The following article is from the Queens Tribune: The Jewish Defense Organization is targeting a controversial American-born Muslim convert who had been living in Woodside and who they accuse of being an al-Qaeda operative.
The group organized outside of 54-11 Woodside Ave. Dec. 20 where Yousef al-Khattab was last known to be living. They handed out flyers to neighbors demanding the home’s landlord, Mamoon Iqbal of Dix Hills, evicts him and calling the home an “al- Qaeda headquarters,” warning that it has been used for meetings of al-Qaeda operatives who are planning another terrorist attack in New York City.
Al-Khattab, who born Joseph Cohen and raised in a Orthodox Jewish family in New Jersey, operates a Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com, where he praised the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the man suspected of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas on Nov. 5.
“An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack,” al-Khattab wrote on the site. “Get well soon Major Nidal. We love you.”
Al-Khattab, who was featured in a one-on-one interview in the Queens Tribune shortly after he made that comment, left the country earlier this month. JDO claims the apartment is currently being occupied by a man named Abdullah as-Sayf Jones, also an American-born convert to Islam.
Jewish Defense Organization founder Mordechai Levy stood outside of the Woodside house Sunday, asking neighbors to call Iqbal and demanded the eviction of al-Khattab and Jones. Levy claimed that Jones was inside the apartment on Sunday and refused to come out during the protest. He said his own “intelligence unit” confirms Jones still resides in the apartment and that it is still being used as an “al-Qaeda headquarters.”
“Al-Qaeda out of Woodside now,” chanted Levy and the dozen or so protestors that stood in the snow across the street from the red house where al-Khattab once lived and owned by Mr. Iqbal. Levy charged that al-Khattab had not only praised the Fort Hood massacre, but called for another attack on the scale of the 9/11 attack, plotted to bomb synagogues around New York City, and killed and maimed Jews.
Iqbal could not be reached for comment and the phone number for him that the JDO listed on the flyer given out to neighbors has been disconnected, but according to the JDO, Iqbal told other landlords in the area that he was shocked to learn who his tenants were and was going to evict them immediately after receiving what Levy claimed was “thousands” of calls. Levy promised that the JDO would protest outside Iqbal’s Dix Hills home if al-Khattab and Jones were not evicted.
Al-Khattab, however, told the Tribune that the apartment is vacant and that he has left the country for good. Al-Khattab, who moved to Morocco for work within the last few weeks, said the Jewish Defense Organization knew the apartment was vacant and suggested they were holding the protest to take credit after the fact for al-Khattab leaving the country.
Al-Khattab denies Jones still resides in the apartment and claims the apartment has been vacant for at least two weeks. He said the landlords are not involved in any of his writings and have nothing to do with either him or Jones, except as a landlord. He also harshly criticized Levy and the JDO for releasing the landlord’s phone number to the public. He criticized Levy and the JDO labeling of them as al-Qaeda operatives. He said if that were true, he wouldn’t have his freedom.
“Do they think they know something the police don’t?” al-Khattab said, noting that neither the NYPD nor federal law enforcement have arrested him on any terrorism charges. He said if the JDO’s claims were true, he’d “be in prison already”.
“We never said ‘kill Jews’,” al-Khattab said, “We’re not blanket racists, we’re not the KKK, we’re not al-Qaeda. We merely critique American politics.”
(Source: Queens Tribune)
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15 Responses
I hope the feds are watching this rosha as well as the landlord.
I would also like to say that I hereby doubt the yichus of this “convert.”
I don’t understand how in the world someone raised in an Orthodox family could possibly become a Muslim, of all things. And a RADICAL Muslim? This boggles my mind.
BS”D
I know him. He was brought up in a secular Jewish family in South Jersey and made his way in and out of several frum communities. He needs a refuah shelema but at this point a closed ward is the only place for him to be treated.
I thought this Yousef guy was some disturbed ‘baal teshuva’ who converted to Islam. Not someone born in a frum family…
Or am I confusing him with someone else?
Motcha, he wasn’t actually raised frum. He was a baal teshuva, who Satmar was Mekarev, and married him off. He dropped Yiddishkeit, but kept Satmar. He hates the Medina and Chabbad.
#2 If someone becomes a Muslim, it can only be for radical reasons. It’s not logical that someone would become Muslim otherwise.
I wish they would put him behind bars for the rest of his life so that we should be able to bring his wife and children back to the Jewish nation. She followed him only because of her children whom he refused to leave behind. Poor woman.
Better yet, I wish they would force him to give his wife a get (a divorce) so that she can remarry.
I do not wish him behined bars. rather a real TESHUVE he and his family, how low A JEW falls, their is always a way back.
If you do a google search on this mad man you hear his side of the story very creepy. His wife went to high school in washington heights at brewurs. May hashem give his wife and children the strength and brains to run away from this mad man!
BS”D
Again please daven for the freedom of Majnoun’s wife and children:
Luna bat Hassiba
Hassiba (Heftsiba) bat Luna
Ovadia ben Luna
Ezra ben Luna
Rahamim ben Luna
There was a story about his awhile ago in one of the Jewish mags. This guy is screw loose, a Satmar, baali tshuva who is an ‘adult of risk’. What a rachmanus on the wife!!
Glad that this group is demonstrating and letting the neighbors know what is growing in their community. Spray them out like roaches..
BS”D
Please do not mention Satmar and this majnoun in the same sentence.
I chatted with him many times online and he claims only that he had a Satmarer chavrusa. He despises even the Ku Klux Karta at this point, probably because they get more attention than he does.
His strongest attachment was to Sefardim. This was how the sad story with his wife, who went to the old Breuer’s sem and whose family I know, came about.
She was not legally allowed to stay in the US and had to marry a US citizen, so a naive shadchanis found her someone of “her own background”. When he became a chosson, he actually claimed to be a Breslover of Turkish Sefardi origin from what her relatives told me.
Then he moved to Netivot to escape bad debts from some crooked retail rapper style jewelry venture (or to escape revenge from his largely inner city customers) and there he became a follower of Rav Ovadia Yosef whose online name was 17 Seats Shas. After his time in Netivot he became a Muslim.
He also spent time at a Beis Chabad while in college but never claimed affiliation with Chabad.
Bekitzur, he is 39 WD’s short of a can of WD-40, but he is a dangerous fruitcake.
Majnoun himself told me that Yad leAchim and even one faction or the other of Neturei Karta have tried to rescue his wife and children with no success. I am not sure if this is true or part of his delusions of grandeur.
He is no Majnoun. He is a rodef. In the alter heim they used to take care of creatures like this. Nowadays, Hashem does the work if we ask for it properly.
BS”D
He is not sane. I still would like to see him taken care of in a closed ward which is where he belongs.
That is not to say that I would not mind if he perishes in a “work accident” because he is such a shlimazel that if he even tried to make a bomb he would blow his own sorry self up into so many pieces that Zaka could not put him back together.
Whatever, so long as his family is free and he does not take anyone else with him.
What a tragic story, Hashem yirachem. Yasher Koach, A600KiloBear, for giving us the names of the family members.
According to a reporter I spoke with at the New York Post his mother put him in the nut house after the beat up other students at Hebrew School.