America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
JOE BIDEN - FUNDER OF GLOBAL MUSLIM TERRORISM - Biden Unlocks Fresh Funds to Iran Totaling Billions
Qatar's (HOME TO HAMAS LEADERSHIP) longstanding efforts to buy influence in the United States have, quite unsurprisingly, included substantial donations to the Clinton Foundation. In 2011, for example, the foundation accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar in honor of former president Bill Clinton's 65th birthday. Hillary was serving as secretary of state at the time, but failed to disclose the massive donation to the State Department despite her pledge to keep the agency apprised of the foundation's foreign donors.
The Biden administration on Tuesday reapproved a sanctions waiver that will allow Iran to access upward of $10 billion in frozen assets, the State Department confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon.
The sanctions waiver, which was set to expire today after first being authorized for a period of 120 days in July, allows Iraq to transfer payments for multibillion-dollar electricity imports from Iran into accounts outside of the country that can be used by Tehran. This is the first time the Biden administration has renewed the waiver since the Iran-backed terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that was reported to have been planned with Tehran's support.
Renewal of the waiver "allows Iraq to use its own funds to render payment for Iranian electricity imports into restricted Iranian accounts in Iraq," a State Department official told the Free Beacon, speaking only on background. "These restricted funds can only be used for humanitarian and other non-sanctionable transactions."
While Iran can only use the funds related to the sanctions waiver for the purchase of humanitarian goods, critics of the administration's policy argue that by freeing up this cash, Iran can allocate other financial resources to its global terrorism operation, which has been in overdrive since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. Analysts place the amount of cash accessible by Iran at upward of $10 billion, as the Free Beacon first reported on Monday.
In deciding to renew the waiver for an additional 120 days, the State Department official said, "Unfortunately, Iraq will not wean itself off of Iranian gas imports overnight."
The administration maintains that allowing these funds to be accessed by Iran limits its leverage of the Iraqi government, which has grown increasingly close to Tehran's hardline regime in recent years.
"It is in the U.S. interest that this money leave Iraq and be spent down from Iran's accounts held overseas," the State Department official went on. "Money used for non-sanctionable, allowable transactions—like humanitarian trade—is not available to Iran for other purposes, and it deprives Iran of leverage against the Iraqi government."
Critics, however, see the sanctions waiver as proof that the administration is maintaining Tehran's financial channels, even after it provided Hamas with the resources necessary to slaughter more than 1,200 Israelis and take hostage many others, including Americans.
"The White House just responded to October 7th with a $10 billion reward," Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and sanctions expert who served on the White House National Security Council, told the Free Beacon. "Congress needs to act quickly to cut off Iran's access to every penny."
Due to Iraq's reliance on Iran for energy, the State Department said, "this waiver continues to be necessary, to provide space and time for the government of Iraq to implement [Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani's] energy reform agenda."
"This waiver isn’t about Iraq importing electricity or gas," Goldberg said in response to the State Department’s comments about the waiver. "It’s about Iran getting access to the cash."
The State Department also confirmed that like July's version of the waiver, Iraq will be able to transfer Iranian funds to third-party countries, including Oman and several in Europe.
While the Trump administration during its time in office granted a sanctions waiver to Iraq for these electricity payments, it gave the authorization only on the condition that the payments were kept in an escrow account in Baghdad. The Biden administration's version allows the money to move outside the country, making it easier for Tehran to access the funds, according to Goldberg.
The State Department maintains that Iraq's ongoing payments to Iran effectively reduce "Iranian leverage over Iraq."
Biden Mulls Approval of Fresh $10 Billion for Iran
Sanctions waiver frees up money for Tehran as it funds Hamas’s war on Israel
The Biden administration may approve a sanctions waiver on Tuesday that will allow Iran to access at least $10 billion in previously frozen funds held in Iraq, a closely watched decision that comes just a month after the Tehran-backed terror group Hamas launched an attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead.
The waiver would extend the multibillion-dollar sanctions relief first issued in July that expires tomorrow. It allows Iraq to transfer frozen electricity payments into Iranian-owned bank accounts in Europe and Oman. The waiver renewal is driving concerns that the Biden administration is maintaining financial avenues for Tehran as the country’s terrorist proxies foment chaos across the Middle East.
"The world is living in a post-Oct. 7 world, but the White House is still running an Oct. 6 policy toward Iran," Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and sanctions expert who previously served on the White House National Security Council, told the Washington Free Beacon, referring to Hamas’s attack last month. "Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran's hands."
While the Biden administration paused a $6 billion ransom payment to Iran following a pressure campaign in Congress, the Iraq-Europe-Oman sanctions waiver would signal the United States is still trying to provide financial relief to the hardline regime. Iranian military officials warned Monday that the Gaza war has already "spilled over into neighboring Lebanon and may even widen in scope" as Iranian-armed Hezbollah fighters become more active in the conflict. Tehran also has been rallying Arab nations against Israel, threatening to prolong the war and open more fronts.
The Trump administration first allowed Iraq to import electricity and gas from Iran, but only on the condition that the payments were kept in an escrow account in Baghdad. The Biden administration continued to issue that waiver, and then broadened it in July so that Iraq could move more than $10 billion outside the country, enabling Tehran to draw on the funds for its budget and humanitarian needs. In late October, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran reportedly discussed expediting Iran's access to the funds with his Omani counterpart.
In testimony before Congress late last month, Goldberg advised Congress to lock down the $10 billion as punishment for Tehran’s role in supporting Hamas’s war on Israel.
The Biden administration insists that, like the $6 billion held in Qatar, Iran can only use the $10 billion for non-sanctioned purposes.
Critics argue that since money is fungible, the access allows Iran to free up cash in other places for illicit activities.
Iranian leaders in recent days have emphasized the importance of the electricity payments, reportedly telling Omani leaders they should "accelerate the use of these new foreign exchange resources" and signaling the regime is relying on the Biden administration to continue freeing up this cash.
The State Department declined to comment on the sanctions waiver or confirm whether it will be renewed this week.
THERE IS A CONSISTENT PATTERN OF OBAMA, GEORGE SOROS AND THEIR PUPPET BIDEN ALWAYS BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE. JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY RIGHT INTO BIDEN'S POCKETS!
The U.S., the West, free markets and trade, and democracy need strong forceful anti-Iran U.S. leadership and they need it now. The Saudis know that. U.S. leadership may well be forfeited by the Biden Administration, either deliberately or by incompetence.
Recently Barack Obama opined on Israel’s war with Hamas, and predictably reprised all the received wisdom that our politicians on both sides of the aisles have indulged since 9/11. One comment in particular evoked one of the more dangerous takes on the conflict with modern jihadism––that this venerable doctrine of Islam is some sort of heresy or extremism that doesn’t represent Muslims worldwide.
In the context of the current war with Hamas, according to ABC news, Obama said of Israel’s campaign, “‘There are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did,’ Obama said, making the distinction between Palestinians who live in Gaza and the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.”
We’ll pass over the mendacious euphemism “the militant group Hamas,” and the implication that the accurate description “terrorist organization” is merely a prejudiced slur by U.S. security agencies. More important is Obama’s variation on the cringing and dishonest phrase “nothing to do with what Islam,” an echo of the Western apologists after 9/11 who regularly chanted this lie.
The use of this duplicitous formula transcends political party. After 9/11, the Bush administration no doubt thought that such rhetorical distortions would pacify Muslims and show them that we’re “not at war with Islam.” Verbal preemptive cringes abounded in Bush’s speeches, such as the following: “Our enemy [al Qaeda] doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion . . . All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam . . . It’s a faith based upon love not hate.”
Anybody even vaguely familiar with traditional Islamic doctrine and history knows that this flabby ecumenicalism is at best well-meaning wishful thinking, at worst a talking-point for malignant apologists. Listen to Ibn Khaldun (d.1406), one of Islam’s most significant and revered historians and philosophers: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” So too, Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), another important Muslim theorist of jihad: “Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.” Are these titans of Islamic thought “hijackers” or “heretics”?
In the current crisis, such distortions of jihad like Obama’s serve to cast Hamas as victims, and to demonize Israel for its alleged callous disregard of innocent lives, as Obama implies. But “innocence” is not so simple, not when the enemy is utterly indifferent to their own peoples’ security and lives, and hide their weapons in schools, tunnels under hospitals, mosques, apartment buildings, and other civilian infrastructure. Moreover, Hamas has the support of about half of Gazans, who voted Hamas into power in 2006. Nor was there any mystery about Hamas’s genocidal violence, which is codified in its founding covenant.
Also, support for “armed struggle” against Israel and its people is shared by most Gazans. As Andrew McCarthy recently reported, a poll “from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research tells us that, by a margin of 58 percent to 20 percent, Palestinians would prefer a renewal of the intifada (the ‘armed struggle’) to peaceful negotiations aimed at ending ‘the occupation.’ That’s consistent with last year’s polling, as is the finding that about seven in ten Palestinians oppose the two-state solution.”
Other recent polls from the Washington Institute similarly report that “there is widespread popular appeal for competing armed Palestinian factions, including those involved in the attack. Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas—along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%).”
Moreover, smaller but more fanatic outfits like Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lion’s Den have “receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three quarters of Gazans express support for both groups, including 40% who see the Lion’s Den in a ‘very positive’ light, an attitude shared by a similar percentage of West Bank residents.” Given that the Palestinian Arabs have no formal military, “armed struggle” means terrorism.
No surprise, then, that many “civilians” took part in the massacre on 10/7. Photographers embedded with Hamas terrorists have publicized the carnage with photos that appeared in Western media like AP, the New York Times, Reuters, and CNN. The media watchdog website HonestReporting wondered, “Is it conceivable to assume that ‘journalists’ just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?” And wouldn’t that make those reporters and media outlets “accomplices in crime,” as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said?
Indeed, according to the Coalition for Jewish Values managing director Rabbi Yaakov Menken, “What we now know is that ‘civilians’ drew maps for Hamas, guiding them to each house, to each child, to each pet . . . ‘Civilians’ came after the terrorists to murder and kidnap those who had been spared,’” and “‘civilians’ were embedded with the terrorists to report on the atrocities committed. Also, ‘civilians’ deliberately gather around the terrorists, even, barbarically, bringing their children.”
These delusions about the doctrines of Islam have vitiated our response to jihadist terror since before 9/11. There was the misinterpretation of the Iranian revolution by our national security and intelligence agencies, who seemingly knew little of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious motives in the 1978-79 revolution that created the Islamic [N.B.] Republic of Iran. More egregious was the similar failure in the Nineties to understand the origins and motives of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
And it’s not like we weren’t warned before then. In 1993, a group of jihadists associated with Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheik,” bombed the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center, leaving a 100-foot crater and killing six. Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted Rahman and his accomplices, laid out during the trial the jihadist doctrines that also would motivate Osama bin Laden.
Nor was Abdel Rahman a nutty cult leader, a Muslim “beard from the fringe” similar to David Koresh or Jim Jones, both of whose beliefs were obviously bizarre interpretations of Christian doctrine. In contrast, Abdel Rahman had a doctorate, with distinction, in Koranic studies from Cairo’s famed al-Azhar University, the Islamic equivalent of Harvard or Oxford. As McCarthy’s analysis of jihadist doctrine showed, Abdel Rahman’s preaching on jihad was completely consistent with traditional Islamic orthodoxy as set out in the Koran, the Hadith, the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and later theorists like the traditionalist Ibn Taymiyyah mentioned earlier.
Yet nobody in our security and defense agencies seemed to take seriously McCarthy’s explanation of jihadist doctrine during Rahman’s trial. Throughout the Nineties, scores of our citizens and service members were murdered, and our national security and interests damaged by al Qaeda’s string of terrorist attacks against our embassies in East Africa and military housing in Saudi Arabia.
All these attacks were treated by the Clinton administration as crimes rather than battles in Osama bin Laden’s declared war against the infidels’ greatest power and challenger to Islam’s religiously sanctioned dreams of global domination. And as we saw earlier in Bush’s remarks, not even the gruesome finale on 9/11 and the 2996 dead could awake our foreign policy mavens from their dogmatic slumbers.
Finally, this willful blindness, as McCarthy titled his important book on the first World Trade Center bombing, serves the therapeutic, self-loathing narrative that makes our jihadist enemies the victims of Western historical depredations abetted by Israel, particularly colonialism. Barack Obama, in his cringing flattery of Islam during his 2009 Cairo speech, recycled this dubious received wisdom about the West’s guilt.
Just like today’s Western supporters of Hamas and their ahistorical chatter about “settler colonialism,” Obama blamed “tensions” between Islam and the West on “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.” Obama neglected to point out that Islam created one of history’s greatest colonial empires, and those Muslim nations were paid billions of dollars in foreign aid to align with the U.S..
So now, due to our decades of delusions, we are facing a more dangerous Middle East dominated by Iran and its terrorist proxies, an Iran partnering with Russia and China to compromise our national interests and security. Yet still we disregard the facts of history, and more important continue to indulge our own moral idiocy.
For the moral truth is, if a man stands behind his family and shoots at yours, and you return fire in self-defense, killing members of his family, then the moral culpability is his for putting them in danger in the first place. We need to stop pressuring Israel to value the enemy’s civilians more than their own, and speaking the truth about jihad is a good place to start.
Bruce S. Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an emeritus professor of classics and humanities at California State University, Fresno, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is Democracy’s Dangers and Discontents: The Tyranny of the Majority from the Greeks to Obama.
A federal program to help nonprofit groups protect against terrorist attacks has given millions of dollars to mosques and Islamic groups that have praised terrorists and called for the destruction of Israel, according to a Washington Free Beacon review.
The Department of Homeland Security awarded the California-based Masjid al-Ansar mosque $100,000 on March 9 under the Nonprofit Security Grants Program. Moustafa Kamel, the imam at Masjid al-Ansar, earlier this year called Jews a "bigoted and arrogant breed of people" and prayed they "will be annihilated" in a war over the Holy Land, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Then there is the Islamic Center of Detroit, which received $150,000 on Oct. 12, 2022. Its head imam, Imran Salha, said at a pro-Palestinian rally days after Hamas’s invasion of Israel that Muslims have a "fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise." During a sermon in March, he referred to the "sick, disgusting Zionist regime" and prayed: "may Allah eradicate them from existence."
The rhetoric could fuel the sorts of hate and terrorist attacks that the Homeland Security grants aim to prevent. Anti-Semitic hate crimes have surged 400 percent since Hamas’s attack, in which 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered. A bipartisan group of senators called for additional funding under the program last month to protect against "a potential rise in anti-Semitic threats."
There is little oversight over which organizations receive funding under the program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state agencies. A majority of the grants have gone to synagogues, churches, mosques, and temples that do not support violence or promote terrorist organizations.
But there are also grants to outfits like the Islamic Center of San Diego, a mosque best known as the home to two 9/11 hijackers. Days after the Hamas attack, Imam Taha Hassane defended the attack on Israel as an act of self-defense.
"When people are occupied, then the resistance is justified," he said in an Oct. 20 sermon. "We cannot accuse somebody who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist. The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself."
The mosque received $150,000 under the grant program on Aug. 15, according to federal spending records.
At the Flint Islamic Center, which received $300,000 in grants on Oct. 12, 2022, an Islamic scholar asserted in a sermon last month that Jews "literally live for the purpose of genocide" of Palestinians.
"These people … their businesses have foundations just to serve their objectives. They literally live for a purpose of genocide in an occupation like this," said Shaykh Adbullah Waheed.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group identified as a co-conspirator of Hamas, has mounted a public awareness campaign to urge mosques and Islamic nonprofits to apply for the Homeland Security grants. CAIR noted that fewer than 50 Islamic organizations had received funding under the program, largely due to "concerns about the potential strings attached" to accepting the federal funds.
CAIR, which received grants under the Homeland Security program, blamed Israel for the "root causes" of the Hamas attack. Its executive director, Nihad Awad, condemned President Joe Biden for criticizing Hamas instead of Israel.
Dar al-Hijrah, the mosque of Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hisan, has received funding under the grant program. An imam at the mosque appeared to condone Hamas violence against Israel during a sermon last month, saying: "When the hypocrites say, ‘those people are deluded by their beliefs, they think if they kill their enemies, they go to paradise.’ Well, you don’t have to accept it. It’s not your faith. But we are free to believe what we believe."
The Muslim American Society’s Chicago affiliate, which received $149,000 on Sept. 1, was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist group that spawned Hamas. The Muslim American Society regularly hosts anti-Semitic speakers. Yasir Qadhi, an Islamic scholar who has said that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews," is slated to speak at its annual convention next month.
The head imam at the Islamic Organization of North America, which received $450,000 on Nov. 3, 2022, said at a rally last month that Palestinians were being "slaughtered by the Israeli Zionist government." The event was emceed by Amer Zahr, an activist who has said, "We stand with every resistance against Israel and every resistance against the occupation … whether it’s called Hamas, whether it’s called Hezbollah."
Other grants have gone to ICNA Relief USA, whose religious director, Rafiq Mahdi, has expressed "support" for Hamas and said it is "difficult to blatantly condemn [suicide bombers]."
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite his longtime support for former President Barack Obama, HBO’s Bill Maher admitted to feeling disappointment while “struggling” with the Democrat ex-president’s “moral equivalency” between the Jewish state and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s Real Time, host and political commentator Bill Maher expressed his dismay over Obama’s recent remarks regarding the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“I must say I am struggling with people’s moral equivalencies, still,” Maher said during a panel discussion.
“I mean, Barack Obama, who has rarely disappointed me, did so this week,” he continued. “His statement — I mean, it’s not a horrible statement — but he said, ‘If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth and then you have to admit nobody’s hands are clean.’”
Last week, Obama told his former staffers on Pod Save America that “all of us are complicit to some degree” in the violence in Gaza, as he appeared to describe a moral equivalence between Hamas murdering Israelis and the Israeli “occupation” of Gaza.
Some referred to his remarks as a version of “very fine people on both sides.”
Admitting that the 44th president’s comments were “literally” true, Maher offered two examples of why they were nonetheless unhelpful “at this moment.”
“First of all, the attack was only a month ago. A more savage attack than we’ve ever seen in reverse,” he said. “There’s a big difference between collateral damage and what Hamas did.”
In addition, the liberal comedian contrasted Israel’s humane gestures with Hamas’ brutal conduct.
“Secondly, the Israelis are now allowing a four-hour pause for people to get out,” he said. “So people say ‘oh, wow, big of them.’ Ok, but it is a war that the other side started!”
“It’s so interesting. When they fire at Israel, it’s a war. When Israel fires back, it’s a war crime,” he added. “Little crazy.”
WATCH — Jake Sullivan: 9 Americans Still Missing After Hamas Terror Attack:
He contrasted Hamas’ practices with Israel’s attempts to minimize casualties by pausing military actions to allow civilians to evacuate, questioning whether or not the terror group would undertake similar humanitarian actions.
“Also, would Hamas do that? Would they give four-hour pauses?” he asked. “No, no pausing.”
Maher then highlighted the response of the Israeli government to controversial statements made by its own officials, referencing an instance where a minister who mentioned using a nuclear weapon against Gaza was removed from the Cabinet.
In contrast, he argued, such accountability is unlikely to be seen from Hamas.
“And then Israel’s heritage minister was asked in an interview about using a nuke on Gaza. And he said ‘that’s one of the possibilities.’ He was fired, not allowed in the Cabinet meeting anymore, disavowed by the Prime Minister,” he said.
“Would that happen in reverse? So enough with the moral equivalencies, please,” he added.
WATCH — Netanyahu: Hamas Taking Babies Hostage Is “Savagery of the Highest Order”:
He also claimed media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war “couldn’t be more pro-Hamas than it is now.”
Despite Obama’s remarks about Israeli “occupation,” Gaza has not been “occupied” by Israel since 2005, when Israel withdrew all of its soldiers and civilians in a “disengagement” that aimed to reduce violence in the region.
In response, Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel and started several wars.
Though last month, in the wake of the October 7 massacre which saw Hamas perpetrate the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history, Obama said that Israel must “dismantle” Hamas; he has since spent the last several weeks backtracking in the face of anti-Israel and antisemitic activism emanating from the “progressive” left.
Responding to Obama’s comments, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued a blistering response, accusing the former president of being “complicit” in terror and war.
In addition, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) head Morton Klein called Obama a “monstrous and dangerous Jew-hater and Israel-hater who must be condemned, delegitimized, and removed from polite society.”
WATCH — Maher: Media “Couldn’t Be More Pro-Hamas than It Is Now”:
The October 7 attack saw Hamas terrorists gun down hundreds of young participants at an outdoor music festival while others hunted Jewish men, women, and children in local towns, who were then subjected to torture, rape, execution, immolation, and kidnapping.
The onslaught resulted in more than 1,200 dead inside the Jewish state, over 5,300 more wounded, and at least 241 hostages of all ages taken.
The vast majority of the victims are civilians and include dozens of American citizens.
Last month, Maher argued that anti-Israel and pro-Hamas sentiment is a majority view on elite college campuses, describing them as “the mouth of the river from which most of this nonsense flows.”
“And they’re very influential and those are the people who graduate and become the assholes in society,” he said.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
The whole world experienced the attacks of September 11, 2001, in real time. Videos, photos, and audio captured the horror inflicted by Islamic jihadists and the heroism displayed by ordinary Americans.
In our effort to never forget, Breitbart News offers you this visual and audial remembrance of that fateful day when the world changed forever.
We will always remember.
***
From the time of its opening in 1973 to that fatal day in September 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center dominated the skyline of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District, as seen in this photo taken on September 5, 2001, just six days before the Towers fell:
(Jamie Squire/Allsport/Getty Images)
Designed by Detroit architect Minoru Yamasaki, the Twin Towers were famously disparaged by New York Times’ architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who offered this eerie and unintentionally prescient prediction in 1966: “The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.”
Those words were long forgotten on that bright September morning before death rained down from cloudless skies.
A view from the Hudson River of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District, including the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. (Getty Images)
Betty Ong, the flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11, was the first person to notify authorities about the Islamic hijackers.
The audio of Ong’s call to the American Airlines emergency number was included in this audio/video montage released by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2018 to commemorate the 17th anniversary of 9/11:
The following video captured the moment of impact when Islamic hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower (1 WTC) at 8:46 a.m.
The first images of the burning North Tower quickly flashed across television sets.
This video shows the first five minutes of cable news coverage:
Four minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Christopher Hanley, 35, called 911 from the 106thfloor of the North Tower, where he was attending a conference at the restaurant Windows on the World that morning.
This is the audio of his 911 call:
The whole world watched in stunned horror as a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center (2 WTC) at 9:03 a.m.
The second plane removed any doubt that this was a terror attack, not a pilot error, and America was indeed at war.
This video shows the ABC News coverage the moment the second plane struck:
United Airlines Flight 175 flew low over Manhattan on a direct path for the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/ William Kratzke)
Islamic hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center (2 WTC) at 9:03 a.m. (AP Photo/Carmen Taylor/File)
A fireball exploded from the South Tower. (AP Photo/Carmen Taylor)
Smoke billowed from the North Tower of the World Trade Center and flames and debris exploded from the South Tower. (AP Photo/Chao Soi Cheong)
(AP Photo/Todd Hollis)
(AP Photo/ABC via APTN)
Plumes of smoke poured from the World Trade Center buildings. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
President George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.
He was informed about the attacks when his chief of staff, Andy Card, whispered in his ear: “A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack.”
President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andy Card whispered in his ear: “A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack.” Bush was visiting Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, that morning. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)
(Fabina Sbina/ Hugh Zareasky/Getty Images)
(Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Debris fell from the burning Twin Towers. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Smoke poured from the World Trade Center after both planes strike. (Robert Giroux/Getty Images)
People watched the burning towers from the street below. (Getty Images)
People hang out of broken windows of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Richard Pecorella has spent years searching for an image he says will bring him peace: a photograph that proves his fiancee, whom he believes could be in this photo, jumped to her death from the burning World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
A man leaps to his death from a fire and smoke filled Tower One of the World Trade Center. (Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images)
A person jumps from smoke and flames at the World Trade Center. (Robert Giroux/Getty Images)
People in front of New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral react with horror as they look down Fifth Ave towards the World Trade Center towers. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)
A man jumps from the North Tower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The controversy surrounding the publication of the image below of a man falling from the North Tower, and the subsequent quest to identify the man depicted in this photo, inspired a 2006 documentary called 9/11: The Falling Man. You can watch it here.
A person falls headfirst from the North Tower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A woman cries watching the World Trade Center go up in flames. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
At 9:37 a.m., the Islamic hijackers on board American Airlines Flight 77 crashed it into the Pentagon.
A helicopter flies over the Pentagon crash site. (AP Photo/Heesoon Yim)
A helicopter flies over the burning Pentagon. The Washington Monument can be seen at right, through the smoke. The White House roof is visible in the trees of Washington at left. (AP Photo/Tom Horan)
Vehicles are seen traveling on Interstate 395, leaving Washington, in front of the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Tom Horan)
Rescue workers look over damage at the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Kamneko Pajic)
At 9:45am, the FAA ordered the United States airspace shut down. No civilian flight was allowed to take off and all aircraft in the air were ordered to land at the nearest airport. In this photo a screen at the American Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport shows that all flights have been canceled as the airport is shutdown. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
A board at the Los Angeles Airport announced the closing of the airport. (GERARD BURKHART/AFP/Getty Images)
The South Tower of the World Trade Center began to collapse at 9:58 a.m.
The South Tower of the World Trade Center began to collapse at 9:58 a.m. (AP Photo/Gulnara Samoilova)
The Millenium Hilton hotel is seen in the foreground of this photo showing the South Tower collapsing. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
The South Tower collapses. (AP Photo/Jim Collins)
(Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images)
(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The South Tower collapses. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
People flee the falling South Tower. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
At 10:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Were it not for the heroism of the passengers who stormed the cockpit, the Islamic hijackers would have crashed the plane into either the United States Capitol dome or the White House.
Officials examine the crater at the crash site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (DAVID MAXWELL/AFP/Getty Images)
At 10:28 a.m., the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
This photo of the North Tower of the World Trade Center shows the building 30 seconds before its collapse at 10:28 a.m. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
People run from the collapse of one of the Twin Towers. (AP Photo/FILE/Suzanne Plunkett)
This is a view of the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn after the World Trade Center towers collapsed. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Smoke rises from the New York skyline. (JOHN MOTTERN/AFP/Getty Images)
(AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)
(Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Flags flew at half-staff at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, as a large cloud of smoke billowed from the fire at the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer)
Thick smoke billowed into the sky from the area behind the Statue of Liberty where the World Trade Center towers stood. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer)
The Statue of Liberty guarded the harbor as smoke engulfed lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson)
The remains of the World Trade Center stands amid the debris. (AP Photo/Alexandre Fuchs)
People run from the debris of the collapsed towers. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)
Pedestrians on Beekman St. flee the area of the collapsed World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta,FILE)
Survivors make their way through smoke, dust and debris on Fulton St., about a block from the collapsed towers. (AP Photo/Gulnara Samoilova,FILE)
Marcy Borders covered in dust as she takes refuge in an office building after one of the World Trade Center towers collapsed in New York. Borders was caught outside on the street as the cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the area. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
A police officer helps a woman to a bus after she fled the area near the World Trade Center towers. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
People flee the collapsing World Trade Center. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Dust swirls around south Manhattan moments after a tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Police escort a civilian from the scene. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
People walk in the street in the area where the World Trade Center buildings collapsed. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
People evacuate the area around the World Trade Center. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
(Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images)
A car sits on its side amid rubble at the World Trade Center. (Ron Agam/Getty Images)
Cars are covered in rubble after the collapse of one of towers. (DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images)
The debris and wreckage. (Getty Images)
A man walks through the rubble. (DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images)
Edward Fine covering his mouth as he walks through the debris after the collapse of one of the World Trade Center Towers. Fine was on the 78th floor of 1 World Trade Center when it was hit. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
A man helps evacuate a woman through rubble and debris. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
An unidentified New York City firefighter walks away from Ground Zero after the collapse of the Twin Towers. (Anthony Correia/Getty Images)
People cover their faces as they move across the Brooklyn Bridge out of the smoke and dust in Manhattan. (AP Photo/Daniel Shanken)
People flee lower Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. (AP Photo/Daniel Shanken)
(AP Photo/Daniel Shanken)
Pedestrians crossing the Brooklyn Bridge as they flee Manhattan after the collapse of the South Tower. (DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images)
Traffic in Washington, DC, gets gridlocked, as U.S. government workers are released and the city is shutdown following the attacks. (TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images)
President Bush watches television as he talks on the phone with New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki aboard Air Force One. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)
President Bush talks with Chief of Staff Andrew Card aboard Air Force One during a flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)
An F-16 fighter flies just off the wing of Air Force One on a flight back to Washington, DC. (DOUG MILLS/AFP/Getty Images)
A trader outside the London Stock Exchange reads the evening paper with “Terror war on USA” on the front page. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)
Newspaper vendor Carlos Mercado sells the “Extra” edition of the Chicago Sun-Times. (SCOTT OLSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Deputy U.S. marshal Dominic Guadagnoli helps a women after she was injured in the attack on the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Gulnara Samoilova)
A shell of what was once part of the facade of one of the Twin Towers rises above the rubble that remains after both towers collapsed. (AP Photo/Shawn Baldwin)
New York City firefighters rest during rescue operations at the World Trade Center. (Ron Agam/Getty Images)
New York City firefighters’ search and rescue efforts at the World Trade Center. (Ron Agam/Getty Images)
New York City firefighters take a rest from rescue operations. (Ron Agam/Getty Images)
An unidentified New York City firefighter walks away from Ground Zero after the collapse of the Twin Towers. (Anthony Correia/Getty Images)
Rescue workers make their way through the rubble of the World Trade Center. (DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images)
An exhausted police officer rests on a car covered in dust near the World Trade Center. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
Late afternoon, smoke rises in the distance before the Long Island and the Throgs Neck Bridge between the Bronx and Queens, NY, following the destruction of the Twin Towers. (MATT CAMPBELL/AFP/Getty Images)
Smoke billows from where the World Trade Center Twin Towers once stood, as evening descends on the city. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
Patricia Petrowitz falls to her knees in prayer in Seattle’s St. James Cathedral during a prayer service on September 11, 2001. The Cathedral was filled to standing room only. (Tim Matsui/Getty Images)
Kellog Metcalf closes his eyes during the prayer service in Seattle’s St. James Cathedral. (Tim Matsui/Getty Images)
From front left: Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., Senate Minority Leader, Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Senate Majority Leader, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Rep. Richard Gephardt, House Minority Leader, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and other Congressional members address the public on the evening of September 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Kenneth Lambert)
Democrats and Republicans stood shoulder to shoulder on the steps of the Capitol that evening in a show of national unity.
At the end of their remarks, they sang “God Bless America.”
President George W. Bush walks down the steps of Air Force One as he arrives at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. (DOUG MILLS/AFP/Getty Images)
(AP Photo/Doug Mills)
President Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office that evening.
“Today, our nation saw evil — the very worst of human nature,” he said. “And we responded with the best of America.”
As the nation prayed, the search for survivors began…
Volunteers donate blood at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, at a blood donation station set up to help victims of the World Trade Center attack. Sadly, the donations were largely unnecessary because there were so few survivors rescued from the collapsed towers. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)
In the days that followed, people returned to Ground Zero with photos of their loved ones, searching for any news of their whereabouts. In this September 13, 2001 photograph, a woman poses with a picture of a missing loved one who was last seen at the World Trade Center.(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
In this September 15, 2001, photograph, a woman poses with a picture of a missing loved one who was last seen at the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Charlie Krupa)
A woman is comforted as she holds a picture of a missing loved one who was last seen at the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
A woman looks at missing person posters of victims from the World Trade Center attacks. (AP Photo/Robert Spencer)
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani became America’s mayor during 9/11. In this photo, he consoles Anita Deblase, of New York, whose son, James Deblase, 44, was missing, at the site of the World Trade Center disaster. “He’s at the bottom of the rubble,” she said. James Deblase worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Military and fire personnel get set to unfurl a large American flag on the roof of the Pentagon on September 12, 2001. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Firefighters unfurl an American flag from the roof of the Pentagon on September 12, 2001. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
A makeshift altar, constructed for a worship service, overlooks the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 16, 2001, in Shanksville, PA. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
An American flag is posted in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 13, 2001. (AP Photo/Beth A. Keiser)
On September 14, 2001, President Bush visited the first responders and rescue workers at Ground Zero and delivered an impromptu speech that captured the sentiment of the country:
The massive clean-up efforts at Ground Zero spanned months…
Among the rubble, a cast iron cross was found rising out of the destruction at the World Trade Center. The cross fell intact from Tower One into nearby Building Six on September 11.
The cast iron cross found in the rubble at the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Pool)
On Thursday, Oct. 4, 2001, rescue and construction workers gathered around Father Brian Jordan, second from left, who blessed the cross of steel beams found amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center by a laborer two days after the collapse of the Twin Towers. (AP Photo/Pool, Kathy Willens)
One of the damaged connecting pedestrian walkways of the World Trade Center complex still stands at Ground Zero in New York on September 19, 2001. (AP Photo/Cameron Bloch)
A New York Fire Department Chief, firefighters from various municipalities, and other rescue workers take a break Thursday, September 13, 2001, from the rescue/recovery effort at the World Trade Center site. (Andrea Booher, FEMA via AP)
A worker examines a beam of tower one of the World Trade Center, on November 2, 2001, as the cleanup and recovery effort continues at ground zero in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)
In the weeks and months that followed, we buried our dead…
The coffin of New York Fire Department Chaplain Rev. Mychal Judge is carried from St. Francis of Assisi Church on September 15, 2001, following his funeral mass in New York City. Judge, who was a Franciscan friar, died administering last rites to a fallen fire fighter in the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. (Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
Firefighter Tony James cries while attending the funeral mass for New York Fire Department Chaplain Rev. Mychal Judge. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Firefighters carry the flag-covered casket of fellow fireman Lt. Dennis Mojica during a funeral mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on September 21, 2001, in New York City. Mojica, who was with Rescue Company 1, was one of the 343 firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attack. (Joe Raedle/Gettyimages)
Firefighters stand atop a fire engine with the flag draped casket of fellow fireman Lt. Dennis Mojica following his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (Joe Raedle/Gettyimages)
New York City firefighters stand at attention as the casket of FDNY Capt. Terence Hatton is placed on a fire engine outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral on October 4, 2001, in New York City. Hatton was one of the 343 New York firefighters killed in the line of duty on September 11, 2001. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A joint service honor guard marches through the colonnade at Arlington National Cemetery with a casket containing the unidentified remains of victims of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, following a funeral ceremony on September 12, 2002. Of the 184 who died in the Pentagon attack, 64 have been buried at Arlington. (MIKE THEILER/AFP via Getty Images)
In the years that followed, we sought justice…
Nearly two years after the attacks, the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.
His death penalty trial by military jury is set to start on January 11, 2021, at Camp Justice, Guantanamo Bay.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) handout photos of suspected al Qaeda commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were marked with the word “Located” after his arrest on March 1, 2003 in Pakistan. (FBI/Getty Images)
And finally, ten years after the attacks, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was brought to justice.
On May 2, 2011, President Barrack Obama announced to the nation that bin Laden was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs during a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
A large, jubilant crowd at the corner of Church and Vesey Streets, adjacent to Ground Zero, reacts to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011, in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)
A crowd in New York’s Times Square reacts to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)
And over the years, the country rebuilt, the memorials arose, and each year we remember…
Father Brian Jordan blesses the Ground Zero Cross at ceremony with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in attendance, on July 23, 2011, before the Cross was moved to its permanent home at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Visitors to the Flight 93 National Memorial pause at The Wall of Names, containing the names of the 40 passengers and crew who died in the crash of United Flight 93 following a memorial service in Shanksville, PA, on September 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
President Barack Obama delivered an address at the dedication ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York on May 15, 2014. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
The South reflecting pool is viewed at the Ground Zero memorial site during the dedication ceremony of the National September 11 Memorial Museum on May 15, 2014. The museum spans seven stories, mostly underground, and contains artifacts from the attack on the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001, that include the 80 ft. high tridents, the Ground Zero Cross, the destroyed remains of Company 21’s New York Fire Department Engine, as well as smaller items such as a letter that fell from a hijacked plane and posters of missing loved ones projected onto the wall of the museum. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
On May 15, 2014, a rose is placed on a name engraved along the South reflecting pool at the Ground Zero memorial site during the dedication ceremony. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A quote from Virgil fills a wall of the museum prior to the dedication ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial Museum on May 15, 2014. (John Munson-Pool/Getty Images)
On May 21, 2015, the National 9/11 Flag is displayed for the first time at the National September 11 Memorial Museum. The flag was recovered nearly destroyed from Ground Zero and was restored in “stitching ceremonies” held across the country. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
On October 29, 2014, One Word Trade Center as seen from the 9/11 Memorial grounds where the fallen towers once stood. (Diane Bondareff/Invision/AP Images)
On September 11, 2016, people visit the Pentagon’s 9/11 Memorial Park in Arlington, Virginia. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
On September 9, 2018, people attend the dedication stand around the 93-foot tall Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the tower contains 40 wind chimes representing the 40 people that perished in the crash of Flight 93. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
The Tower of Voices display at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2018, the day before thousands of victims’ relatives, survivors, rescuers, and others joined President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a commemoration ceremony on the 17th anniversary of 9/11. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Thousands of flags representing each of the 9/11 terrorist attack victims wave on a lawn overlooking the Pacific at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, on September 8, 2019, in a display that is now an annual tradition commemorating the fallen. (AP Photo/John Antczak)
People walk by a memorial to fallen firefighters near the World Trade Center Memorial in lower Manhattan on September 9, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
An exact replica of the wall of the compound that Osama bin Laden was hiding in is displayed at the new exhibition “Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden” at the 9/11 Memorial Museum on November 7, 2019, in New York City. The exhibition features declassified documents, testimony, and objects to tell the story of the decade long hunt and capture of Bin Laden. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A poster and picture used to identify Osama Bin Laden is displayed at the new exhibition “Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden at the 9/11 Memorial Museum” on November 7, 2019 in New York City. The exhibition uses both digital and physical displays to show visitors the complexity of the search and eventual raid on Bin Laden’s Pakistani compound that led to his death. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The Tribute in Light to commemorate the 18th anniversary of 9/11 is seen next to the One World Trade Center on September 10, 2019, in New York City. (Johannes EISELE / AFP/Getty Images)
Firefighters and police participate in the start of ceremonies at the National September 11 Memorial on September 11, 2019, in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Alexandra Hamatie, whose cousin Robert Horohoe was killed in the 9/11 attacks, pauses at the National September 11 Memorial during a morning commemoration ceremony on September 11, 2019, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
People gather at one of the pools at the National September 11 Memorial following a morning commemoration ceremony on September 11, 2019, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) take part in a moment of silence on September 11, 2019, on the Capitol Steps with members of the House of Representatives during an observance and campus wide moment of silence for the National Day of Service and Remembrance honoring victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and his wife Leah Esper, lay a wreath during a ceremony marking the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, on September 11, 2019, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump presents the Presidential Citizens Medal to Susan Rescorla, the wife of Richard Cyril Rescorla, during an East Room event at the White House on November 7, 2019. Richard Cyril Rescorla, the former director of security for Morgan Stanley, was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously for his implementation of evacuation plans that help to save thousands of lives during the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joins his Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America in a ceremony for the resumption of construction on the new Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center on August 3, 2020, in New York City. On September 11, 2001, St. Nicholas was the only other building besides the Twin Towers to be completely destroyed during the terrorist attack. Saint Nicholas Church, which began services in 1922, was named after Agios Nikolaos, the Patron Saint of Sailors. Before the Covid-19 outbreak halted all non-essential projects statewide for months, construction at the church was set to resume in the spring. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joins his Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America in a ceremony for the resumption of construction on the new Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center on August 3, 2020, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A piper plays in front of the boulder that marks the impact site of Flight 93 at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA, on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, as the nation prepares to mark the 19th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The 9/11 Tribute in Light shines above the lower Manhattan skyline on September 10, 2020, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Her (KAMALA HARRIS) more radical positions, such as support for the Obama administration’s Iran deal, prosecuting a journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s collection and sale of aborted babies’ body parts (while receiving campaign donations from them), anddefending Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, may indeed sit well with a great many leftists, but her actions as Attorney General of California may not. While in that position, Harris jailed hundreds on marijuana charges and authorized anti-prostitution sting operations which, according to SF Weekly, disproportionately targeted Latino men (a crucial Democrat demographic). In addition to this -- though she later admitted it was a mistake -- she prosecuted and jailed the parents of truant teens. She even refused to release the names of Catholic priests accused of sexually molesting children, abnegating law enforcement’s most basic and humane duty -- regardless of anyone’s opinion of the Catholic Church.
Muslim Democrats ‘Horrified’ by Plan to Halt Palestinian Immigration to U.S.
Celal Gunes/Anadolu/SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Muslim Democrats Andre Carson, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar say they are “horrified” by GOP plans that would halt Palestinian legal immigration to the United States.
This week, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and other House Republicans introduced legislation to ban the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from providing green cards, visas, refugee status, and parole to Palestinians.
Zinke’s legislation also would revoke visas for Palestinians in the United States, thus making them eligible for deportation.
“This legislation keeps America safe,” Zinke said of the legislation. “I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States.”
In response, Carson, Tlaib, and Omar issued a joint statement where they called Zinke’s legislation “xenophobic, punitive, and [an] unconstitutional measure.”
“As the three Muslim Members of Congress, we are horrified by Rep. Ryan Zinke’s recently introduced bill to pause all visas, refugee status, and granting of asylum for individuals holding a passport issued by the Palestinian Authority indefinitely — and to revoke others,” they said:
Let’s be clear: using the full power of the state to target and persecute a particular ethnic group or nationality is fascism and pure bigotry. This legislation—by a former cabinet official no less—directly violates the U.S. Constitution, and would illegally destroy the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian immigrants who live in and contribute to American society. Though intended to target Muslims, this bill will also hurt Palestinian Christians, who will be targeted by these provisions. History will harshly judge this xenophobic, punitive, and unconstitutional measure. [Emphasis added]
…
We call on the leadership of both parties to vocally and specifically condemn these comments and legislation, to make clear that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate has no place in our politics, and to name it when it happens. [Emphasis added]
Despite claims that Zinke’s legislation is “unconstitutional,” the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Hawaii that the president has extraordinarily broad discretion under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) to exclude aliens when he believes doing so is in the nation’s interests.
Since Zinke introduced the legislation, House and Senate Democrats have sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to provide Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to Palestinians in the United States — a policy that the far-left Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is currently lobbying for.
Giving TPS and DED to Palestinians would ensure they cannot be deported from the United States.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Exclusive – World-Renowned Expert on Urban Combat: Hamas ‘Creating’ Civilian Deaths to Stir World Against IDF
Despite the “nightmare” of tunnel warfare, the mission being carried out by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appears “very successful,” though Israel doesn’t have unlimited time, according to retired United States Army Major and urban warfare expert John Spencer, who deemed Hamas an “existential threat” whose strategy is to “create their own civilians’ deaths and get the world to react,” in order to prevent the IDF from eliminating their military capabilities — “and it is working.”
He also accused those protesting Israel’s supposedly “disproportionate” response to Hamas of having “no understanding of war, the laws of war or how the world works,” and that the terror group would “slaughter” the protesters, if given the opportunity, “for not being radical Islamic followers.”
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, retired U.S. Army Major John Spencer, a world-renowned expert on urban combat who serves as chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, delved into the various warfare tactics at hand during the current Middle East conflict.
“Of course, very costly,” he said. “But it’s not unlike any other urban battle I’ve seen.”
While Gaza is a “very highly dense place,” he noted, “cities like Baghdad, Mosul, and Raqqa are more dense,” though that “doesn’t mean it’s not any harder to operate in it.”
“From the ground perspective, as somebody who teaches this to armies around the world, I think they have been very deliberate in their approach to go through the steps that would be required to accomplish the mission they have stated, whereas a lot of militaries aren’t as clear in their objectives,” he said.
Citing a Vietnam-war saying, “you have to destroy the city to save it,” Spencer said the fact is unfortunate, “but it’s the reality of urban fighting.”
The saying conveys that there is a defender inside the city, which, in order to clear out “you basically destroy the city.”
“And there’s nothing I’m seeing now that changes that paradigm,” he added.
Deeming the IDF’s battle against Hamas “enemy–centric,” in that the mission to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities is “very clear,” the retired Army officer explained that the task cannot be done [entirely] from the air, though an air campaign can be used “to attrit rocket sites, command-and-control centers, the ability to communicate, and the ability to move — even underground.”
“As far as I can tell,” he assessed, the mission being carried out by the IDF appears “very successful.”
“Now they’ve moved forward methodically surrounding the city; the step that we call ‘isolate’ the city,” he explained, with reports indicating that the northern part of Gaza is now completely cut off.
“And I’m sure that means both on the surface and underground, because isolating the surface doesn’t mean you’ve isolated the underground,” he added.
But Israel’s current conflict with the terrorist Hamas group is actually the Jewish state’s fight against an “existential threat” that’s been “allowed through U.S. encouragement” to fester, and October 7 was a result of that.
“Hamas has in their charter the complete destruction of Israel and the slaughter of the Jewish people, and it tried that on October 7 on as many as they could,” he added.
UNDERGROUND WARFARE
Despite the difficulty in fighting Hamas, Israel is not facing “mission impossible,” Spencer asserted.
IDF finds Hamas tunnel (IDF)
Having “traveled the world, and been in tunnels all around the world,” as well as having “studied the way militaries approach, or don’t approach, underground warfare,” he concluded that the IDF are “leaders of the world in developing technologies, tactics and trained personnel for this specific mission.”
“They have one of the biggest underground units, the Yahalom, which is a special forces engineering unit.”
They also have modern day “tunnel rats,” dog units, and a “complete major organization that does experimentation and research to develop things,” he noted.
Spencer highlighted the challenge of underground warfare, where “nothing that any military developed for the surface of the Earth for fighting works.”
You can’t see down underground without special night vision because there’s no ambient light, which is what most of most night vision goggles use. You can’t navigate down there because there’s no satellite transmission. You can’t communicate because there’s no satellite or line of sight radio frequency down there that will work. Many places down there you can’t breathe. Many of your munitions can’t fire down there because the concussion will blow your eardrums and give you basically a concussion, without special equipment.
In addition, he explained, such depths can’t be reached with aerial technologies.
“Hamas dug deeper and deeper because of the fact that bunker buster bombs can go about 100 feet underground,” he said, “and the IDF has already found some Hamas tunnels 200 feet underground, below where any bunker buster can get to [or] any munition.”
The Israeli military believes, he noted, that there are likely tunnels even “300 feet” beneath the surface.
While the IDF “has some of the greatest equipment and little robots they can send down, drones that bounce off walls, remote control cars, and dogs,” with 300 miles of such tunnels, “you’ll quickly run out of that capability.”
“And sending somebody into a tunnel is the last resort, so you always seek a way not to go into a tunnel,” he explained.
However, he noted, the IDF has some personnel that can, including “everything from special forces throughout Sayeret Matkal, to the special soldiers that have been trained for it.”
Another issue is the presence of captives in such tunnels.
“We’re 99 percent sure all hostages, or a majority of them, are underground. So even some of the historical methods in which militaries used to deal with tunnels — whether it’s to explode them or neutralize them by putting tear gas in them or flooding them or something similar, you won’t initially be able to do because you have to map and navigate the tunnel to see if there are hostages down there,” he said.
GAZA, PALESTINE – 07/19/2023: A fighter from Izz al-Din al-Qassam stands in front of a tunnel during an exhibition of weapons, missiles and heavy equipment for the military wing of Hamas in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, during the commemoration of the 2014 war that lasted 51 days between Gaza and Israel. (Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Calling such a scenario a “really wicked problem” and a “nightmare to fight in,” Spencer explained why previously common methods are not feasible under current conditions:
Even the basic military, what we teach every soldier in every military in the world, is to fire and move. In a tunnel there’s no fire and move. There’s just fire down the tunnel and maybe fire back at you. You can’t flank them. You can’t move around them. You can’t surprise them. So it’s really a nightmare of a place to have to go fight or have to even enter. You can’t even breathe down there without special breathing equipment, depending on the depth that it goes and the ventilation that it has.
However, he insisted, the presence of hostages underground is not an impossible problem to solve, rather it merely means that forces must move slower and the mission will take more time.
“Israel developed the world’s first hostage rescue teams that the rest of us have now copied. So they have hostage rescue teams and many special forces units that all have underground training,” he said. “They can put a drone into a tunnel beforehand to see if there’s a hostage down there before they do something to it.”
He expressed his belief that for the IDF to accomplish its objectives, it would need several months, “based on other examples.”
“Although the hostages make this situation very unique — there’s no historical precedent for that at this scale — I would say it will take months.”
“I don’t think years, just months,” he said, “but definitely not days, and unlikely weeks.”
However, he maintained, the real question is how much time they have, and not how much time it will take.
“No military gets unlimited time, and Israel doesn’t have unlimited time,” he said. “So that means you’re going to have to make a lot of decisions about risk, and take risks and make hard military decisions.”
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
With many concerned for civilian casualties, Spencer insisted that “all the laws of war that were created — really, strengthened — after World War Two, have gotten a lot stronger.”
“No more carpet bombing of cities like the U.S. and every other country involved in WWII were trying… whether it’s the London Blitz or Dresden or what the U.S. did to Tokyo,” he stated. “The idea that you can bomb your enemy to your goals has really happened very few times in the history of wars and worked.”
In addition, he stated, such a strategy “definitely wouldn’t accomplish the Israeli mission of destroying military infrastructure and capability.”
“You have to use joint power: air, land, sea, and cyber,” he explained, “but you have to get in there and clear, destroy tunnels, destroy Hamas members, and destroy Hamas rockets.”
“So from a military analyst perspective I think they’re doing pretty good,” he added.
Regarding civilian casualty numbers, Spencer noted that they are “not unlike other battles” in recent history.
“In the Battle of Mosul, there were 10,000 civilian casualties in a city of 1.4 million civilians where ISIS kept the civilians there for a long time before they could start to evacuate,” he said. “But by sheer numbers, they evacuated 80 percent of the urban areas. And while that’s still hundreds of thousands of people, militaries are never able to empty all of the cities, it just never happened.”
“Even in WWII in the Battle of Aachen, where we cleared the city four times, there were still hundreds of civilians in the city and lots of civilian casualties,” he added.
He also pointed to when U.S. forces “surrounded Fallujah, and spent six months — that Israel doesn’t have — to empty 90 percent of the civilians there,” yet there were still many casualties.
“So there are a lot of similarities,” he noted.
According to Spencer, when an enemy chooses to defend from urban terrain and use human shields, the results we see are “not abnormal.”
“Really, the civilian casualties are 90 percent of the casualties of modern war, not military,” he explained, “because modern war fights are happening in cities, not fights for cities, which is really ancient, fighting for cities.”
Today, in contrast, militaries fight in cities for a variety of reasons, he noted. For example, Hamas militants “can gain a large amount of power [by fighting] in urban environments.”
“They take away the attacker’s military superiority, just to bring the fighting close and have a slugfest,” he said. “So that means more and more warfare.”
“But out of the last 20 years, 90 percent of the casualties of war have been civilians,” he added.
Spencer also explained that “everybody” misunderstands the notion of proportionality.
“We should not be comparing the amount of Palestinian civilian deaths to the amount of Israeli civilians killed on October 7 — 1,400 versus supposedly 10,000 (I’m highly doubtful that’s an accurate number, but it doesn’t matter),” he said. “That’s not the way war works. That’s not even close to the definition of proportionality — it has nothing to do with it.”
“Every civilian death is, of course, a loss, but people that want the end of the conflict because of the fact that it’s not ‘proportional’ to what happened on October 7, have no understanding of war, the laws of war or how the world works,” he added.
Reflecting on his having taught strategy at West Point for years, Spencer determined that Hamas’ strategy is to “create their own civilians’ deaths and get the world to react,” in order to prevent the IDF from eliminating their military capabilities, — “and it is working.”
“Despite the fact that I can tell every news agency in the world that what we’re seeing in Gaza is not unlike what we’ve seen in battles against ISIS in Mosul, Raqqa, Syria, and Marawi — nobody cares,” he said. “They’re still saying, ‘no, no, stop.’”
“That’s the Hamas strategy, to get so many civilians killed that the IDF will have to stop, and Hamas gets to live to fight another day,” he added.
Another Hamas strategy he indicated is that of buying time.
“Most defenders in history lose, but one of the goals can be just to buy time,” he said. “So Hamas is going to use guerrilla warfare, use complex urban terrain and snipers, ambushes, IEDs, and pop out of tunnels, just to slow the IDF down, so that they can’t achieve their goal quickly.”
“The IDF needs time — and Hamas’ strategy is to take that time away from them, by putting all these pressures, getting every Palestinian, every Muslim of the world, to force international leadership to try to encourage the IDF to stop,” he added.
In light of the above, Israel should “absolutely” be given the time and space to achieve its goals.
To even destroy the tunnels, you’ve gotta clear the tunnel. You’ve gotta make sure there’s no military equipment, hostages, or fighters, in them. Then they have to destroy the tunnels, and that would be historic because even some of the ways militaries have destroyed tunnels aren’t an option to fully destroy 300 miles of tunnels. One of the only options is to flood them with seawater — which would necessitate time.
And while the IDF needs to be given the time, he acknowledged, it is crucial to “not allow Hamas’ strategy of buying time to succeed.”
DEMONSTRATIONS
On protesters who have come out in large numbers against Israel’s response, Spencer suggested “they have no clue of what war looks like,” despite possibly being well-intentioned.
“War happens in cities, and though it may appear like the IDF is indiscriminately bombing the cities of Gaza, that’s not the case and I have seen nothing that shows that,” he said. “In fact, this looks very similar to most U.S.-backed operations.”
“It’s what happens when an enemy embeds itself in a civilian population and the civilians are in an urban area,” he added. “Every strike is a targeted military target, but this is what war looks like.”
Addressing the “double standards” of those who protest Israel’s fight against Hamas while ignoring significantly controversial events such as the recent move by Pakistan to expel 1.7 million Afghan refugees, Spencer explained that the IDF, for various reasons, is “held to a standard above and beyond any other standard that we hold any other military in the world.”
“It’s scrutinized and held to a standard that isn’t actually within the laws of war,” he said. “It fights in that limelight, at a standard that nobody else is held to.”
However, he noted, Hamas would “slaughter” those protesters “for not being radical Islamic followers.”
“They would slaughter them — do horrific things — just like they slaughtered the people on October 7.,” he added.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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