The terrorist's US-bashing letter gets a second wind as Israel is locked in a war with Hamas
Image Courtesy: Wikipedia
Twelve years after he was taken out by the US Navy Seals, Osama Bin Laden had a resurrection on social media after a letter he wrote condemning the US and Israel went viral on Thursday.
Osama, the man who engineered September 11, 2001, twin tower attack, was shot dead by the US forces in 2011 in Pakistan's Abbottabad.
The four-page letter, written by the founder of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, went viral on social media platforms after a TikTok user Lynette Adkins shared a video that carried the 2002 Guardian article that contained the letter.
Just as #OsamaBinLaden began trending on X and elsewhere, the UK news website took down the article without making explicit any reasons for doing so.
"The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023," the site's page which once carried the letter read.
Even though the site took down article, several X users shared the letter, an excerpt of which read, "Palestine shall not be seen captive, for we will try to break its shackles. The United States shall pay for its arrogance with the blood of Christians and their funds."
"The tyranny of the control of capital by large companies has harmed your economy, as it did ours, and that was my motivation for this talk. Tens of millions of you are below the poverty line, millions have lost their homes, and millions have lost their jobs, marking the highest average unemployment in 60 years," the terrorist wrote addressing the Palestinians.
The two-decade-old letter stoked some strong sentiments among some of the Palestine supporters on TikTok, a major chunk of whose user base is younger population.
The app owned by Chinese firm ByteDance was recently accused by US lawmakers of allowing proliferation of hashtags championing Palestinians, a charge TikTok denied in a statement.
In a press release on Monday, the app said that hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok.
"Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags. Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views. It is easy to cherry pick hashtags to support a false narrative about the platform," it said.
The app claimed there are more videos associated with Palestinians hashtags because they been around for at least two years, while those supporting Israel came into existence only a month ago.
"As a matter of fact, TikTok removed 100% of antisemitic or Holocaust denial content fighting online anti-Semitism reported through our Community Partner Channel last year," the app said.
Israel declared war on Hamas a day after Hamas' October 7 sudden attack on its military bases and a music festival that was taking place near the Gaza-Israel border. At least 1,200 people were reported killed in that day's attack alone.
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