The ‘Day of Jihad’ That Never Came
Illinois man Joseph Czuba believed he was ready for the apocalypse. He had been convinced by his favorite radio shows that Muslims were planning a “day of jihad” on October 13, 2023. When the day passed without incident, Czuba told his wife that something was still coming the next day. Ready to face down the attacking hordes, he withdrew $1,000 from the bank, just in case “the grid” went out. There was only one loose end: his Palestinian-American tenant, Hanaan Shahin.
“He came to the house and said he was angry at [Shahin] for what was happening in Jerusalem,” prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald said after the incident, citing detectives investigating the crime. When Shahin told Czuba to “give peace a chance,” Czuba allegedly chased Shahin through her apartment with a knife. Then he stabbed Shahin’s 6-year-old son Wadea Al-Fayoume to death, prosecutors say. Police found Czuba outside the apartment, dripping blood.
Czuba was not the only one who feared October 13 would be a “day of jihad.” After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and called for protests in other Arab nations the following Friday, the media speculated about a wave of terror on U.S. soil. Politicians whipped their followers into a frenzy. Police beefed up security, and schools closed down in fear of impending attacks.
Then nothing happened. There were no armed attacks on America by Muslims that week—and the rumor provoked armed attacks against Muslim Americans. It was like a speed run of post-9/11 paranoia. American society saw an incomprehensible foreign threat, and overreacted. Innocent people were hurt. Later, as the perceived danger wore off, the false rumors and the violence they inspired were memory-holed, with no one held accountable.
“The War on Terror disappeared into normality, rather than disappearing. A lot of the infrastructure that was created post 9/11 just remained in place,” says Arun Kundnani, an expert on counterterrorism and mass surveillance. “When October 7 happened, the default reflex from a lot of institutions was already shaped by the War on Terror.”
Through interviews and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, including a never-before-seen FBI memo, Reason has reconstructed how the panic spread, and the damage it did to Jewish, Palestinian, and other American communities.
The rush by powerful figures and institutions into mass hysteria—and the lack of reflection on the consequences—vividly reveals what the politics of the war on terror have done to America.
‘THERE WILL BE BLOOD’
The phrase “day of jihad” was an invention of the tabloids. Hamas never used those words. In fact, “there is no history of Hamas attacks on U.S. soil or U.S. troops,” says Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a scholar of classical Arabic who has extensively researched Islamist movements. (Hamas has killed and kidnapped Americans during indiscriminate attacks on Israel.) Its ambitions, however violent and repressive, are limited to taking power in the Holy Land.
Groups that have attacked America, such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, want “never-ending armed jihad” aimed at “world domination,” Al-Tamimi says. In September 2024, an Islamic State supporter in Canada was arrested for allegedly plotting a mass shooting against Jewish Americans. By contrast, Hamas’ goal is “a Palestinian state that should be Islamic in its identity, and governed by Islamic law,” Al-Tamimi says.
Still, there was a kernel of truth behind the idea that Hamas was trying to mobilize foreign supporters. As it became clear that Hamas had killed hundreds of Israelis on October 7, and reports of atrocities against Israeli civilians flooded out, someone associated with Hamas did make a call for some action in foreign countries. In an interview with a Yemeni media outlet on October 11, former Hamas chairman Khaled Meshaal asked people to “head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world” in two days.Â
Meshaal told “scholars who teach jihad,” or religious warfare, that “this is a moment to practice” what they preach. Specifically, he asked neighboring Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt to intervene in the war. It echoed a written statement by Hamas the day before, asking foreign Muslims to gather on October 13 and “march towards the borders of our beloved Palestine.”
“This was not a call for a global war of jihad against infidels or a call to terrorism in Western countries,” Al-Tamimi says. Arabic-language media covered Meshaal’s speech in passing, if at all, as a straightforward attempt to stir up pro-war demonstrations in the countries bordering Israel.
English-speaking media had a different reaction. The Middle East Media and Research Institute, a controversial think tank run by a former Israeli intelligence officer, reposted clips of Meshaal’s speech with English subtitles. Journalists ran with the most sensational framing possible.
“THERE WILL BE BLOOD,” declared a headline from The Daily Signal, a news outlet formerly published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The headline was not a quote from anyone involved with Hamas—it was a quote from Heritage Foundation expert and former U.S. intelligence official Robert Greenway, who claimed Meshaal’s video was “an unambiguous global call to arms” that “will be heeded.” Greenway did not respond to multiple emails asking for comment.
The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, coined the phrase “day of jihad,” which was quickly picked up by other media. CBS News reported matter-of-factly that “Hamas has called for a day of jihad on Friday” without any context. NewsNation ran a five-minute segment on a “call for bloodshed” and the potential threat to American cities, full of wild speculation, without specifying what they were actually talking about.
“That’s what the whole framework of counterterrorism enables. You don’t have to ask those kinds of questions: Precisely what are you talking about, which organization you’re talking about, what is the actual evidence for a threat,” says Kundnani, the counterterrorism expert. “You just have to take whatever measures you can imagine and get on with it, and you don’t stop and ask questions. That’s the danger of the whole framework of counterterrorism, as it’s been set up since 9/11.”
Political figures played up the fear. “Do not leave your homes that day unless there is an emergency. Avoid public transit. Avoid airplanes. Avoid public events,” conservative podcaster Joey Mannarino warned. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk urged his followers to “arm up.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) stated on social media that Floridians would be armed that day. Republican congressional candidate from Minnesota Dalia al-Aqidi went on Fox News to claim that Hamas was “ordering every terrorist sympathizer, not only in the United States but globally, to entice [sic] violence, and antisemitism, and hate.” Former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, meanwhile, argued that Americans should “design your nation’s immigration policy so you don’t have to worry about a global day of jihad.”
As the House of Representatives debated who would be its next speaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) even tried to use the rumors to accelerate the vote. “Do not make us all travel tomorrow on Hamas’ announced global day of jihad,” she said. “And we all know we aren’t going to be here this weekend.” Mannarino, Kirk, Gaetz, al-Aqidi, and Greene did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Miller’s organization, America First Legal.
‘Abundance of Caution’
Law enforcement agencies raced to respond to the public’s fears. The New York Police Department ordered all officers to report in uniform on October 13, activated a Joint Operations Center, and stepped up patrols out of an “abundance of caution.” Other big city police departments made similar announcements. Quietly, officers across America discussed whether there really was a threat.
Many of these conversations took place through fusion centers, a system of offices created after 9/11 for information sharing between local and federal law enforcement. Although fusion centers sometimes help police officers report real threats and receive sober guidance from higher-ups, they also allow for the spread of panicky rumors from the internet.
Government repression “is inseparable from the news cycle, and the news cycle is inseparable from social media panics. These things all feed into each other,” says Dylan Saba, a half-Jewish and half-Palestinian attorney at Palestine Legal, a Palestinian-American legal aid nonprofit.
The Austin Regional Intelligence Center (ARIC), a fusion center in Texas, issued a bulletin about the upcoming “Day of Global Jihad.” It includes a brief quote from Meshaal urging Muslims to sacrifice their “blood and souls,” without mentioning anything else about the context or target audience of his statements. The footnotes cite an AmericanMilitaryNews.com article based almost entirely on a social media thread by a Christian televangelist.
The ARIC bulletin’s disclaimer that there is no “intelligence indicating a potential threat to individuals, groups, or critical infrastructure within the Central Texas region” rings a little hollow, especially because the bulletin was forwarded to police across the country. Reason found a copy among the emails of the San Diego Law Enforcement Coordination Center.
The same social media thread cited in the ARIC bulletin made it as far as Clifton, New Jersey. “The link below brings you to a social media post that has brought much fear to communities within Clifton,” a police captain wrote in an email to officers ordering additional patrols outside Jewish and Pales
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