Friday, September 11, 2026

09/11 Links Pt1: What 9/11 taught us about courage, unity and the price of freedom; If 9/11 happened today; Douglas Murray & Dan Senor; 25 Years After 9/11

From Ian:

John Ondrasik: What 9/11 taught us about courage, unity and the price of freedom
Twenty-five years after 9/11, America finds itself in another battle — this one for the soul of our nation and, more broadly, for the future of Western civilization. Remembering 9/11: How educators teach the tragedy 25 years later Video

The threats are not identical to those we faced in 2001. But they are real. Radical Islamism remains a global threat, while antisemitism and anti-American extremism increasingly find expression across the ideological spectrum. Ideas once confined to society’s fringes now travel instantly, and with little consequence, through universities, political movements and social media. The enemy is in the building, and time is not on our side.

That is why "Never Forget" cannot become merely a slogan printed on a bumper sticker or repeated once every September.

It is an obligation. It is our obligation.

We have a duty to teach our children what happened on September 11, 2001: about the evil fanatics who attacked us, why they attacked us, and the carnage of what unchecked extremism can produce.

But "Never Forget" means something more.

It means remembering the best of us.

It means telling our children about the firefighters who climbed stairwells while everyone else was running down. The police officers, paramedics and ordinary citizens who ran toward collapsing infernos to save people they had never met. The passengers of Flight 93 who understood what was happening and, knowing the probable cost, fought back.

They represent the best of humanity.

Twenty-five years later, their courage should still challenge and inspire us.

Their sacrifice should remind us that America is not sustained merely by institutions, elections or slogans. It survives because generation after generation chooses to defend the principles that make the country worth defending.

Memory fades. History becomes distant. Tuesdays come and go.

But some Tuesdays must never be forgotten.

May the memory of those we lost — and the example of the heroes of September 11, 2001 — give us the strength, courage and fortitude to fight for America every day, especially Tuesdays, for the next 250 years.

Let’s Roll…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What Mohamed Atta Was Trying to Tell Us
I began this essay with Mohamed Atta in a Hamburg apartment, calmly writing instructions for his burial while living inside one of the richest and freest societies in the world. That image matters because it strips away the comforting explanation the West preferred: that beneath the theological language there must always lie a more familiar material grievance waiting to be negotiated, subsidized, or therapeutically addressed.

Twenty-five years later, the more uncomfortable truth is that the West has become much better at finding, capturing, or killing men like Atta, but still hesitates to confront the milieu he emerged from: the institutions, networks, doctrines, funding streams, and civilizational ambitions that shape him long before he appears on a watchlist.

Civilizational resilience is not a vague confidence that democracies always muddle through. It is the hard capacity of a people to see its vulnerabilities clearly, repair them in time, and deny its enemies the use of its virtues as weapons. To do that, it is important for us to acknowledge that our virtues are real, and uniquely our own—so much so that millions of men have fought and died over centuries to make them real and widely shared. We did not fight those battles because all cultures are the same, or all values are equal. Rather, our ancestors, real and imagined, sacrificed on a civilization-wide scale, so that men and women of all races and backgrounds could think and live freely, according to the dictates of one’s own conscience. Those who share our foundational values belong among us; those who deny the primacy of those values have every right to pursue their own versions of happiness elsewhere.

It is high time that our elites understand that the primacy of the West is not an accidental gift of fate, nor was it largely unjust. Injustice is a feature of all societies and cultures. The West is unique because of its regard for the individual conscience and its ability to correct its mistakes. It is frankly insane to demand that the West recognize the right of our enemies to destroy and replace the civilization that we built according to the values of the Reformation and the Enlightenment with the values of other cultures distinguished by centuries of stagnation and decay. No such right of replacement exists in any society or culture.

To deny the radical and positive importance of Western culture to the human inheritance is more than a form of historical and individual blindness; it is a death wish that we can no longer afford to indulge. Tocqueville wrote that the greatness of America lay in her ability to repair her faults, not in being more enlightened than other nations, and that is still the right standard by which to judge the republic at 250. The question now is no longer whether America can kill terrorists faster than they regenerate. A resilient civilization would redesign its protections so that free information, migration rules, and associational liberty function as intended, to shelter citizens rather than adversaries. It would rebuild formative institutions, repair its leadership class, and recover enough constitutional confidence to resist civilizational subversion without abandoning liberty itself. It would also build a wall against people who do not share our culture and indeed actively wish to destroy it.

If America and Europe can still do that, 9/11/2026 will be remembered as the moment they chose survival with clarity. If they cannot, Mohamed Atta’s will and the quarter-century that followed will stand as evidence that a civilization can know its enemies, kill their foot soldiers, send mighty armies halfway around the world, and still fail to save itself.
If 9/11 happened today
Osama bin Laden himself would be reframed with remarkable speed. In 2001 he was correctly understood as the operational and ideological leader of the Islamist global insurgency that declared war on the United States and its allies, celebrating the slaughter of civilians and rooting its programme in a coherent reading of Islamic texts and history. Who knows – his image may even be held high by Australian celebrities or emblazoned on our iconic monuments. Elites, academia, politicians and activist networks would insist on ‘context’. So perhaps bin Laden’s oldest son, Hamza, was right when he said, ‘We are all Osama.’

Osama would be presented as a complex, charismatic figure shaped by Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, American support for the mujahedin, Saudi politics and legitimate grievances against the West. Mainstream politicians would still formally condemn the attacks, yet the surrounding conversation would soften the edges: ‘Bin Laden was wrong, but he had a point.’ Replaying the videos of his statements or the celebrations that followed 9/11 might risk ‘stigmatising’ communities and could see demands by our e-Safety Commissioner for further crackdowns on what we can say and who can say it.

One reason 9/11 today would be turned upside down is a deep strategic failure to understand the enemy. As retired US Marine Corps General Jim Mattis explains in Call Sign Chaos, anyone who has studied history knows that the enemy always moves against your perceived weakness. One of ours is allowing those who hate our way of life to migrate to our country believing eventually they will love us.

One of the least-known yet most strategically influential al-Qaeda figures was Abu Musab al-Suri, who was arrested in 2005 in Pakistan. No other individual did more to transform al-Qaeda’s strategy into a globalised umbrella. He saw how jihad could become mainstreamed into many aspects of Western society – not just physical terrorism, but merged with leftist grievances and victim-based struggles now highly visible in Western cities. Al-Suri recognised the opportunity for mass mobilisation. He saw the Palestinian intifada as the prototype, scaled up to reach the home of the American invaders and their infidel allies from every race and place. Al-Suri was a revolutionary mastermind.

Sadly this revolutionary movement will not be tamed by riding the four horses of weakness: apology, appeasement, acquiescence and acceptance. Nor will it be understood through conventional Western thinking and DEI workshops run by earnest facilitators who fear the consequences of offending others with realism. As explained by Richard Belfield in Terminate with Extreme Prejudice, the 12th-century commander Saladin found when he threatened the Ismaili Assassins that they welcomed violence. Their letter replied: ‘We have read the gist and details of your letter and taken note of its threats against us with words and deeds, and by God it is astonishing to find a fly buzzing in an elephant’s ear and a gnat biting statues. Others before you have said these things and we destroyed them and none could help them…. You know the outward aspect of our affairs and the quality of our men, what they can accomplish in an instant and how they seek the intimacy of death…. Prepare means for disaster… for I will defeat you from within your own ranks and take vengeance against you at your own place and you will be as one who encompasses his own destruction.’ This is just as we see it today.

The eerie and evil manipulation by the Islamist global insurgency is the implied threat of further Bondi-style attacks if we do not accept their demands. Yet if this trajectory continues, future generations will inherit a West that has already conceded the decisive terrain – its own population, its own language and its right to name the enemy.

The price of continued denial is not theoretical. It is the slow, irreversible loss of a commitment, and a diminishing courage to fight for something greater than ourselves that is the bright light of Western civilisation.




Andrew McCarthy: The Rocky Path to Prosecuting Terror
REVIEW: 'Second Wave: Inside Al Qaeda's Post-9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It' by Michael Lebowitz
Over the course of eight years, from the bombing of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, through the destruction of that iconic American complex on September 11, 2001—in suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, struck the Pentagon, and would have obliterated a target in the U.S. capital, probably the Capitol itself, were it not for the heroism of Flight 93's doomed passengers and crew—jihadist terrorists repeatedly attacked American installations at home and overseas.

In our history-challenged times, as the nation pauses for 9/11's solemn 25th anniversary, the events of even that horrific day lie beyond the memory of the generation coming of age, never mind the atrocities that preceded it. For the generation before, though, it was the predominant story of the post-Cold War: The WTC bombing followed quickly by an even more ambitious plot—thankfully thwarted—to bomb New York City landmarks; the 1994 plot to bomb aircraft in flight, codenamed "Bojinka," that presaged al Qaeda's 9/11 strategy; the 1996 bombing of U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia's Khobar Towers; the near-simultaneous 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in Yemen, the near-sinking of an American destroyer, the USS Cole in 2000 (following a similar but failed attempt to bomb the USS The Sullivans a year earlier).

The 9/11 attacks were not a standalone. They were the culmination of an intolerable juxtaposition: A ruthless, ideologically driven foreign enemy, capable of an attack more devastating in scale than Pearl Harbor, waged war against us; yet our government responded with subpoenas and arrest warrants, as if the challenge were merely a crime wave. Hence the reference to 29. That's the number of jihadists the Justice Department managed to prosecute during the eight-year pre-9/11 terror wave. And about half of those were related to the attacks and plots of 1993—some carnage, such as the Cole bombing that killed 17 Navy sailors, resulted at the time in no response at all, not even an indictment. Only after the mass slaughter of 9/11 did the world's remaining superpower come to its senses, shifting from a criminal prosecution paradigm to a war-footing.

This is essential history, particularly if one seeks a reckoning of the erratic fits and starts of that transformation. And that is the problem with Second Wave, an account of plots that comprised the follow-on strikes that Osama bin Laden's terror network strove to carry out even as it evaded the American military response to 9/11.

The author, Michael Lebowitz, is an Iraq war veteran and Army lawyer who prosecuted terrorists in the ultimately futile U.S. military commission system. From that perspective, he offers an occasionally rambling narrative of an investigative enterprise so farcical that we've just been told Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the brains behind 9/11 and the "second wave," may finally be tried in… yes… 2028—a quarter-century after his apprehension in Pakistan. Lebowitz takes us through the now-notorious episodes of post-9/11 counterterrorism—enhanced interrogation techniques (which Lebowitz, after some initial lawyerly caution, settles on labeling "torture"), enemy combatants, extraordinary rendition, CIA "black sites," indefinite detention, and so on. Still, there is scant recognition that these were quandaries at a murky crossroads between civilian criminal justice and the laws of war.

Second Wave is mainly the story of Saifullah Paracha, a self-made success who rose from poverty in Pakistan to run a cross-continental business empire based in Manhattan and Karachi. Paracha, a self-proclaimed moderate Muslim, builds an import-export business with an orthodox Jewish business partner. As he flourishes, Paracha dabbles in Pakistani real estate, motion pictures, and financial ventures, grooming his oldest son, Uzair, to follow in his footsteps.
Why They Hate Us: The Sources of Terrorist Conduct
Bin Laden's depraved mind held many kooky beliefs about Jewish power over Americans—as revealed in his 2002 "letter to America" that trended on TikTok in 2023—but he didn't seek to kill Americans because of Zionism. In his 1996 declaration of jihad against the United States, bin Laden wrote, "Clearly after Belief there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of" the Arabian peninsula. He also referred to "the forthcoming Islamic State" that would supposedly control the area after the Americans were defeated.

Some appeasers thought removing U.S. troops from the region and cutting off Israel would cause bin Laden to focus his ire elsewhere and smooth over tensions with the allegedly aggrieved Arab street, but they were mistaken. When bin Laden and Zawahiri crowed about 9/11, Zawahiri complained about the loss of Spain back before Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World. These fanatics sought to conquer the Middle East and then the world. Americans had a longstanding interest in preventing any other country from dominating the Persian Gulf's oil resources, which put us on a collision course with the jihadists.

Al Qaeda had murdered Americans before 9/11, but that attack made defeating the group a national priority. The Clinton administration had balked at earlier opportunities to kill bin Laden, but after he murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, bin Laden had to flee for his life from U.S. forces and their Afghan partners. Over the ensuing 25 years, our country's military became ruthlessly efficient at finding and defeating terrorists around the world, as the Navy SEALs personally demonstrated to bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. There are still plenty of al Qaeda allies active, but none have carried out an attack nearly as harmful in the United States.

Allies have been critical for curbing this threat. NATO invoked the mutual defense treaty on September 12 and many members sent troops to Afghanistan. Israel provided intelligence and other support against a range of threats. Many regional partners have fought with extraordinary courage. Some of the most pugnacious American allies are the "hypocrites" bin Laden threatened in 1996.

Shortly after 9/11, bin Laden said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." He was right. He just didn't understand the sources of American strength.
Lee Smith: 9/11 Never Happened
Twenty-five years later, the legacy of 9/11 is that there was no 9/11.

Commemorations this week hold that the deadliest attack on the U.S. mainland forever changed the way we live. And that’s true if we mean that for the past 25 years Americans have lived in a collective fugue state from which there seems no exit.

The issue isn’t that nearly a third of the country was born after the attacks or that foreign intelligence services push 9/11 lies into our social media ecosystem. The conspiracy theorists are more shrill a quarter of a century on precisely because our memories of the day, and our reactions to it, have been redirected and erased.

There was never any kind of cover-up; there were no “dancing Israelis” who secretly directed Arab terrorists into the Twin Towers to get American boys to die in the Middle East on behalf of Israel; and there was no controlled demolition of the towers as part of a false flag operation to drive an angry nation to war in the Middle East.

Rather, it was more like the opposite: Elites across the political spectrum blunted the rage of a wounded nation determined to avenge its dead.

By the time of the attacks, New York had been in the crosshairs of Muslim terrorists for decades. The city is the world capital of finance, media, advertising, publishing, and culture, from painting to theater. And much of its success was thanks to the waves of Jewish immigrants that started arriving in the middle of the 19th century. With the United States’ victory in World War II, the human capital that the city had accumulated and augmented for a century turned New York into human history’s new center of gravity.

The serial efforts to bring the city to its knees would require making Western civilization doubt its strength, virtue, and purpose. And how we remember the attacks is proof that these efforts worked.

The whitewash of Sep. 11 was conducted in full view of the public and started almost immediately after the attacks, while aid workers at the World Trade Center were still sorting through the rubble and ashes.

Six days after the Twin Towers collapsed, then President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., where Muslim leaders joined him onstage. Days earlier, the press attacked him when he described the U.S. government’s planned military response as a “crusade.” So he was eager to show he meant no offense to Muslim sensibilities still smarting nearly a millennium after the conclusion of the last Christian campaign for Jerusalem.

“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” said Bush. “That’s not what Islam is all about,” he continued. And even more remarkably, “Islam is peace.”

Bush’s words had no demonstrable effect on Muslim masses across the world, giddily celebrating bin Laden’s raid. But with the president’s maudlin apologia for a crude belief system that inspired the murders and elevated the causes for which the son of Saudi elites had killed Americans, he unveiled the sentimental underpinnings of the approach that in the post-9/11 period has had disastrous consequences for the country.

Critics of the Global War on Terror argue that the administration’s failure to define a real enemy—rather than a term so abstract that world bodies can safely pretend not to know what distinguishes it from lawful dissent—showed the United States had no coherent strategy to keep Americans safe. But that’s not true: The GWOT had an internal logic. The argument was that we could protect Americans at home and U.S. interests abroad only by first securing the political rights of Muslims in the Middle East.

That’s why U.S. forces righteously focused their fire on those groups and regimes, like Saddam Hussein’s, who seemed to be the obstacle to the democratic aspirations of Muslim citizens. Once these people were free to exercise their civil rights and use their votes to improve their societies, the theory went, young Muslim men would no longer feel compelled to channel their frustrations into terrorism that kills Americans and U.S. allies.

In other words, the GWOT was a U.S. government initiative deploying enormous human, military, and other material resources to shape current-day reality after a fantasy crafted by progressive Middle East academics, Muslim apologists, and idealistic neoconservatives working inside the administration, along with spokesmen for the states and terror groups aiming their guns at Americans.

Agreeing on little else, together these ideological cohorts promoted an ideological fantasy: a culturally rich and politically sophisticated Middle East, like the convivencia of medieval Andalusia, where majority-Muslim polities lived in peaceful and tolerant coexistence with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. America’s post-9/11 mission was the war to restore “moderate Islam”—something that had never existed in the first place.
We risk another 9/11 by ignoring Afghanistan
What could help to contribute to a different way forward is some agreement among non-Taliban Afghan leaders, both inside and outside the country. But initiatives to deliver this have had no backing from western countries, obsessed instead with turning back Afghan refugees, ignoring the hell-hole they left behind. The Taliban leadership have no interest in governance, and while millions starve, amid what the World Food Programme call ‘the largest surge in malnutrition ever recorded,’ the mullahs in Kandahar instead spend their time thinking up new ways to prevent women from living normal lives. Not content with blocking access to education and work, they have blocked the training of new midwives. Afghanistan is once again the most dangerous place in the world to have a baby, as it was during the last Taliban administration in the 1990s. Where are the massive marches in the west against the continued oppression of Afghan women?

But the world has turned its back on Afghanistan, and Afghan political parties and civil society groups have had to create their own spaces to try to build consensus, amid constant problems of securing funding and visas for travel. The longest-running, the Vienna Process, has not met since February last year. Annual meetings in Cambridge, (the latest was last weekend) have made some progress in at least rehearsing differences in a safe space, synthesising different ‘roadmaps’ to get agreement on a common way forward. But without international sponsorship to create political space for the opposition, it is hard to see how these initiatives can build the wide legitimacy needed to present a united opposition to the Taliban.

Meanwhile, twenty-five years after 9/11, Afghanistan is once again not only a prison for women, but a haven for international terrorists, where madrasas turn out a generation of suicide bombers. Al Qaeda’s global headquarters is in Kandahar, and eye-witnesses have described seeing former Nato bases close to Kabul now full of foreign fighters.

I started reporting from Afghanistan in the 1990s, when it was known as ‘the forgotten war.’ It took 9/11 to show the folly of that path. Western countries risk making the same mistake again if they continue to ignore the flashing red warning lights coming from the country. It is time for a different policy: make space for the opposition, including armed resistance.
CIA reveals Clinton administration was warned in 1998 of potential bin Laden plane attack
Nearly three years before the September 11 attacks, US intelligence officials warned then-US president Bill Clinton and the administration that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United States using a plane “loaded with explosives” that would be flown into an American city, according to classified documents declassified and released by the CIA on Friday.

The documents, released ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, show that US intelligence agencies repeatedly warned senior officials about bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s intentions to strike inside the United States in the years leading up to September 11, 2001.

The document, dated September 10, 1998, was titled “Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions” and was prepared for senior administration officials with access to the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, one of the most highly classified intelligence documents provided to the president and a small group of national security officials.

The document did not contain definitive intelligence about how bin Laden planned to carry out an attack or where it would occur. However, it noted that his attention had turned toward Washington.

The document does not indicate that US intelligence had advance knowledge of the specific aircraft hijacking plot carried out on September 11, 2001. Rather, it shows that a scenario involving the use of a plane against a target inside the US had emerged within the intelligence community years before the attacks.
25 Years After 9/11: Closing Conversation with Douglas Murray & Dan Senor
The Manhattan Institute and the Community Security Initiative invite you to join leading voices in counterterrorism, policing, and civic life for a live forum on what the legacy of 9/11 demands of us now and what it will take to preserve American freedom. The program will examine how New York’s security posture has changed, the evolution of Islamist and anti-Western radicalism, and what the past quarter-century has revealed about patriotism, pluralism, and civic identity.


Commentary Podcast: 25 Years Later Contributing editor Eli Lake joins us on this Friday to discuss the current geopolitical reality through the prism of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the Global War on Terror.



TabletMagazine: 9/11, 25 Years Later: Has America Learned the Right Lessons?
Twenty-five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the questions they raised about America’s understanding of the Middle East, radical Islam, and its own institutions remain unsettled.

In this special conversation, Tablet Editor at Large Liel Leibovitz moderates a panel of scholars and academic leaders examining the lessons America drew from 9/11—and whether some of those lessons led the country badly astray. The discussion looks back at the errors made in responding to the attacks, the ways the ensuing quarter-century reshaped American academia and culture, and the intellectual and political challenges that remain today.

The panel features Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar Family Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and Professor Emerita of Government at Smith College; E. Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of West Virginia University; Franck Salameh, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Boston College; and Cole Bunzel, Professor of Middle East history and modern Islamic radicalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Asaf Romirowsky, Executive Director of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), delivers opening remarks.

The conversation was hosted by ASMEA in partnership with Tablet Magazine to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11.


spiked: ‘Of course it’s about Islam’ | David Starkey on the religious roots of 9/11 and Islamist terror
This is the first half of historian David Starkey’s conversation with spiked’s Fraser Myers. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, they discuss the religious roots of Islamic extremism, the insanity of the Iraq War and how the West gave up on its civilisation.

The second half is coming soon.

00:00 Introduction
00:38 Was 9/11 the West's first brush with Islamist extremism?
01:06 The Iraq War: 'the most stupid war the West has ever launched'
04:36 How Britain treats Islamism as a crime of the individual
05:21 Religion, privacy, and the myth of British religious freedom
07:42 Gunpowder Plot vs 9/11: dealing with religious terrorism before
10:05 How Saudi Arabia and the UAE reined in Salafism
10:33 'I wonder whether we shouldn't establish Islam'
11:20 The Burnham row and appointing bishops
13:24 The King's claim to be Caliph
15:03 Starkey's UAE conference anecdote
16:18 Charles as Caliph, Shabana Mahmood as Chief Mufti
18:24 Would the 9/11 terrorists be pleased with the West today?
19:08 The IRA, security, and the separation of rulers from ruled
22:08 The alliance between Islamism and the left
24:31 Modernism as a desire to wreck
25:48 Open borders and the collapse of the frontier
26:35 The new wave of protests against open borders
28:27 Human rights law and the protection of minorities
30:23 The Southport riots
31:35 The Birmingham pub incident
33:29 'Putting your baseball bats back in the mosque'
35:46 White working-class boys as a 'protected characteristic'
37:40 Woke, the law, and the war of all categories against all
38:09 The Supreme Court and 'what is a woman'
39:23 Belfast and the 'Northern Irelandisation' of British politics
40:21 Could a new government undo all this?
44:01 Closing


The Brink: The lies we believed about jihadism after 9/11
In this episode of View from the Brink, Jake Wallis Simons reflects on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and asks how the West has become increasingly confused about the difference between its friends and its enemies.

Jake traces the consequences of September 11th through Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rise of jihadism, arguing that while the West fought Islamist extremism abroad, its propagandists became increasingly effective at exploiting Western institutions, social media, and the progressive left.

Turning to October 7th and Israel, Jake argues that the response to the Hamas attacks exposed the scale of this information war, with misinformation spreading rapidly while sympathy for Israel collapsed.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, Jake argues that the West must recover the confidence to recognise its enemies, defend its allies, and resist the propaganda designed to turn it against itself.


Antisemitic conspiracies blaming Jews for 9/11 resurface ahead of 25th anniversary, CyberWell warns
Antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews and Israel for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have resurfaced on social media ahead of the day’s 25th anniversary.

CyberWell, an Israeli non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism online, recently identified numerous posts across Meta, Reddit, TikTok, and X/Twitter claiming Jews had planned 9/11, knew the attacks were coming, or secretly had a hand in controlling the terrible events.

Some of the posts used a juice box emoji to subtly refer to the Jewish people in a way that would prevent the post from being flagged by the sites' moderation systems, according to CyberWell.

Others were more direct, pairing images of 9/11 alongside the antisemitic “Happy Merchant” caricature, explained CyberWell, while others still targeted individual Jews directly, calling them antisemitic slurs and accusing them of being involved in the terror attack.

CyberWell noted that some of the posts also recycled the “Dancing Israelis” conspiracy theory, which claims that Israeli men seen near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, had advance knowledge of, celebrated, or were involved in the attacks.

Additional posts invoked American billionaire Larry Silverstein, alleging that his absence from the Twin Towers that morning was because he knew of the attacks ahead of time. Jews account for roughly 10% of 9/11 victims

“September 11th was a horrific terrorist attack on a global scale against the entire free world,” said CyberWell CEO and Founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “According to US State Department figures, an estimated 200 to 400 Jews died at the World Trade Center, including five Israelis, meaning Jews accounted for roughly 10% of the victims.”

“Those trafficking in conspiratorial hatred online around the 25th anniversary of September 11 undermine the true lessons of this tragic event and tarnish the memory of its victims and the brave first responders who risked their lives to save others.”

“The outrageous and false conspiracy blaming Jews and Israel for the 9/11 attacks continues to spread widely online, amplified by engagement algorithms and, in part, by a lack of effective platform policies to address it,” Cohen Montemayor explained. “CyberWell has recently tracked significant increases in scapegoating of Jews for major world tragedies, yet very few platforms directly address this form of hatred in their Trust & Safety policies.”

She noted that “as AI and LLMs increasingly rely on social media data for training and as a source of knowledge, the risk of antisemitic conspiracies and bias being absorbed and reproduced as fact increases.”
Washington Free Beacon: How Democrats Remember 9/11 It's been 25 years since terrorists attacked the United States and killed 3,000 Americans. At the time, most people could agree that this was bad.



UCLA professor and father of Daniel Pearl condemns university event hosting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lawyer
A top UCLA professor has torn into the college for hosting the lawyer who represented the jihadist who executed his son during a 9/11 event this week.

Judea Pearl, 90, said the appearance of Melanie T. Partow made him “ashamed of my university” as he accused it of “weaponizing” the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks.

His son Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was decapitated by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan in 2002 after being lured there for a supposed interview with an Islamic scholar.

A twisted video of his murder was released at the time, with Daniel Pearl saying he was from California and his family was Jewish before he was beheaded.

“A September 11th event should be used to commemorate the victims of that attack: Innocent Americans,” Pearl told the California Post.

The Post revealed Wednesday that UCLA was hosting Partow as well as a controversial Yale professor who called post-9/11 counterterrorism “racist.”

It sparked fury among survivors and heroes who attended the scene of the terror attacks tearing into the college for “pointing fingers at the victims.”

Pearl, who teaches at UCLA’s Samueli School of Engineering, told the Post: “Colleagues inform me that, sadly, UCLA Law School is guilty of such practice: Weaponizing the painful days of 9/11 and 10/7 to promote hateful ideologies.”

He added: “Having lost a son to such an ideology, I stand ashamed of my university.”


Palestinian flag-waving loon runs onto field at Yankee Stadium – Subway Series fans respond with ‘USA’ chants
A bozo waving a Palestinian flag ran onto the field at Yankee Stadium during Friday night’s Subway Series game — at 9:11 p.m. on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The man stormed the field during the seventh inning of the Yankees-Mets game in The Bronx, waving the flag as the crowd erupted in anger.

Some fans broke into chants of “USA! USA!” while others could be heard yelling “f–k you” at the man.

The disruption came as New York marked 25 years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

It was not immediately clear how the man managed to get onto the field.

Fans tossed drinks at the protestester, who was kicking at the security guards as they carried him off the field.

The spectacle came on a night steeped in emotion at Yankee Stadium, where the crosstown rivals had gathered to commemorate a quarter-century since the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.


Houthis seize key Red Sea islands, complete takeover of vital Bab el-Mandeb shipping lane
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis seized several strategic Red Sea island on Friday after capturing territory along the coast, sealing their takeover of a vital shipping corridor linking Europe and Asia.

The development is likely to deepen the Middle East war’s impact on international commerce, months after the strategic Strait of Hormuz was blockaded by Iran, which hailed its Yemeni allies’ advance on Friday.

After a week-long offensive that has left hundreds dead, the Houthis appeared to be in control of territory along the Yemeni side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern gateway to the Red Sea and, in turn, the Suez Canal.

A local official with Yemen’s Saudi-backed government said on Friday that the Houthis had “completed their takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area and Mayyun Island, while a witness said gunmen were “deploying along the Bab el-Mandeb shore and are driving around in military vehicles.”

Later, a military official in the internationally recognized government told AFP that the Houthis had also seized Greater and Lesser Hanish, the last two islands that were not under their control in the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

“Everything that was under our control on the western coast has fallen,” the official said
Anthropic says it foiled apparent Houthi effort to use its AI chatbot to develop guided missiles
Anthropic said Thursday it had blocked efforts by bad actors to use its artificial intelligence models for malicious activity such as research that could have led to biological weapons and an apparent effort by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels to build guided missiles.

As AI models grow more powerful, elaborate cyberattacks no longer require sophisticated skills and even lone individuals can create threats that would not have been possible even a year ago, Anthropic said. The company said it has added stronger safeguards in its latest models to restrict biological research that could also be used to make weapons.

“The cases we share here aren’t typical misuse, but rather examples of the most notable and novel threat activity we’ve identified to date,” Anthropic said in its third report since March 2025 describing AI misuse. The report includes snippets of the malicious code and AI prompts Anthropic said it found and it urged governments and AI competitors to identify and prevent similar abuse.

“We’re publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services. As models become increasingly capable, their risks will increase, unless AI developers and society’s defenders act to make them safer,” the company said.

The lengthy report by the AI startup, which is planning an initial public offering this fall, was published two days after one of its researchers announced he’s resigning over concerns that Anthropic and its competitors are not acting responsibly in AI development. He echoed concerns raised inside and outside of the industry about the technology’s potential to elude human control.
Saudi crown prince reportedly called Trump, asked US to strike Houthis
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly called U.S. President Donald Trump twice on Thursday to ask the United States to strike the Houthi terror group in Yemen, U.S. officials told Axios.

Trump declined, and U.S. officials said that the Trump administration has no current plans to attack the Houthis, the outlet reported.
Saudi Arabia shutters major oil pipeline struck by drones from Iraq
Saudi Arabia said Friday it shut down a major pipeline a day after it was attacked by drones, and Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured a strategic island at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, two officials said, opening a new front in the Iran war.

The Houthis made their biggest territorial gains in years along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s key shipping lanes. The advance could boost Iran’s strategy of driving up world oil and gas prices to pressure the United States.

Saudi Arabia said it had shut down the East-West pipeline after it was attacked the day before, with the energy ministry calling the move “a precautionary measure.”

The Saudi foreign ministry blamed the attack on several drones from Iraq that it said “caused human injuries and damage.” In a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the kingdom said it would not respond to give the Iraqi government “an opportunity to take the necessary measures.” But it also stressed that Saudi Arabia “reserves the right to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty, its security, its facilities,” and its inhabitants.

The Iraqi government condemned the assault, with the prime minister’s office announcing the dismissal of a military commander after investigations confirmed the attack originated from Iraq. Two Iraqi sources later told Reuters that Iraq ordered the closure of the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iran as a precautionary measure, adding that a wide-scale operation was underway to pursue the perpetrators of the attack.

Saudi Arabia and the United States bombed Iranian-backed militias in Iraq in July, after blaming them for drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities that had been claimed by the Houthis. Regional officials told the Associated Press that the Houthis helped the Iraqi militias plan and execute the attacks.


Next round of Israel-Lebanon talks delayed until October — US official
The next round of US-mediated talks between Israel and Lebanon has been pushed off until next month, a State Department official says.

The next round was supposed to take place next week in Rome but now will now be held in October, the official says, adding that the two countries’ ambassadors will still meet at the State Department to discuss implementing the framework deal meant to disarm Hezbollah and phase the IDF out of southern Lebanon.

Scheduling conflicts led to the delay, an Israeli official says, though the development suggests slowing momentum amid Israel’s upcoming elections and Hezbollah’s refusal.

A Lebanese official told The Times of Israel that “indiscriminate” IDF strikes in southern Lebanon is undermining Beirut efforts to disarm Hezbollah, while Jerusalem argues that the Lebanese Armed Forces is not yet up for the task.


IDF kills commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade in southern Gaza airstrike
An airstrike late Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip killed the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, the Israeli military and the terror group said on Friday morning.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said that Khan Younis Brigade commander Muhammad Abdul Salam al-Yazouri was involved in advancing dozens of attacks on troops, as well as restoring Hamas’s capabilities.

The same strike in Khan Younis also killed Hudheifa Muammar, a company commander, and Muhammad Bahjat Rashi, another Hamas operative, according to the IDF.

“IDF forces under the Southern Command are deployed in the area in accordance with the agreement, and will continue to operate to eliminate any immediate threat,” the military said.

The previous Khan Younis Brigade chief, Rafa’a Salameh, was killed alongside Hamas military wing chief Muhammad Deif in July 2024.

The army published footage of the strike that killed Yazouri.

Hamas announced Yazouri’s death ahead of the IDF, publishing a “martyr poster” for the commander, also known as Abu al-Haitham, on a Telegram account that the terror group uses to announce the deaths of members.

In a separate strike in Khan Younis on Thursday, the military said it killed Moamen Jabr Al-Sayed Abu Labda, the commander of a Hamas sniper cell in the terror group’s Rafah Brigade.

The military said Abu Labda “carried out sniper training across the Gaza Strip” in preparation for attacks, as well as tried to restore Hamas capabilities, “in systematic violation of the ceasefire.”


Osint613: How Iran Lost Its Entire Military Command In One Night
Israel spent eight months building a trap for Iran's military command. Just after midnight on June 13, 2025, it closed.

This is Operation Rising Lion, the opening strikes of the June 2025 Israel-Iran war.

Twenty of Iran's most protected men answer an emergency summons sent through Iran's own secure channels and gather in a bunker near Tehran. At the head of the table, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force. The summons was fake. Every man in that room dies.

The war starts before a single Israeli jet crosses the border. Roughly seventy Mossad trained commandos, in teams code named after musical notes, fire from inside Iran at 3am and destroy the anti aircraft batteries. Then the sky opens. About 200 Israeli fighter jets, F-35s hunting radars, F-15s and F-16s behind them with 2,000 pound bunker busting JDAMs and SPICE glide bombs. Five waves, 330 munitions, 100 targets, all before sunrise.

Two code names run inside those waves. Red Wedding, taken from Game of Thrones, kills Iran's military leadership at the same moment so nobody can warn anyone: Mohammad Bagheri, Hossein Salami, Gholam Ali Rashid. Operation Narnia kills nine nuclear scientists in their beds, including Fereydoun Abbasi, who survived a magnetic car bomb in Tehran in 2010.

Iran's plan for this exact moment was an opening salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles. The order never came, because there was nobody alive to give it.







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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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