Brother of Michigan synagogue attacker was Hezbollah commander, Israel alleges
The brother of Ayman Muhammad Ghazali, the accused Michigan synagogue attacker, was a Hezbollah terrorist commander who was killed in an Israeli strike days before the attack, Israeli intelligence revealed Sunday.
"Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali was responsible for managing weapons operations within a specialized branch of the Badr Unit," the Israeli Defense Forces posted Sunday morning on X. "The unit is responsible for launching hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilians throughout the war."
"His brother, Ayman Muhammad Ghazali, carried out the terror attack in Michigan this past Thursday. Ibrahim was eliminated in an IAF strike on a Hezbollah military structure last week."
Ayman Ghazali, 41, carried out his attack a week after Israel bombed his family's town in Lebanon on March 5, killing two of his brothers and a niece and nephew, according to news reports.
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Around the same time as the synagogue attack, a man convicted in 2016 on a federal charge of providing material support to the Islamic State fatally shot one person and injured two others, both U.S. Army personnel, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, which has close ties to the U.S. military. The Virginia attacker, who had been released from prison in 2024, was killed by Reserve Officer Training Corps students in the class who subdued him.
In Michigan, the Lebanon-born Ghazali rammed a pickup truck laden with fireworks and jugs of gasoline into Temple Israel in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, sparking a fire. Ghazali fatally shot himself in the head during a gunfight with a security guard.
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The terrorist ties to the U.S. attack put new focus on Iranian terrorist proxies of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel and Lebanon are expected to hold direct talks in the coming days, their first since the start of the Iran war that has drawn Lebanon deeper into conflict, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Saturday, citing two sources with knowledge of the matter.
President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will be involved in the talks that might be held in Paris or in Cyprus, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's confidant Ron Dermer leading the Israeli delegation, Haaretz said.
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The negotiations were expected to focus on ending fighting in Lebanon and disarming the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Haaretz said.
Hezbollah opened fire on Israel on March 2, saying it was retaliating for the killing of Iran's supreme leader at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Israel has since launched an extensive bombing campaign against the powerful Lebanese armed group, which has killed more than 770 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, while Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets across the border.
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The IDF posted a video to X on Saturday showing "Hezbollah terrorists carrying rockets into a weapon storage facility in southern Lebanon."
While the Badr Unit operates in southern Lebanon, according to the Center for Monitoring Security Threats (CMST), the IDF did not make a direct connection between the video posted, the added focus on Hezbollah retaliation against Israel and the terrorist attack in Michigan.
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment.
Reuters contributed to this report.