Bin Laden’s Heirs

By Seth Mandel

Friday, September 11, 2026

 

September 11 is a date, but it is also an ideology. And much as the Western world claims to be mourning the victims and the destruction of that day, it is far more equivocal on the 9/11 ideology of intentionally murdering civilians. Bin Laden is dead, bin Ladenism is alive.

 

It’s tempting to want to isolate al-Qaeda from the rest of the global terrorist threat because they were the ones who “did 9/11.” But terrorism and terrorist networks don’t work that way. You cannot sever al-Qaeda from the countless other terrorist groups just because they have different names. From a strategic perspective, though not a literal one, they should be understood as different formations and divisions and branches of the same military alliance. A sort of evil twin to NATO.

 

And as yet more revelations make clear, no one practices bin Ladenism today more devotedly than Hamas.

 

The 9/11 ideology of bin Ladenism is marked by pride in butchery. Its adherents do not think that when they carry out attacks, they are undertaking a necessary evil. The carnage itself is what they celebrate, death for its own sake.

 

One hallmark of this mindset is anniversary attacks and similar attempts to honor and build upon their savagery.

 

Per Hinrichs at Politico reveals today—and it is highly appropriate that this story was published on the 25th anniversary of 9/11—the details of a Hamas plan to launch attacks in Berlin and Vienna on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks. Arrests were made last year, but this is the first look inside the indictment itself.

 

And that indictment lays out plans by Hamas to widen its war on Europe, using Turkey as a base of operations:

 

“The prosecutors alleged the weapons operation was also coordinated from Lebanon, where a Hamas operative allegedly oversaw one of the procurement channels linking members of the network across Europe.

 

“According to the indictment, the objective was to move beyond the fundraising, propaganda and logistical activity that had long characterized Hamas’ presence in Europe and develop the capability to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in the West.”

 

Stories like this are important because they serve as reminders that Hamas’s grievances are not land-based. They do not spring from a territorial conception of the world. Moreover, the desire to repeat and honor the October 7 attacks—that is, repeat and honor cold-blooded murder, sexual torture, and the psychological torment of children—is Hamas’s way of distinguishing itself not as some fake “liberation” organization but as a leading avatar of uncompromising barbarism.

 

Nor is the decision to target the heart of Germany random. The Germans have thus far refused to legitimize the bin Ladenists of Hamas the way that the UK, France, Canada, Spain, and others have so shamefully done. The Western world has rewarded bin Ladenism and continues to do so, and Hamas intends on pressuring Germany to join them.

 

One has no trouble picturing what 9/11 would have looked like in a world that reflected our current media environment. Everyone justifying October 7 would have justified 9/11 in the moment and with no hesitation. The vast Qatari and Iranian propaganda networks and proxies online would be immediately set in motion.

 

We don’t even have to wonder if this would be true: Democratic candidates for the House and Senate have been campaigning with Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11.

 

The mobs of demonstrators in support of Hamas—some wearing Hamas paraphernalia—have appeared repeatedly since October 7, 2023, in the major cities of the Western world. There is no difference in the mindset behind 9/11 and 10/7; march for one, and you are retroactively marching for the other.

 

Hamas was proud of what it was building toward in Berlin and Vienna last year too:

 

“The indictment also says one of the suspects recorded a claim-of-responsibility video in Vienna in August 2025, weeks before the planned attacks. Masked and armed in front of a Hamas flag, he threatened acts of revenge in Europe in the name of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing.”

 

Ask yourself this: In recent years, would Hamas have seen anything to suggest it would be foolhardy to lay these plans? The opposite. European countries have largely conceded Hamas’s arguments about the war, about the West, about the Jews. The ones that haven’t done so yet—Germany, for example—will now be targeted. The armies of 9/11, the footsoldiers of bin Ladenism, are on the march. Defeating them, if we want to do so, requires recognizing these forces for what and who they are.