When the official report of the congressional 9/11 commission was released in 2003, 29 (not, as often claimed, 28) pages had been removed. These pages have now been released. As has been rumored for some time, they do in fact show evidence of connections between Saudi officials and the hijackings. Simon Henderson writes:

It is instantly apparent [upon looking at the passages] that the widely-held belief for why the pages were not initially released—to prevent embarrassing the Saudi royal family—is true. The pages are devastating. . . . The inquiry . . . quotes a redacted source alleging “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government.”

[In a recent] interview, the CIA’s director, John Brennan, [stated that] “there [is] no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks.”

That could very well be right. But it still allows for the possibility, indeed the probability, that the actions of senior Saudis resulted in those terrorist outrages. [One need not believe] that the Saudi government or members of the royal family directly supported or financed the 9/11 attacks. But official Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the attackers, without a doubt. . . .

On Friday, the Saudi foreign minister held a news conference at the Saudi embassy where he declared “The matter is now finished.” Asked whether the report exonerated the kingdom, he replied: “Absolutely.” I think not.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.