Hasan Piker Revisits Benjamin Netanyahu's Words on 9/11 Helping Israel

Hasan Piker, on his stream on Wednesday cited remarks Benjamin Netanyahu made after the September 11 attacks to argue that Israel benefits whenever Americans fear Islam, a claim with a real but more layered documentary record than the version aired on the show.

The comment came as Piker watched clips from Run Hide Fight: Infidels, a Daily Wire film produced by Ben Shapiro and starring Jonathan Majors that depicts an ISIS-style takeover of a college campus. The hosts argued the movie was built to stoke fear of Muslims and shore up Western support for Israel.

"This is also part of the reason why when Benjamin Netanyahu came out immediately after 9/11. And he said this is good for us because America will finally learn what we've known for years that you know Islam is this true danger," Piker said. "He said that I think literally on 9/11 2001 or the day after."

Piker continued: "Israel knows that when Americans in the Western world broadly speaking are Islamophobic they get unlimited weapons. They get to justify their cruelty."

What Benjamin Netanyahu Actually Said About 9/11

Two documented statements underpin the claim, and neither matches the wording used on the stream.

On the day of the attacks, Netanyahu, then out of office after his first term as prime minister, was asked by The New York Times what the attacks meant for relations between the United States and Israel. "It's very good," he replied, before correcting himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." He added that the attacks would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples."

The more direct version came seven years later. In April 2008, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported that Netanyahu, by then leader of the opposition Likud party, told an audience at Bar-Ilan University: "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." He added that those events "swung American public opinion in our favor," according to accounts of the Ma'ariv report published by Haaretz, Foreign Policy and Democracy Now.

Neither account records Netanyahu saying that America would "finally learn" that Islam is a "true danger," the phrasing used on the stream. The remarks that describe Israel as "benefiting" from the attacks were reported in 2008, not on the day of the attacks, and they tie that benefit to the Iraq war as much as to 9/11.

Did U.S. Military Aid to Israel Rise After 9/11?

Piker's broader claim, that Western Islamophobia translates into "unlimited weapons" for Israel, can be tested against aid data compiled by the Congressional Research Service.

Foreign Military Financing grants to Israel stood at roughly $1.98 billion in fiscal year 2001, rose to $3.1 billion a year under a 10-year memorandum signed in 2007, and reached $3.3 billion a year under the current 2019-2028 agreement, according to CRS tables and the service's May 2025 report.

But the upward trajectory was set before the attacks. The first 10-year memorandum, agreed under President Bill Clinton in 1999, committed the U.S. to phase out economic aid to Israel while raising military aid by one-third over the following decade, CRS notes. The later increases came from agreements signed by the George W. Bush administration in 2007 and the Obama administration in 2016, the latter pledging $38 billion over 10 years.

The sharpest single-year jump came not after 9/11 but after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Military aid obligations reached $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2024 after Congress passed an emergency supplemental in April 2024 that included $3.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $5.2 billion for missile defense, CRS reports. In all, the U.S. has provided Israel about $174 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding since World War II, in non-inflation-adjusted dollars.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry Research the Stream Cited

Piker also pointed to a leaked document reported by Drop Site News in September 2025. According to that report by Ryan Grim, Stagwell Global, the firm led by political strategist Mark Penn, was commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to test messaging in the U.S. and Europe. The research found that a combined message pairing Israel's support for women's rights and gay rights with warnings that Hamas seeks to "destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism" raised support by more than 20 percentage points in the countries tested; the report did not find that lift from the Hamas-threat framing on its own.

"The Israeli Foreign Ministry had come to the conclusion that it was virtually impossible to defend Israel on its face," Piker said. "This movie is a byproduct of that Israeli Foreign Ministry Hasbara push."

PolitiKool is not aware of any reporting connecting the Daily Wire production to the Israeli government.## How Critics Have Received 'Run Hide Fight: Infidels'

Piker himself focused on the film's quality, saying Shapiro had compared it to a classic. "Ben Shapiro said, 'This is my Citizen Kane,' about ... the Islamophobic ... movie that he made. It's crazy," Piker said.

Professional reviews have been mixed. Film Threat praised the film's stunt work and practical effects, according to a roundup by Awards Daily. The same roundup quoted Sue Obeidi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council calling the movie "more ridiculous than it is offensive."

Piker was skeptical the film would achieve what he described as its aim. "Will it happen? I don't think so. Will it work? Probably not," he said.

What Happens Next

The current U.S.-Israel aid agreement runs through September 30, 2028, and CRS reports that officials on both sides are preparing for negotiations over its successor. Netanyahu has said in the past year that Israel needs to "wean ourselves off of American security aid," according to remarks cited in the CRS report, even as Congress continues to appropriate at or above the levels the memorandum set.