Conspiracy Theories Continue to Blame Jews and Israel
Pastor Dale Morgan
Conspiracy Theories Continue to Blame Jews and Israel Five Years After 9/11*
The Lie That Won't Die
by Richard Greenberg, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
As the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
approaches, the date has become synonymous with the image of wanton
destruction. And in addition to the massive loss caused by the attacks,
they spawned another form of unrelenting damage -- a host of
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories implicating the Jews and Israel in the
bloodshed.
These canards have not been fleeting expressions of paranoid fantasy
that dissipate once they have been debunked. On the contrary, even today
the various "Jews-did-it" scenarios emanating from the wreckage of the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon have proven stubbornly resilient.
"If anything, they're flourishing," said Chip Berlet, senior analyst at
Political Research Associates, a liberal think-tank based in Somerville,
Mass. The idea that Jews were somehow involved in Sept. 11 has now
become a permanent feature in the conspiracy pantheon, like the JFK
assassination and the Oklahoma City bombing," said Mark Pitcavage,
director of fact finding for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The Internet is the chief incubator and disseminator of apocryphal Sept.
11 story lines, and cyberspace remains awash with chatter purporting to
link the Jews with America's worst terrorist attacks, according to
Pitcavage. But the same message, he added, also is being spread through
books, pamphlets, videos and speakers. The practical impact of this
phenomenon remains unclear.
The purveyors are an eclectic aggregation that spans the geopolitical
spectrum. They include neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in the
United States and elsewhere, anti-government zealots, young anti-war
activists, Holocaust deniers, Lyndon Larouche supporters, New Age
ideologues, propagandists and journalists within the Arab and Muslim
world, as well as assorted devotees of the early 20th-century forgery
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purports to document a
Jewish plan to dominate the world. Efforts to connect the Jews with
Sept. 11, however, are not limited to fringe groups talking with one
another.
Contributors to Wikipedia, the popular and influential online
encyclopedia, have tried repeatedly to insert anti-Jewish Sept. 11
theories into Wikipedia's pages and represent them as fact or at least
plausible versions of reality, according to Berlet.
The insertions -- which represent one of countless pieces of potentially
suspect information submitted to Wikipedia almost daily -- have been
promptly excised by the encyclopedia's volunteer editors, said Berlet,
himself a Wikipedia editor, "but it requires constant attention."
It's impossible to determine how many viewers see these postings before
they are removed from the Wikipedia Web site, which has a daily
viewership of roughly 30 million, according to a company spokesman.
The Sept. 11 assaults triggered an almost immediate outpouring of
conspiracist conjecture, in part because of the bizarre, almost
implausible nature of the attacks, according to Michael Barkun, a
professor of political science at Syracuse University who has studied
extremist movements and their philosophies.
"These events cried out for some sort of explanation," Barkun said.
"This was a golden opportunity for conspiracy theorists to introduce
their theories to a broader audience. The thing to remember about
conspiracy theories is that they are profoundly psychologically
comforting. They give sense and meaning to the world. Nothing is
arbitrary or accidental or coincidental."
Not all of the explanatory hypotheses stemming from Sept. 11 implicate
Jews. Some accuse the United States government, for example, of being
aware of the attacks and doing nothing to stop them in order to justify
military intervention in the Muslim world.
But early on anti-Semitic finger pointing came to dominate the
revisionist view of Sept. 11, according to a report issued in 2003 by
the ADL. These accusations brought "'The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion' into the 21st century," updating a familiar theme -- that "Jews
are inherently evil and have a 'master plan' to rule the world," says
the report, which profiles the Sept. 11 conspiracists' cast of suspected
plotters and other scapegoats.
They include:
* The Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, which is accused of
orchestrating and carrying out the attacks to advance the Jewish state's
geopolitical agenda. "This perverse respect for the Mossad," the ADL
report says, "derives in part from anti-Semitic notions that only Jews
are sufficiently cunning, resourceful, and wicked to have carried out
the attacks and blamed them on their enemies."
* A "spy ring" consisting of young Israelis claiming to be art
students. They purportedly had been tracking the Sept. 11 hijackers but
did nothing to stop them.
* Jewish businessmen, including owners of the World Trade Center,
who plotted to destroy the structures to collect insurance money, thus
perpetuating the "myth of the greedy Jew," the ADL report says.
* "Four thousand Israelis" who allegedly worked at the World Trade
Center but were warned by Israeli intelligence operatives to stay home
on Sept. 11. One of the most widely accepted Sept. 11 myths, some
sources say it was initiated by Hezbollah's Al-Manar television network.
These assertions either have been laughed off as preposterous -- or
investigated and discredited. The "spy ring" story, for example, may
have emanated from a disclosure that a number of young Israelis who
violated their visas had been deported from the United States.
Subsequent reports intimating that the deportees had been engaged in
sinister, clandestine activities were examined by The Washington Post,
among others, and found to be "nothing more than an urban myth,"
according to the ADL report.
But the fact that conspiracy theories have been disproven is largely
irrelevant to the theories' adherents, according to Barkun. The reason,
he said, is that die-hard conspiracy mongers are united by their embrace
of what he calls "rejected knowledge."
"These people are profoundly distrustful of authority. It seems absurd
to the rest of us, but in the mirror world that conspiracy theorists
live, anything that is rejected by mainstream institutions must
therefore be true," Barkun said.
A conspiracy-tinged view of world events seems to be gaining traction in
America and elsewhere, according to Lou Manza, chairman of the
psychology department at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. As
evidence of this trend, he cites polls indicating that suspect theories
of all kinds have gained popularity over the past 10 to 15 years.
Among the possible explanations for this emerging worldview: In today's
information-bloated environment, the conviction that all-powerful forces
control global events makes life easier for believers by obviating the
need to think critically about complex issues.
"Our environment today is not conducive to a critical-thinking approach,
especially with the instant access we have to so much information,"
Manza said. "If it's on the Internet and the graphics are good, it must
be true." But why does it necessarily follow that the Jews in particular
were the unseen hand behind America's most infamous terrorist attack?
Because they had something to gain from Sept. 11, according to
conspiracists, who contend that military retaliation against Arabs was
its own reward for the Jews and Israel.
Asked why the Jews were implicated in the attacks, Barkun said, "You
might as well ask, 'Why does anti-Semitism exist?' Unfortunately, the
concept is deeply rooted in Western culture. And like a lot of
conspiracy theories, it's a closed system of ideas that is structured so
that it's impossible to disprove."
In a sense, the extremist explanations for Sept. 11 are merely an update
of conspiracy theories that have been evolving ever since the Crusades,
according to conservative columnist and analyst Daniel Pipes, director
of the Middle East Forum, who has written two books examining conspiracy
theories.
Virtually every major conspiracy theory hatched over the past 900 years
has featured one of two key elements, Pipes said. One is so-called
"secret societies," such as the Trilateral Commission -- an influential
coalition of influential private citizens -- as well as suspected
government cabals; the other is the Jews.
Anti-Semitic Sept. 11 scenarios have staying power, but it's unclear how
widely they're embraced. In the West, according to Pipes and others,
Sept. 11-related Judeophobia seems to have a limited constituency among
both ordinary people and those in positions of power and influence.
No American office holder, for example, has tried to score political
points by blaming the Jews for Sept. 11 -- although recently defeated
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) made a name for herself by repeatedly
taking anti-Israel stands and alleging that the federal government was
complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Pipes believes that all told, the Western strain of Sept. 11 revisionism
seems dominated by conspiracy buffs rather than bona fide anti-Semites
who pose a real danger to Jews.
Berlet takes a less benign view.
"Any form of conspiracy theory is toxic to the democratic process," he
said. "How can you reach compromise with those 'evil people' who bombed
the World Trade Center? That sort of thinking could flare up in hard
times and affect policy."
Overtly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories stemming from Sept. 11 appear
to be more widely accepted and tenacious in the Arab and Muslim world
than in the West.
"The implications in the Middle East are quite profound," Pipes said.
"It's one more brick in the edifice of fear and loathing of Israel and
the Jews.''
Eavesdropping on the Conspiracists:
Here's a representative selection of recent (or at least still-extant)
Web postings from individuals who maintain that the Jews or the Israelis
had a role in America's deadliest terror attack -- or its supposed cover-up.
* "There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson
River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade
Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst
atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their
eyes. Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even?
Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis -- and at
least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad,
the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA."
-- www.whatreallyhappened.com, Aug. 7, 2006
* "Essentially, this is what it boils down to: If you talk about
evidence of Mossad handiwork or the Israeli government's deep
involvement in the events of September 11, 2001, and the gatekeepers get
wind of this chit-chat, then you are an anti-semite. If you try to point
out that many hi-power individuals both within and external to the U.S.
government were in on 9-11 and that these people happen to be Jews
and/or Zionists with direct ties to Israel and were involved in
orchestrating and/or covering up 9-11, then you're an anti-semite."
-- World Independent News Group, undated article titled,
"Connecting the Dots"
* "Although much of the admitted foreknowledge of terrorist
events on and since 9/11 is of Israeli origin, the following section is
not meant to be anti-Semitic by any means. Several workers from Odigo,
an Israeli instant messaging company that had offices in the World Trade
Center towers, were warned to get out of the building prior to the
attacks on the morning of 9/11. [The article goes on to claim that some
Israeli officials were informed of other terrorist attacks as well.] If
this were the case, the question begs to be asked just as with 9/11 why
were Israelis given exclusive treatment while others were not warned?"
-- www.911fraud.blogspot.com, March 13, 2006
* "Was it only a coincidence that so many rich and powerful
Jewish Americans played a pivotal role, or performed a supporting role
in the alleged 'terrorist attack' on September 11, 2001, and the 'War on
Terror' that followed? Likewise, under closer scrutiny, why do we find
so many Israelis, in the exact same locations as the alleged Islamic
plotters and terrorists? Curious coincidence or clever design?''