Candace Owens Accuses Israel of Perpetrating 9/11
Owens accused Israel of committing 9/11 in response to an abruptly-edited clip of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as antisemitic conspiracy theories surge amid Operation Epic Fury
On Wednesday, March 4, 2026, conservative commentator Candace Owens posted a direct accusation on X targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, writing “You murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11. For starters.”
The comment was posted in reply to what appears to be a selectively edited news clip of Netanyahu speaking at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Beit Shemesh, Israel. The post, which drew immediate and widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum, marks the brazen rehashing of an antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy narrative Owens has been advancing across multiple posts over several days.
The Clip Owens Shared and What Was Cut Out
The video Owens responded to was captioned: “Netanyahu: You see the difference. The tyrants of Tehran target civilians. We target the tyrants of Tehran to protect civilians.” That is a direct quote from Netanyahu’s March 2 statement at Beit Shemesh, a residential area struck by an Iranian missile that killed nine civilians, delivered on the third day of Operation Roaring Lion, the joint U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.
The shared clip, however, omitted the surrounding remarks in which Netanyahu explicitly described the operation as a joint endeavor with the United States, framed Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat to multiple continents, and thanked President Trump by name for American participation.
The full statement read in part: “This is the third day of Operation Roaring Lion, the operation the Israeli army and the State of Israel set out, with our great friends in the United States of America and President Trump, to thwart existential threats to Israel, and great threats to America and the entire world.” Netanyahu also warned that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles would “threaten all of humanity.”
By stripping out that context and presenting only Netanyahu’s contrast between Iranian and Israeli targeting doctrine, the circulated clip provided the visual and rhetorical premise for Owens’ accusation.
No Community Note After 24 Hours
As of the time of publication, Owens’ post had amassed over 132,000 likes, 23,000 retweets, and 7.4 million impressions with no Community Note attached, despite having been live for over 24 hours. Community Notes, X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking feature, is designed to add corrective context to posts containing misleading or false information. A direct accusation attributing the September 11 attacks to Israel, contradicting the findings of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, would appear to meet the threshold for a note by the feature’s own stated criteria.
Bipartisan Pushback, Including From the Right
The response was swift and cut across political lines. Brent Scher, editor in chief of The Daily Wire, Owens’ former employer, wrote: “We need better conspiracy theorists. Israel did 9/11 is one of the most tired conspiracies in the playbook. Didn’t know we were stating it as fact now in the asylum.” Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody replied with a sardonic equation and concluded: “Take whatever they say and invert it.”
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo wrote: “Osama Bin Laden is not a Jew. There are A LOT of American families that are hurt by this toxic click bait.”
Part of a Documented Antisemitic Surge
Owens’ posts did not emerge in a vacuum. The ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) documented a rapid convergence of antisemitic narratives across the ideological spectrum, from white nationalists to Islamist-aligned accounts, following the launch of Operation Roaring Lion on February 28.
The ADL identified Owens as a key amplifier of two dominant themes: the claim that the strikes were conducted to serve Israeli or Jewish interests at the cost of American lives, and the explicit assertion that the United States is operating as an “occupied nation” under Zionist control.
In an earlier post from the same period, Owens wrote that “no one ever should sign up for the United States military” outside of those wishing to join the IDF, and appended: “We are an occupied nation.”
The COE also noted that Owens amplified an antisemitic AI-generated image during this period that reached a combined audience of over one million views.
The 9/11 claim is consistent with a documented progression in Owens' public output. She has previously floated Israeli involvement in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, mocked the Jewish Shabbat greeting in attacks on Kirk's widow, and circulated content drawing on the antisemitic Khazarian origin myth, which frames modern Jews as ethnic impostors with no authentic historical claim to Jewish identity or to Israel.
The Jerusalem Post reported that in her recent posts Owens largely avoided explicitly naming Jews, instead relying on coded language long established in antisemitic conspiracy ecosystems.