What the US sending Israel weapons “at the speed of war” looks like.
One area where the Biden administration has set itself apart is in sending weapons to partner countries, and now we’re getting a more complete picture of what the US is sending Israel in the weeks since October 7.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the US has ramped up its previously minimal military aid to the country to an unparalleled $46.7 billion. Ukraine towers over the other major recipients in bar charts of US security assistance for 2022 and ’23. The US is sending so many munitions there that it has apparently strained American factories and led to a whole-of-government effort to revive military supply chains.
The US is also accelerating arms transfers to Israel in response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the kidnapping of more than 200. Last month, President Joe Biden announced from the Oval Office that he would seek “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense” of $14.3 billion. “We’re surging additional military assistance,” he added.
But while Ukraine has never been a traditional recipient of heavy military aid, the US’s most recent support of the Israeli military builds on a long bipartisan American practice. Israel has received about $3 billion annually, adjusted for inflation, for the last 50 years, and is the largest historical recipient of US security aid. The Obama administration in 2016 announced the biggest security assistance package to the country ever, pledging $38 billion for Israel over the next decade. US support has ensured that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge over neighboring Arab countries by having more advanced weapons systems, something Congress wrote into law in 2008.
Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the US, which over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports. Israel is using them as part of its large-scale military operation that has so far killed over 11,000 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals and civilian infrastructure. While it is the Israeli Defense Forces doing the killing, the extent of US aid has raised serious questions about American culpability. “Providing weapons that knowingly and significantly would contribute to unlawful attacks can make those providing them complicit in war crimes,” Human Rights Watch said.
Which weapons, exactly, the US is sending to fill Israel’s requests since October 7 has been hitherto kept secret — in contrast to how the US publicizes the weapons it delivers to Ukraine. But Bloomberg this week published a leaked Pentagon document that showed the US has delivered 2,000 Hellfire missiles that can be launched from Apache helicopters, as well as an array of other mortars and ammo, including “36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of the requested M141 bunker-buster munitions and at least 3,500 night-vision devices.”
This year, military budgets around the world hit all-time highs. Israel in recent years has been growing its arms export business. It also imports significant weapons from the UK, Italy, Canada, and Germany, but 92 percent of what Israel gets comes from the United States. As researcher William Hartung wrote recently in The Nation, “Israel’s arsenal, and its arms industry, are by and large made in, and financed by, the USA.”
Why Biden’s team is so effective at getting weapons to Israel
The Biden administration has a robust understanding of weapons systems and the business behind them. While any mainstream US administration, Republican or Democrat, would likely be rushing weapons orders to Israel, this administration is uniquely qualified to do so, bringing to bear their successes on Ukraine arms transfer and experience advising weapons-makers. In the second year of his presidency, Biden’s arms sales overtook President Donald Trump’s, who himself had already overseen a big increase.
The House voted in favor of new military assistance to Israel but cut out the Ukraine aid component, so the Senate will likely not pass it. In the meantime, the Biden administration has been efficient and quiet about transfers, using creative tools to jump-start deliveries to Israel that include direct commercial sales from arms-makers (meaning the US isn’t financing the purchases but does allow American weapons manufacturers to sell to Israel), governmental financing vehicles that don’t require congressional approval, and hurrying up orders that were placed before October. Stockpiles meant for US use are also being diverted to Israel. As a senior Pentagon official put it, “expediting security assistance” to Israel has been task number one.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former board member of Raytheon, the major military contractor that co-produces Iron Dome receptors with the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. RTX, as Raytheon has been renamed, is one of the most significant providers to Israel. Austin and many other senior appointees to the Pentagon bring a depth of experience working for the arms industry. Even if they aren’t directly involved in the day-to-day — Austin has had to recuse himself from the Department of Defense’s dealings with Raytheon — the heft these appointments bring shows the seriousness with which the Biden administration takes the defense industrial base.
As Austin told the Senate, “We are flowing security assistance to Israel at the speed of war.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors in 2017, which has worked for military contractors, new military-tech startups, and Israeli companies. Blinken, for his part, advised the defense contractor Boeing, according to his financial disclosure. Last month, Boeing rushed the transfer of 1,000 smart bombs and 1,800 GPS-guidance bomb kits to Israel.
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Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Much of the team that worked to get Israel the $38 billion Obama package over 10 years is leading the way. Other key State Department officials include Daniel Shapiro, who also worked for the Israel spyware maker NSO Group when he was out of government. Intelligence leaders, too, bring vast experience. Avril Haines, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, has worked as an adviser to the data-processing powerhouse Palantir, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel and apparently provides advanced tech to the Israeli military.
The foundation of relationships between the defense industries in the US, Israel, and its other partners in the region also helps. When the world’s biggest aerospace and defense companies gathered at the Dubai Airshow this week, for example, Israeli defense firms and officials kept a low profile — but the big deals continued. Take the US-Israel-UAE triangle, which benefits each country. Boeing, an American company, signed a $52 billion airliner contract with a UAE carrier. On the sidelines of the fair, business people discussed “the impact of the demand for equipment stemming from the conflicts in Gaza” and “Close U.S.-U.A.E. alignment on the Israel-Gaza conflict,” according to the US-UAE Business Council. At the same time, Elbit Systems’ Emirati subsidiary is selling $53 million of military tech to the UAE.
The US has promoted the long lists of weapons it is sending to Ukraine, publishing one-pagers and tallies that go into great detail. But as the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein noted, the Biden administration has kept the list of weapons it’s sending to Israel secret. The administration has also “sought permission to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons — like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition — to Israel without notifying Congress,” according to the watchdog group Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. That would remove a key mechanism for oversight from lawmakers — and scrutiny from the public.
Who’s concerned about arms to Israel?
Many of these weapons are now being used in Gaza, with catastrophic humanitarian results. That has led the United Nations, French President Emmanuel Macron, and a number of international organizations to urge an immediate ceasefire. Human Rights Watch has called for war crimes investigations into the Israeli bombardment of the health care system.
“The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said last month. That heavy bombardment and death toll prompted the UN’s high commissioner for human rights to say Thursday that “the killing of so many civilians cannot be dismissed as collateral damage.”
Given this, some activists are protesting US military aid to Israel and are calling for a ceasefire. One group called Palestine Action has been staging actions in the US and the United Kingdom at the facilities of Elbit Systems, an Israeli military contractor. About 150 protesters picketed Raytheon Technologies in El Segundo, California, for its arms trade with Israel.
Josh Paul, a former senior State Department official overseeing arms sales who resigned in protest last month, has been straightforward in saying that Israel is in violation of international law. “It is my opinion that Israel is committing war crimes in its actions in Gaza right now,” he said. “And it’s not just my opinion. I’ve actually heard from officials across government, including elected officials at a very senior level, who share that opinion but aren’t willing to say it in public.”
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Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images
This may be setting up Israel for a collision with the Biden administration.
In February 2022, Biden strengthened the human rights component of US arms transfers. The administration put a new emphasis on human rights in the Conventional Arms Transfer policy that added safeguards for “elevating the importance of protecting civilians.” The policy specifically restricted the transfer of weapons that are “more likely than not” to be used in atrocities, including violations of the Geneva Convention or of international humanitarian law.
The Biden administration may be “violating its own conventional arms transfer policy” by sending arms to Israel, as Seth Binder of the Project on Middle East Democracy recently told Jacobin.
But senior Biden officials insist the administration is upholding its commitments. “All of our arms transfers, including arms transfers to Israel, are rooted in the basic proposition that they will be used consistent with [the] law of armed conflict,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said last month. “There is no exception here and no difference here from any of our other arms transfers.” The administration regularly conveys to Israel the importance of humanitarian laws, that “innocent civilians must be taken [in]to account for any operation,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh.
Some of the concerns relate specifically to the kinds of weapons the US delivers. The document that Bloomberg obtained showed that the US is sending Israel 57,000 of the 155mm shells that are used in artillery guns. A group of humanitarian aid groups and security experts had sent a letter to the secretary of defense earlier in the week urging the Biden administration not to send these shells to Israel, saying they are “inherently indiscriminate” and “have a high error radius, often landing 25 meters away from the intended target,” which would be particularly destructive in a place as densely populated as Gaza.
As arms trade accelerates and scrutiny on Israel’s operations heightens, the reason for the strengthening of the arms transfer policy’s human rights component seems more relevant than ever. “It is not in the US national interest to engage in arms transfers where we assess that they are likely to be used in human rights violations,” Christopher Le Mon, a senior State Department official, said in March. “It does not advance our national interests, it does not advance our national security.”
The Las Vegas Grand Prix proves F1 needs more than glitz and glamour.
Thanks to a little show called Drive to Survive, as well as fresh ownership by way of Liberty Media, Formula 1 has never been more popular. This weekend, they’ll send the fastest cars in the world zooming down the Las Vegas Strip for the first time in almost 40 years. But if you’re a local looking to catch the race live — or any other American hoping to catch a glimpse of the cars roaring past — good luck.
A revitalized pop culture engine has taken over the sport: Driver fancams on TikTok, erudite magazine features, and braggadocious trap tracks proliferate with each passing day. American audiences, traditionally accustomed to Nascar, have bought into F1, and brought with them a whole new world of moneymaking ploys, not all of which are so fan-friendly.
Ask anyone who has spent time at the Miami Grand Prix, which was added to the race calendar just last year: Liberty Media is all about making F1 into an experience, the racing equivalent of Coachella for celebrities, influencers, and uber-wealthy tastemakers. All the while, the company pumped up the showiness with lavish, cheesy ceremonies. “I guess it’s the American way of doing things, doing sport,” Mercedes driver George Russell said about the Miami race back in May. (At races in Italy, Canada, and Japan, the ceremonies pale in comparison.)
If Miami’s extravaganza is any indication, there’s trouble brewing for Las Vegas, especially when it comes to understanding the various audiences in America. Miami’s three-day event put spectacle above sport in every way. And it seems like this weekend on the Strip will have the same excessive vibe — at the cost of everyday fans, locals, and even the Formula 1 teams themselves.
Not only has the hasty construction for a temporary street race track caused months of havoc, going to the race is out of the question unless you make serious bank. The average “get-in” price began at about $1,600 when tickets went on sale a year ago, unless you want to stand by the Sphere for a cool $500. That’s not including airfare, lodging, food and drink, or any bougie hospitality package (those range from thousands to millions of dollars, FYI).
While F1 officials claim that the event will generate more than $1 billion in economic activity for locals, the logistics and fizzled hype around the race tell a different story. Official tickets are still available when they’re typically sold out, and resale tickets have plummeted by hundreds of dollars. (Don’t mistake a price drop for affordability, though — it’s still ridiculously expensive.) Reasons for such a decline include: an inconvenient start time (10 pm local time, or an absurd 1 am if you’re on the East Coast), a lack of stakes — as driver Max Verstappen has dominated the competition this season — and the fact that it’s quite chilly to watch cars vroom vroom in late November.
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Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Sure, Formula 1 has always been a glitzy sport, celebrated on Monaco’s champagne-laden yachts and marked by the opulence of Abu Dhabi’s day-to-night race. But the aggressive pursuit of even more glamour as its audience grows (and transforms) is a deep misunderstanding of why people like F1 to begin with. Fans brought in by Netflix’s Drive to Survive appreciate the sheer engineering fortitude of cars that make 200 miles per hour look easy, the Bravo-worthy interpersonal drama, and the ease of only having to keep up with 20 drivers, rather than hundreds of athletes.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix looks to be proof of a hunch many have had for a while. Formula 1’s strategy for explosive growth was never about courting a diverse American audience of fervent fangirls, dorky dads, or motorsport maniacs. It’s about selling the pastiche of American sports to the wealthy, and giving European racing Super Bowl-levels of revenue and cultural soft power.
Formula 1’s missteps in America reflect a fascinating microcosm of what Liberty Media believes drives Americans. But despite Formula 1’s popularity explosion, these recent changes ignore what everyone really wants: competitive, accessible racing. Unless the sport can provide that, new American fans will tune out.
How Formula 1 became so damn big in the US
At the risk of severely oversimplifying F1 to the chagrin of nerds everywhere, the cool thing about Formula 1 is that it’s a physical and technological feat every race. Drivers are going so fast that their bodies are actively fighting against five times the G-force of a normal car. That’s the equivalent of feeling your body becoming five times heavier than it actually is. And in order to make cars go faster and also keep drivers safe, suites of engineers tirelessly research improvements.
It’s different from Nascar in a few ways: Drivers race on winding tracks with hard turns rather than circular tracks, the gulfs in performance between the best and worst machines are massive, and, thanks to literally breakneck speeds made to push bodies to their limits, the stakes are higher.
There are 10 teams in F1, with two drivers each. There’s a driver championship, where individual racers compete against each other (even teammates), and the constructor’s championship to reward the team as a whole. Winning in either category nets you more money to build better cars, and better cars mean more wins.
For a long time, the complexity of F1 alienated potential fans, much the way baseball’s stats-oriented ethos does. US-based company Liberty Media, which owns SiriusXM, bought Formula 1 in 2017, and updated the branding of the sport to be sexier and more watchable in order to get younger crowds at races. But it was Drive to Survive that changed F1’s longstanding reputation, matching feats of science with drama on the track.
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Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The show first aired in 2019, right before the pandemic, and while growth started slow, it has become exponential. 2021 was the first season where audiences could come back to the track, and it couldn’t have been a better time to be an F1 fan. Upstart Verstappen and veteran Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton — who was battling for his potentially record-breaking eighth world champion title — were neck and neck all season, with Verstappen ultimately coming out on top.
Total attendance globally for the 2022 season was 5.7 million, up 36 percent compared to 2019, according to Liberty Media’s public financial reports. 2021 and 2022 saw back-to-back record-breaking attendance at the Austin Grand Prix, with 400,000 and 440,000 attendees, respectively. The average attendance in 2019 per race globally was around 200,000 viewers.
With that huge growth came the desire to do more in the US — where a lot of change stemmed from. Formula 1 added the Miami Grand Prix in 2022, with the expectation of a 10-year contract. The Las Vegas race was announced shortly after, with the debut aiming for 2023.
The growing pains of finding new audiences
The crucial issue with Formula 1 and Liberty Media is their assumption of who is attending these races. The additions of Miami and Las Vegas suggest that F1 is only really after a good party. It makes sense: These are cities that offer a lot of nightlife, food, and culture for those who might only attend a race because it’s the cool thing to do.
Roaming around the Miami paddock and the Mercedes party at the Ritz-Carlton on South Beach back in May, I asked folks whether they were fans of a certain team or racer. One answered while sipping a sake martini that she was here for a PR trip; another answered that she lives in Miami and that F1 creates an opportunity to mingle with celebrities and influencers. One half of electronic duo Disclosure played some oontz-oontz tracks, and for a moment, brought Mercedes reserve driver Mick Schumacher, the son of decorated F1 racer Michael Schumacher, to the stage. Only a handful of people recognized him.
In some ways, Liberty Media is right. The guest who is there for the vibe needs to be catered to — they’re the ones who have full wallets. At the same time, longtime fans and even new fans who care about the actual sport bristle at this dynamic. Tickets are becoming more expensive when theoretically these races should be more accessible. Austin’s general admission for the whole race weekend in 2021 was around $200-$300. This year, they went for $475. Las Vegas’s standing room only admission starts at $500, but the hospitality options exceed the price of Miami’s.
Currently, some longtimers are miffed at the fangirl culture shift, blaming them for the changes in F1. The lines between fangirl and clout-chaser are seemingly thin for those who can’t tell the difference. But really, it’s not the new female devotees who are at fault, it’s corporate greed. Those same enthusiasts are certainly the ones asking hard questions: Where are the female drivers? Why did F1 seem so pro-“End Racism” in 2020 only to muzzle drivers years later? Why was an alleged abuser and son of a Russian oligarch racing for so long? That can be a tough pill to swallow when so much of the sport has for years been just about statistics. But questioning the status quo can only strengthen the sport — it’s leaving fans out that poses the real problem.
What’s going on with the Las Vegas Grand Prix?
Lovingly put, Formula 1 severely overestimated the Venn diagram of who loves to watch racing and who can afford a laughably decadent experience. F1 has turned into a spectacle, riding on the coattails of its most exhilarating season in 2021, and the gut-wrenching rise and fall of Ferrari’s attempt to win the driver’s championship in 2022.
But this season’s stakes are just … not there. It’s a total snooze for a new fan who may have become accustomed to the edge-of-your-seat dynamics of the last two years. Verstappen took the championship already with a record-breaking 17 wins out of 23 races this year. He could start in the very back of the pack and still take pole position. With the driver’s and constructor’s championship more or less decided, the season is remarkably uninteresting. According to ESPN, Formula 1 is averaging 1.11 million viewers across its networks — down 8 percent from last year.
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Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Unlike what Drive to Survive depicts, the drama just isn’t there. The seemingly predetermined nature of these races is turning America off. (Longtime fans may remember a time when Michael Schumacher won five years in a row, so it’s not like the dominance is necessarily new, but it’s just not what drew in bright-eyed American fans.)
So it’s not that much of a shocker that people don’t want to spend their hard-earned money on a race that doesn’t really matter all that much, especially when said race is the most expensive on the calendar. If Las Vegas apes Miami’s overpriced, underwhelming hospitality — one attendee in May tweeted “Fyre festival vibes,” after reportedly paying $42 for a “wagyu” sandwich that had what looked like a few slices of ham — it could mean even more tension between certain types of fans.
Then there’s the issue of how unwelcome Formula 1 is in Las Vegas. Unlike Miami and Austin, where the races are held temporarily within a stadium or on a dedicated circuit far away from downtown areas, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is at the heart of the city, on roads locals use every day. Street races have their place on the calendar (like in Singapore, my personal favorite to watch), but the key difference is local governments have a sustained relationship with F1 and Liberty Media. What’s going on in Vegas is a haphazard, bureaucratic mess.
As Elizabeth Blackstock reported for Jalopnik, locals and laborers alike have immense scorn for the infrastructural disaster the sport has wreaked on the city for the last nine months, in addition to chopping down trees, pricing out tourists, and more. “I’ll leave you with this,” an anonymous front-of-the-house hotel worker told Blackstock. “I often hear the sentiment, joking or not, that folks wish the mob still ran Las Vegas instead of these vultures and leeches.”
Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei recently issued an apology for the disruption, but padded it with the so-called economic benefit of the race. “I want to apologize to all the Las Vegas residents and we appreciate that they have their forbearance and their willingness to tolerate us,” he said. “We’re going to bring something like $1.7 billion of revenue to the area.”
The drivers themselves are a bit more measured. Negative connotations aren’t good for the sport. “I’ve heard there’s been a lot of complaints about the event being here from the locals,” Hamilton told reporters. “We’ve got to make sure people are taken care of. We can’t be a circus that shows up that’s all glitz and glamour and people are affected negatively by it, in my opinion.”
The big question Formula 1 will have to ask itself after this weekend is: Was it worth it? A poorly installed drain cover shredded the bottom of Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz’s car during practice, leading to a pricey repair worth a “fortune,” penalties for Sainz, and a 90-minute delay, pushing the second practice to 2:30 am. Fans were ejected from the grandstands moments before practice resumed. What’s the point of spending all that money if you only got to see 10 minutes of car racing?
The impression is that the US is full of fans with money, and that’s true to some extent. But it’s hard to build something solid and lasting on razzle-dazzle and upcharged extras. Nothing can be cool forever, and drawing comparisons to doomed music festivals doesn’t bode well for the long term. Even if people are dropping the equivalent of a house down payment to have a good time, the growing pains are here. For some fans, the hurt will be too much.
Why bin Laden’s 2002 letter became the latest TikTok moral panic.
This week, videos featuring former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s 2002 missive “Letter to America” were posted to TikTok, leading a wide swath of politicians, families of 9/11 victims, and influencers to condemn users creating the clips — and the app itself.
The story goes like this: TikTokers are “going viral” for sharing bin Laden’s arguments, and that is renewing calls to ban the app and feeding a recent fear that TikTok is indoctrinating Gen Z with pro-Hamas propaganda. The issue is, that story’s not fully true. While some TikTokers really were posting videos urging others to read the letter and getting modest views, these videos only made up a “tiny, tiny corner” of TikTok, as Jason Koebler, one of the earlier reporters to dig into the videos, explained in a post on X.
The controversy over the videos is a reminder that, often, a moral panic stems from a kernel of truth, one that is removed from its original context and coated in hyperbole. The panic over the letter is just the latest in a long line of these sorts of social media-driven scares about the dangers of the internet, which tended to create a false sense of frenzy. Did any children at all film themselves eating Tide Pods for views? Sure. Was it a wildly popular trend among Gen Z teens back in the day? No. The same goes for last year’s panic about kids baking NyQuil in chicken in order to go viral on TikTok.
What makes this TikTok panic especially potent, however, is a mix of factors. There’s bipartisan support among US politicians to restrict or ban TikTok as a national security risk. In a hearing earlier this year, lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew over the app’s ties to China (TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is a Chinese company). And although TikTok says that the average age of its 150 million active users in the US is 31, the platform retains a deep association with youth culture. This makes it the ideal breeding ground for anxiety about what The Children are up to online.
Meanwhile, bin Laden is a figure that elicits strong emotions — especially in the West — for his role in the 9/11 terror attacks and the shadow the resultant war on terror cast on American life. One of the things the letter touches on, and one of the things the videos focused on, is Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. The letter cites Israeli actions toward Palestinians, and the US’s allyship with Israel, as justification for al-Qaeda’s attacks on the US. In the wake of Hamas’s assault on Israel and Israel’s war on Hamas, those comments appear to have taken on new potency for some TikTok users. As NBC News reports, many who’ve discussed the letter have not said that they support bin Laden’s actions and his perpetration of the September 11 attacks, but note that it has made them view the US’s foreign policy in the Middle East more critically.
It seems likely that statements, tweets, and articles expressing outrage about TikTok personalities praising the letter went more viral than any of the videos in question. Regardless of how this story actually began, we’re all paying attention to it now.
The outrage over the bin Laden “Letter to America” TikTok videos, briefly explained
As with many stories about viral trends, the original source of interest in the bin Laden letter is unclear. The Washington Post noted that a small account on TikTok had posted one of the earlier videos on Monday, though its reporters write that Google search interest in the missive had been growing for days before videos about the bin Laden letter began to circulate on social media.
According to the Post, TikTok videos with the hashtag #lettertoamerica had been viewed about 2 million times as of Wednesday evening, a number the publication described as a “relatively low” figure given the 150 million accounts on the app in the US. On Wednesday night, social media influencer Yashar Ali posted a compilation of these posts on X that was viewed 38 million times, per the Post. Ali has a large, diverse, and politically well-connected following on X, giving his posts wide reach. Following his post, TikToks with this hashtag had been viewed 14.2 million times as of Thursday morning.
With all those views came backlash. The White House criticized those creating, watching, and sharing the videos: “There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil and antisemitic lies that the leader of Al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history,” Andrew J. Bates, a deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement to the New York Times. “No one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.”
Slate writer Fred Kaplan was among the media experts and political observers who believed that those who are sharing the letter may be doing a selective reading that disregarded other provisions, including its broader “attack on the modern secular world,” justification for violence against civilians, and antisemitic statements. Far-right lawmakers — many of whom backed former President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban the app — have also seized on the spread of this letter to try to reignite criticism of TikTok and calls for a ban. Because the app is owned by a Chinese parent company, some lawmakers have raised concerns that it could be used to amplify anti-American content and propaganda, an allegation TikTok has denied.
In response to this outrage, the Guardian, which had hosted an English translation of the letter since 2002, removed it from its site, citing the lack of background provided. The Guardian noted in a statement that the letter was “widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualized it.”
For his part, Ali — as well as CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan — disputes the implication that his video was the sole cause of this topic’s virality. TikTok has also pushed back against the idea that the bin Laden videos went viral at all, while also taking down videos promoting the letter noting that these videos violate “rules on supporting any form of terrorism.”
“The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate,” TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe added in a statement to NBC News. “This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”
What’s in the “Letter to America”
The 2002 letter tries to answer the questions of why al-Qaeda is opposing and fighting the United States, and what the group wants from the US. It was published after the terrorist group killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.
Bin Laden argues that the rationale for the group’s violence is “because you attack us and continue to attack us,” citing the United States’s support of the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestinian territories, among a number of other foreign policy actions including America’s sanctions on Iraq and bombing of Afghanistan. It also calls for more people to become adherents to Islam and criticizes the US for everything from its purported “acts of immorality” to its climate policy to its treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
In its response to these two questions, the letter also attempts to justify the killing of civilians, uses several antisemitic tropes, and attacks gay people.
In their posts, some TikTok users say that reading the letter has forced them to reflect on how history has framed the US’s culpability in geopolitics. “If you have read it, let me know if you are also going through an existential crisis in this very moment, because in the last 20 minutes, my entire viewpoint on the entire life I have believed, and I have lived, has changed,” one user said. And while much of the backlash has suggested that these posts are broadly synonymous with praise of bin Laden, some people in the videos featured in Ali’s compilation were focused more on reflecting on America’s historical relations with the Middle East than they were on backing bin Laden’s actions.
This response has come as there has been increased scrutiny of Israel’s airstrikes and siege of Gaza, which have killed more than 11,000 civilians, and a desire to understand the history of the Israel-Hamas conflict. At the same time, TikTok is gaining in popularity as a place to learn about and understand the news. According to a recent Pew Research poll, the share of TikTok users who regularly get news on the app has doubled since 2020. Younger people, who have a large presence on TikTok, have also been among the groups who’ve been most critical of both Israel’s military response and the US’s support for it.
One expert told the Washington Post that some of the users sharing bin Laden’s letter were potentially focusing on parts that resonated with them while ignoring other parts that perpetuated damaging tropes and violence.
“It’s not the letter that is going viral. It’s a selective reading of parts of the letter that’s going viral,” Charlie Winter, a specialist in Islamist militant affairs and director of research at the intelligence platform ExTrac, told the Washington Post. “And I don’t know whether it’s because people aren’t actually reading it or, when they’re reading it, they’re reading the bits that they want to see.”