Last week Americans were shaken by Islamist terrorism as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a native Texan and US Army veteran, carried out a truck ramming attack while displaying an Islamic State flag. New Orleans’ fun-loving Bourbon Street became a live-action horror scene, with 14 killed and dozens injured.
Of course, this wasn’t the first Islamist attack on US soil. The World Trade Centre attack in 1993, 9/11, the 2015 San Bernardino Christmas party attack in California, and 2022's synagogue attack in Colleyville, Texas were forerunners. However, Americans have remained largely cavalier about the threat of terrorism at home. But if they want to stop burying young people enjoying life, it’s imperative to consider the lessons of this lethal attack, which apply particularly to Jewish Americans, who have been living with “a nine out of ten” security posture since October 7, 2023.
For starters, it’s worth clarifying what Americans are facing. Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative (an equivalent to the CST for the New York area) and a former NYPD senior intelligence and counterterrorism official, told me: “What we have here, as best as we can tell, is a lone actor who was inspired by Isis and potentially radicalised at his mosque in Texas who decided to act on his own to commit this act while pledging loyalty to Isis.”
Importantly then, does Jabbar’s attack signal the intifada has been globalised? Silber elaborated: “While antisemitism permeates Isis ideology, to date there is no evidence that the Israel-Gaza war was a motivating or mobilising factor driving Jabbar. Rather, he followed Isis’s ‘just do it’ or ‘crowd sourced terrorism on its behalf’ models. So no – not connected to ‘globalise the intifada’ so far.”
By contrast, Faran Jeffery, deputy director of the counter-extremism think tank Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism (ITCT), “absolutely” thinks New Orleans showed that the intifada has gone global. “Today, Islamist radicalisation not only takes place via dark web and Telegram forums of Isis but also via the narratives peddled by outlets like Al-Jazeera,” he said. “The helplessness of Western governments in the face of the global intifada campaign has only further emboldened Islamists.”
Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad, also sees a global link. He described to me the “jihad against Israel and the Jews” and “these massive campaigns and slaughters going on in sub-Saharan Africa and pogroms against Hindus in Bangladesh” as one “interconnected phenomenon”. Bostom believes this bigger picture is important to understand because there’s “hatred jihad directs at all non-Muslims, and that’s what New Orleans reminds me of”. As for what Americans should now do, Elad Shoshan, Israeli consul to the southwest US, who rushed to New Orleans to assist the attack’s two hospitalised Israelis, told me Americans should “read the signs. There are signs of demonstrators on the street saying ‘globalise the intifada’, walking with flags of terrorist organisations on the streets of America. Americans want to believe the chants will stay chants and tweets will stay tweets. We’ve seen it doesn’t end there.” Open threats should be addressed “as early as possible” because “whenever people start speaking about it, other people will continue to do it”.
More specifically, according to Silber, “New Orleans security officials should have already known – you need to have street barriers or bollards protecting areas where there are large numbers of civilians gathering.” He further advised the Jewish community “to review your organisation’s security protocols, be vigilant, and finally, keep calm and carry on.”
For individual Jews looking to safeguard themselves and their families in the wake of the New Orleans attack, Yehuda Remer, founder of the Pew Pew Jew podcast, told me more bracingly: “American Jews need to understand that terrorism is at our front door. We need to embrace the Second Amendment. We must purchase firearms, learn the basics, and train with them to become proficient,” in order to make “the terrorists more afraid of us than we are of them.”
Jeffery also suggested a new “focus on acceptance and normalisation of Zionism [and Israel] rather than only focusing on Islam-Judaism community outreach,” which has “more or less failed”. He added, young Jews could also benefit from this education.
Tackling terrorism at home will require a multifaceted solution. President-elect Trump should direct national security agencies to assess their existing priorities and resource allocation, but Americans must also be clear-eyed about the threat and develop both individual and civil society solutions. As New Year’s Eve brutally reminded everyone, the world remains a dangerous place. And yes, terrorism can happen here in the US, too.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein is a writer based in the Washington DC area.
