This is just the beginning.
Earlier today, on the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, a car exploded at the Rainbow Bridge at the U.S.-Canadian border, as was reported here just a while ago by my colleague Nick Arama. (Officials are now raising a question as to whether the car, in fact, contained explosives or exploded due to the force of the impact/crash.)
Here is what is known as of this writing
The Rainbow Bridge has been closed to all traffic amid reports of a vehicle explosion just outside the border inspections plaza on the American side.
Traveling down Niagara Street, the car reportedly sped the wrong way into the inspection booths, where the explosion occurred.
As Teri Christoph just posted, it seems that there might have been a heightened alert in New York tied to the war in Israel.
As news continues to break on the suspected terrorist attack on the Rainbow Bridge connecting the U.S. and Canada at Niagara Falls, we're learning that a CBS News report from Tuesday evening reported on "growing concerns about security" in New York state "with the escalating violence in Gaza."
CBS News' Catherine Herridge reported:
"CBS News has obtained a security alert suggesting an increasing terrorist threat to New York state. The New York state intelligence bulletin points to Israeli operations against Hamas, and specifically that increase in civilian casualties, raises the likelihood that violent extremist threat actors will seek to conduct attacks against targets in the West, with New York state being a focus."
Herridge also reported that likely targets included protests and other public events. As a result of the increased threat alert, security increased around synagogues and extra police were brought in for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, although there was believed to be no "credible threat."
This is just an absolutely horrific tragedy for every person directly involved in Buffalo and for both Canada and the United States as a whole. Sadly, there have been a number of people who have been sounding the alarm nationally and here at RedState about how porous the borders are not protected.
For those of us who work here with Salem Media and, in particular, my colleagues here at RedState, this has been on our mind for most of the past couple of years since the Biden administration lifted the gates at the southern border and allowed a free-for-all to come across. While the southern border has been an absolute mess, the United States also has a vast northern border with Canada and multiple ports on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
Essentially, that means that the men and women who handle border security need all the support they can get and a federal government that is supporting them, not dragging them down in their mission as has been done since January 20th, 2021.
Many have been driving home the point of the mayhem at the southern border for about six months now and have written about it a number of times here on these pages.
We are now just past the 22nd anniversary of 9-11 here in this country, and we have lost a bit of our fervor of being alert and demanding our government do the right thing for us. I wrote about this trend a couple of years ago, right here: Today We Say Never Forget But Let's Be Brutally Honest, We Are Forgetting.
From that article:
Today the United States of America once again pauses to take a moment to remember the events that reshaped the world on September-11-2001. Hard to believe that it has been 18 years since the purely evil events of that day unfolded. Yet here we are at another anniversary as time marches on.
Most of us will take to Facebook and recount “where we were” when the planes struck and what an awful, tragic day that was. We will accompany those posts with memes that say “Never Forget” and then move on to September 12th and live our lives until next year. Which is of course what those who sacrificed their lives and those who were murdered would have wanted for us.
Let me very blunt here though.
We are forgetting and it is showing.
I went on to explain how we spend more time now talking about where we were when he heard what happened than we do wondering what the government has actually done with all the powers they have accumulated since that day.
Here is another example I laid out in that article.
Did you remember that five of the 9/11 hijackers — Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Satam al-Suqami — carried out their killer plot after overstaying their visas, evading detection, and avoiding deportation?
Did you remember the other radical Muslim members of the Terrorist Visa Overstayers Club? They include 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, and Eyad Ismoil; 1993 New York landmark bombing plot conspirator Fadil Abdelgani; convicted Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad; and U.S. Capitol bomb plotter Amine El Khalifi, whose visa expired in 1999 and who escaped Homeland Security’s notice for 12 years before he was arrested in 2012 — just blocks from the Capitol building donning what he thought was a suicide-bomb vest.
We have had pretty much a wide-open border since January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden took the oath of office to be President of the United States. The administration stopped building the Trump border wall and did everything but send flyers down to Central America and the rest of the world so that they could skip across the Rio Grande and gain entry without authorities checking they are. Of course, this policy was just reversed within the past week, but it's really a case of too little too late.
This is NOT irresponsible speculation, given the director of the FBI just last week testified before Congress along those same lines.
FBI Director Confirms Hamas-Led Threats Against Americans in the U.S. Now at 'Whole Other Level'
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security and revealed that, due to the Israel-Hamas war, "The threat of an attack against Americans in the United States" has been raised "to a whole other level."
In his prepared remarks, Wray provided more context to those threats: "Since October 7th, we've seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies. Hizballah expressed its support and praise for Hamas and threatened to attack U.S. interests in the Middle East. Al-Qaida issued its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists to attack Americans and Jewish people everywhere. ISIS urged its followers to target Jewish communities in the United States and Europe."
In short, Americans are under threat both at home and abroad; not surprisingly, Jews are most at risk from these threats.
During questioning from the House panel, Wray admitted that the threats could be tied to pro-Hamas elements and global bad actors.
WATCH:
FBI DIRECTOR WRAY: "We were already in an elevated threat environment even before October 7th and it's gone to a whole other level since October 7th." pic.twitter.com/hiEf0yGsF3
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 15, 2023TRANSCRIPT:
Certainly we're in an environment where a number of tips and threats that are being reported to us have gone up significantly since October 7. We are already, as I testified earlier, already at an elevated threat environment even before October 7, and it's gone to a whole other level since October 7. The biggest chunks of the threats that have been reported in to us, but a good margin, are threats to the Jewish community. Synagogues, Jewish prominent officials, things like that. We also have a large number of tips and leads related specifically to Hamas and radicalization and recruitment.
Going forward, government officials will try to paint this in the best light possible, being we're just under 12 months until a presidential election in 2024, and the Biden administration will not want to be blamed for the mess at the borders and what looks like to be a potential terrorist attack that close to next November.
Common sense, though, clearly states that you can't have this many undocumented people cross our borders, particularly given this country's unwavering support of Israel in its efforts to smash Hamas, and think these types of events are not going to happen here.
America is vulnerable to attack, whether or not our government officials and the vast majority of the citizens want to believe it or not.
Deal with reality as it is, as opposed to the feelings about it that you have.
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