Back-to-school guide in the US: "Israel is to blame for 9/11"
The Muslim organization CAIR removed from its website a teacher's manual claiming that relations with Israel caused the terrorist attack in which thousands of Americans were murdered. The program described the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks as a "group that identified as Al-Qaeda and came from the mountains of Afghanistan," but did not explicitly define them as terrorists.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the US, has quietly removed from its back-to-school guide for K-12 a link to a program that presented the September 11 attacks as a response to American policy, primarily the support for Israel, and included among the background materials for high school students Osama bin Laden's antisemitic manifesto, "Letter to America."
The 16-page national guide was published this week ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks and was presented as an expansion of CAIR's campaign from campuses to schools. In the original version, parents and educators were called upon to access the program "The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims," developed by the CAIR New Jersey chapter and the organization Teaching While Muslim, and to share it with "educators, administrators, and local school boards." The link was removed following an exposé on a website.
In the program, the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks were described as a "group that identified as Al-Qaeda and came from the mountains of Afghanistan," but were not explicitly defined as terrorists. Instead, it was written: "They carried out the attacks in response to US support for Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and the massive presence of the US military in the Middle East." It was also claimed that the media tended to reserve the term "terrorism" for Muslims, unlike other extremist groups. Bin Laden was presented as a "man named Osama bin Laden" who was among the rebels supported by the US against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The list of background materials included the 9/11 Commission Report and a fatwa against terrorism, and as background material for middle and high school, even the "Letter to America," in which bin Laden justified harming civilians and claimed that "the Jews control your policies, media, and economy."
The material is not new. In 2022, the CAIR New Jersey chapter announced that it had used it to reach nearly 30 school districts, including more than 55 public schools. The chapter director, Selaedin Maksut, said at the time that the guide was intended to help teachers and students "adopt a proactive approach to Islamophobia in the classroom" and also understand the hate crimes, discrimination, and wars that followed the attacks.
Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother Frances was murdered in the attacks, told the "New York Post": "Israel had nothing to do with 9/11. As we get further away from 9/11, the new generation of children will learn to blame our country. These children will be poisoned — and that is the intention."
Moshe Safra, president of the United Jewish Teachers organization, defined the material as "dangerous propaganda" and accused CAIR of blurring the identity of the terrorists. Following the uproar, CAIR added a note to the guide stating that "an earlier version of the document did not undergo proper review." The organization determined that source documents related to the 9/11 perpetrators are suitable for study only after 12th grade and in a broad context. The new version calls for teaching about the attacks, the victims, and their families, alongside the war in Afghanistan and the rise in hate crimes against Muslims.
CAIR did not explain how the material was included again in the national guide and did not respond directly if it still stands behind it. At the same time, a chapter on conversations with five-year-olds about the Gaza Strip remains in the guide, which does not mention Israel, Hamas, or the October 7 massacre. A link also remains to activism guidelines calling for placing American citizens at the forefront of protests and moving those who are not citizens to behind-the-scenes roles, in order to reduce their exposure to arrest.
