The ‘Meaning’ of 9/11 It’s not what you think

[Arben Nelku]

The ‘Meaning’ of 9/11
It’s not what you think


by Justin Raimondo,
September 10, 2010
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One would think that after nine years at least some of the anger, the horror and shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks would have dissipated: but no. A glimpse
at the headlines, a few days before the somber anniversary, disabuses
us of this hopeful notion: a crazed pastor out in the boonies somewhere
is burning Korans, and the commander of our forces in Afghanistan feels compelled to respond, as does the President. The proposal
to build a Muslim community center blocks from "ground zero" – modeled
on Jewish community centers ubiquitous in New York – is met with furious opposition, and the "anti-Islamization" movement spearheaded by bigots
takes off, with mosques all over the country under attack. Physical
attacks on Muslims, or people perceived as Muslim, escalate: a New York
City cabbie is assaulted by a crazed Islamophobe, and people who have lived in this country for the whole of their lives are afraid.
What’s going on? Andrew Sullivan,
writing on his popular blog, writes he is "at a loss to understand why
so many have reacted so ferociously to this project." After all, Imam Feisel Rauf, the Muslim cleric who wants to build Cordoba House, is a moderate who has condemned Islamic extremism: Rauf was sent by the Bush administration overseas to act as an ambassador of good will to Muslim countries. So where is the ferocity coming from?
To find the answer to this question, we just have to follow the money, and thankfully Ken Vogel and Giovanni Russonello over at Politico have done just that. After detailing the money coming into the Cordoba House project from mainstream donors like the Rockefellers, they write:
"There’s also big money behind the mosque opposition, as
highlighted by the relationship between [David] Horowitz’s Los
Angeles-based nonprofit, Jihad Watch – the website run by Spencer
"dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology
and ideology play in the modern world" – and Joyce Chernick, the wife
of a wealthy California tech company founder.
"Though it was not listed on the public tax reports filed by
Horowitz’s Freedom Center, Politico has confirmed that the lion’s share
of the $920,000 it provided over the past three years to Jihad Watch
came from Chernick, whose husband, Aubrey Chernick, has a net worth of
$750 million, as a result of his 2004 sale to IBM of a software company
he created, and a security consulting firm he now owns. 

"A onetime trustee of the 
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aubrey Chernick led the effort to pull together $3.5 million in venture capital to start Pajamas Media, a conservative blog network 

"The David Horowitz Freedom Center had a budget of $4.5 million last
year, according to its tax filings, of which $290,000 came from the
conservative Bradley Foundation, which also gave $75,000 to the Center
for Security Policy last year. Horowitz has received an average of
$461,000 a year in salary and benefits over the past three years, while
Spencer has pulled in an average of $140,000, according to the center’s
IRS filings."
Laura Rozen follows up on her Politico
blog, detailing the trail of donations from 2008 990 filings for
Chernick’s charitable foundation, the Fairbrook Foundation, listing all
the familiar suspects – CAMERA, Horowitz, MEMRI, Frank Gaffney’s Center
for Security Policy, the Israeli nationalist "Stand With Us" campus
project – and a few less familiar, such as the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, dedicated to thwarting our stated policy of no more settlements where it counts: in East Jerusalem.
Millions pour into the coffers of these groups, all of which are
dedicated to one overriding principle, one goal: advancing Israel’s
national interests in the US. The serpentine convolutions of the
Chernick connection, linking one front group to another, encircle the
political and temperamental spectrum, ranging from the Jewish Federation
Council of Greater Los Angeles (over $900k) to the many hundreds of
thousands given to hardline neoconservative outfits like the Hudson
Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, not to mention
Pajamas Media ($7 million, in collusion with venture capitalist James "extensively experienced in multimillion-dollar technology transfer and license agreements " Koshland) and a mass campaign to distribute DVDs of the virulently anti-Muslim film "Obsession."
The aim of all this giving is to create and sustain an obsessive hatred of Muslims, all
Muslims, and garner support for Israel. The fulminations of Newt
Gingrich and the flaxwn-haired harpies of Fox News, who rail against the
"ground zero mosque" seem, on the surface, to make no sense. Are they
really saying that they want the US to declare war on the billion-plus
Muslims who inhabit the planet earth? This, after all, is precisely what
Osama bin Laden has repeatedly said: that all the world’s Muslims must
unite under al-Qaeda’s bloody banner because the West, in alliance with
Israel, is out to destroy Islam, and it is therefore the duty of the
faithful to wage jihad against the US.
The Israelis, having long ago declared war on all the other nations
of the region, want us in their camp, and that is precisely what
occurred with stunning speed before the smoke cleared from the site
where the World Trade Center once stood. "We’re all Israelis now!" exulted Martin "Palestinians are subhuman" Peretz, over at The New Republic. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is today the Prime Minister of Israel, told
an audience at Bar Ilan University “We are benefiting from one thing,
and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American
struggle in Iraq,” according to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv. The attack, he averred, “swung American public opinion in our favor” – and now that he and his fellow extremists are in power in Tel Aviv, they are making sure public opinion stays in their favor.
The craziness that ensued in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks
had to be sustained if Israel was to take full advantage of the moment –
a moment their intelligence operatives anticipated, according to Fox
News, in a four-part series by their topnotch journalist Carl Cameron, which started out as follows:
"Since September 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 they 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 never retracted a word of this story, although they did – after
pressure from the Israel lobby – delete it from their web site. It was never
mentioned again, at least in "respectable" quarters, and, to be sure,
it was never forgotten, thanks to the Internet, where Carl Cameron will be exposing
the Israeli connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks unto eternity.
Cameron’s noting that "more than sixty" Israelis had been arrested
immediately after 9/11, along with and under the same legal rubric as
thousands of Arabs, had also been noted here in this space,
before the Fox News broadcasts. Why, I asked in a column, was the US
government rounding up Israelis, of all people – unless there was some
kind of Israeli connection to the attacks? The answer came in Cameron’s
reporting, and subsequent stories in the "mainstream" media: the
Israelis, whose intelligence services had been very active on our soil in the months leading up to 9/11, had been following
the hijackers, shadowing their every move, without telling us – almost
as if they were protecting them rather than trying to stop them.
What happened on September 11, 2001, has changed the shape of
history, and certainly determined the utterly disastrous course of US
foreign policy since that day. We have launched a war of retribution
against the entire Muslim world, a vast campaign of bombings, drone attacks, occupation, and terror unleashed on the peoples of the Middle East, from Iraq to Pakistan. This is precisely why the Israelis didn’t tell us what Mohammed Atta and his co-conspirators
were up to, although – if we take Fox News seriously, and I realize
there are plenty who don’t – there is no doubt that they had it in
their power to stop the whole operation before the hijackers had a
chance to strike. All they had to do was tell us – and they didn’t. This
is the "intelligence failure" – not the lack of centralized
information, not the competition between the CIA and the FBI – that made
the 9/11 terrorist attacks possible: the perfidy of our Israeli "ally."

The Israelis didn’t dive-bomb the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with commandeered airliners: Atta and his gang did.
Yet they could have prevented it – but why should they have? After all,
the attacks have swung public opinion in their favor, as Netanyahu
boasted – surely a foreseeable development.
Today, nine years after the event, the Israel lobby is using the
anniversary of the attacks to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria to a fever
pitch, and they have plenty of bucks to do it. These people – who, as
Juan Cole points out, represent a minuscule fraction of the pro-Israel
population in the US, and stand out like a couple of sore thumbs from
the overwhelmingly liberal Jewish community – mean business, and there’s only one way to fight them. It’s time to play hardball – just like they do.
I was warned, before raising the possibility of an Israeli connection
to 9/11, that I was touching a live wire, that my career – such as it
is – would be destroyed, and that I would be banished to the
hinterlands, where various obsessives trade conspiracy theories and
argue over whether it’s the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati who control
the world.
It hasn’t happened, but I wouldn’t care if it did. As Ayn Rand once
said: I’m not brave enough to be a coward – I see the consequences too
clearly. We see the consequences of 9/11 all around us, in the
hate-wrinkled face of the Koran-burning preacher, in the shrill
shrieking of Pamela Geller whose anti-Muslim rallies in the vanished shadow of the Trade Towers are as ugly as she is: we see it in the faces of Pakistani refugees, huddled in disease-infested camps, as they flee the US invasion of death-dealing drones.
Think about it: the leadership of a nation that betrayed us, that watched, impassively – or, perhaps, gleefully
– as Islamist terrorists wreaked deadly havoc on our two biggest
cities, has a vast and well-funded propaganda network in this country
dedicated to stoking hatred of Muslims. And they are certainly doing a
very good job of it.
How do they get away with it?
So, you want to know the "meaning" of 9/11? It is, as Martin Luther King put it, this:
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I’m taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country,
talking about some of the ideas expressed in Wednesday’s column on "Anti-Interventionism:
The Left-wing Tradition." My talk is entitled "Why Has the Left Sold
Out the Antiwar Movement?" – which is sure to provoke a controversy, or
at least that’s the hope.
The libertarian student movement, organizing nationally under the leadership of Young Americans for Liberty,
is the most exciting – and important – development since the birth of
contemporary libertarianism itself. Murray Rothbard, who founded the
modern libertarian movement in his living room (and, back then, believe me, it was
just big enough to fit in his modest-sized living room), would be
thrilled if he were alive today. That’s because they’re hard core, and
hard workers, busy building a burgeoning organization dedicated to
ending the Fed and ending the wars the Fed makes possible.
Who would’ve thought?! That’s one reason I’m taking this tour, but
another is to engage in dialogue with the left: to wake them up to the
fact that a united antiwar movement, organized around the single issue
of US military intervention overseas, is a moral imperative.
If you’re interested in booking me at your campus, write ***@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665.