“We have some planes…”
–Muhammad Atta, 9/11 hijacker

The great horror of 9/11 was supposed to be that Al Qaeda hijacked a bunch of American planes and used the civilians on them as mere cannon fodder for their military ends. The great redemption was supposed to be United Flight 93, which flew out of Newark, bound for San Francisco, but crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers stormed the cockpit and brought it down.

The horror hasn’t really ended. It’s just been concealed. United Flight 90 is the standard United flight to Tel Aviv out of Newark that I’ve taken for a decade, starting from the same place as Flight 93, but flying in exactly the reverse direction. It turns out that everyone on it is, and has for some time been, a human shield for Israel. Our lives–and the honest truth–mean so little to our ruling class that they’ll sacrifice both to Israel without a thought.

The Intercept has the story:

United Airlines is set to resume the shipment of military hardware to Israel aboard passenger flights, according to shipping data reviewed by The Intercept. The airline, one of the biggest in the world, had halted the practice more than six months ago amid the outbreak of the war on Iran.

On Wednesday evening, United is scheduled to transport five shipments of military cargo onboard United Airlines flight 90, a passenger route from Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, to Tel Aviv, Israel, a day after resuming the route and another direct flight to Israel, records show. 

The shipments, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept, include one transport to the “electro-optics” wing of the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems, in Rehovot, Israel, where the arms maker has a major campus. Another shipment is bound for Elbit Systems Land, a division of the company formerly known as IMI Systems, located in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. And a further three shipments are scheduled to go to an Elbit Systems facility in Karmiel, Israel.

Read the whole thing. It goes on for awhile, but the bottom line is obvious: Al Qaeda turned American civilians into flying ammunition; Israel and its American allies, including its corporate ones, have turned American civilians into human shields. Both parties are willing either to blow you up or get you blown up for their God-intoxicated ends. That’s what six wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Iran) over twenty-five years have gotten us: one set of terrorists started out with four planes; the other set now has the whole fleet. Progress!

The only people charging the cockpit this time are the activists across the country trying to bring the whole thing to a halt. That’s the sense, and the only sense, in which the 2026 midterms and every forthcoming election are a “Flight 93 Election.” The people flying the plane are committing suicide and taking us with them. Either we stop them, or we go down with them. Outlandish as it may seem to some, the activists trying to stop arms shipments out of places like Newark/Elizabeth and Oakland/Alameda are the only ones who really grasp the stakes or the dynamic involved. (On Newark/Elizabeth, see this and this. On Oakland/Alameda, see this and this.)

Oakland Arms Embargo, Oakland, California, March 2026 (photo: Kate Herrick)

The United States has been telling the same lie now for 100 years, since the sinking of the Lusitania. Only our enemies turn civilians into human shields, the story goes, not us. Well, if you believe that, just know that United Flight 90 is well within range of Iranian drones and missiles as it approaches TLV. Feel free to get on it, and feel free to get blown up. You’ll figure it out. Like the 9/11 hijackers, you can take satisfaction in having thrown your life away for a greater good. They threw their lives away for Allah; you can throw yours away for Israel. I’d have no objection either way, except that it gets in the way of the rest of us living our lives, something that’s taken a back seat to brutes for far too long.

Members of the Port of Elizabeth Movement, Elizabeth, New Jersey, August 2026