If Osama bin Laden were alive in 2025, Western leaders would be hailing him as a visionary. His 2002 Letter to America called Israel’s existence a ‘crime’ and demanded a heavy price for its supporters. He spun a narrative of Western imperialism, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation – grievances that resonate with many victimhood-driven Western institutions. If the goal of war is to change the enemy’s foreign policy, then for the Islamist global insurgency, now enabled by Western leaders, Palestine is just the start. Bin Laden would be prouder than a donkey headed to the Hajj.

Not in his wildest jihadi dreams could the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US have imagined his Islamist ideas are now mainstreamed into Western society, including in Australia and the United Kingdom. Bin Laden’s words tap into a deep chip on the shoulders of Western leaders, and a population fed on guilt and dependency.

Bin Laden had strong connections to Palestine. In the 1970s, his father’s construction firm repaired the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and his Islamist global insurgency mentor was Palestinian cleric Addullah Yusuf Azzam. Even though al-Qaeda and Hamas rarely see eye-to-eye, both understood war as multidimensional: ideological, economic, cultural, psychological, and brutally savage when required. Bin Laden wielded propaganda as a weapon, amplifying anti-Western narratives long before social media fuelled populism. Same as Hamas.

Bin Laden’s globalised Islamist framework ultimately recognised there would need to be a great mobilisation to achieve mass participation in a jihadist movement. The Palestinian intifada was always seen as a ‘prototype’ for reaching the homes of the Western invaders and their infidel allies from every race and place. Now non-violent jihad is acceptable in cities like Melbourne, Sydney and London, and merged with many other anti-Western causes such as net zero and trans-activism.

Given bin Laden’s capacity to think strategically, he would have calculated that once his Islamist soldiers (that include women), found sanctuary in Western countries, they no longer needed to deliver their demands via bombs-in-backpacks in Sydney or London. Thanks to propaganda-savvy Hamas and a compliant Western media, the insurgency has calculated how to differentiate the application of violence and non-violence. Violence against Israel and Jews, while non-violence against the rest through flag-burning protests, the slow acceptance of sharia law, the appointment of Islamophobia envoys, and mass-migration.

The West mistakenly believed the insurgency could be confined to Afghanistan. Fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here, when all along the insurgency had been working its way into our political and educational establishments at home.

In June 2024, al-Qaeda’s de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, under the pseudonym Salim al-Sharif, released the third instalment of his essay series, This is Gaza: A War of Existence, Not a War of Borders No.3.  This essay, part of al-Qaeda’s propaganda response to the current Israel-Hamas war, frames the conflict as an existential jihad against Zionism and Western imperialism. By leveraging the global spotlight on Gaza, al-Qaeda is seizing a strategic victory – not through territorial gains, but through the growing recognition of Palestine as a cause galvanising the Islamist global insurgency’s agenda: exploiting the Gaza crisis to mobilise anti-Western causes worldwide. It’s a new form of guilt-based collectivism.

The West’s other mistake was treating war as a hardware problem, ignoring the ideological software bin Laden mastered. He wove conspiracy, humiliation and justice into a potent mix, now mirrored in the rhetoric of leaders like Starmer and Albanese. Strip away bin Laden’s jihadist mask, and his anti-imperialist, anti-Israel stance aligns with their policies. Starmer’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ and Albanese’s Islamophobia Report released on 9/11’s 24th anniversary give bin Laden’s themes and Al-Qaeda’s Six Master Narratives mainstream legitimacy.

Our final mistake (the one hardest to admit) is continuing to believe love and appeasement will pacify the Islamists. Many believe that all these terrorists, if you scratch beneath the surface, are looking for religious equality and justice. They just want to be accepted. That’s complete nonsense. Recognising a Palestinian state won’t stop Western-hating protests. It’s too late for that now. The Islamist insurgency’s aims will continue to be advanced by ‘pen and gun, word and bullet’. Earnest think tanks, Palestinian statehood and Islamophobic re-education for members of parliament will not lead to co-existence.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Al-Qaeda share one goal: erasing Israel, not coexisting. And their existential ambition is the same for the West, just look at their success in the UK. The Gaza and Palestinian cause is a moral smokescreen for advancing the Islamist insurgency even deeper into Western hearts and minds.

If alive, bin Laden might be invited to a TED Talk on Gaza, his ideas repackaged as anti-colonial, net-zero wisdom. After all, in an era where universities teach ‘decolonising the curriculum’, his narrative of resistance fits neatly into the expected discourse on campuses across the West. At a British conference in Leicester, organised by the radical Al-Muhajiroun faction in October 2002, Abu Hamza al-Masri told followers that the whole world had become the battlefield. Not much different to the progressive collectivism we see today.

As Jessica Stern explains in Terror in the Name of God, it is no longer sufficient to focus on one or two leading villains. Stern argues we may have to deal with the villain as a seductive, hateful idea of ‘us versus them’. So, the real masterstroke, begun by bin Laden and advanced by Hamas, has been to continue feeding the cause by repeating their claims wrapped in our own principles.  Just how clever is that.

A transformation has taken place where once again our political leaders act against their nation’s self-interest, in what the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described as The March of Folly. A transformation where our leaders no longer stand for Western Judeo-Christian values, free speech and pride in one flag.

Through smooth talking explanations and self-hypnosis those in power remain enablers of these anti-Western external forces seeking to undermine our freedom and security. Perhaps bin Laden’s son, Hamza, was right. Osama is everywhere.