Media Outlets Omit Aafia Siddiqui’s Anti-Semitism From Coverage of Texas Synagogue Attack

Andy Jacobsohn/Getty Images

On Saturday, a gunman took four people hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Thankfully, the situation ended the best way possible: With all hostages freed and the suspect, Malik Faisal Akram, dead.

During a standoff with police, Akram demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman known as “Lady al-Qaeda” who is serving an 86-year sentence at a prison near the synagogue for attempting to kill U.S. personnel.

Following the attack, the Associated Press, NBC News, The Washington Post, Boston.com, Sky News, all ran profiles of Siddiqui without mentioning her history of anti-Semitism. CNN ran an opinion piece by Peter Bergen, a national security analyst for the network, that did not mention her proud hatred of Jews.

This is particularly unfortunate given that the terrorism at the synagogue was a clear and harrowing instance of anti-Semitism.

The evidence is overwhelming. Ahead of her 2010 trial, Siddiqui tried to dismiss her lawyers because they were Jewish and demanded the jury not include any Jews.

According to The Guardian, “she said her case was been orchestrated by unspecified ‘Jews’ and demanded that no person of Jewish descent be allowed to sit on the panel of jurors. After the guilty verdict was announced she cried out: ‘This is a verdict coming from Israel and not from America.’”

In a letter from prison to then-President Barack Obama following her trial, Siddiqui wrote, “Study the history of the Jews. They have always back-stabbed everyone who has taken pity on them and made the ‘fatal’ error of giving them shelter … and it is this cruel, ungrateful back-stabbing of the Jews that has caused them to be mercilessly expelled from wherever they gain strength. This is why ‘holocausts’ keep happening to them repeatedly! If they would only learn to be grateful and change their behavior!!”

As a proud Jewish American, I was horrified as the hostage situation was unfolding, knowing that an attack like that can happen at my own synagogue. It is a fear shared by many Jews in the United States and abroad amid a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism. As a media critic, I am shocked that the press can omit something so urgent – Siddiqui’s vicious hatred toward the Jewish people — in reporting on an anti-Semitic attack in which her release was being demanded.

What happened in Texas should be a wake-up call for the media to frequently, consistently and properly cover anti-Semitism, which emanates from not only the far-right but also from radical Islam, the far-left and other sources.

Watch above, via Fox News and CNN.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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