The Sept 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center echoed a devastating coup on Sept. 11, 1973 supported by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, by General Augusto Pinochet against the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. In retaliations, dates resonate.

Pinochet went on to inspire Operation Condor, the persecution, torture, and disappearance of thousands of leftist students and workers in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. One method was being thrown from a plane at sea. The CIA and other elements in the U.S. government were involved.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani compromised investigation of the 9/11 crime scene by selling the recovered steel, giving rise to theories of government conspiracy. Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden later said the attack was a response to U.S. military presence in his home country, Saudi Arabia. He once allied with the CIA in opposing the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He was also responsible for the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

He announced, “The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early childhood, fueled my desire (and that of the 19 bombers) to stand by the oppressed and punish the oppressive Jews and their allies.”

We may charitably assume bin Laden referred not to Jewish people but to their Zionist leadership, which from Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress (Basel, 1897) to current Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been in political control of Israel.

Zionism is so increasingly focused on territorially recreating the greater Israel state of ancient times that it now can be described as a threat to Israeli Jews. Zionists defined as enemies the Palestinian Arabs who lived in that space. Palestinians were violently driven from their farms and homes in the 1948 formation of the Israeli state.

The army-occupied West Bank, to which Palestinians retreated, is the size of Delaware, our second-smallest state. Choice portions of land and homes of Palestinian in the West Bank have been taken by Israeli settlers. Like 19th-century pioneers moving against Indians in the West, or Boers consuming the lands of Blacks in South Africa, they overwhelm. They number over 600,000.

In response to the horrific retaliatory attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a justified effort to totally destroy Hamas. But it is alleged that he is using the assault to reduce the number of Palestinians living there. Bunker buster shells, supplied by the U.S., can indiscriminately destroy a city block. Approximately 25,000 Palestinians have been killed, 2 million made homeless.

The question never asked — or answered — is why in our lifetimes has the world been put under constant threat of terror?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney chose not to lead a sympathetic world on a global effort to capture and punish those responsible for 9/11, instead lying about why, and launching invasions that would fail upon two countries innocent of the crime. Costs were staggering, casualties enormous, the number of those angered incalculable.

Following World War II, Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill were intolerant of sharing the world with differing ideological systems than capitalism. Unacceptable was their Soviet war ally’s desire to maintain protection from Germany by dominating Eastern Europe. Germany was remade as an ally against Russia. The two generated the Cold War.

The Vietnam War was, in part, an attempt to reverse the Communist Revolution in China. Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship in Taiwan was given Chinese representation at the U.N. — for 62 years.

Pivotal in the growth of terrorism was the 1953 CIA-British takedown of the elected Iranian government over control of oil. Prime Minister Mosaddegh was forcefully replaced by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who brutally suppressed the Iranian people. As he was sheltered by the U.S., during the 1979 revolution 52 hostages were taken at the American embassy and held for more than a year. Rather than coming to an understanding over shared wrongs, the U.S. classified Iran an enemy, encouraging the defensive rise of its most hostile elements.

Iran, backing Hamas, Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the central agent in Mideast terror, has been made unapproachable.

Netanyahu cannot end threats to Israel and President Joe Biden cannot militarily defend it. Rather than bombing terrorism sites, the one choice Biden should take to dramatically reduce the terrorism threat is to announce withdrawal of military and economic support for Israel unless it removes settlers from the West Bank to provide there an independent Palestinian homeland. Israel can resettle pulverized Gaza.

Ukraine, Taiwan, and Middle East are at a boil. One is reminded of 1915, when a single bullet fired launched tense countries into world war.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian, currently editing his new work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning he American Narrative.”