Standing in an empty parking lot in front of a cluster of microphones belonging to most major news networks, FBI spokesman Matt DeSarno gave a statement that he may have later regretted. “We do believe from our engaging with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community. But we’re continuing to work to find motive,” he announced.
Special Agent DeSarno was, of course, referring to the attack on the Congregation Beth-Israel synagogue in Coleyville, Texas, where, just minutes before, gunman Malik Faisal Akram had held four people hostage after tricking his way inside the building.
What followed was an 11-hour standoff in which Akram ranted that “Jews control the world” and demanded the release from prison of Pakistani jihadist Aafia Siddiqui, who infamously blamed Israel after she was jailed for attempting to murder American military personnel in Afghanistan.
At just before 10pm local time, a SWAT team stormed the synagogue and, moments after a smattering of gunfire was heard from within, the hostages escaped and Akram was pronounced dead.
The media reaction to DeSarno’s statement was swift and numerous news sites ran with his comments, prompting headlines in the Associated Press, the BBC, and other publications.
HonestReporting was among a number of organizations and individuals that criticized the FBI’s premature and, frankly, perplexing inference that the hostage-taker was in no way motivated by a hatred of Jews.
In a critique, we noted:
Is it anti-Jewish to take hostage worshippers at a synagogue with the goal of getting a notoriously antisemitic terrorist released from prison? For The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the answer is less than an unequivocal ‘yes.’
Despite recent developments, the two outlets have not accurately detailed the nature of Saturday’s attack at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. As a result, millions of people around the world may doubt that holding Jews captive in a Jewish house of prayer is ‘not specifically related to the Jewish community.’”
Last night, the FBI announced that the Texas synagogue hostage ordeal on Saturday was indeed an antisemitic attack.
So why have neither the @NYTimes nor the @BBC documented this? pic.twitter.com/SIZKCIqeed
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 17, 2022
Founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Kenneth Marcus, for example, accused the federal agency of clearly getting it “wrong,” while pointing out that the siege was “obviously a matter of antisemitism.”
Roz Rothstein, the CEO of antisemitism educational charity StandWithUs, described DeSarno’s comments as “insulting and disappointing.”
“Trying to separate Jews from the idea that Jews were targeted on their holy day at their house of worship, is a mistake and it is insulting and disappointing,” she told Fox News.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was one of several politicians who poured scorn on the FBI’s initial assessment, tweeting: “It is very disturbing to hear from the FBI they do not believe the hostage taker’s demands had anything to do with the Jewish faith.”
I hope the FBI will reconsider the statement because it is well known that at her trial Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al-Qaeda,” was a raging anti-Semite who demanded that jurors be genetically tested for Jewish blood.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 16, 2022
Perhaps realizing its mistake, the bureau released a second statement which clarified that, in fact, the attack was a “terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted,” adding: “We never lose sight of the threat extremists pose to the Jewish community and to other religious, racial, and ethnic groups. We have had a close and enduring relationship with the Jewish community for many years.”
In response, many news publications that had included the FBI’s original assertion updated their reports to reflect the change in the law enforcement agency’s guiding principle underpinning its ongoing investigation, including, for example, NBC and ABC.
Despite this, and as HonestReporting pointed out on Monday, two prominent media outlets, the BBC and New York Times were exceptions to these instances of journalistic due diligence.
Following our overtures to both outlets, they have produced subsequent articles that more accurately depict the nature of Saturday’s events.
A story on the BBC’s website, Texas synagogue siege: Teens held in UK as Briton named as hostage-taker, does not include any reference to the initial FBI statement — this, despite the outlet having immediately produced a two-paragraph stand-alone piece uniquely dedicated to Desarno’s comment — but nevertheless incorporates numerous quotes that allude to the antisemitism that clearly drove Akram.
For example, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is cited as unequivocally branding Akram’s actions an “act of terrorism and anti-Semitism.”
Similarly, the New York Times in a piece published on Monday evening refers to the FBI’s revised analysis of the motivations that prompted the siege:
On Sunday, President Biden called the Colleyville attack an “act of terror,” and the F.B.I. was investigating it as a “terrorism-related matter.” The suspect, Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British citizen, died, according to the police.
Mitchell D. Silber, the executive director of the community security initiative at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said that there was a palpable fear that copycat attacks could occur in the coming weeks.
‘More and more, the Jewish community has accepted that unfortunately what it means to be a Jew in the United States in 2022 is that your institution needs to have guards, checkpoints and security,’ Mr. Silber said.”
Additionally, the Associated Press posted a story that included the FBI’s new statement alongside an accompanying tweet that clarified it had “deleted an earlier tweet that quoted the FBI saying the hostage taker’s demands were about an issue “not connected to the Jewish community.”
The AP deleted an earlier tweet that quoted the FBI saying the hostage taker’s demands were about an issue not connected to the Jewish community.
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 17, 2022
HonestReporting will continue to reach out to news outlets such as the NYT and BBC in order to encourage them to get their reportage right — in this case, to correctly characterize the attack on the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue as antisemitic.
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Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
