Snopes.com, officially known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, has
since its
humble inception in 1995 come to be
regarded as one of the most trusted debunkers of
conspiracy theories on the
internet.
Described by one of its many fans – it
apparently has over 6 million visitors per month – as “the grand-daddy
of all fact-checking sites,” Snopes is downright cavalier, however, in its
attitude to
facts surrounding Israel’s role in the 9/11 attacks.
In its
large section on urban legends relating to 9/11, Snopes purports to
debunk a claim that “four thousand Israelis employed by companies housed in
the World Trade Center stayed home from work on September 11, warned in
advance of the impending attack on the World Trade Center.” A click on
the link under “Israelis” brings the curious reader to an entry
titled “Absent
without Leave,” in which the “four thousand Israelis” have suddenly and
inexplicably been replaced by “four thousand Jews.”
In “Absent without Leave,” Snopes reproduces a September 17, 2001 report
by Lebanon’s al-Manar satellite television station, which claimed that the
Israelis (not “Jews”) “remained absent that day based on hints from the
Israeli General Security apparatus, the Shabak.” The Al-Manar piece cited
also refers to the
five Israelis arrested hours after the attacks, after having been
witnessed filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed.
Below the al-Manar article, Snopes has appended a shoddily written,
anonymous, unsourced internet piece, in which the 4,000 Israelis have again
been mysteriously transformed into 4,000 Jews. In contrast to the al-Manar
report, this diatribe includes such absurd and
provocative
anti-Semitic statements as “the Jews knew and were prewarned” about
9/11.
Snopes makes no distinction between the two pieces, however, lumping them
together as examples of what it calls the “plenty of anti-Semitic,
anti-Zionist, and anti-Israeli groups eager to use the horrors of September
11 as fodder for propaganda to serve their own political ends.” Considering
its
tendentious conflation of
legitimate criticism of Israel – and the
exclusivist ideology on which it is based – with an
irrational hatred of Jews, one doubts whether Snopes would
level the
same accusation against Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon.
The statement that 4,000 Israelis had not been accounted for came,
originally, from the Jerusalem Post: “The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem
has so far received the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in
the areas of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the
attacks.”
Officially, only 5 Israeli citizens died in the attack,
So, by the accounting of the Jerusalem Post, 4000 should have been
there and only 5 died. Amazing luck, eh? -- Comment
How could they not have known?
Asked on the night of September 11 what the attack meant for relations
between the United States and Israel, Netanyahu replied, “It’s very good.”
Then he quickly edited himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate
immediate sympathy.” Later that night in an appearance on Israeli TV, the
then Israeli prime minister Sharon indicated how Tel Aviv intended to
exploit that “sympathy,” when he “repeatedly placed
Israel on the same ground as the United States, calling the assault an
attack on ‘our common values’ and declaring, ‘I believe together we can
defeat these forces of evil.’”
Three of the Dancing Israelis
Instead of
attempting to debunk the
well-documented claims that at least some Israelis were forewarned
about the 9/11 attacks, Snopes peremptorily dismisses them, claiming they
“scarcely merit the dignity of a rebuttal.” Yet, Haaretz
reported that two employees of Odigo, the Israeli-owned instant
messaging service, “received messages two hours before the Twin Towers
attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen.”
Asked whether Israeli agents had advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks,
Fox News reporter Carl Cameron
quoted U.S. investigators who concluded, “How could they not
have known?” And then there were those “dancing Israelis” who later
claimed on an Israeli talk show that their “purpose was to document the
event.”
Disregarding evidence of Israeli foreknowledge, Snopes asserts that “no
miracles, human intervention, foreknowledge, coincidence, or vagaries of
fate saved more than a few World Trade Center workers from meeting their
deaths that day.”
Lucky Larry Silverstein
One of the
lucky few (not mentioned by Snopes) was Larry Silverstein, who signed a
99-year lease on the World Trade Center six weeks before 9/11, insuring it
for $3.5 billion.
Silverstein’s wife’s insistence that he couldn’t cancel an appointment
with his dermatologist that morning ensured that he missed his daily
breakfast meeting with tenants at the Windows on the World restaurant on the
top floors of the
North Tower of the
World Trade Center.
His son and daughter, who worked with him in the Twin Towers, were
also
fortunate to be “running late” on September 11.
Silverstein’s good fortune no doubt delighted his
close
friends in Israel. Soon after the attacks, the property developer
received phone calls from no less than three Israeli prime ministers –
Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon – inquiring how he was.
Seemingly puzzled by suspicions that Israelis had advance warning of the
World Trade Center attack, Snopes asks rhetorically: “Why would Israel
follow such a course of action, betray its staunchest ally, and doom
thousands of innocent Americans to death?”
One could also ask why Israeli agents
planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954? Or why
Israel murdered 34 U.S. servicemen in a
deliberate attack on the
USS Liberty on June 8, 1967? Or why Mossad
decided not to warn the United States about the October 23, 1983 attack
on its Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 troops? Or why Mossad’s
Operation Trojan led Washington to believe that Libya was responsible
for the April 5, 1986 Berlin disco bombing which killed two American
soldiers?
To date, Snopes has yet to investigate any of these acts of betrayal by
Israel of “its staunchest ally.”
And last but certainly not least, the husband/wife team
that run Snopes are Jewish. What a coincidence. -- Comment
Motive, means and opportunity = Mossad did
9-11 ... with help from their friends.
