Palestinians Celebrated the September 11 Attacks for Years: An Illustrated History
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by Ephraim D. Tepler and Itamar Marcus
The September 11, 2001, terror attack on the World Trade Center. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of the heinous September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
As we move further away from 2001, it is worth remembering how the Palestinian Authority (PA) celebrated the attacks year after year, with cartoons glorifying Osama Bin Laden or mocking and attacking the US.
The PA’s official media outlets made a concerted effort to bash the United States by rubbing salt in its most sensitive wounds, and by depicting America as evil, while appropriating Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as the victims.
In the cartoon below, Bin Laden is shown forming a victory sign with his fingers, which are made up of the smoldering Twin Towers next to a plane about to fly into them.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 12, 2007]
In this next cartoon, the PA depicts Iran and Iraq as the real victims of 9/11:
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 11, 2006]
Another cartoon shows the PA’s view that the real victims of 9/11 were Iraq and the Palestinians:
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and Palestinian daily Al-Quds, September 12, 2003]
The text on Tower One reads “Palestine,” and the text on Tower Two reads “Iraq.’
In another cartoon, the PA mocked the US by portraying Uncle Sam fleeing in terror from the date “September 11”:
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al Jadida, reprinted from Al-Wattan of Kuwait, September 11, 2002]
In the below cartoon — an effort to say that the US is immoral and imperialistic — the PA places the Twin Towers over a mass of dead bodies, who are supposedly the victims of American imperialism.
Text on wall: “September,” Twin Towers form “11” over dead bodies. Text on down tower: “Rights of Nations.” Text on up tower: “American hegemony”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, reprinted from Al-Khalij (UAE), September 11, 2002]
Below, the PA shows that it believes that 9/11 was an American conspiracy against Arabs and Muslims:
After the massacre and atrocities committed by Palestinians in southern Israel on October 7, a senior Palestinian official repeated the accusation that the US knew about the 9/11 attacks but wanted them to happen:
They [Israel] knew about this [Oct. 7 attack] and were silent because they wanted that what happened would happen, just as their teacher [America] did in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
[Fatah Revolutionary Council member Adnan Al-Damiri, Facebook page, Dec. 20, 2023]
In the below cartoon, the PA accused Israel of using the 9/11 attack on America as an excuse to attack Palestinians. The cartoon also gives a nod to the Palestinian libel of Jews as terrorists:
The two letters “L” of Ramallah take the form of the Twin Towers and the “o” in TERRORISM takes the form of a Jewish star.[Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, October 19, 2001]
The PA also claimed that 9/11 was just an excuse to jail Arabs and Muslims:
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 11, 2002]
The fact is that nothing about the Palestinian Authority has changed until this day. As Palestinian Media Watch continues to bring to the fore, the PA constantly demonizes America and appropriates itself as the victim of the crimes that it openly supports, such as the October 7 massacre. And that’s not even counting the untold number of Palestinians who danced in the streets to celebrate the attack when it took place in America 23 years ago.
Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director, and Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to PMW. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
