Hezbollah reportedly disputes a claim by Israeli military officials that the brother of the man who rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue last Thursday was a leader of the Lebanese militant group.
The Israeli Defense Forces said Sunday that Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, whom law-enforcement officials identified as the 41-year-old attacker, is the brother of a Hezbollah commander in the group’s Badr unit. The IDF said Ghazali’s brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week.
Ghazali, who officials say killed himself after exchanging gunfire with security guards at the synagogue, was a resident of Dearborn Heights, the town’s mayor, Mo Baydoun, said in a Facebook post. Baydoun also said Ghazali “lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon” earlier this month.
Ghazali was a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, according to federal officials, who are investigating the crime as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”
An Israeli military spokesperson told MS NOW that the IDF worked on “cross referencing” to reach its conclusion that the Hezbollah commander was the brother of the Michigan synagogue assailant. “But you know, we’ve been in this operation against Hezbollah for almost two weeks,” the spokesperson said in an interview with MS NOW’s Ines de la Cuetara.
The IDF did not provide details about how it had verified the information. It also did not directly link the man responsible for the synagogue attack to Hezbollah. The FBI declined MS NOW’s request for comment on the IDF’s statement, citing its ongoing investigation.
But a Hezbollah official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The New York Times that neither Ibrahim Ghazali nor his family were affiliated with the group.
The incident at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, came nearly two weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on Feb. 28, leading to a sprawling and deadly war. Lebanon is engulfed in the raging war after Hezbollah mounted an attack against Israel in retaliation for killing Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called Hezbollah’s actions a “strategic mistake.” Israel has waged massive military strikes on Lebanon. The Israeli military has called for evacuations in Hezbollah strongholds across southern Lebanon. At least 850 people have been killed in Lebanon, many of them civilians, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, with more than 800,000 people displaced.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian. Recommended
