We are still living through terrible days. They have not ended. Twenty-five years have passed since the terror attacks in the United States. Three years have passed since the Oct. 7 massacre in the communities near the Gaza Strip. And as the years go by, the forces of darkness are winning, aided by far too many of those considered enlightened.
Osama bin Laden, Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei would have reason to be pleased. Their work is being carried out not only by the terrorists who continue in their footsteps. It is also being done by a growing band of useful idiots who advance the ideology of those who openly declare that their goal is to defeat the free world.
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Osama bin Laden, Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei would have reason to be pleased
(Photo: Brook Mitchell / Getty Images)
This is not Israel’s struggle alone. It should have been the struggle of the Muslim world — yes, the Muslim world in particular — and of the free world. That is because Muslims are the primary victims of jihad, the same jihad that attacked the United States 25 years ago and Israel three years ago. But that did not happen. The Muslim Brotherhood, from which most jihadist movements emerged, is persecuted in most Arab countries, which understand the danger, while its influence in the West continues to grow.
And jihad continues to spread death. The main hotspots are in Africa, particularly in the Sahel — Mali, Chad, Nigeria and elsewhere. In all, over the past quarter-century, 320,405 people have been murdered in Islamic terrorist attacks. That represents only a small fraction of jihad’s victims. Jihadist branches are spreading death in wars that have raged for years in Sudan, Somalia, Libya and other parts of the world. Shiite jihad is wreaking havoc in Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and among the Palestinians. Millions have been killed. Millions more have become refugees.
Most of these centers of violence have nothing to do with the United States or Israel. But this is where the paradox reveals itself in all its wretchedness. The greater the destruction wrought by jihad, the more Hamas declares its desire to destroy Jews and Christians and conquer the world, the more hatred of the United States and Israel grows. There are no demonstrations over the millions of dead and displaced. No one seems troubled by the fact that nearly 17 million people in Yemen suffer from malnutrition, in part, and perhaps primarily, because of Iran’s involvement and its supply of weapons to the Houthis. It is doubtful that even a single demonstration was held in the West over the massacre in El Fasher, Sudan, which claimed the lives of some 60,000 people. No Jews, no news.
The more Hamas declares its desire to destroy Jews and Christians and conquer the world, the more hatred of the United States and Israel grows
According to Brown University’s Costs of War research, about 4.5 million people have been killed since 2001, most of them in Muslim countries. Of those, even if we accept Hamas’ figures, about 75,000 were killed in Gaza. That amounts to about 1.6% of the total.
For the moment, set aside the fact that the breakdown of fatalities, according to Hamas’ own figures, shows that most of those killed are men of fighting age. Set aside the fact that many of those included on the list died of natural causes. Set aside the fact that many were killed by missiles and rockets fired by terrorist organizations that landed inside the Gaza Strip itself. And set aside the fact that Hamas, and Hamas alone, bears full responsibility for every person killed in this war after launching the Oct. 7 massacre. Despite all these facts, roughly 98% of the demonstrations, by a crude estimate, are directed against Israel and the United States.
The madness has not remained on the fringes. British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said this week in a fiery speech: “Millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: We hear you. You were right.”
Ed Miliband
(Photo: Oli SCARFF / AFP)
He also expressed support for Palestine Action’s right to exist, even though Britain itself has designated it a terrorist organization. Just short of converting to Islam himself, he was all smiles in a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. A representative of a regime that murders people en masse does not bother him. Israel does. Nor do the millions of dead and displaced interest Miliband or the other self-styled enlightened people — progressives on the left and members of the far right who have fallen in love with jihadist organizations.
This hatred of Israel and the West from within the West itself is the great distortion. So yes, bin Laden and Sinwar would have reason to smile. Their murderous ideology is winning.
Most countries in what was supposed to be the free world are now caught between two contradictory impulses. In nearly all these countries, troubling and sometimes horrifying reports have been published in recent years about the Muslim Brotherhood’s penetration of more and more institutions. Brotherhood activists do not look threatening. Quite the opposite. Many of them walk around in tailored suits.
“Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion,” the BBC reported on the French government’s report in May 2025. Britain’s Jenkins report, which addressed the same issue, pointed to the Brotherhood’s support for Hamas and terrorism, based on a belief that “western society is inherently hostile to Muslim faith and interests and that Muslims must respond by maintaining their distance and autonomy.”
There are more and more such reports. The result is a paradox. On the one hand, detailed reports point to the growing danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other, the Brotherhood’s power continues to increase.
The paradox is deepened by the fact that the two Muslim Brotherhood states, Turkey and Qatar, are expanding their influence in the West. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a declared antisemite who presides over a repressive regime in Turkey that arrests journalists and members of the LGBTQ community, is a favorite of the U.S. president, even though various reports have pointed to links between Erdogan and al-Qaida. “For a decade,” one report stated, “Erdogan shielded an al-Qaida network.”
Qatar, meanwhile, is the largest foreign funder of U.S. campuses. How can Qatar’s destructive influence be fought when Trump accepted the gift of a $400 million presidential plane from the country that is the world’s largest producer of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and, in practice, anti-American propaganda?
Iranian ideology views the United States as the Great Satan and Israel as the Little Satan. This is the ideology taking over American campuses through their syllabuses.
On hatred of America, according to a recently published study, “Anti-Western Intellectualism in Higher Education,” 91.73% of American students surveyed “believed that people expressing patriotic or pro-Western views were judged negatively on campus.”
The ranks of those who hate the West are long
(Photo: AFP)
On Israel, another study of courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict found that “staunchly anti-Zionist texts—those that question the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state—are commonly assigned.” This is not surprising. Most faculty associations in these fields have voted in recent years to support the BDS campaign. Forget about an education that broadens knowledge. We are living in an era in which campuses have become incubators for anti-Western propaganda.
Nothing stays on campus. It makes its way into politics. As early as Oct. 13, less than a week after the massacre, Zohran Mamdani applied the word “genocide” to Israel. Abdul El-Sayed, recently chosen as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, is a clear-cut Islamist who recently refused to condemn the mass killings carried out by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. He condemned the United States instead.
The list goes on. The ranks of those who hate the West are long. They receive support from Tucker Carlson on the right and Hasan Piker on the left. Piker, an online influencer, is a figure who accompanies the new generation of politicians in the mold of El-Sayed. He himself justified the terror attacks in the United States. Bin Laden has yet another reason to smile. He wanted to promote hatred of the West. He succeeded.
Twenty-five years after the terror attacks in the United States and three years after the Oct. 7 massacre, the free world is bowing to the ideology of jihad. It is unclear whether the West will come to its senses. But it must do so before it is too late.