Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ from 2002 was taken down by The Guardian newspaper after it was broadly shared on social media.
LONDON – British newspaper The Guardian has eliminated a 21-year-old message written by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden from its web site, after it was shared a number of million occasions on social media.
Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” started being shared on TikTok on Tuesday, sparking a fierce debate about US help for Israel in its present battle in opposition to Hamas.
Bin Laden was one of many attackers on September 11 22 years in the past that killed almost 3,000 individuals by crashing passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
The White House sharply criticized the net phenomenon and TikTok mentioned it was taking steps to take away the posts in query.
The transcript consists of bin Laden’s assertion that the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001 due to its help for Israel.
Links to the unique on the Guardian’s web site have been changed by an announcement saying it had been shared “with out full context”.
“This web page beforehand displayed a doc containing, in translation, the complete textual content of Osama bin Laden’s ‘letter to the American individuals’, reported within the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002,” he wrote.
“The transcript printed on our web site was broadly shared on social media with out the complete context. So we determined to tug it down and direct readers as a substitute to the information article that initially put it in context. “
The White House mentioned in an announcement on X, previously often called Twitter, that “nobody ought to offend the two,977 American households who’re nonetheless mourning their family members by associating themselves with the insulting phrases of Osama bin Laden.”
“Especially now, at a time when antisemitic violence is on the rise world wide, and simply after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst killing of Jews because the Holocaust within the identify of the identical conspiracy theories,” he mentioned.
– ‘Remove aggressively’ –
TikTok mentioned on X that it was “proactively and aggressively eradicating this content material and investigating the way it obtained onto our platform.”
“This just isn’t distinctive to TikTok and is seen throughout completely different platforms and media,” the Chinese-owned app mentioned.
Bin Laden’s message, launched a yr after 9/11, described his protests in opposition to Western actions in Muslim nations, criticizing the United States for its help of Israel and its strategy to the Palestinian territories.
He additionally denounces what he described as “lies, immorality and deflation” of the West and argued that assaults in opposition to civilians and the United States have been justified because of this.
“They threw a whole lot of hundreds of troopers in opposition to us and shaped an alliance with the Israelis to suppress us and occupy our land — that was the explanation for our response on the eleventh day,” he mentioned.
Various media shops have attributed the origin of the pattern to a video posted by a TikTok individual on Tuesday with 12 million likes on his profile.
“I would like everybody to cease what they’re doing proper now and go learn – it is two pages – go learn ‘Letter to America’,” the influencer wrote.
“Come again right here and let me know what you suppose. Because I really feel like I’m going by way of like an existential disaster proper now, and lots of people are. So I simply want another person to really feel this too.”
The letter has acquired many constructive feedback from social media customers with trending searches on TikTok together with “Summary of Osama’s letter to America” and “letter to America defined”.
TikTok argued that the variety of movies concerned was small and that “trending reviews on our platform are inaccurate.”
After almost 10 years because the world’s most wished man, bin Laden was tracked down and killed by US particular forces at his compound in Pakistan in 2011.
