Steve Malzberg
Monday, July 8, 2002

You can ask the NYC PBA. You can ask the New York State Shields, an organization whose motto is "Cops for Cops." You can take a look at the various honors that I've been privileged to receive over the years. You can talk to the hundreds of callers to my WABC Radio talk show that I've done verbal battle with when it comes to police related issues.

You can ask Charles Schwarz. He's the former New York City cop now fighting to remain a free man, as he struggles through closing arguments of his retrial in the Abner Louima torture case.

You can ask NYC Police Detective Steven McDonald. Nearly 15 years ago he hesitated, and was left a quadriplegic after being shot on duty. I'm proud to call him a friend.

I have also had dealings with the police. That is, I have needed their services in the past. I have also needed the services of the FBI In all instances I have found the officers to be nothing less than professionals who are willing, able and anxious to get the job done.

Having said that, I must admit that I am outraged at what the FBI is trying to pull in regard to the Fourth of July terrorist shooting at LAX.

Here we are a full four days after the fact and the folks in charge at the bureau claim that they don't know what it was that made Egyptian-born Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet take a .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun – and full magazines for each gun – and a 6-inch hunting knife to the El Al ticket counter on July Fourth, where he killed two and wounded several more.

In fact, we haven't heard one word on the guns. Did they belong to Hadayet? Did he own them legally? Did someone get the guns for him? It seems that these questions would be easily answered by now.

Richard Garcia, the agent in charge, says he's narrowed the motive for the shooting down to three possibilities.

Garcia says it might have been a hate crime. Really? A hate crime? Does he mean that Hadayet might have actually hated Jews, and that's why he picked El Al out of all the airlines at LAX? Wow! Who could have come up with that one? Of course every terrorist act is an act of hate!

A second possible motive for the attack: marital strife. Sure, he and his wife haven't been getting along, so go out and end it all, while taking out as many Jews as you can. Makes sense to me. Even it this is true, it's a terrorist act.

Any way you look at it, it's the third possibility offered by Garcia that is the correct one: terrorism. Of course this is terrorism!! The Israelis knew it from the moment it happened, and they said so. I knew it, and I said so. My callers knew it, and they said so.

It seems as if the only ones who refuse to acknowledge that this was terrorism are the folks at the FBI. It seems that they are not willing to go any further than to say that the gunman, who turned 41 on the Fourth, came to LAX with the intent to kill. Just how dumb do they think we are?

We now know that a former driver for Hadayet's limo service, 36-year-old Abdul Zahab, has said that his boss "had hate for Israel, for sure." Zahab is quoted in the New York Times on Sunday as saying, "He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are Israeli." Zahab also says that Hadayet felt that both the U.S. government and the media are pro-Israel.

We also know that Hadayet went crazy when an upstairs neighbor of his put out a Marine Corps flag and the American flag shortly after 9-11.

We know that Hadayet had overstayed his six-month visa, which he received in 1992. INS says he was later turned down in 1996, when he asked for permission to remain in the U.S. The deportation process was started, but he was allowed to stay here after his wife won an immigration visa in a lottery in 1997. (Let's hope this lottery stuff has stopped, although I doubt it.)

A NewsMax.com Inside Cover story has reported that a pro-Israeli Web site, DEBKA, claims that Hadayet had links to the terrorists who committed the first WTC bombing in 1993, and may have known the Egyptian pilot who was heard on tape saying "G-d is great" just before he allegedly took down Egyptair Flight 990 in 1999 (another event that was most likely an act of terrorism). (See: Report Links LAX Shooter to Egyptian Jihad.)

Whether or not this lottery winner had any official ties to a terrorist organization doesn't matter. Day after day, groups like Fatah and Islamic Jihad and Hamas, along with sermons given in some mosques inside Arab countries and right here in the United States, call for Jihad and the murder of Jews all over the world.

It seems blatantly obvious that Hadayet was just cashing in on his destiny with martyrdom. He wanted his 70 virgins. That the FBI pretends not to see this and not to know why Hadayet did this is totally disingenuous and does a great disservice to the American people and our war on terror.

Memo to the FBI: In 1993, the terrorists were going to bomb Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn but figured that they could kill more Jews at the WTC (this according to one of the terrorists wanted in the bombing).

In March 1994, livery cab driver Rashid Baz opened fire on a bus filled with 15 Hasidic Jewish students on the Brooklyn Bridge. It took much too long for the killing of Ari Halberstam, who was riding in that bus, to be classified as a terrorist act, but it eventually was.

In February 1997 a Palestinian schoolteacher opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one and injuring six. He then killed himself. He had a suicide note that talked of his desire to kill Jews. Terrorism?

Stop the B.S., FBI. Call this attack what it is. America cannot be fooled. America knows, and America is watching.

Please note that my WABC Radio shows can be heard live on the Internet at www.wabcradio.com: Monday-Friday, 6-8 p.m. Eastern time with Richard Bey on "The Buzz" and my Sunday morning show from 9-11 a.m.

A product that might interest you:
Revealed: The Terrorists Living Among Us

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
War on Terrorism