Shortly after the FBI killed Malik Faisal Akram and rescued the four hostages he was holding in a Colleyville, Texas synagogue, an agency spokesman made a baffling statement, reminiscent of Barack Obama’s notorious remark about those who would “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli” apropos the bloody jihadist attack on a French kosher grocery store.

“We do believe,” said the FBI agent, that Akram “was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community. But we are continuing to work to find motive.” Strictly speaking, the issue motivating Akram—the freeing of a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist—does not relate to the Jewish community in Colleyville or anywhere else. But in Akram’s mind the relationship to the Jewish community is straightforward, as he believed that the Jews control the U.S. government, and that flying to America and attacking the nearest synagogue would be the best way to get their attention. The same anti-Semitic delusion animated the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. Lahav Harkov comments:

Perhaps at first glance, that issue, the release of Aafia Siddiqui, currently serving an 86-year prison sentence for attempting to murder American troops and FBI agents, does not seem to be “specifically related to the Jewish community.” But Siddiqui was a raving anti-Semite, and that information is readily available.

After Siddiqui was arrested in Afghanistan for her part in plotting al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the U.S., UK, and Pakistan, shooting at U.S. Army troops as they detained her, she said the case against her was a Jewish conspiracy. Siddiqui dismissed her legal defense team because she said the lawyers were Jewish, and she demanded that jurors in the trial take DNA tests to make sure they were not Israeli or Zionists, in order “to be fair.”

She also wrote a letter to then-president Barack Obama telling him that Jews “have always back-stabbed everyone who has taken pity on them and made the ‘fatal’ error of giving them shelter.” . . . After her conviction, Siddiqui said: “This is a verdict coming from Israel and not from America. That’s where the anger belongs.”

One of the organizations that has been advocating Siddiqui’s release in recent weeks is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In November, CAIR’s Texas chapter and MPower Change, a Muslim activist group, hosted an online event titled “Injustice: Dr. Aafia and the Twenty-Year Legacy of America’s Wars.” In addition, CAIR San Francisco executive director Zahra Billoo told attendees during a speech she gave last November to “know your enemies” [and] “to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues.”

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”