“This is the largest gathering place for Israelis in the state of Michigan in the United States. I have booby-trapped the car. I will forcefully enter and start shooting them. God willing, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can.”
These chilling remarks come from a video message an American terrorist sent to his sister in Lebanon just minutes before he attacked a Michigan synagogue in what the FBI called a “Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community and the largest Jewish Temple in Michigan.”
On March 12, 2026, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, rammed his pickup truck twice into an entrance at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Inside the truck was $2,200 worth of fireworks, two torch-lighters, 35 gallons of gasoline in containers, an AR-style rifle, and 300 rounds of ammunition.
The second time he slammed the building with his truck, Ghazali managed to drive some 200 feet down the hallway of the synagogue’s early childhood center, where more than 100 children, including infants, were present.
“The only thought I had was, I’m going to die,” Elise Otis, lead teacher in the toddler room that day, told NPR. “So if he—or they—come in, I’m going to lay on the babies, because I’m going to die regardless. . . . I was more scared that they were going to die.”
When the terrorist rammed his truck through the doors, he struck Danny Phillips, the director of security, breaking his leg. Phillips dragged himself to a room where the babies were being kept, bolted the door shut, then lost consciousness.
Synagogue security personnel exchanged gunfire with the terrorist before he set off the fireworks inside the cab of his truck, which was wedged in the hallway of the early childhood center. The truck’s engine caught fire. Trapped inside his burning truck, Ghazali turned his gun on himself and took his own life. Besides the terrorist, no lives were lost.
Ghazali clearly intended to carry out a mass murder of Jewish people. A timeline provided by FBI Detroit Field Office Special Agent Jennifer Runyan indicated that Ghazali began preparing for the attack three days prior, visiting the websites of Detroit-area synagogues and other Jewish institutions and purchasing an AR-style rifle; firearm magazines; ammunition; and forty 5.3-gallon water containers, several of which he later filled with gasoline.
The FBI reported that a review of Ghazali’s online activity dating back to January 2026 revealed that he regularly watched pro-Hezbollah and Iranian news channels and “viewed news coverage about an Iranian fatwa [binding religious order on Muslims] for total Jihad against the US military.”
Israel’s military announced that Ghazali’s brother Ibrahim was a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon who, along with three other family members, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in March 2026.
Hatred of Israel saturated Ghazali’s social media content. Just hours before attacking Temple Israel, he took to social media and posted several comments across various profiles, including “Israel is a cancerous/malignant growth,” “Israel is pure evil,” and “The oppressors will soon know what kind of end they will meet.”
By the grace of God, only the terrorist met his end. But his demise is no solid comfort to the Jewish community because it has violently experienced the truth that there is no practical difference between hatred of the Jewish state and hatred of the Jewish people.
Jewish toddlers in Detroit have nothing to do with conflicts in the Middle East. Yet, the existence of the Jewish people anywhere fuels antisemites everywhere. And their bloodlust is not easily quenched.
