By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-09-05 11:31:40 | Updated at 2026-09-05 12:11:39
49 minutes ago
The first victim of 9/11 would be “incensed over today’s political divisiveness and conspiracy theories” about the terror attacks, according to his best pal.
Danny Lewin, an American-Israeli tech billionaire, is believed to have tapped into his Israel Defense Forces commando skills to fight the terrorists before being slashed in the throat on American Airlines Flight 11, which plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am on that fateful morning.
“Danny called it like it is – rather than the tragedy unifying the country, it’s now all about being divisive,” blasted Marco Greenberg, Lewin’s childhood friend. “He’d be very disappointed, but not surprised, to see how truth has been turned on its head.”
Lewin was born in Denver and moved to Israel with his family when he was 14. He shot into the stratosphere in brains and brawn, winning the “Mr. Teenage Israel” bodybuilding competition and going on to become a military commander in IDF’s most elite counterterrorism unit and then a star student at the prestigious Technion university.
By Sept. 11, 2001, Lewin, 31, was a newly minted billionaire who had co-founded a revolutionary high-tech company, Akamai Technologies, which made the internet faster and more efficient.
Living in Brookline, Mass., with his wife and two young boys, 8 and 5, the decorated commando was the “smartest guy in the room at MIT,” where Lewin was a Ph.D candidate, according to Greenberg, CEO of PR agency, Thunder11.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Lewin caught an early-morning flight out of Logan Airport for a business trip to LA.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Lewin sat in 9B in business class, directly behind infamous hijacker Mohamed Atta. Having “served four years as an officer in the Israeli military . . . he may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that another was sitting behind him,” read the report, naming Lewin’s probable killer as Satam al Suqami, a 25-year-old Saudi.
Reports of Lewin struggling with four terrorists provided some solace to his inner circle.
“He fought back with his own bare hands,” Greenberg said defiantly of his friend, a “trained killer, armed with only a blackberry and laptop.” The 5-foot-9 ex-commando weighed “180 pounds of rock steel.”
He is believed to have been killed some 20 minutes before the plane struck the WTC, according to Greenberg. “They surrounded him – his throat was slashed and dead before they hit the tower.”
He friend says Lewin would be sickened to see that 25 years after the deadliest attack on American soil the unthinkable tragedy has been recast to vilify the US and prop up terrorist ideology.
Lewin would rail against the memory of 9/11 tragically morphing into an ideological issue that’s led to the next generation idolizing arch terrorist Osama bin Laden while blaming the US for bringing it onto itself, said Greenberg, 62.
“Danny would be incensed not just over the political divisiveness today,” said the pal, “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.
The “hero commando” was considered to have “transformed the internet,” according to a book about the rising star.
Lewin would have gone on “to be a household name if he lived,” claimed Greenberg. “Along the lines of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sergei Brin.
“I always said to Danny, ‘You’re either going to be the next Bill Gates or you’re going to be the next prime minister of Israel – or both,” mused Greenberg.
Greenberg wants people to know of his friend’s heroism. “It’s using his story to inspire others to take risks in life.”
To see the truth about 9/11 and origins of terror twisted would have shaken Lewin to his core.
“Danny was not PC, but he was so respectful of other humans of every creed and religion,” said Greenberg. “But he would call it like it is – he would make a sharp distinction between Islam and radical Islam.
“He knows that’s the malignant ideology that murdered him.”
