Osama bin Laden (left) before his assassination with his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri (agencies)
Suddenly, and without prelude, former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden came back to the forefront of social media with an old message he sent more than twenty years ago to the American people.
The irony is that the return came through American activists, not Arabs, who succeeded in a few days in turning the "first enemy" of the United States, at some point, into the leader of the "trend" on the "X" platform.
How did that return happen? What does it have to do with the Gaza war? And how to read this emerging change in the mood of the younger generations in the United States?
Bin Laden's two messages to the American people:
American activists discovered that bin Laden had written an old letter to the "American people" that had been forgotten, but the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip reminded it of it.
The first was written by bin Laden in November 2002, in response to articles published by a group of American writers questioning the reasons why Muslims hate the United States, which led a group of them to carry out the famous September 11 attack.
The second was written in 2009, under former President Barack Obama, in which he talked about the feasibility of the war in Afghanistan and its economic and moral cost, as it continued for years, with no signs of victory.
The first message is important here, because it is the one in which bin Laden elaborated on Palestine, as he considered it the first reason for the hostility of the United States, considering it the reason for the continued crimes of the Zionist occupation of murder, displacement and destruction, stressing that Washington's support for these crimes does not need a lengthy explanation to prove it.
He also vowed revenge for the Palestinian people, saying: "The blood shed from Palestine must be avenged on an equal footing. You should know that Palestinians will not cry alone; their women will not be widowed alone. Their children will not be orphaned alone."
This letter was published by the British newspaper "The Guardian", in its entirety, in 2002, before being deleted again in the last hours, fearing the American reaction.
A New American Generation Feels in Crisis:
It is not yet possible to say for sure how American activists began to find bin Laden's message and breathe new life into it, but it seems that the tip of the thread began with Lynette Adkins, an American activist in support of the Palestinian right, and well-known in the TikTok community. "I want everyone to stop what they are doing now and go read it (bin Laden's message). It's literally two pages. Go read a letter to America."
Then it is synonymous in meaningful statements:
"And please come back here and tell me what you think; I feel like I'm going through an existential crisis right now, and a lot of people are going through it, so I just need someone else to feel this."
Another activist, Ryrides, wrote: "We lied all our lives, remember seeing people chanting when Osama was found and killed? I was a child at the time, and it confused me. It still puzzles me today. The world deserves better than what this country (meaning America) has done for them. Change has to happen."
Jack Shields says, "We were told that he (bin Laden) hates us because of our freedom, but if you read his words already, he hates us because of the evil American money they are fighting for in Israel."
Lucas Gage, a former U.S. Marine who previously fought in Iraq, believing he was on a mission to save the Iraqi people, caught my eye:
"Even though the war is over, I'm not done fighting, our real enemies aren't in foreign land, they're here in Washington."
Lucas took advantage of bin Laden's message to rebroadcast it translated to his followers on X, where the video had achieved 1.7 million impressions at this writing.
These are just examples, of millions of comments, that can't be spotted in an article like this, of course, but they carry important connotations that cannot be bypassed.
How to read bin Laden's sudden appearance?
If it is very difficult to make final judgments on the phenomenon, this does not prevent one from trying to seek a preliminary explanation of it.
It seems that the horrific Zionist massacres in the Gaza Strip - especially against women and children - have left a wound in the public conscience of the American people, especially the segment of young people active on social media, and those familiar with those images that document these crimes periodically, which led to the undermining of certainty in what was considered one of the constants in the past, foremost of which is the absolute American support for Israel.
Hence bin Laden's message, which was concerned with explaining and explaining the reasons for the clash, sounded the alarm for what may happen in the future, due to the unlimited American support in committing these massacres, which will not be erased from Arab and Islamic memory for decades.
The emergence of the message is also inseparable from the tense atmosphere within American society, where accusations of corruption of American political elites are increasing, receiving money from Jewish lobbyists such as AIPAC, and growing talk about the role of arms companies and capitalist society in directing US policies, even at the expense of values and morals.
This tension, expressed by American activists, is a re-reading of the causes of the September 11 attack, away from the narrative of the civilizational conflict between Muslims and the civilizational values of the West, which have been adopted and promoted extensively, to justify launching a devastating war against Afghanistan and Iraq.
But all this would not have happened so quickly and dynamically, had it not been for the independence conflict triggered by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, which signals major regional and international changes.