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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/Zestyclose_Use_4842 on 2023-11-16 15:07:53.
Osama bin Laden 'Letter to America' Goes Viral on TikTok , Is Deleted by Guardian
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed,” wrote a 25-year-old user who posted the letter in full.
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.
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.
While some of bin Laden’s judgments would not have been out of place in mainstream American politics of the era — he takes the U.S. to task for not signing the Kyoto Protocol treaty on restricting emission of greenhouse gases, for example — the letter is also interspersed with antisemitic tropes and hate speech.
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.” As for what al-Qaeda wanted, bin Laden said that the U.S. had to renounce its culture of “hypocrisy” and become an Islamic nation.
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