Writing a year after 9/11, bin Laden noted in his message that he was seeking to answer two questions that had occupied American media since that terrible day: “Why are we fighting and opposing you?” and “What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?” The first section is surely the most relevant to the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as it denounces the U.S. for helping to establish and maintain a Jewish state in the Palestinian territories. “The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals,” bin Laden argued. “Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”
Bin Laden expounded further about how the oppression of Palestine had to be “revenged,” going on to impugn Western imperialism and hegemony in broader terms, before shifting into a justification for killing civilians in his jihad. “The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,” he wrote. “This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.”…
He repeatedly wrote that the country was dominated by Jews who “control your policies, media and economy,” elsewhere condemning homosexuality and fornication as “immoral,” and accusing the U.S. of spreading AIDS, which he termed a “Satanic American Invention.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member