Opinion: 23 years after the terrorist attacks that shook the world, the West has lost its way

9/11 was the template for the atrocities of 10/7

Published Sep 11, 2024  •  Last updated 42 minutes ago  •  6 minute read

Left: A man stands in the rubble after the collapse of the first of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Right: An Israeli soldier stands in a burned-out building in the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel on Oct. 18, 2023, following the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by ARIS MESSINIS/JACK GUEZ / AFP via Getty Images

By Sheryl Saperia and Sophie Milman

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have been largely expunged from historical memory by an entire cohort of young adults too young, jaded or disinterested to remember or consider its import. But this lack of concern did not impede the TikTok generation from recently rediscovering and rehabilitating 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden as a clarion voice of truth and inspiration.

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The Canadian family members of 9/11 victims with whom we work were stunned to watch these young people, weaned ostensibly on a steady diet of diversity, equity and inclusion, deliver geopolitical soliloquies in praise of al-Qaida’s mastermind — a notorious jihadist, terrorist and proud murderer of innocents, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

These same 9/11 family members had watched in horror as another theatre of spectacular terrorist cruelty orchestrated by Hamas terrorists opened to the cheers of an international audience on October 7, 2023. The 10/7 attacks were then followed by the iconization of Hamas across the globe, which unleashed an unremitting torrent of antisemitism and anti-western hate that has tilted our world over the past 11 months.

In the aftermath of the slaughter and sexual depravity committed last October, millions of people found clarity and validation for their support of Hamas in bin Laden’s violent extremist rhetoric against the West and the Jews, reflected in a 2002 missive he had written entitled “Letter to America.” The edification of a man who would have gladly incinerated them is symptomatic of a post-truth era in which so many card-carrying members of our me-too society betrayed the truths they had so passionately championed, unabashedly denying or applauding the sexual atrocities committed against Jews as legitimate acts of “resistance.”

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In some ways, 9/11 was a template enhanced and reapplied on 10/7. Both events stemmed from a common creed of Islamist extremism grounded in the ideological heritage of the Muslim Brotherhood; both received assistance from the Islamic regime in Iran; both events were greeted with applause if not celebration across the globe; both were ultimately recast by conspiracy theorists as fraudulent events or evils orchestrated by Jews; and both events involved the murder of citizens hailing from countries around the globe.

Notably, the perpetrators in both cases were fuelled by an insatiable and genocidal antisemitism. The centrality of Jew-hatred in the thinking of bin Laden and the 9/11 al-Qaida terrorists is a common binding article of Islamist extremist faith, in which Jews are understood as the irredeemable, metaphysical source of all historical evil and corruption, whose destruction is essential to human salvation.

Bin Laden wrote his letter to America more than 20 years ago, and now the Supreme Leader of Iran speaks directly to the young people of the West, conveying the same poison, the same Jew-hatred, and the same contempt for the West. And the message seems to be resonating. Many are struggling to distinguish friend from foe, good from evil, truth from lie, while others are quite content to simply embrace this Islamist malice as their new moral compass.

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KBG defector Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov predicted this phenomenon. In a 1984 interview, he revealed that a main focus of Russia’s KGB was ideological subversion and psychological warfare. According to Bezmenov, the plan was to transform the West from within: “This is about changing the perception of reality … to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their community, their country. It’s a great brainwashing process that is slow — to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, expose them to the ideology of your enemy.”

The problem goes well beyond classical Soviet propaganda methodologies, which created the current templates of distortion still employed by totalitarians, antisemites and other purveyors of calumnies against western democratic values. The West has also welcomed Iranian, Chinese and Qatari money, malign influence and subversive narratives.

Young people are encouraged to obsess over identity politics, real or contrived, and to marinate in grievance as some twisted form of aspirational personal growth. They are conditioned to be ashamed of liberal democratic traditions, and to focus on democracies as fatally and inherently flawed rather than works in progress that have made Canada and other western countries the envy of the millions of immigrants willing to do anything to join our ranks.

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There is a particular animus in this worldview that places Israel as the collective Jewish scapegoat, inherently guilty of all and any of humanity’s perceived sins. Western youth, including Canadians, are indoctrinated into the falsehood that tiny Israel, the only Jewish state, a democracy with an evolved judiciary and equal rights for citizens of all faiths that has made endless overtures for peace and co-existence with its neighbours, is worthy of more criticism than the regimes in China, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan combined. Israel is the only country whose right to exist is debated and whose destruction is so often demanded.

Canada and the West must reverse course. Courageous political leadership willing to forgo votes for principle is needed. And citizens must step up to reclaim the redemptive power of liberal democratic values, and reject the often thinly veiled totalitarian calls to build an Islamist or Marxist or fascist paradise. We must be willing to confront the purveyors of extremist and terrorist ideologies, and not abandon the public arena to those fighting for the likes of Hamas on our streets.

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These voices do exist. The Global Imams Council, for one, deserves our attention. Based in Iraq and comprised of over 1,500 influential Shia and Sunni clerics from around the world, the council issued a statement on a previous anniversary of Sept. 11 that courageously “condemned and opposed all Islamist and militant organizations that target innocent civilians, including … Al-Qaeda, ISIS, ISIS-K, Taliban, Hamas and its parent organization the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, and the IRGC. Our council deems such organizations unIslamic, deviant, and criminal. We stand on the side of peace, against terrorism; and will pray forever for all the souls of the victims and loved ones lost on this tragic day.” Later, council was unique in unequivocally condemning Hamas after October 7 for the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians, and most recently condemning the cold-blooded murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas.

We can also take inspiration from the Canadian relatives of 9/11 victims like Maureen Basnicki and Danny Eisen, the co-founders of Secure Canada. Maureen and Danny advocated relentlessly for laws like the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, and for Sept. 11 to be designated as a National Day of Service to honour and celebrate Canadians who serve their communities. Instead of wallowing in anger, these 9/11 family members chose to focus on service, laws, community, and democratic ways to enhance and protect Canada.

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The West did not pay heed to the writing on the 9/11 walls as they crumbled into dust at Ground Zero, and now the 9/11 template has been amplified exponentially. We must protect our education system from those seeking to subvert it, and reclaim our democratic freedoms from those utilizing these precious freedoms to incapacitate them. Our young people are embracing the messages promulgated by some of the globe’s most malevolent players. But bin Laden, Sinwar and Khamenei cannot be left unchallenged as the inspiration for the next generation of North American children. Yes, we are 23 years late — but it is not too late to change course if we have at least comparable conviction to those who seek our destruction.

Special to National Post

Sheryl Saperia is CEO of Secure Canada, where Sophie Milman is strategic adviser.

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