ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Sayeret Matkal veteran aboard Flight 11: ‘We missed out on someone great’
Or Shaked
September 10, 2026

At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Before the impact, Daniel Lewin, a 31-year-old Israeli American, former Sayeret Matkal officer and co-founder of internet giant Akamai Technologies, was murdered in business class…The moments in which he is believed to have tried to confront the hijackers have overshadowed the story of a teenage immigrant, a friend, husband and father, a man of physical strength and formidable intellect, and an exceptional entrepreneur…As a child in Denver, Lewin played the violin. In Israel, he took up bodybuilding and won the title of Mr. Israel for his age group. He later went on to Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite special forces unit, then the Technion, MIT and eventually the company he co-founded, Akamai. “Everything he did was just like larger than life,” Avni said. “He had the physical, he had the energy, he had the charisma, he had the intelligence, he had all these things packed into one, and he was driven beyond belief.” READ MORE