Michigan synagogue attacker lost relatives since Israel’s attacks on Lebanon began, mayor says
The suspect who rammed his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue has been identified as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon.
Ghazali was killed in the attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, a security guard was injured, and the temple itself was partially burned in a fire resulting from the crash into its hallway.
His identity was confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security.
A neighbor of Ghazali told The Detroit Free Press he lived in Dearborn Heights, just west of Detroit, and recently lost family members in an Israeli strike on his homeland as part of Operation Epic Fury.
Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun subsequently said in a statement that the suspect “lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon” earlier this month.
The neighbour said he had also lost a brother in the strike, adding that she had planned to bring him flowers and expressing shock at his death, describing him as “my rock,” according to the Free Press.
“He was the best,” she said. “The best neighbor. Always quiet, a hard worker. He was always pleasant. Everybody liked him.”
Ghazali was born in Lebanon in January 1985 and entered the U.S. in May 2010 on an IR1 immigrant visa after marrying an American citizen, the DHS said.
He applied for naturalization in 2015 and was granted citizenship on February 5, 2016.
Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, called the crime a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community” and said at a news conference Thursday that the FBI is leading the investigation.
During a press conference on Friday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer described the attack as an act of “antisemitism.”
“It was hate,” Whitmer said. “Plain and simple. We will fight this ancient and rampant evil.
“We will stand together as we do it,” she continued. “We will call it out. We must lower the rhetoric in this state and country.”
At the same press conference, Senator Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish, thanked security staff at Temple Israel.
