, he killed himself before police arrived.
Even though an adult man targeting a 33-student school in rural California is highly improbable, it’s not a surprise that it happened. The day after the attack, a note was found detailing the gunman’s motive. The note said he sought to carry out the “child executions” as a “response to America’s involvement with Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians along with the attacks towards Yemen”.
“There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. What looks strange is thought improbable, and what is improbable need not be considered.”
- Thomas Schelling, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
Terrorism is the use of violence or threats of violence, often against civilians, to achieve political, ideological, or religious goals by instilling fear and coercing societies or governments. Very few school shootings across US history have been committed by adults with a political motive.
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