Alleged Nashville school shooter appears to have praised Hitler and shared neo-Nazi content
(JTA) — Police in Tennessee are investigating whether an antisemitic manifesto posted online was written by a teenager accused of carrying out a fatal school shooting in Nashville on Wednesday.
The alleged shooter at Antioch High School appears to have posted a livestream of the shooting as well as content on his social media accounts prior to the attack, in which one student was killed. The material was removed after its connection to the shooting became known.
According to The Tennessean newspaper, the materials attributed to the shooter, identified as Solomon Henderson, included statements praising Adolf Hitler and opposing “race-mixing,” as well as materials related to past school shootings, including a deadly one at a Nashville Christian school in 2023. Authorities say Henderson, a 17-year-old student at Antioch, killed himself during the incident after fatally shooting another.
“Our analysts located a sprawling manifesto full of anti-Black content, references to accelerationism and antisemitism,” Carla Hill of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told the newspaper. “It also plagiarized from various far right manifestos and publications, including Terrorgram Collective and a manifesto by Matthew Harris.”
US security firm prepares to enter Gaza ahead of Palestinians’ return to northern Strip
(JNS) — Preparations are underway for a U.S. security firm to start inspecting vehicles returning to the northern Gaza Strip through the Netzarim Corridor next week in accordance with the Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement, the Ynet news outlet reported on Thursday afternoon.
Representatives of the company, which employs approximately 100 former military and CIA operatives, arrived in the Jewish state in recent days ahead of a pilot set to kick off on Sunday, according to the report.
An international consortium has been established to facilitate the safe return of Palestinians to northern Gaza, according to Ynet. Participants include Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), a logistics planning and operations firm; UG Solutions, which provides integrated security solutions; and an unnamed Egyptian security and inspection company.
Funding for the coalition does not come from Jerusalem but is managed by the countries that mediated the agreement with Hamas: Qatar, Egypt and the United States. Doha is believed to be providing most of the funds.
US House panel releases updated ‘Terror Threat Snapshot’
(JNS) — In the wake of the ISIS-inspired terrorist car-ramming attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, which killed 15 people and wounded 35, including two Israelis, the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement and Intelligence released a report Wednesday on the rise of terrorism in the United States.
The 14-page “Terror Threat Snapshot” highlights the “persistent terror threat to America, the West and the world from foreign jihadist networks.”
There were more than 50 instances of jihadist terrorism in 30 states within the last four years, the report notes. Most involved attempts to provide material support to terrorist organizations, such as when a man tried to join Hezbollah and lied to the FBI about his intentions. Unlike in New Orleans, most of these attempts were thwarted.
The report also outlined cases of international terrorism, and set out more than 35 developments from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis alone, most of them surrounding the ongoing conflict with Israel after, and including, the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel.
“The New Orleans terrorist attack was a stark reminder that the terror threat to America is alive and persistent,” said committee chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.).
Google reportedly ‘rushed’ artificial intelligence to Israel after Hamas attack
(JNS) — Google “rushed” access to its artificial intelligence tools Vertex and Gemini to Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
“Internal documents show Google directly assisting Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel’s government,” the Post reported.
Per the documents that the Post secured, a Google staffer told the company that Israel would “turn instead to Google’s cloud rival Amazon, which also works with Israel’s government under the Nimbus contract,” if Google “didn’t quickly provide more access.”
Google fired more than 50 staff members, who protested the company’s multibillion-dollar, cloud computing Nimbus contract with the Israeli government.
Google has said that the Nimbus contract is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” per the Post.
“The documents obtained by the Post do not indicate how Israel’s military used Google’s AI capabilities, which can be used for tasks such as automating administrative functions far from the front lines,” the publication added.
Trump’s appointee for Pentagon Middle East adviser has called for ‘pressure’ on Israel
(JNS) — The man whom the Trump administration appointed on Monday as chief Middle East policy advisor at the Pentagon had urged the Biden administration to “pressure” Israel to deliver more aid to Gaza. Michael DiMino also believes that the United States has “no vital or existential” interests in the region and supports a policy of “offshore balancing” to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria.
DiMino, a former CIA analyst, was sworn in on Monday as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.
In his tenure as a fellow at the Washington think tank Defense Priorities, which bills itself as a “hub of realism and restraint” and was founded with money from the libertarian Koch brothers, DiMino expressed skepticism about U.S. commitments in the Middle East, including its relationship with partners like Israel.
“There are no vital or existential U.S. interests in the region,” DiMino said in a February webinar.
Washington’s two interests in the region are natural resources and countering terrorism, the threat of which DiMino stated was “exaggerated,” he said in February.
“We’re really there to counter Iran, and that’s really at the behest of the Israelis and the Saudis,” he said, of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Syria.
US government ‘aware’ of reports Tel Aviv terrorist was US green-card holder
(JNS) — The U.S. State Department is “aware” of reports that the terrorist who stabbed people in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, including a U.S. tourist, is a Moroccan man with a U.S. green card.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected,” a spokesperson for the department told JNS. “We have no further comment.”
The State Department hasn’t held a press conference yet, since Marco Rubio, a former senator, became the new secretary of state.
Anti-Israel activists disrupt Israeli history class at Columbia University
(JNS) — About a half-dozen anti-Israel protesters disrupted a modern Israeli history class at Columbia University on Tuesday, on the first day of the new semester.
Elisha Baker, a junior at Columbia who is enrolled in the class, told JNS that masked protesters disrupted the class, taught by Avi Shilon, who is Israeli and is a history lecturer at the university’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
“Pretty soon after the class started, a group of masked protesters barged in with a drum, a video camera, a ton of fliers and a speech about how terrible it was that this class was even happening with this Israeli professor,” Baker told JNS.
The fliers read “the enemy will not see tomorrow,” “burn Zionism to the ground” and “crush Zionism,” per images that Baker posted online. (The Israeli embassy in Washington responded to Baker’s post and wrote, “What would Greta Thunberg say about all these flyers they printed in the name of Jew-hatred?”)
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce stated that it is outrageous that masked students disrupted class at Columbia, which receives billions in taxpayer dollars, to pass out flyers calling for the murder of Jews.”
“Does Columbia understand that failing to combat antisemitism will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration?” stated the committee, which is newly chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.).
