The men who were suspected of celebrating in Jersey City as they watched the Twin Towers collapse were Israelis. I remember this very clearly from the time it was first reported and I think a contemporary ABC News report on it should settle the matter. There is some dispute over whether they were really celebrating, and uncertainty about whether they had prior knowledge of the attacks. In the end, it was concluded that at least some of them probably worked for Israeli intelligence and that there was no proof that they had anything to do with the attacks. Even though they were held for a couple of months, interrogated repeatedly, and allegedly tortured, they were eventually deported.
It’s still an interesting case if you’re willing to scratch around the official story of 9/11, but it’s also a dead end.
What’s interesting is that it spawned a lot of “Israel-did-it” websites. Just google the name of “Sivan Kurzberg” and you’ll see what I mean. Mr. Kurzberg was one of the detained Israelis. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, google Israeli Art Students.
Yet, somehow, this has been changed in Donald Trump and Ben Carson’s minds into a group of thousands of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City.
The story about the Israeli “High-Fivers” was carried on ABC’s 20/20, but there never was any coverage of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City because those celebrations took place in foreign countries.
Just bringing up basic historical facts like this makes me feel like half a Truther. But it’s what actually happened, so live with it.
As easily provable as it is that this Trump assertion is 100% fictitious, I will go out on a limb and predict that nary a single national news outlet will call it a “lie”. They will dance around it, do the “he said-she said” thing, and never come out and state the plain fact; this is a purposeful lie intended to whip up anti-Muslim feelings. I doubt they will even raise the question. Because, well…. the villager’s mantra is that it’s not the job of the media to correct Republican falsehoods. Because if Republicans message something, even an obvious lie, all they can do is report it.
and I kind of doubt they will point out who actually was arrested and detained in Jersey City for celebrating the attacks and having box cutters and maps of New York and other incriminating stuff in their van.
Millions, or tens of millions, of people will “know” about the fictitious Muslims. And only a handful of people will know the actual documented facts of the Israelis.
And so it goes in this country. Business as usual. Now I am getting depressed again.
Sometimes I see that shifting, and other times I don’t. Didn’t the Times recently overcome its (infuriating) taboo and refer to a recent public statement as a “lie”?
As Jeb Bush is learning painfully, it’s not the same world as it was 15 years ago, when that idiot Frank Bruni helped usher his brother into power. In many ways it’s worse and in many other ways it’s better (from the standpoint of journalistic objectivity).
It seems like there’s been far more overt fact checking on Trump and Carson then there ever was for George W. Bush (and definitely more than Reagan, who got away with murder). But that’s just my subjective sense of it.
I’m guessing Trump and especially Carson are pushing the envelope too far. Mind you, the media did a collective hand-wave over Sarah Palin with a few notable exceptions. Actual journalism has always been an act of courage and it seems still in short supply.
Prediction failed, Mike. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-8-most-recent-113000727.html
Don’t read the comments.
Usually good advice at yahoo news. Or read the comments and find out what the Tea Party is
thinkingsaying, you can’t really call it thinking. I particularly love all the castigating of “the liberal media”.Hmm, in their story TPM says they were held 27 days.
I’m going off the ABC News story:
Netanyahoo cheered the 9/11 attacks. I’ll just leave this here:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-netanyahu-says-9-11-terror-attacks-good-for-israel-1.244044
You can’t say five Jews. But it’s acceptable to say thousands of Muslims. More probably there were millions and millions of them. It’s almost like a Freudian slip of the tongue to turn five Jews into thousands of Muslims. That’s the racist dilemma in a nutshell.
I don’t use ‘jews’ in this context for a few reasons. It contains less information, for starters.
For another, American Jews and Israelis have much different profiles in their politics and worldviews.
For another, it’s obnoxious but not treason for an Israeli to spy on this country.
And, lastly, it’s needlessly inflammatory and implicates people who have no guilt in this matter whatsoever.
You have good, understandable reasons. But it is a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? If I understand correctly, the State of Israel (you just have to love the pomposity of the name) divides the citizens of the state according to religion. The main division is between Muslim and Jew. The two are not equal. A full citizen of the State of Israel can only be a Jew. These guys (Israelis) yucking it up with a full view of the results of the horrible terrorist attack were Jews. If not, they would have been described as Arab Israelis, which they obviously weren’t. Trump didn’t say there were Afghans, Saudis, Jordanians, etc. celebrating. All those people were just Muslims. And of course even if it were true, a huge percentage of Muslims around the world would not have approved of their behavior. That goes for American Muslims, too, undoubtedly. So why can’t you say they were Jews? You know, the goose and the gander, complimentary and symmetrical.
Not your main point but in fact the only legal distinction between Arab and Jewish Israelis are that Arab Israelis are not required to serve in the armed forces. Many do anyway, particularly the Druze.
The Druze aren’t Muslims. Housing discrimination, separate roads for Jews, inter-sectarian marriage is prohibited (for everyone, true) and loads of little daily annoyances like the attention paid by the army and police to Jewish complaints as compared to Arab/Palestinian ones. See Jewish Israeli peace groups. No clearskies, as much as you might pretend, the skies are not clear.
There is a separate road system for Israeli citizens, which includes Israeli Arabs. Try to get your facts straight.
Assumption can be formed easily as pointing finger on other people but truth has its own way to come out. It is shameful to assume things without supported proof than losing in campaign.
A timely review of what propaganda does to America … and it’s only getting worse under the regime of the Obama administration. The US losing its moral compass in a turbulent world. Battling whistleblowers by prosecution for treason, a most secretive administration, revising and enactment of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 and undermining protest by the cognitive infiltration theory perpetuated by Cass Sunstein.
Intro of my newest diary – The Terror Trap Laid By Warmongers In the US and Israel.
nice one http://www.karanpreet.in
I had a visit from the Israeli Art Students. A stunningly beautiful ‘student’ showed up at my offices in Oakland, CA with a stack of obvious Chinese hack crap. Sad clowns and cartoonish, mass-production schlock. My boss bought a few paintings just to get to talk to her more. What I wouldn’t give now to tear apart the frames.
Would be an excellent way to deliver and distribute listening devices or explosives. Just sayin’.
Killer Mike at Sanders’ Atlanta Rally. Reclaims the real Martin King and … (just watch it):
HuffPo
Yes, Mr. Trump. Not you personally b/c super wealthy people such as yourself hire help to handle all the real work. There’s plenty of competent researchers available for the task — if you pay them the going rate and not your preferred sub-minimum wage.
Eh, why bother with fact-checking what he KNOWS is true? Who cares about petty details like that? Let the flunkies hash out the paperwork once the overall deal is done; he’s the big-picture guy, not some grubby back-office subordinate.
Heh. I originally typed “pig-picture”, was tempted to leave the typo unfixed.
True — as long as the media and GOP continues to give him a pass. However, looking at how easily the media and a political party took down Howard Dean for the “crime” of enthusiastically urging his supporters to stay in the fight, a ton of bricks can hit Trump when he least expects it.
True; and as I mention on the comments on another post, some GOP figures are beginning to say “fascist” out loud about Trump, where the MSM can hear them. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/donald-trump-fascism/index.html
Or as Billmon noted, one or more of the other candidates hangs Trump with Trump. Although I’m not sure that his supporters have enough operating brain cells to care what Trump said yesterday or for that matter, five minutes ago.