If This Is “Israel’s 9/11,” It Is Repeating the US’s Disastrous Mistakes
The US response to 9/11 killed millions, destabilized an entire region, and led to more American deaths than the original attacks. Israel is rushing down the same path.
Smoke billows during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023, as raging battles between Israel and the Hamas movement continue for the sixth consecutive day. (Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“This is our 9/11. We are committed to change the equation, to shatter the old paradigm.”
These words from the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations were among the earliest in a flood of statements around the world since Hamas’s horrific attack this past weekend comparing the assault to Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
“Israel Faces Its 9/11,” read a Wall Street Journal headline the day of the attacks, the accompanying op-ed exalting the “moral clarity and resolve that characterizes democracies under attack” that the writer was witnessing in Israel. Many Israelis drew the same parallel as the dust cleared from the killings.
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