Islamofascist terror has been a threat to Americans for decades. We just passed the 40th anniversary of the Beirut bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks that killed 307 people, including 241 Americans. To name but a few other attacks, there was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and, of course, 9/11/2001.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress Tuesday that the threat is elevated once again. “The reality is that the terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023,” Wray told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, “but the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level.”

“We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration, the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago,” Wray said. “In just the past few weeks, multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West.” He added, “We also cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil.”

Note that among the roughly 1,400 innocents murdered when Hamas jihadists backed and trained by Iran attacked Israel on October 7 were 33 Americans. That makes it “one of the deadliest terrorist attacks for Americans in history,” notes political analyst Charles C.W. Cooke. “If, as Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken suggests, another ten Americans remain captive in Gaza, then the attack of October 7 was also — is also — one of the worst hostage situations for Americans on record.”

So, yeah, you could say the terror threat is elevated.

As for Wray’s testimony, however, there are a couple of problems to note. One is Wray himself and other intelligence leaders. That there haven’t been more jihadist attacks against Americans or on American soil is in large measure a credit to the vigilance of the good men and women of the FBI and other U.S. counterterrorism agents. Yet beginning with Barack Obama and continuing through Joe Biden, U.S. intelligence has sometimes been weaponized against American citizens for the crime of supporting the “wrong” political party, politician, or policy.

If a terrorist slips through the cracks and kills Americans, part of the reason may be that distraction with the wrong “extremists.”

Another major problem is the Biden administration’s obsession with “Islamophobia.” Biden and his underlings/handlers always manage to inject that phony word into any conversation that addresses the alarming rise in anti-Semitism at home and around the world.

That isn’t to say it’s not reprehensible to attack a person because they’re Muslim. Criminal behavior should be punished accordingly. But it is to say that conflating those rare crimes with the far more widespread problems of Islamofascist terrorism or anti-Semitic hate crimes is to a few illegal border crossers from Canada on the same level as the total crisis at the southern border.

Which, come to think of it, is point number three. Wray works for a president who has allowed an intentional invasion of the border from our south, and along with him at the hearing was DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Among the millions and millions of illegal aliens coming to the border and being released all over the country — or never encountered in the first place — are some number of possible terrorists.

During a press conference Tuesday, Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso observed, “We have just returned from our southern border, and it is painfully clear that with Joe Biden’s open border policy, our country is really at an increased threat for a terrorist attack.” Indeed, Border Patrol agents have seized explosive devices from illegal border crossers.

As for Mayorkas, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley challenged him in a heated exchange about the former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesperson who works for DHS vetting immigrants. “That individual has been placed on administrative leave,” Mayorkas replied, while also theatrically taking great offense at something Hawley never said — that Nejwa Ali is “emblematic” of other DHS employees. For good measure, Mayorkas was sure to point out that he’s “the child of a Holocaust survivor.”

Histrionics aside, the entire hearing about the threat of Islamofascist terrorism against Americans is also another huge warning to Democrats: Quit “standing with the Palestinians” and smearing Israel as an “apartheid state” and such. Wray called the attack on Israel an “inspiration” for would-be jihadists, and we’d argue that Democrats’ apparent major problem with Jews — along with moral equivalence about “Islamophobia” — is likewise an inspiration to jihadists who want to kill Jews and Americans.

On top of the racial, ethnic, and religious division, the Biden administration’s weakness abroad and feckless enforcement of the law here at home poses the real security risk. American lives are at stake.