By Captain Eric H. May - Intelligence Correspondent
"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. ... (These events) swung American public opinion in our favor." -- Ha'aretz, Apr. 16, 2008, "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel" --
More than six years after 9/11, the Israel angle becomes more and more acute -- and it becomes harder and harder to be obtuse about it. The circumstantial case for Israeli involvement in the terror attacks grows stronger with each new revelation, old evasion or repeated charge of "anti-Semitism" leveled against those who dare to ask questions.
Netanyahu's Wednesday remarks suggest that Israel had a motive in the terrorist events, but they are hardly new material. Indeed, on September 11, 2001, shortly after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the same Netanyahu was asked by reporters how the then-fresh cataclysm would affect US/Israel relations:
"It's very good," he said, then added "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)."
He wasn't the only one who had reason to celebrate the terror attacks. American neocons, closely aligned to Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, had already published their desire to see a "new Pearl Harbor" to catalyze American public opinion for an imperial "new American Century." The document that contains the "new Pearl Harbor" line, Restructuring America's Defenses, was accepted by an incoming Bush administration in 2000. In large part it was a repetition of ideas accepted by Israeli right-wingers in the 1996 document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
Protocols of Zion
"The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers before the attack on Tuesday, and were congratulating one another afterwards." -- Fox News, Sept. 14, 2001, "One Arrested, Others Detained at NY Airports"
Shortly after 9/11, Jewish film director Mark Levin found that more and more New Yorkers believed that Israel was behind the terror attacks. Accordingly he examined the various unexplained facts and unsubstantiated rumors that were fueling local public opinion in his boldly-named Protocols of Zion.
The documentary took its title from the controversial underground political classic, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which alleged that a worldwide Jewish conspiracy is the unseen force in shaping international events.
In Protocols of Zion Levin addressed the notorious "dancing Israelis," believed to be Mossad agents, who were filming and celebrating the ongoing attack on the World Trade Center when they were arrested by local police. In a popular YouTube clip excerpted from the documentary, three of the arrested Israelis offer a dubious explanation of their 9/11 activities on an Israeli television program in November 2001.
Friendly Fox
Shortly after 9/11, Fox News investigated the forbidden topic of Israeli involvement in the attacks. While Fox News still posts a link to the transcript, it abruptly took the video down shortly after airing it, reportedly due to pressure from the Israel lobby. The official government investigations that Carl Cameron's report prompted were quietly dropped.
A few extracts from the first installment of the four-part series gives a hint as to how devastating real journalism can be:
"Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9/11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
"Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to Sept. 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States." -- Fox News, "Israeli Spy Ring" (by Carl Cameron)
Muslim Murmers
Every extract or quote in my essay has come from a pro-Israel mainstream media source, and it's difficult to see how anyone could accuse Ha'aretz, Mark Levin, the Israeli 9/11 suspects or Fox News of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, for committing the thought crime of putting it all together, I shall certainly be accused of anti-Semitism.
In this topsy-turvy post-9/11 new world order, the label "anti-Semite" is the price one pays for asserting that two plus two equals four. George Orwell, that most relevant of modern writers, predicted things would be like this. On the other hand, it is acceptable -- in fact, encouraged -- to assert that "Islamo-fascists" are capable of saying and doing all kinds of evil.
A few days after the attacks, Osama bin Laden denied any role in them:
"The US government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seem to have been planned by people for personal reasons." -- CNN, Sept. 17, 2001, "Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks".
Soon afterward, the Bush administration "discovered" a videotaped confession, so we wouldn't have to worry whom Bin Laden was accusing of being the perpetrators. Never mind that Arabic experts pronounced the videotaped to be a phony.
To this very day Muslims have tried to muddy the waters when it comes to 9/11. Take Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example, who just Wednesday insinuated that the official US story was, at best, in error:
"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3000 people had been killed, but never published their names. ... Under this pretext, they attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq." -- Ha'aretz, Apr. 16, 2008, "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel".
Without a doubt, Ahmadinejad is stretching things a bit. First, the names of all 2,749 World Trade Center victims were unreported only for five years -- but were read on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Further, the Bush administration has not killed a million Iraqis. As of the latest report by the British Lancet, we have killed a mere two thirds of a million.
After Netanyahu finished his remarks about how good 9/11 has been for Israel, he launched into a tirade about the evil of Iran and Ahmadinejad. Thank God we have Netanyahu to let us know who our real enemies are.
Captain Eric H. May is a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine. For his biography, archives and upcoming interviews, refer to his home site.
See the complete Price of Liberty Archive for Captain May here.
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/08/04/21/may.htm
"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. ... (These events) swung American public opinion in our favor." -- Ha'aretz, Apr. 16, 2008, "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel" --
More than six years after 9/11, the Israel angle becomes more and more acute -- and it becomes harder and harder to be obtuse about it. The circumstantial case for Israeli involvement in the terror attacks grows stronger with each new revelation, old evasion or repeated charge of "anti-Semitism" leveled against those who dare to ask questions.
Netanyahu's Wednesday remarks suggest that Israel had a motive in the terrorist events, but they are hardly new material. Indeed, on September 11, 2001, shortly after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the same Netanyahu was asked by reporters how the then-fresh cataclysm would affect US/Israel relations:
"It's very good," he said, then added "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)."
He wasn't the only one who had reason to celebrate the terror attacks. American neocons, closely aligned to Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, had already published their desire to see a "new Pearl Harbor" to catalyze American public opinion for an imperial "new American Century." The document that contains the "new Pearl Harbor" line, Restructuring America's Defenses, was accepted by an incoming Bush administration in 2000. In large part it was a repetition of ideas accepted by Israeli right-wingers in the 1996 document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
Protocols of Zion
"The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers before the attack on Tuesday, and were congratulating one another afterwards." -- Fox News, Sept. 14, 2001, "One Arrested, Others Detained at NY Airports"
Shortly after 9/11, Jewish film director Mark Levin found that more and more New Yorkers believed that Israel was behind the terror attacks. Accordingly he examined the various unexplained facts and unsubstantiated rumors that were fueling local public opinion in his boldly-named Protocols of Zion.
The documentary took its title from the controversial underground political classic, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which alleged that a worldwide Jewish conspiracy is the unseen force in shaping international events.
In Protocols of Zion Levin addressed the notorious "dancing Israelis," believed to be Mossad agents, who were filming and celebrating the ongoing attack on the World Trade Center when they were arrested by local police. In a popular YouTube clip excerpted from the documentary, three of the arrested Israelis offer a dubious explanation of their 9/11 activities on an Israeli television program in November 2001.
Friendly Fox
Shortly after 9/11, Fox News investigated the forbidden topic of Israeli involvement in the attacks. While Fox News still posts a link to the transcript, it abruptly took the video down shortly after airing it, reportedly due to pressure from the Israel lobby. The official government investigations that Carl Cameron's report prompted were quietly dropped.
A few extracts from the first installment of the four-part series gives a hint as to how devastating real journalism can be:
"Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9/11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
"Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to Sept. 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States." -- Fox News, "Israeli Spy Ring" (by Carl Cameron)
Muslim Murmers
Every extract or quote in my essay has come from a pro-Israel mainstream media source, and it's difficult to see how anyone could accuse Ha'aretz, Mark Levin, the Israeli 9/11 suspects or Fox News of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, for committing the thought crime of putting it all together, I shall certainly be accused of anti-Semitism.
In this topsy-turvy post-9/11 new world order, the label "anti-Semite" is the price one pays for asserting that two plus two equals four. George Orwell, that most relevant of modern writers, predicted things would be like this. On the other hand, it is acceptable -- in fact, encouraged -- to assert that "Islamo-fascists" are capable of saying and doing all kinds of evil.
A few days after the attacks, Osama bin Laden denied any role in them:
"The US government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seem to have been planned by people for personal reasons." -- CNN, Sept. 17, 2001, "Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks".
Soon afterward, the Bush administration "discovered" a videotaped confession, so we wouldn't have to worry whom Bin Laden was accusing of being the perpetrators. Never mind that Arabic experts pronounced the videotaped to be a phony.
To this very day Muslims have tried to muddy the waters when it comes to 9/11. Take Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example, who just Wednesday insinuated that the official US story was, at best, in error:
"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3000 people had been killed, but never published their names. ... Under this pretext, they attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq." -- Ha'aretz, Apr. 16, 2008, "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel".
Without a doubt, Ahmadinejad is stretching things a bit. First, the names of all 2,749 World Trade Center victims were unreported only for five years -- but were read on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Further, the Bush administration has not killed a million Iraqis. As of the latest report by the British Lancet, we have killed a mere two thirds of a million.
After Netanyahu finished his remarks about how good 9/11 has been for Israel, he launched into a tirade about the evil of Iran and Ahmadinejad. Thank God we have Netanyahu to let us know who our real enemies are.
Captain Eric H. May is a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine. For his biography, archives and upcoming interviews, refer to his home site.
See the complete Price of Liberty Archive for Captain May here.
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/08/04/21/may.htm
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