November 2008. The attention of the world has been focused for days on a hostage take-over by the Lashkar-e-Taibe terrorist organization of five different locations in Mumbai, India including the Nariman House, a Jewish synagogue serving the local Jewish community. Then the horrible news is given: They’ve killed almost 200 people, among them were six Jewish people from a synagogue. In all the mess, they go out of their way to take the time to hunt these people down, just because they are Jewish. Having beaten the couple’s 2 year old child, Moshe, the terrorists turned to the parents, Rabbi Gavriel Hotlzberg and his six-month pregnant wife Rivka, and murdered them. First they tortured them, bound them together, and then excecuted them in cold blood. Hardened Israeli forensics teams, who deal with the gruesome effects of terrorism, express horror at the conditions of the bodies. “I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatized,” a mortician said. Video ran of baby Moshe crying “Mommy Mommy!” during his parents’ funeral.
The scene of mourning was heart-rending, and all people of conscience joined the mourners in their sorrow.
But not everyone mourned the Hotlzbergs. In Newburgh, New York, James Cromitie was watching the funerals of Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, and was absolutely ecstatic. He turned to his friend Maqsood and said
“Look at the Jewish guy. You’re not smiling no more, you fucker. I hate those bastards. I hate those motherfuckers. Those fucking Jewish bastards. I’d like to get one of those. I’d like to get a synagogue. Me. Yeah. Personally.”
Hearing this, Maqsood, a member of the Pakistani terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammad, was ready to help his very eager friend fulfill his wish.
Maqsood was sure of his friend’s deep-seated hatred of Jewish people and his commitment to harming them. They’d been friends since June of 2008, and in many of their conversations Cromitie had expressed his hatred of Jewish people. Cromitie hated being around Jewish people, and his self-consciousness around them turned into the outright paranoia typical of anti-Semites. “A lot of Jews here. They look at me like they would like to kill me when they see me inside my jalabiya,” he would tell Maqsood in October of 2008. “…these Jewish people like at me like I am something different…Because they can see I’m Muslim.”
Cromitie’s hatred of Jewish people wasn’t motivated by anything going on between Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, he never once expressed his animosity towards teh Jewish people as stemming from a perceived abuse of Palestinians by Israel. Instead, he saw himself in the same shoes as the Prophet Mohammad,
“…everything they say to me is like…they used to say some bad word to the prophet when they seen him. You remember this hadith?…I think they saying the same thing to me…it just make me want to jump up and kill one of them…”
He then goes on to recount an incident that supposedly occurred between him and a Jewish man – which, given Cromitie’s tendency for storytelling – where because of a percieved insult he tells the man, “I would have killed you already.” As for Jewish women, he says, “Sometimes I just want to choke sone of the ladies, too…The Jewish women.” While discussing another conversation he had with a Jewish man on why the Islamic religion is better than Judaism, Cromitie tells the guy, “I pray five times a day. I ain’t never killed no prophet of my people,” a common line used by radical Muslims that Jewish people are the “killers of the prophets.”He repeats this anti-Semitic accusation while watching the Holtzberg funeral, listing it as one of his reasons for hating Jewish people.
…I ain’t never though I can hate someone. I hate those motherfuckers. Those fucking Jewish bastards. Every time one prophet come, they kill ‘em. Every time. You know that? Every time Allah…send him one prophet, they kill him. Everything he came with, they say is magic. Un-fucking-believable.
Not only do they kill the prophets, but Jewish people are the enemies of God, another theme of traditional Islamist anti-Jewish feeling. On October 19, 2008. “Right here in America, the Yahudi [Jewish person] have everything against Allah.”
Then he said he wanted “to get a synagogue…personally.” Maqsood asks him which synagogue he’d like to target. He’s already got an idea of which he wants to target. “The one in New York City and Brooklyn. That one is like the mother of synagogues.” He then assures Maqsood that
“A lot [of Jewish people go there]. A lot. Oh…all of those Jews. All of them.” In December, he fleshes out his plan more with Maqsood. “I don’t know about the synagogue thing. I don’t know…I don’t give a fuck if a bunch of Jews are in there. I will let it off…but you said don’t hurt nobody…If you leave it up to me, I wouldn’t give a God damn…I don’t like them, Hak. At all…it’s sad to say that you would hate someone…But they the most wickedest people that Allah has created.”
On February 24, 2009, he asks his buddy Maqsood, “Do you think there’s such a thing as a good Jew?” By April 16, 2009, he has a target: “we got the synagogue up in the Bronx…”
Not only that, but he doesn’t want anyone else getting teh credit for bombing the synagogue. “I ain’t gonna lie, Hak….I’d like to do the synagogue thing by myself, Hak.” Maqsood then asks Cromitie about another part of their plan, “What do you think about the military planes?” Showing his obssessive focus on Jewish people, Cromitie answer, “I don’t give a damn who do that. I want to do the synagogue. I have a choice to do what I want, Hak…That synagogue would fuck a lot of shit up.” Maqsood tries to diver him to the bigger objective, the military planes. “Let’s stick with one plan, okay? …and we’ll go from there, brother.” Cromitie, undeterred, responds, “Okay, I’m sticking with the synagogue, Hak. That, that’s my wish right there.”
He wants to carry out this plan and doesn’t care who he hurts. On April 7, 2009 he says “And I’m gonna tell you, I don’t care if it’s a whole synagogue of men…I would take ‘em down, I don’t even care. ‘Cause I know they are the ones.” He has a plan to. That same day Maqsood says, “Friday, this Friday before…synagogue. We take a package, put a package there…Cell phone.” Cromite responds “I’m taking it inside, Hakim.”
He constantly disparages the Jewish religion, claiming that a Jew told him that he only showers once a week, and because of that “The Jewish people, they are, they the retard.” He goes on to say on October 19, 2008,
“the worst brother in Islam is better than ten million Yahudi [Jewish person]…We will always be better than the Yahudi…The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than ten billion Yahudi…I would rather follow him than ten billion Yahudi.”
Because of this inherent moral inferiority of Jewish people, Cromitie views the lives of Jewish people as dispensible. He says,
“I will kill ten Yahudis before I even think of killing one Muslim…You understand? With no hesitation, I will kill ten Yahudis, and then I’ll have to think twenty thousand times before I kill one Muslim.” Hes constantly on the prowl for Jewish people, and can barely control his urge to cause them harm, “…it doesn’t even matter, but everywhere I see Yahudi, I always say y’Allah, that’s it…I’d like to destroy one, just one because some of them gave me so much problems.”
He also engages in conspiracy theorizing about Jewish people, also typical of anti-Semites. On October 19, 2008, he repeats a line right out of the Protocols and says that “’cause right now Yahudi run everything here. How…you be in a country, and they let the Jewish people run everything here?” On November 30, 2008, he accuses, “them fucking Jews [of] dressing like Muslims…and doing crazy shit. And they’re [the Muslims] being blamed.”
The makers of the Newburgh Sting documentary say that Maqsood egged on Cromitie. Yeah, from certain clips of conversation, you could come away with this view. Maqsood says “Prophet has forbidden us to have these, the Jews, Yahuds, because they are responsible for all of the evils in the world.” Cromitie responds, “Yeah…They are responsible for that.” Taken alone, this could show that Cromitie was being influenced by Maqsood. Except, if you read all of the facts and conversations between the two, Cromitie started saying bad things about Jewish people long before this conversation happened.
They get what they need, two bombs hooked up to cellphones, and put them in two cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center, across the street from each other. They’re all set to blow up the synagogues. Except there’s one fact that Cromitie didn’t know and that’s that Maqsood was an FBI informant. The whole thing was a sting, and Cromitie’s every move has been monitored by the FBI from the beginning. But imagine for one second if Maqsood was actually who he said he was, a real terrorist, who gave Cromitie real bombs. A lot of Jewish people would have been killed at the synagogues, families and their kids who came to worship God. Would a bunch of dead Jewish people have been better evidence to convince the people who made this documentary that Cromitie really was dangerous? I say I’m very thankful that the U.S. government is on top of things like this and made sure that a dangerous man wasn’t able to harm these innocent people.
The Real Newburgh Sting 