D.C. Police Worried That Fear of Terrorism Could Inspire More Terrorism
The terrorist threat wasn’t real, police determined. But the rumors about the terrorist threat could cause terrorism “from those seeking to ‘counterattack,'” they warned. A homeland security bulletin, recently obtained by Reason, sheds new light on the panic and confusion that U.S. authorities dealt with in October 2023.
The bulletin demonstrates that national security is a bit like the movie Inception. There’s always one more layer. But it’s also an important acknowledgment, from within the government, that panic itself can be the enemy. While “abundance of caution” has been the motto of U.S. counterterrorism for over two decades, the bulletin acknowledges that being too credulous about terrorist threats can itself cause problems.
American media was falsely reporting that Hamas had threatened to attack American soil on October 13, 2023, a so-called “day of jihad.” The rumor was based on muddled, secondhand coverage of an interview where former Hamas Chairman Khaled Meshaal called for protests in the countries bordering Israel, soon after Hamas’ massive October 7 attacks on Israel. Officials across the United States scrambled to deal with the public’s fears, often feeding right into them.
“We do not have any intelligence to suggest a threat to the District of Columbia associated with the misinterpretation of this address; however, we have observed online social media postings indicating that individuals may seek to violently ‘counteract’ these perceived attacks, further elevating the threat environment and potential for interpersonal clashes between opposing groups at First Amendment Protected events associated with the ongoing Israel–Hamas War,” the D.C. Fusion Center wrote in an October 12 bulletin.
The bulletin added that there have been “threatening social media posts…focused on targeting members of the Palestinian or broader Islamic communities from those seeking to ‘counterattack’ the Day of Jihad.”
Sadly, the Fusion Center’s prediction came true elsewhere in the country. Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 4-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Illinois, was stabbed to death by his vigilante landlord, Joseph Czuba, who believed that he was fighting against t
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