By: Jason Rosenweig
Poway. Seattle. Washington, D.C. Pittsburgh. In recent years anti-semitic attacks have been on the rise around the US. Now, a new attack has been driven by antisemitic beliefs and harmful ideation, this time in Texas. On January 15, 2022, the Jewish Sabbath, a congregation called Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas was streaming their Shabbat services online. At around 10:00 am, a man came into the synagogue claiming to be homeless and Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker welcomed him in, offering him a cup of tea. At first, all seemed fine, however, the situation soon became dire. As Cytron-Walker turned around to pray towards Jerusalem, he heard a click, which turned out to be the pistol of Malik Faisal Akram, the perpetrator of the attack who posed as a homeless man. This hostage situation lasted for 11 hours and involved the FBI and over 5 dozen law enforcement officers were involved in ending it.
One interesting thing about how this hostage situation started is how Akram exploited the Jewish pillar of Tikkun Olam, or “repairing the world”. This is one of the three pillars of Judaism. In the sect of Reform Judaism — the sect which Congregation Beth Israel belongs to —, it is believed that Tikkun Olam, one of the three pillars of Judaism, represents charity and making the world a better place through good deeds. Therefore, when Rabbi Cytron-Walker saw a man walking through the synagogue’s doors in need of help, his first instinct was to help him. Akram exploited this and he knew that he could manipulate someone using a pillar of their religion into being let into the synagogue and even given care.
The sad part of this crisis is many people may use this attack as an excuse to neglect a pillar of their religion, fearing that, if they help people, they could be subject to an attack. Tikkun Olam is, in my opinion, the most important pillar of Judaism to be followed because it, in turn, helps you to achieve the other two pillars, those pillars being Torah study and Avodah, which can either be interpreted in modern-day Judaism as being either its literal meaning of “work” or a more interpretive meaning of prayer. Tikkun Olam can be achieved through these pillars and these two pillars can be achieved through Tikkun Olam which is why the greatest possible tragedy to come from this attack would be an abandoning of one of the defining aspects of Judaism in the name of safety.
To get some context, we must talk about why the hostage taker took hostages, and why he chose the synagogue as the place to take hostages.
It is said that Akram was seeking the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a former neuroscientist from Pakistan who was convicted of attempted murder of troops in Afghanistan who detained her. After the 9/11 attacks, she moved to Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan and Siddiqui began to get radicalized while she supplied aid to Taliban soldiers. She joined Al Qaeda and became involved in numerous terrorist plots, eventually becoming one of the most wanted people in the world. She was detained by the Americans in Afghanistan and attempted to shoot at the soldiers interrogating her, which is the crime for which she is serving a sentence not far from Congregation Beth Israel. . Siddiqui has become a sort of celebrity within the world of Al-Qaeda, earning the nickname of “Lady Al-Qaeda” with many people — including herself — asserting that she was falsely imprisoned and demanding her release. In this case, Akram viewed Siddiqui as a “sister”, likely seeing their fight towards a cause as being a uniting factor and wanting her release to help this cause that he had grown to believe in over the previous years.
As to why he chose a synagogue, it is simple: he was delusional. According to Rabbi Cytron-Walker, Akram believed that Jews controlled the world. He asked them to get on the phone with the “Chief Rabbi of America” and to free Siddiqui.
During the hostage situation, there was so much instability and uncertainty. Luckily, the synagogue was livestreaming its services on Facebook. Though the stream was taken down from the public after a couple of hours, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) provided the feed to law enforcement so they knew exactly what was going on in the synagogue. At the 11th hour, the hostages were increasingly fearful for their life. Though Akram showed no clear intention of wanting to kill any hostages, he grew even more aggressive and erratic as the hostage situation went on. Around 9pm, 4 hours after one hostage was released at 5pm, the hostages decided they needed to get out. Rabbi Cytron-Walker threw a chair at Akram, and the hostages were able to run away and escape to safety. Shortly after, law enforcement entered the synagogue and Akram was killed by an FBI agent, ending the situation.
In the coming weeks and months, we will learn more about this situation, the motives behind it, and whether it was a random act or whether Akram was acting at the behest of another group. This attack and the motives behind it are a concerning sign of the increasing trend of antisemitism — even those people in Congress who come from the state of Georgia and believe in Jewish space lasers. This antisemitism, even if only words, will often trigger people into committing violent attacks.
The only way to stop this wave of violence is to attack antisemitism at its root, harmful misinformation passed on generation to generation. For long periods of time, this misinformation only traveled from parent to child or friend to friend, but in the age of social media, misinformation can travel with ease. In today’s modern echo chambers there are no rational voices before it is too late and one has been radicalized with harmful beliefs that lead people to commit hate crimes and lynchings and terrorist attacks. We must engage in a campaign of bursting the bubbles of these echo chambers by flagging posts with fact checks with the hope that we may prevent people from heading down a dangerous rabbit hole. Social media giants such as Meta and Twitter must do their best to ban all users who spread these lies in order to prevent the views that come with them. All of this is what we must do if we hope to ever make the world a better place.
Works Cited
"Hostages Freed After Standoff at Texas Synagogue, Gunman Dead." Al Jazeera, 16 Jan. 2022, www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/16/man-takes-hostages-at-texas-synagogue. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
"Hostages Rescued Safely, Suspect Dies in Texas Synagogue Standoff." The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2022, www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/15/us/synagogue-hostage-texas-colleyville. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
Kelly, Mary L. "Why the man who held Texas synagogue hostages invoked the name of Aafia Siddiqui." All Things Considered, NPR, 17 Jan. 2022, NPR. www.npr.org/2022/01/17/1073661277/why-the-man-who-held-texas-synagogue-hostages-invoked-the-name-of-aafia-siddiqui. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
Levenson, Eric. "What It Was Like Inside the Colleyville, Texas, Synagogue During the 11-hour Hostage Standoff." CNN, 19 Jan. 2022, edition.cnn.com/2022/01/17/us/inside-texas-synagogue-hostage-standoff/index.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
Magid, Jacob. "Hostage: Attacker Chose Synagogue, Thinking Jews Powerful Enough to Free ‘sister’." The Times of Israel, 17 Jan. 2022, www.timesofisrael.com/hostage-attacker-chose-synagogue-thinking-jews-powerful-enough-to-free-sister/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
Rosenfeld, Arno. "Texas Rabbi: Gunman ‘thought That Jews Control the World’." The Forward, 16 Jan. 2022, forward.com/news/480928/beth-israel-hostage-standoff-charlie-cytron-walker/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
"Meet 'Lady Al-Qaeda' Aafia Siddiqui, who Texas gunman demanded be freed." The Jerusaelm Post, 17 Jan. 2022, www.jpost.com/international/article-692631. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
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