The threat of a terrorist attack in New York State is reportedly increasing as a “direct result” of Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel last month when the Islamic terror group murdered 1,200 Israelis and injured thousands more.
CBS News reported that “chatter about targets in New York” has increased in recent days, according to a new threat assessment from the New York State Intelligence Center.
The report said that Israel going after Hamas inside Gaza “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,” the report said. “Terrorist messaging has placed focus on attacking ‘soft targets’ such as protests, group gatherings, and other public events.”
The news comes as Islamic terrorist groups have called for terror attacks inside the U.S. in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack. New York experienced the worst terror attack in world history when al-Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has already taken steps to increase resources to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in light of the new threat assessment.
“We are working with all law enforcement, federal, state, and local, statewide,” she said. “These are not just New York City events.”
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Jackie Bay, commissioner of the Department of Homeland Security’s New York State Division, said that while calls for violence have increased, there have not been in credible threats made against Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade at this time.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that the most immediate concern that federal law enforcement has is that “violent extremists, individuals or small groups, will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives.”
“That includes not just homegrown violent extremists, inspired by a foreign terrorist organization, but also domestic violent extremists,” he continued.
Wray specifically highlighted an arrest that the FBI recently made in Houston of a Palestinian who was allegedly planning a terrorist attack against Jews.