If We Treated 9/11 Like the Israel-Hamas War

Could you have imagined the missing persons posters would get torn down?

It was supposed to be an ordinary Tuesday. We remember exactly where we were when we heard, not long into the working morning hours. Those of us who were school-aged at the time remember parents frantically flooding into the school building — during what was the 2nd week of that school year — to collect their kids out of panic. Of course as adolescents, we were happy at first to be sent home early. But then we arrived home to watch the images of the Twin Towers’ fall replayed again and again on TV. The images of that day are forever seared into the collective memories for anyone old enough to remember it. For us millennials, it largely defined our formative years.

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil. The attacks claimed nearly 3000 lives and injured thousands more, many suffering long-term health problems as a result of exposure to toxic debris during the lengthy cleanup effort at Ground Zero. Everyone who remembers it now is well into adulthood. The Gen Z “activists” engaging in the current demonstrations we are seeing are either too young to remember, or did not exist at all when it happened. It is my view that their ahistorical rants (“resistance is justified/when people are occupied”) are largely the result of their privilege not to remember 9/11.

I also remember seeing clips of certain groups celebrating the attacks. But those people lived far away and were generally accepted as enemies of our state. No American would dare try something like this, let alone on the day it happened:

If we treated the aftermath of 9/11 like the Israel-Hamas War…

• Columbia students would have marched with al-Qaeda flags as soon as 48 hours after the Twin Towers hit the ground.

• The attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the airplane hijackings would have been called “acts of resistance” from freedom fighters justifiably confronting American colonialism in the Middle East.

• Protesters would have been apoplectic that our own troops who volunteered to go to Iraq and Afghanistan were killing civilians there. What did the Iraqis do to deserve that, since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 to begin with? That’s a legitimate question that I almost never heard asked during my university days, which were at the height of that conflict.

• Major newspapers would publish a daily death count of all Iraqi and Afghan civilians killed by the U.S. military, with the Taliban as their source.

• We would have had dedicated journalist-activists disputing the total number of 9/11 fatalities and who caused their deaths. Maybe United and American airlines intentionally crashed their planes instead of al-Qaeda hijacking them?

• People would tear down the fliers of missing persons that loved ones posted in NYC at the same time emergency services frantically dug through Ground Zero for bodies.

Photo credit: Steve Pyke

And so more than two decades after 9/11, we approach the first anniversary of the deadliest day for Jews since 1945. How will I feel about October 7th 22 years from now? How will I explain it to the kids who weren’t around when it happened? What will be the issues that they speak out about in 2046?

All I know is that every single day since 10/7 has been a nightmare for the world’s Jews. But despite everything, I am convinced that our people will ultimately emerge stronger, better. The Jewish state will survive. We will survive.

Because if we don’t, the terrorists win.