Danny Lewin, the first victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would be deeply disturbed by the current political divisiveness and the spread of conspiracy theories surrounding the tragedy, according to his close friend Marco Greenberg.
Lewin, an American-Israeli tech entrepreneur, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001. He is believed to have been killed after confronting the hijackers, his throat slashed before the plane reached its target.
"Danny called it like it is – rather than the tragedy unifying the country, it’s now all about being divisive," Greenberg said. "He’d be very disappointed, but not surprised, to see how truth has been turned on its head."
Born in Denver and raised in Israel, Lewin was a decorated military commander in the Israel Defense Forces' elite Sayeret Matkal counterterrorism unit before becoming a star student at the Technion university. By age 31, he was a co-founder of Akamai Technologies, a company that significantly improved internet speed and efficiency.
Lewin was a Ph.D candidate at MIT and lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and two young sons when he boarded the flight from Boston's Logan Airport for a business trip to Los Angeles. He was seated in business class, directly behind Mohamed Atta, one of the lead hijackers.
The 9/11 Commission Report suggests that Lewin, having served as an officer in the Israeli military, may have attempted to thwart the hijackers. Greenberg recounted reports of Lewin fighting back against four terrorists, armed with only his laptop and a Blackberry.
Greenberg expressed dismay that 25 years after the attacks, the tragedy is being reframed in ways that vilify the United States and support terrorist ideologies. He believes Lewin would be particularly upset by the notion of the next generation idolizing figures like Osama bin Laden and blaming America for the attacks.
"Danny would be incensed not just over the political divisiveness today," Greenberg stated, "but of how it’s been sanitized. Watered-down language, like the ‘events of 9/11,’ outrage Greenberg. It’s not a TV miniseries – it was a vicious and shocking attack on civilians."
Greenberg described Lewin as a brilliant individual who could have achieved even greater prominence had he lived, likening his potential to that of tech leaders like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sergey Brin.
Lewin, according to Greenberg, would have strongly differentiated between Islam and radical Islam, recognizing the latter as the ideology responsible for his death. "He knows that’s the malignant ideology that murdered him."