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Middle East Review of International Affairs
The Shot Seen Around the World: The Middle East Reacts to September 11th
by Cameron Brown
*
Editor's Note
This article examines official and popular reactions in the Arab world, Iran and Pakistan to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. The article discerns several trends throughout the region, ranging from exuberant support to outright condemnation; from saying that the United States deserved these attacks for its errant foreign policies (especially in the region), to claiming that Israel had actually perpetrated the attack.
In what typifies a world now transformed by instantaneous global communications, within a mere two hours of the time two airliners had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, not only had millions in the Middle East heard of the attack, but the Associated Press and Reuters had already published stories describing celebrations of the attacks in the West Bank and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. While the attacks themselves were the work of a few extremists, what is far more instructive about the region's political realities and the attitudes of its people is the manner in which Middle Easterners reacted to those events.
Full PDF Document, 21 pages, 123kB
Endnotes
Note *: Cameron Brown is the assistant director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and an assistant editor of MERIA Journal. Back