{"id":21756,"date":"2026-03-15T06:59:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T06:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/15\/whitmer-points-the-finger-after-synagogue-terror-attack\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T06:59:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T06:59:05","slug":"whitmer-points-the-finger-after-synagogue-terror-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/15\/whitmer-points-the-finger-after-synagogue-terror-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitmer Points The Finger After Synagogue Terror Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer said Friday that heated political \u201crhetoric\u201d was to blame for the terror attack on the Temple Israel synagogue, calling Thursday\u2019s incident a clear act of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitmer\u2019s comments come after a man rammed his truck into Temple Israel, the largest Reform Judaism congregation in the United States, and opened fire with a rifle. The suspect, identified<\/a> as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese national who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2016, was killed by synagogue security.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday\u2019s attack was antisemitism. It was hate, plain and simple,\u201d Whitmer said. \u201cWe will fight this ancient and rampant evil, we will stand together as we do it, and we will call it out. We must lower the rhetoric in the state and in this country, especially at this moment where we have seen such a rise in antisemitism and more attacks on the Jewish community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitmer said that the attacker was \u201cfomented by rhetoric that they see online and that they see on television and they hear on the radio. It radicalizes people, and it endangers our fellow Michiganders. We cannot let this continue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She did not mention Ghazali by name and referred specific questions about the investigation to the FBI.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am calling on anyone with a platform to be very responsible with their rhetoric, not to identify or target the Jewish community,\u201d Whitmer said. \u201cThat is antisemitism writ large, and I don\u2019t think that any of us should permit or allow that to stand. And that\u2019s why I\u2019m asking people to turn down the rhetoric.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghazali was born in Lebanon in 1985 and entered the United States in 2011 on an immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, the Department of Homeland Security said. He applied for naturalization in October 2015 and became an American citizen in February 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitmer praised the synagogue\u2019s security team, noting that the attack occurred while children were present.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to thank Temple Israel\u2019s security personnel,\u201d Whitmer said. \u201cThey were selfless in their courage, and they saved lives. These heroes threw themselves in harm\u2019s way, engaging the suspect, and let\u2019s be very clear, yes, this is a place of worship, but at the time that this attack occurred, it was a school, 104 children, aged 5 and younger.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The FBI is continuing to investigate the attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer said Friday that heated political \u201crhetoric\u201d was to blame for the terror attack on the Temple Israel synagogue, calling Thursday\u2019s incident a clear act of antisemitism. Whitmer\u2019s comments come after a man rammed his truck into Temple Israel, the largest Reform Judaism congregation in the United States, and opened fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}