Abubaker Abed, a self-styled Palestinian journalist, said Temple Israel was ‘guilty of a crime’
A contributor to the George Soros-funded Drop Site News defended the Thursday terrorist attack against a synagogue and preschool in Michigan as an act of self-defense, claiming that the synagogue was engaged in “criminality” because it supports pro-Israel charities.
Abubaker Abed, a self-styled Palestinian journalist, suggested that Ayman Muhammad Ghazali—the terrorist who rammed his explosives-packed car into the synagogue—was trying “reasonably to defend [himself].”
“A person is not criminally responsible if they act reasonably to defend themselves against an imminent and unlawful use of force,” wrote Abed in a post on X. “Israel murdered his relatives and is illegally bombing and invading his country.”
Abed suggested Temple Israel was “guilty of a crime” over its membership in the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ)—a progressive religious branch—and its support for the Association of Reform Zionists of America, a liberal pro-Israel group.
“Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 25, an individual is guilty of a crime if they aid, abet, or otherwise assist in committing the crime,” he wrote. “Temple Israel in Michigan actively promotes donations to ARZA and its parent organisation [URJ], which support the Reform movement in Israel that supports the Israeli military as ‘an essential institution for national security.'”
“The fact that they do this in a temple doesn’t rule out its gravity and criminality,” Abed added. “Reminder that Israel always claims mosques were used by Hamas and has obliterated most of them in Gaza under the pretext of defending itself.”
Neither Abed nor Drop Site responded to requests for comment.
Abed’s comments came in response to a post from Drop Site cofounder Ryan Grim. Grim posted photos of children, reportedly related to Ghazali, whom Israel allegedly killed in a strike against Hezbollah and Lebanon. Watchdog groups like Honest Reporting criticized the post as an attempt to “rationalize anti-Jewish terror.”
Ghazali, whose brother was a Hezbollah commander according to Israeli officials, was killed after driving his bomb-filled car into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., which also houses a preschool. He injured a member of the synagogue’s security team before entering into a shootout with another armed guard.
Abed, a social media influencer from Gaza, has covered Israel’s war against Hamas for Drop Site, which describes him as a “contributor.” He said in January that he has “worked with Drop Site for many months and still do,” describing it as “almost the only outlet that has credibly reported on Hamas movement news and risked its reputation for it,” while Drop Site cofounder Jeremy Scahill said in an April video that he and Abed “talk every night.”
Drop Site has a history of promoting anti-Israel falsehoods as news, with Grim sharing a debunked video purporting to show Israeli soldiers massacring Palestinians at a humanitarian aid site in June. The BBC later found that the video, which does not depict a single Israeli soldier, was filmed nearly three miles from the nearest aid distribution site. The attack is believed to have been carried out by Hamas.
Abed has engaged in more than defamation against the Jewish state; he has openly called for the destruction of the Jewish people.
“O Allah, unleash Your curse upon the Jews,” he wrote in an X post in March 2024. “O Allah, cause the earth to swallow them, burn them, and shake the ground beneath them.”
He praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks while they were still taking place, saying they “will bode well for the long-waited liberation.”
In other posts, he wrote, “I wish I were a resistance fighter!” and proclaimed that “resistance is existence. We must support Palestine’s right to self-defense. Our resistance fighters are heroes.”
In an X post about the Israeli hostages, Abed wrote that the “most honourable people these Israeli families have ever met in their lives are our resistance fighters. The heroes of humanity and the world.”
In February, Abed mourned the death of Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei, calling it an “immeasurable, irreplaceable loss for the axis of resistance. A genuine, brave leader who unflinchingly resisted the fascist empire and gave, sacrificed, and died for Palestine.” He also mourned the deaths of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, calling them “resistance fighters who heroically fell in battle in Gaza and Lebanon” and “who have fought for the liberation.”
