23 Years of 9/11 WTC, Westerns 'Love-Hate-Love' Muslim Relation. Story from Person Who Love Yankee, May Married with Yankee

In the bottom of this photo, you can see Ladder 118 crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge on their way to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This is their last known photo. Every single firefighter on that truck perished just a few minutes later.

Every year, I see tons of photos and remembrances on 9/11. Every year, even though all impact me, at least one just hits me in the gut. As currently I, as Muslim, love some Yankee.

The horror of 9/11 was swept away with 2 decades of ruthless American imperialism inflicted on millions of people including the genocide in Gaza. Just a reminder that another victim [not only million Muslim, killed post-911]: undocumented immigrants were killed in 911 and also around 2000 helped clean up the wreckage after — and many suffered chronic health issues due to that work. US Congress failed to pass legislation to help an estimated 2,000 undocumented workers who worked to clean up NYC after the 9/11 attack.

The metal beams of the south tower stood in the middle of the debris like carcasses, María Ernestina Hernandez, 41 at the time, observed. It was September 12, 2001 and she had been taken by an independent contractor, recommended by her friend, to help clean businesses on Cortland Street, an area which had been covered with a billowing white-dust.

At the start of what would be a six-month employment journey, Hernandez felt like a hero. She remembers dusting off keyboards, monitors, and stacks of documents. She cleaned windows and walls. She was proud to help New York City get back on its feet, but it’s a decision she has questioned for the past 22 anniversaries. “If they had had a sign that said ‘hazardous area ahead’ I would not have taken the job,” Hernandez told Documented. 

An estimated 2,000 undocumented immigrant workers and volunteers took part in the efforts to clean up Ground Zero in the months following the 9/11 attacks. Yet, for more than two decades, many have continued to languish on the margins of society without the opportunity to obtain legal residency or citizenship. A 2021 bill introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aimed to provide undocumented 9/11 workers with a pathway to citizenship, but the legislation has failed to make any headway in Congress.  

Like Hernandez, four other undocumented migrants who spoke with Documented said that they feel neglected by the federal government and that they have been left to fend for themselves as they grapple with devastating health effects incurred by working at the site. 

Hernandez migrated to New York from Honduras in 1999 and had very little luck finding stable jobs. She had been out of work for two years when on the day of the 9/11 attacks, as she was sleeping on the couch, her pager beeped. Her friend Sonia was calling. 

She took a quarter and rushed to the closest phone booth in her neighborhood of Corona, Queens. On the phone, Sonia asked Hernandez if she had been watching the news that the towers had collapsed. Hernandez told her friend that she was unaware of it. Sonia then asked her if Hernandez would be interested in helping clean up the nearby businesses that had been affected by tragedy. “I was so happy because I did not have a job at that time, so this would help me win my day’s salary,” Hernandez said. 

For six months she made the daily commute from her home in Queens to Lower Manhattan. There, she was picked up in a van near Canal Street and driven along with other workers to Ground Zero. During those months, Hernandez recalls dusting off offices every day, wearing only a loosely woven cloth mask and discardable coveralls. “The architects used to wear a mask that looks like the trunk of an elephant,” she said, adding that the contractor did not provide the proper equipment to protect the cleaners from asbestos. “They also provided lunch but we were eating on top of the dust,” she said. 

Months after she finished her job at Ground Zero, sometime around the spring of 2002, Hernandez began having random allergic reactions, sinusitis, and acid reflux. She suspected it was due to the months she spent  working without proper safety equipment. Other workers also developed chronic illnesses, such as cancer, and it is estimated that at least 2,000 have died in the past two decades due to 9/11-related illnesses. 

While dealing with her ailments has been detrimental to her quality of life, Hernandez said that what she wants most from the federal government is a path to adjust her status to permanent residency. “It will help me secure a job and make a decent living,” Hernandez said. “I want to be able to look out for myself.”

Back again to the Muslim world.

23 years since the cataclysmic September 11th attacks in the United States - attacks that went on to change the global dynamics for years to come, ushering in an era of a mutated and increasingly violent American imperialism in the garb of “war on terror.” 

The attacks - orchestrated by Al Qaeda cells that were ironically armed and trained decades before by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - claimed the lives of 2,977 Americans as hijacked airplanes flew into different targets across the US eastern seaboard - striking New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania.

“Never forget” became the slogan in the wake of the attacks that caught the imagination of the world.

Despite US intelligence seemingly knowing that attacks were imminent, despite US involvement in the arming and training of terrorist cells that eventually became Al Qaeda, “never forget” became the takeaway for the brazen acts of terror inflicted on mostly ordinary Americans. 

What came immediately after the attacks via the Bush Doctrine was unimaginable horror – invasions and bombings across Asia and Africa, mostly Muslim-majority countries, in the so-called “war on terror.”

Afghanistan was subjected to two decades of brutal and criminal occupation after being carpet bombed on the pretext of decimating the Al Qaeda and Taliban. Over a million Iraqis were murdered as Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden continued their reckless occupation of the country.

Syria was invaded and partially occupied, Libya was brutally bombed and Colonel Gadaffi, the one-time ally of the West – was assassinated - just to name a few key events triggered by the events of 9/11.

And of course, right now, minimum assumption that 368,000 Gazans killed in 11 months, thanks for Israel genocide with full-support by United States and entire the West.

The United States used 9/11 - where just short of three thousand lives were lost - to go on a murderous rampage against the Muslim world. Even on its own soil, Muslims were rounded up, interrogated, spied on, and profiled amongst other things via the expansion of the National Security Agency. 

On 31 July, three Guantanamo defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin' Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, signed a plea deal with the convening authority for military commissions, Brigadier General Susan Escallier.

Under the terms of the agreement, the defendants would plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges for their alleged roles in the 9/11 attacks in exchange for removing the death penalty as a possible sentence.

Although the defendants would be facing life imprisonment, top government officials did not seem to think the punishment went far enough.

Two days later, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin issued a memo revoking the plea deal. He informed Escallier of her removal from the case and insisted that the decision "should rest with [him] as the superior convening authority".

Both US Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticised the plea deal, including Senator Richard Blumenthal, who stated that the Biden administration owed Americans "an explanation", and Senator Lindsey Graham, who claimed that the plea agreement "sends a horribly bad signal at a very dangerous time". Congressman Mike Rogers, who published an open letter to the Pentagon chief, also lamented the news as "a 'gut punch' to many of the victims' families".

We could go into the true motives of the US - conquest and exploitation - installing exploitative pipelines for its own corporations in Afghanistan, oil in Iraq and Syria, etc - but let us just entertain the US’ own political line for a brief moment - that all of this murder and mayhem, all of this destruction - was “payback” for three thousand lives lost. It was to ensure it never happens again.

If the US is allowed to declare war against millions of people - unrelated to Al Qaeda - for the sake of three thousand lives lost in a day, what about Palestine where the death toll is approaching 400,000 (if it has not passed it already) in less than a year?

These are, of course, direct casualties. Indirect murder takes longer to calculate, and the fact of the matter is thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are still missing, trapped under the rubble and unaccounted for. This is a presumption they are still alive, buried beneath thousands of pounds of rubble. 

All of this, while the Israeli regime still continues its horrific incursions into the occupied West Bank, with the same modus operandi - killing and maiming women, and children, and even now murdering an American peace activist with a gunshot to the head. 

The hypocrisy is clear, but of course, we are dealing with the system of imperialism. Within imperialism, there is no moral standard, and morality itself is irrational.

In a just world, a country that was subject to losing three thousand of its own people in a single attack would show some level of empathy with the crimes against humanity conducted by the Zionist entity. 

However, we do not live in a just world. Because the bombs dropped on Palestinians in Gaza, the bullets piercing children’s bodies, and the planes causing Palestinian toddlers to have heart attacks from fear - are all made in the US and provided to the Tel Aviv regime by rulers in Washington.

They are shipped to the Israeli occupation with the blessing of the American political system. And Israeli war crimes are never met with the scrutiny of the so-called international “community” (which is largely just a Western term for US vassal states and puppets) because of American hegemonic control.

Back again to detainee related 9/11.

Still, a number of rights groups and even some of the families who lost loved ones in the 11 September 2001 attacks welcomed the plea deal, which came after 16 years of pre-trial proceedings with low prospects of a resolution to the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union described Austin's revocation of the agreement as a "rash act [that] also violates the law" and vowed to challenge it in court. Meanwhile, organisations like September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows issued a statement criticising the defence secretary's decision as a move that "ultimately betrays 9/11 family members".

The group echoed many families' frustration that the case has lingered for so long, emphasizing that the deal would have "offered a path to finality and a modicum of justice and accountability for the crimes of 9/11" while blaming the government's torture of the accused men as the reason it was unable to prosecute the case.

In one swift move, prosecutors' long-sought guilty verdicts were invalidated and reduced to a case study in the long-standing historical debate over capital punishment.

Senator Dick Durbin, who has long advocated for closing Guantanamo, joined in criticising Austin's decision to withdraw the plea deal. "We have a legal and moral obligation to deliver justice for these family members, rather than false promises that these commissions will ever deliver more", he wrote in a statement.

Twenty-three years after 9/11 and nearly 22 years after the opening of Guantanamo, the discourse on "justice" that solely pertains to victims of the attack continues to serve as a critical linguistic frame that has privileged one group of people over another.

Indeed, what Muslims have learned over the last two decades of the "war on terror" is that there is no mechanism of justice to address the violence inflicted on them, much less any narrative or rhetorical frame that meaningfully acknowledges their victimisation and suffering. 

Nine days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, then-President George W Bush gave a speech to a joint session of Congress, announcing the launch of the war on terror.

He emphatically delivered his speech, asserting that "whether we bring our enemies to justice, or justice to our enemies, justice will be done". Careful to convey a narrative of the US as a blameless victim, Bush left the notion of "justice" undefined.

Despite the ambiguity and nonsensical declaration of a war on terror, legal scholar Frederic Megret notes that the concept has "provided a consistent discursive anchor for a range of violent practices across time and space". And instead of marking a specific period in history, it became "a way of understanding the world". 

The world that Muslims have come to understand under the guise of the war on terror is one marked by unabated and unaccountable state violence propelled by entrenched and rampant Islamophobia.  

The actions that the US took in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to "combat terrorism" - from legislating unfettered warfare across the globe through the Authorisation of the Use of Military Force joint resolution and passing the Patriot Act to giving broad surveillance powers to the government, launching a war on Afghanistan, and signing a military order that authorised military commissions with different standards of rules for those detained in brutal prisons from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib and CIA black sites. 

These violent measures have only escalated in the last 23 years of the war on terror. From militarism and warfare to draconian immigration policies, surveillance, federal terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture, this war has almost exclusively targeted Muslims.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen - four Muslim-majority countries - the war on terror has led to a death toll of between 4.5 and 4.7 million people.

As horrifying as this level of violence has been, it doesn't even begin to account for the violence that has otherwise been buried deeper than the victims of the US empire.

The New Yorker's "In the Dark" podcast, for example, recently assembled a database of the largest known collection of war crimes investigations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 11 September 2001. The database includes nearly 800 incidents, with the reporting concluding that "the military delivers neither transparency nor justice".

Unsurprisingly, the US government has offered no meaningful remedies to the catastrophic violence that Muslims have endured at its hands, nor put any systems or mechanisms of accountability in place to acknowledge and reckon with a war whose entire foundation was built on the demonisation and criminalisation of a religious community.  

Last year, on the sixth annual International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism, the State Department released a statement claiming that the US "stands with the global community of victims, families, survivors, and communities who have been impacted by the scourge of terrorism" and "will never forget the victims of terrorism or stop our pursuit of justice and peace".

The US, however, has not only forgotten the victims of its catastrophic and unabashed state violence but swept them so far under the rug that there is almost no possibility of justice for Muslims. 

Where any remedies do exist - for example, if someone is killed by the US in a combat zone - US laws effectively preclude noncitizens from the eligibility to make a claim or receive any compensation for wrongful deaths that occur outside of the country. 

In rare cases where the US military kills civilians, a commander can opt to pay what are called solatia or condolence payments. These payments are not only minuscule - ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars - but they are also expressly made without the military acknowledging any wrongdoing.

One exception to this rule was when the US killed an Afghan family of 10 members, including seven children. The Pentagon eventually issued an apology, with Austin insisting that "no military works harder than ours to avoid civilian casualties. When we have reason to believe we have taken innocent life, we investigate it and, if true, we admit it."

Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance, attend the annual 9/11 commemoration ceremony alongside New York politicians in New York City, on 11 September 2024 (Michael M Santiago/AFP)

However, not only does the US - the military in this case - have limited accountability measures to address civilian deaths, but Austin's statement perpetuates the facade that there are mechanisms in place and that the killing of these Afghan civilians was an exception to otherwise careful military operations.

Moreover, what the war on terror has consistently demonstrated is that the US only acknowledges wrongdoing when it cannot plausibly deny its violence (the war crimes at Abu Ghraib are emblematic of this rule). While survivors among the Afghan family were relocated to the US, the government has yet to provide any monetary compensation despite pledging to.

In contrast, the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund provides monetary compensation to individuals with illnesses related to the attacks or a relative of an individual who died in the attacks.

The Fund was initially established in 2001 by Congress and was closed in 2004. It has since been reinstated, first through the Zadroga Act and then The Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorisation of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which extended claims to 2090.

The exclusion of Muslims from any justice framework after 9/11 is a direct result of the US's unabashed commitment to state violence that has been justified through the criminalisation, demonisation, and dehumanisation of Muslims.

Constructions of Muslims as inherently predisposed to violence, irrationally angry, and barbaric, among others, have specifically served to position Muslims solely as perpetrators and never as victims deserving of any sympathy.

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Coupled with these often harmful representations, another barrier to leveraging victim claims is the absence of a viable, legible, and rhetorical frame through which collective action to hold the state accountable and articulate a demand for justice can be mobilised.

As sociologists William K Carroll and Robert S Ratner write in their article "Master Frames and Counter-Hegemony: Political Sensibilities in Contemporary Social Movements", "Collective action frames form part of the discursive politics of any struggle against established hegemony.”

Part of this rhetorical frame involves a re-constitution of the collective memory of the war on terror as it has been waged thus far while centring the Muslims who have been victimized in its wake. 

What exists now in the form of the collective memory of the war on terror has been driven by state narratives and complicit media entities that have not only justified the violence against Muslims by promoting singular interpretations but also erased their stories and relegated them to the history books, despite the ongoing brutality. 

If there will ever be justice for Muslims, then their stories must become part of the collective memory. In their article on the power of collective memory, the two psychology scholars write that “Collective remembering implies that collective forgetting also occurs…" When it comes to the war on terror, however, collective forgetting is far from accidental and seeks to erase the violent targeting of Muslims from being consciously tied to the broader public's understanding of the 9/11 attacks and its aftermath. 

To insist on a rhetorical frame that centres the memory of Muslims is central to the demand for justice. 

As we enter the 24th year of the war on terror, the concept of justice remains as nebulous as ever.

But if this war could be instructive on anything, it's that justice can be asserted without defining its terms while, at the same time, narrowly prescribing who is deserving of it. 

But Muslims are deserving of justice, and the repeated attempts to exclude them from these calls must be challenged after decades of a war that has devastated Muslim lives domestically and across the world.  

Any meaningful justice, however, necessitates accountability for the crimes committed against Muslims. This imperative will not come from the state, which is why we must insist on the stories of Muslims becoming a part of the collective history of the war on terror. 

A clear rhetorical and discursive framework that directly confronts state violence, centres Muslim humanity and dignity and advocates categorical justice for Muslims must then be articulated and advanced.

After 23 years of collective blame and punishment, Muslims deserve nothing less.

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link gofundme Medo Halimy

Again, by Jennifer Koonings, one brightest member CODEPINK Alert

Jennifer Kooning and her friend Samantha, and also another codepink CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter founding member Ann Wright ann Wright

Medea Benjamin Medea’s Substack

co founder CODEPINK

Medea’s birthday: September 10. Happy Birthday, Medea🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

At least 12-13 days Jennifer Koonings, PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE , one brilliant CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter under Medea Benjamin, hunger strike outside White House in the wake US complicit Genocidal Gaza. This is [click link] her writing as member of CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter. Jennifer is Certified Forensic Examiner for Adults and Children, really full knowledge about sexual assault, such as sexual assault by Israel to every Palestinian, like NYT reporting [photo uploaded].

We as Muslim prohibited to fasting at least 6 days for entire year [365, or 366 in leap year]. 2 Days Eid Fitr / Eid el-Fitr [1 Shawwal and 2 Shawwal / Syawal Syawwal], Day of Eid Adha / Eid el-Adha [10 Dzulhijjah / Dhul-Hijjah - today], and days of Tashriq [11^th, 12^th and 13^th Dhul-Hijjah / Dzulhijjah, or in Gregorian Calendar 2024, the days of Tashriq means 17-19 June]. But doesn’t mean prohibited for ‘less eating or hunger strike.’ As sacrifice in DC at least 13 days by Jennifer Koonings just because her protest about Gaza, I keep ‘eating less’ not only for her but also for Palestine, at least until 19 June. And for June 20th, back again for nonmandatory fasting, normally 17-18 hours, as even Jennifer, with her gut, sacrifice herself for Gaza. Wisdom quote I hear since war [Israel - Gaza] nonstop ‘’...You can't make people care about a genocide happening right in front of their eyes. They either do immediately, or a chip is missing up there, and they never will.’

For solidarity, since she started to hunger strike, I put myself eat 1 very tiny plate/day for break the fasting and for entire day after, extreme fasting 16.5 hours [based on my location]. I’m still continued for hunger strike, because its very easy. In last 17 years, I already [minimum] 340 days / year to fasting [29 - 30 days for mandatory fasting for muslim, ramadan session, the rest is voluntary fasting / sunnah]. Photo Jennifer with ann Wright, retired retired US Army and also [Ann] retired State Department. Sometimes I’m fasting up to 22 hours / day because forgot to break my fasting.

Reflecting On My Hunger Strike for Gaza

Medea Benjamin Medea Benjamin Medea’s Substack and Jennifer Koonings Medea Benjamin

link GFM / GOFUNDME

footage by CODEPINK Alert CODEPINK’s Newsletter, multiple nurses in DC, after humanitarian duty in Gaza

PCRF

Please keep donating to [1] PCRF / Palestine Children’s Relief Fund or [2] Freedom Flotilla.

As PCRF pictures by Dr Rajha in Gaza, Ariana Grande - Butera, and CODEPINK Alert

Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE part of CODEPINK AlertJen

Unlike Israeli and pro zionist student [very easy] get a money [thanks for multiple billionaire], contrary, Palestinian very hard to get a money [like encampments across the world]. Link attached by CODEPINK Alert Jen Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE is Nagham, same healthcare worker like Jennifer but in Palestine. 3 Months ago is Nagham’s birthday. Link to donate. Nagham is still alive.

Jen Jennifer Koonings, PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE. Abdelrahman is still alive after Rafah bombing 3 weeks ago

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Yellow Flower, Jennifer Koonings in Betlehem [around 3pm local time West Bank, 5 weeks ago], nearly same exact result voting UNGA [11.17am NYC - Rockefeller Building of United Nations], 143 votes in favor, nine against, and 25 abstentions for Palestinian membership.

Footage by mine. Minutes before Jennifer

Jennifer Koonings literally singing also for foundation - charity movement Sing for Hope. How golden heart.

her mine

My mine. Doppelganger cat

Love you, Jennifer Koonings PMHNP, MS, MS, NYSAFE. Dont know how deteriorated of you after Hunger Strike