On April 9, 2016 Consortium News published an article, republished last September 12, “Why Americans Are Never Told Why,” that sought to explain why the historical context surrounding terrorist attacks on the West is suppressed to whitewash any responsibility Western governments have for putting their populations in danger.
Instead Western leaders prefer their people believe the illusion that totally irrational actors attack them because “they hate their freedoms” and not because of an aggressive foreign policy towards the Middle East.
Making clear that these attacks against civilians were never justified, the article contained links to statements from perpetrators spelling out why they attacked the West, including a “Letter to the American People” from Osama bin Laden, which explained in detail why al Qaeda struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
The link in the article pointed to the letter’s publication by The Guardian on Nov. 24, 2002. That document has now been removed by The Guardian. It did so last Wednesday, Nov. 15, after 21 years. The newspaper gave this explanation:
“The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualised it.
The clips crossed over to X, formerly Twitter, in a supercut tweeted by the writer Yashar Ali, who wrote that “thousands” of the videos had proliferated across TikTok. Ali’s tweet itself racked up more than 11,000 retweets and 23.8m views.
‘The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again,’ wrote Ali.
In a statement on Thursday, the White House said: ‘There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history.’”
Even after linking to The Guardian article that supposedly gave the letter the “context” The Guardian says was missing, it still did not publish bin Laden’s historical document. With the stated aim of providing “context,” The Guardian instead has destroyed the context that puts Western foreign policy towards the Middle East in a very grim light.
It is difficult not to conclude that that was The Guardian‘s and TikTok’s motives: to succumb to Western government’s pressure to run interference for the West and Israel to keep Westerners ignorant about what their governments have been up to in the Middle East that has caused so much havoc. It also spotlights the disastrous consequences of Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinians.
Hellbound and Down 