Schools Must Teach About Villains, Heroes of 9/11

By Steve Levy

As we have just passed the 25th anniversary of the attacks on our homeland, on Sept. 11, 2001, let’s acknowledge that our nation’s schools find themselves struggling over how to teach the 911 terrorist attacks to our children.

Many schools are placing an emphasis on the obviously heroic acts of first responders.

We are all in for that, of course.

So many gave their lives so that others may have lived on that day.

Indeed, the event did rally Americans around the flag and boosted our sense of patriotism.

With all that said, we must make sure that we do not shy away from vilifying those who committed this atrocious act, and explain clearly to our next generation that didn’t experience the horrors of that day, who the enemy is that perpetrated this mass murder of nearly 3,000 New Yorkers.

There are some who will attempt to gloss over it for fear that they might be labeled “Islamophobic” or that it will make some students feel uncomfortable.

That’s nonsense.

There is a way to talk about the religious fanatics who hate America and carried out this attack without castigating all Muslims as being terrorists or hating America.

There is a difference between the overwhelming number of hard-working, God-fearing, patriotic American Muslims, who seek to assimilate and adapt to our nation’s ways, and the religious fanatics who hate America and Western civilization to the point that they would seek to kill thousands of innocent Americans.

We don’t shy away from teaching children the evil of Nazis and their genocidal quest for world domination on the grounds that doing so might make us appear anti-German, or offend those of German descent.

The same applies to Japan, who were the aggressors in attacking America in 1941.

Translation?

There is a need to tell it like it is.

—Vilifying Nazism is not vilifying Germans.

—Vilifying Islamo-fascism is not vilifying Muslims.

Just about every German-American was assimilated into our society and fought against Germany in the war, as did the Italian Americans who fought against their relatives in the early part of the conflict.

We must also shy away from the type of moral equivalency employed by the seemingly antisemitic mayor of New York City: Zohran Mamdani, who traditionally tweets with his 911 message by calling for reflection about those who were killed on that day, while also also bowing our heads for the many people who were thereafter killed in the foreign wars when America retaliated.

In 2023 he tweeted, “Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 22 years later, the death hasn’t stopped. We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced. In their memory, we work toward a better world.”

If we genuinely want to survive as a nation, we must instill within our children why we think our way of life is better than the enemies wqho tried to wipe us off  the face of the earth.

Recently, we wrote glowingly about how the state of Florida is now mandating that high school students learn about the evils of socialism and communism as practiced in Cuba, China, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union.

If we want to maintain our American way of life, we have to know who our enemies are. 

Those preaching Nazism, communism and religious fanaticism as practiced by the Islamo/fascists must be called out.

Our youth must know who Osama bin Laden and his ilk were and how they wanted to turn us into a Taliban-like society, one in which:

—Girls can’t go to school past the sixth grade.

—Where women must cover themselves up completely.

—Where democracy is snuffed out and there is no free press.

A two page article in Newsday recently discussed how schools are contemplating their lesson plans, inclusive of LOng Ialand, N.Y. educators teaching lessons of Sept. 11.

Tellingly, the words “kindness” and “courage” were each employed twice.

The word “terrorist” only once.

The words Islamists, bin Laden, religious fanatics, or anti-American were never mentioned, . . . or even alluded to.

The heroes of that day 25 years ago deserve our focus and gratitude.

But let us not not forget the villainous religious Islamofascist zealots who wanted to not only kill Americans, but end our Western civilization as well.