The Media's Attempt to Blame Israel and Jews for San Bernardino Attack

The father of Syed Farook, the male half of the San Bernardino Jihadist couple, supposedly gave an interview to an Italian paper in which he claimed that his son was obsessed with Israel. Farook Sr. now claims that he doesn't remember making those comments.

CNN is reporting the claim without the retraction.

Then some media outlets, especially CNN, decided to fasten blame for the attack on one of the victims, Nicholas Thalasinos. Nicholas Thalasinos is not Jewish, but belongs to a Christian movement whose members identify themselves as Messianic Jews. But the media saw the "Jew" part and noted that the victim was Pro-Israel and had reportedly argued with Farook about Islam.

And so a narrative was born. Farook was angry about Israel and the Jews and decided to attack the Christmas Party.

There are a few problems with the narrative.

1. They were ISIS supporters - ISIS is not the organization you join because you hate Israel. You could just as well join CAIR or its Hamas partner. You join ISIS in support of rebuilding the Caliphate. ISIS has little to nothing to do with Israel. It rejects Palestinian nationalism and is much more focused on fighting other Islamic groups who won't join the Caliphate.

ISIS is the group you join if you think Muslims should start building the Caliphate now.

2. Farook and Malik did not suddenly turn to this attack. They had undergone plenty of training and had a background of support for terrorism. Malik in particular had been at this for a while. This was not a response to X, which is what the media tries to build into a narrative of Sudden Jihad Syndrome. They were legitimately committed to the goals of imposing Islamic authority on the world.

3. If you hate Israel, there are plenty of better targets than a Christmas party at the place you work. Even if there is a guy there who supports Israel. For that matter, if Farook had really been that obsessed with Jews, like many other Islamic terrorists, he could have targeted a synagogue.

Instead Farook decided to hit a place he knew well where he could corner a lot of people together. That was the plan. It worked. Their targets were hit because they were non-Muslims as part of a general campaign against America and what Muslims call the Dar-al-Harb or the House of War. If everything had gone according to plan, Farook would have claimed that his wife asked him to urgently come home to help with the baby and you would have seen him on camera crying crocodile tears for his murdered co-workers. But the plan fell apart. Like most mass killers, Farook and Malik overestimated how many people they would be able to kill and how long it would take the police to respond. Farook was probably more optimistic than Malik, which is why she was the one who posted the pledge to ISIS.

For the media, Israel is a convenient narrative. But the narrative is stretched painfully thin. Farook and Malik decided to carry out a terrorist attack on a party because one guy there was a pro-Israel Christian. Nobody goes to the kinds of efforts they did unless there's a bigger plan.

This wasn't about Israel or the target would have been a synagogue or some Israeli event. Both were easy enough to manage. This was about America and about Muslims imposing Islam on non- Muslims.