OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. – U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., addressed the media along with other community leaders, including Governor Gretchen Whitmer, regarding the attack at a West Bloomfield Township Jewish temple.
On March 12, a man, later identified as 41-year-old Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, drove a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township. After an exchange of gunfire with the temple’s security, he died at the scene. One security officer was taken to a hospital after being struck by the truck.
No children or staff were injured. The FBI is leading the investigation and is considering the case as a targeted act of violence.
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Slotkin joined Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Rabbi Arianna Gordon and West Bloomfield Township Supervisor Jonathan Warshay in a press conference at Temple Israel on Friday, March 13, thanking law enforcement and the security team, while also addressing the recent uptick in antisemitic hate crimes in the country.
You can listen to her full statement in the video at the beginning of this article.
“I think it’s clear that if it were not for the private security and the staff at Temple Israel, and then the first responders on the scene and local law enforcement -- if that had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here today with children gone. This could have been much, much worse, so I give incredible credit to law enforcement and the people who were in the room putting themselves and their own families at risk,” Slotkin said.
The senator praised the Metro Detroit community for its response to help those who needed it most on Thursday. She said everyone opened their homes to help care for people fleeing the attack.
“This is a place I have a very personal connection to,” she continued. “I spent a lot of my time growing up in and out of this temple, and I feel just an immense amount of pain, as does the rest of the community that incidents like this even happen.”
Slotkin then addressed the attack as an antisemitic motive.
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“Whether antisemitism is coming from left or the right, whether it’s coming from some group that you like or don’t like, you have a responsibility to call it out,” she said. “Because when you don’t, it gives permission for people to climb that escalation, that ladder of escalation, that goes from saying hateful things online to saying them in person, to graffiti, to ultimately violence.”
According to Slotkin, the Jewish community suffers ten times the number of hate crimes as any other community in the country.
“It is an epidemic. Until we push back on that permission, we’re going to see incidents like this continue to proliferate.”
“The Jewish community spends over a billion dollars across the country securing their houses of worship, their schools, their institutions -- no community in America should be fearful of having their own kind congregate for things like education and worship,” she said. “I stand here proud of the community, but angry that we are even put in this position. Thankful to law enforcement, but asking the average citizen out there -- if you have a friend, a colleague, coworkers, who are using antisemitism in their daily life and feel like it’s just normal, please call that out whenever you see it.”
Slotkin was later asked if she feared the Department of Homeland Security was not fully prepared for a situation like this due to the lack of funding amid a partial government shutdown. She responded, “Because they are essential workers, they have been at work, certainly in Michigan, we have a ton of DHS folks, they are on the call and they are doing their jobs. Certainly, we need to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and we need, in my view, to cut away all the conversation on ICE, which is its own conversation, from all the core missions of the Department of Homeland Security, but they’re essential, on the job, they’re working today.”
You can watch the full press conference below: