The Blogs: The Post 9/11 Generation

The Post 9/11 Generation

You are flying out of JFK and have to wait in a long line to go through security. There are big stanchions in front of all federal buildings. There are surveillance cameras everywhere. There is a Department of Homeland Security.

These are all a way of life for everyone mostly due to 9/11 and fears of another attack from those who want to destroy us.

But those protestors parading about at the World Trade Center Oculus building last week and last year in their trendy kaffiyeh garb with such vacuous signs like “Free Palestine” and ”Globalize the Intifada”, and shouting that the NYPD is the same as the KKK, probably don’t know that life wasn’t always like this.

They also were shouting support for the radical Islam group, Hamas, on the soil of Ground Zero, where the worst attack in history by enemy forces on American soil took place. This attack was perpetrated by the radical violent Islamic terrorist group al-Quaeda. It was a traumatic event that shook our nation and brought us together in our fight against those that wanted us dead.

Those responsible for 9/11 hated the United States and everything we stood for. The 19 terrorists who came to our nation to conduct this absolutely barbaric attack came disguised as students and came here legallyusing tourist and student visas, much like Mahmoud Khalid, from Columbia University, the new darling of the Kaffiyeh crowd. Khalid is one of the organizers of demonstrations that disrupted campus life at Columbia University and harassed Jewish students. Khalid is now being detained while the U.S. seeks to deport him.

The 9/11 suicide jihadists deliberately took advantage of our generosity and welcoming nature and especially of our incredible naivety. While here plotting the destruction of our country, they were hosted by American families, invited to dinners, and allowed to attend flight training classes. Here they learned how to turn a commercial aircraft into a deadly missile. Lessons they would put to use to kill American civilians at work, at the Pentagon, and possibly at the White House or the Capital building if Flight 93 hadn’t been taken down by heroic Americans.

Americans who encountered these individuals at the time were completely clueless that these seemingly pleasant, educated visitors wanted them dead, much like the students and faculty at Columbia consider Khalid to be affable and sympathetic today. Nearly 3,000 Americans died that day almost 24 years ago and changed our lives forever. But perhaps these protestors aren’t aware of this.

After all, most of the young people protesting at the Oculus, just meters from where thousands of bodies were disintegrated, weren’t yet born when this occurred. Some were just young children. But does that excuse them?

Is it really okay to glorify Hamas, a terrorist group with the exact same philosophy as Al Quaida? Are these young people aware that these same Hamas terrorists and their supporters look at us, the same way they look at Israel, as the enemy. They would destroy and kill innocent men, women and children in this country like they did in Israel if they had the means to do so and without a trace of conscience. The Palestinians in Gaza that these young demonstrators sympathize with elected Hamas and the majority support them. Why are they the ones American youth are cheering on? Why not Israel, which is an ally of America and shares our values and are victims of an atrocious massacre?

In researching this blog, I looked at a description of September 11 on the official website of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Nowhere does it mention who was responsible for this attack save for one mention of “middle east terrorists.” On the National Archives page is written, “As the nation moved from shock to anger in the days after 9/11 President Bush emphasized that the attacks were conducted by extremist terrorists and did not represent the Islamic religion.”

Yes, I remember how some people, in fact nearly all those in power, seem gripped by a deep fear that Islamophobia would rear its ugly head. That Americans would get out their pitchforks and go attack their kindly Muslim neighbors. We were warned again and again not to blame all Muslims for 9-11, that it was just this tiny, tiny group of Islamic Jihadists and we needn’t fear the vast majority of Muslims.

However, throughout the world Islamic attacks continued.

Hearing so many calls for caution and not to hold Muslims here responsible for the acts of a small group of radical Islamists, I remember doing some research to find out just how much Islamophobia increased in the year following 9/11. What I found out was shocking and not what I expected and what nobody was speaking about. Hate crimes against Jews increased substantially. The Jews were the recipients of unjustified hate, while anti-Muslim actions increased just a small amount.

In 2001, anti-Islamic religion incidents became the second highest reported among religious-bias incidents with 481 reported. BUT anti-Jewish religion incidents were the highest, with 1,043 incidents involving Jewish victims. [FBI Hate Crime Statistics,2001]

Among the 2,004 offenses motivated by religious prejudice, anti-Jewish bias made up 55.7 percent; anti-Islamic bias accounted for 2.2 percent. So much for islamophobia.

In 2002, anti-Jewish bias accounted for 65.9 percent or 1,039, of the 1,576 reported offenses rooted in religious bias. Anti- Islamic bias made up 10.8 percent of these types of offenses, and bias against other, unspecified religious groups (anti- other religion) made up 13.8 percent. [Hate Crime Statistics, 2002] Note this was the first full year following Sept 11, 2001.

Looking back over the decades (unfortunately the latest date for which I could find the FBI’s official Hate Crime Statistics was 2019), Jews have always and by a substantial number led the hit parade of victims of hate crimes. Somehow this fact just doesn’t get much attention. Or at least not until recently. I can only imagine what the statistics will reveal for the years 2023 and 2024 when the FBI finally gets around to releasing these numbers (probably five years from now judging from past performance.).

The messaging from the United States has been wrong at least since 2001 and probably much longer. We should be afraid of the Muslims and protective of our Jewish citizens. We’ve drummed into the next generation that islamophobia is the biggest sin you can commit, second only to anti-Black racism and that anti-American and anti-Jewish feelings are negligible if they exist at all.

We’ve now come full circle since September 11, when we rallied together to fight our enemies. Now our young people are celebrating them.

We were so careful not to accuse all Muslims of terrorism that we’ve gone completely around the bend and now message that Islamic terrorists are the good guys, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the victims, the righteous, the freedom fighters, the virtuous, the blameless, the innocent. It is the Jews and Americans, except of course for these protestors themselves, who are the bad guys, the oppressors, the colonizers, the fascists, the nazis, the murderers and the privileged who must be held accountable if Muslims are killed. It is never their own fault.

If we can’t name our enemy how can we fight them and defend ourselves?