(JNS) The anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2021 attacks will be marked on Thursday. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day 24 years ago: 2,753 at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan; 184 at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; and 40 on United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after brave passengers—preferring to plummet to their deaths rather than enable the plane to reach the White House or Capitol building—fought the hijackers.

Included in the total were all the passengers on American Airlines flights 11 and 77, which the Al Qaeda terrorists in the cockpit used as the weapons of mass destruction to topple the Twin Towers.

In addition to the 2,977 men, women and children murdered on what came to be known as 9/11, more than 6,000 others were wounded during and following the Islamist assault on the shores and essence of the United States. The immediate injuries included crushed bones, burns and smoke inhalation. Longer-term trauma—as well as mental anguish—involved the health problems on the part of first responders and survivors stemming from exposure to toxic debris at Ground Zero.

For Americans, the catastrophe was a jolt to complacency. For Israelis, it was devastating, but not surprising. Citizens of the Jewish state had spent the 12 months leading up to the seemingly apocalyptic event trying to calculate which buses might blow up or what shopping mall would be targeted next by a suicide bomber.

The above characterized the years of the Second Intifada, which the Palestinian Authority, then headed by arch-terrorist and PLO chief Yasser Arafat, had launched in 2000. The impetus? Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s massive “land for peace” offering at Camp David.

It is thus that even many longstanding left-wingers in Israel’s “peace camp” reached the conclusion that diplomacy with terrorists serves only to intensify their bloodlust. And not only for Jews.

Islamists were already slaughtering Christians across the Middle East and Africa, and causing them to flee the PA in droves. Oh, and let’s not forget the Muslim “infidels” in jihadist crosshairs for “betraying” Islam.

These are the same jihadists who celebrated 9/11 by dancing on rooftops at the sight of victims jumping out of WTC windows. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet experienced dread.

But the sensation wasn’t sufficient to cause widespread recognition that Israel’s plight is part of a broader Islamist plot. Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2023, the second anniversary of which is coming up next month.

When Hamas invaded southern Israel and committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, one might have expected a transnational realization that this was a manifestation of the same jihadism responsible for 9/11—and that different, often rival, Islamist groups, have a shared goal. Since the perpetrators of all such assaults are open about this aim, it shouldn’t be difficult to grasp.

Alas, 10/7—proportionately 12 times the toll of 9/11—had the opposite effect. Instead of constituting a wakeup call to the West, it unleashed the kind of antisemitism not witnessed since the rise of the Third Reich.

Worse, it opened the floodgates of Jew-hatred in the United States, of all places—from the halls of Harvard to the pages of mainstream publications and beyond. The phenomenon isn’t merely disgusting; it’s self-defeating.

As the late British historian Paul Johnson wrote in Commentary magazine in 2005, “[Antisemitism] is an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.”

Furthermore, he stated, “In the whole of history, it is hard to point to a single occasion when a wave of antisemitism was provoked by a real Jewish threat (as opposed to an imaginary one).”

Nor, he added, is it “confined to weak, feeble or commonplace intellects; … its carriers have included men and women of otherwise powerful and subtle thoughts. Like all mental diseases, it is damaging to reason and sometimes fatal.”

Well, it’s certainly fatal for Jews—though in the process, it eats away at societies that succumb to it. The same goes for jihadism. Once it takes hold in the countries that its adherents seek to subjugate, it metastasizes.

This is particularly true in the West, where there is a dangerously low birthrate—other than among immigrants—as well as vociferous fellow travelers whose influence far outweighs their numbers. These are the useful idiots whose progressive politics and behavior are antithetical to the jihadist ideology they abet, whether out of ignorance or malice.

The latest excuse for ganging up on Israel and the Jews is the war against Hamas and subsequent/simultaneous battles with additional Iranian proxies, as well as with the Islamic Republic itself. The moral vertigo on the part of people who will be next in line if the jihadists have their way is astounding.

If not for the current administration in Washington, the only real relevant player in the international arena, Israel would be forced to face its mortal enemies, and counter the gaslighting by its ostensible friends, on its own.

Thankfully, US President Donald Trump understands that the Jewish state, the “small Satan,” is on the front lines not only of the war against the “great Satan,” America, but against all the Judeo-Christian values that both hold dear. It’s precisely why he’s urging Israel to get on with the business of winning it already.

Ahead of this pair of interconnected anniversaries, it behooves us to stop bemoaning the hollowness of the post-Holocaust slogan “never again,” and remember Hamas’s vow, endorsed by jihadists everywhere, to repeat the abominations of Oct. 7 “again and again and again.”

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