ET TU, ISRAEL?

ET TU, ISRAEL?
Did the Israelis have advance notice of 9/11? Probably.

I couldn't help but laugh as I read the following entry in Andrew Sullivan's
weblog:

"People ask why Americans tend to sympathize more with Israelis than
Palestinians. It's not racism. It's a recognition that, for all their failings,
the Israelis live in the same moral universe as we do. The Palestinians
palpably, brazenly do not."



OUR MORAL UNIVERSE, AND THEIRS

Sullivan is a bloated bag of wind begging to be punctured,
and his delusions about Israeli benevolence certainly have
been pricked by the news that the 60 or so Israelis being
held by the US since 9/11 are what Fox News calls "part of
a long-running effort to spy on American government
officials." And that's not all: while "there is no indication the
Israelis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks," we are told,
"investigators suspect that they may have gathered
intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it."
If the Israelis had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and
failed to inform us, then just what moral universe are they
living in? Surely one many light-years from our own.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST

When the news first broke that not only Arabs are
being held in the wake of 9/11, to my knowledge I was the
only columnist to deal with the subject of the mysterious
Israelis in custody: "Israel and 9/11 – Feds holding 60
Israelis in connection with 9/11 – Why?" While the
Washington Post assured us that the Israeli detainees were
only "observing a time-honored tradition in their country –
touring the world after their mandatory service in the Israeli
military," I was more than a little skeptical:

"Something tells me these guys are no ordinary tourists,
but since the US Government is keeping mum about
everything connected with this investigation, we just don't
know."

THE PLOT SICKENS

Ah, but now some government officials are talking, and
we know a lot more. We know that some of the detainees
have been identified as Israeli military or intelligence agents,
and that some failed polygraph tests when asked whether
they had engaged in covert operations "against and in the
United States." We also know, courtesy of Fox News, that
as many as 140 Israeli agents may have been rounded up in
the US before 9/11: the extent of Israel's covert action
operation is described as "sprawling."

A GOOD GUESS

What were they doing here? Besides infiltrating a whole
laundry list of government agencies, including the DEA, the
FBI, military bases, and even targeting the private homes of
government officials, they were also conducting surveillance
on a group of Arab immigrants in California that authorities
believe have connections to the 9/11 plot. I'll admit that the
following was sheer speculation on my part, but it looks like
I was dead right. As I wrote in November:

"In rounding up untold hundreds of mostly Arab Muslim
men, and interviewing thousands more, the Ashcroft Sweep
is clearly designed to gather information that might lead
them to the remaining conspirators. It could be that the
Israelis, or at least some of them, fall into this category:
while not being directly involved, maybe they know
something."

RETALIATION PLUS

What did they know, and when did they know it? That
is the question that must now be answered, and pronto. For
remember what the President said: "You are either with us,
or you are with the terrorists." If the Israelis had advance
notice of 9/11 – via their spy network in the US, which
kept the hijackers and their associates under surveillance –
then this is "harboring" terrorists, by any definition of the
term. Look what happened to the Taliban when they
harbored bin Laden. If Israel did indeed betray us, and let
3,500 people die at the World Trade Center, then they
deserve what the Afghanis got – plus a little bit more.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…

At least Mullah Omar and the Taliban never made any
bones about the depth of their contempt for the US. Israel,
on the other hand, pretends to be our staunchest ally, more
royalist than the king when it comes to confronting the
declared enemies of the West. Yet an undeclared enemy,
posing as a friend, is in many ways a greater potential threat
– as, perhaps, we are beginning to learn.

CLASSIFIED AND CONFIRMED

When asked for details about the detention of the
Israelis, a highly placed investigator huffed that "Evidence
linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified, I cannot tell you
about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified
information." Aside from affirming that such evidence
exists, this same source admitted to the Los Angeles Times
that there were certain "tie-ins" with 9/11. Some patriotic
law enforcement officials seem to have leaked just enough
information to practically confirm our worst suspicions. As
Brit Hume put it in his lead-in to the first of Carl Cameron's
four-part investigative report, top US law enforcement
officials now believe the Israelis "may have known things
they didn't tell us before September 11."

THE UNFORGIVEN

After funneling over $90 billion into the Israeli settler
state, making enemies of the entire Arab world, and sticking
by Israel through thick and thin, is this our reward – a stab
in the back? If true, this story is a devastating blow to the
Israel First crowd in the US, one from which it may never
recover. Americans quickly forgot the sinking of the USS
Liberty, and those who remembered were for the most part
willing to forgive. The average person has probably never
heard of Jonathan Pollard, the CIA agent who spied for
Israel. Pollard severely compromised US intelligence
sources and methods, which eventually wound up in Soviet
hands – and yet our alliance with Israel survived. But this –
the withholding of information that could have prevented
the 9/11 mass murder – is well nigh unforgivable.

A McCAIN MOMENT

This story is also a devastating blow to the War Party
and its plans for an all-out attack on Iraq. To understand
why, we have only to listen to Senator John McCain – the
most belligerent and tireless of the warmongers – going up
against a skeptical Chris Matthews, who wanted to know if
the Senator thought we should conquer Iraq and set up a
military occupation. McCain looked pained, and replied: "I
don't pretend to prescribe the exact strategy." Scott
McConnell captured this McCain Moment well in a column
for Antiwar.com:

"Then he fell back to what he believed to be his Maginot
Line, the argument that trumps all arguments. My
nightmare – I have several nightmares about Saddam
Hussein, but one of them is the that SCUD missile which
he has. . . that's in the view of most, aimed at Israel.
Aimed at Israel."

Well then, said Matthews, why doesn't Israel take them
out?

McCain, stunned, hemmed and hawed for a moment, and
finally said:

"Because I'm not sure we should ask the Israelis to do – to
take care of a threat to the United States of America."

Matthews: "But you just said it was a threat to Israel."

McCain: "Well to world peace, I think."

Matthews: "No you said it was a threat to Israel. Why
should the United States deal with a threat to Israel? Why
don't we let Israel – we've been giving them $3 billion a
year to defend themselves. Why don't we say, ‘Defend
yourselves. You've got a clear fight. Go take Saddam
out'?"

McCain: "Because I think it's our job. I think we're the
world's leader and I. . ."

Matthews: "Our job is to defend Israel?"

Equating our "national interest" with the defense of Israel,
McCain's answer was, essentially, yes. But no one said this
was a mutual defense pact. Israel wants us to defend them:
yet who, pray tell, will defend us from the Israelis?

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

It was Pat Buchanan, during the first Gulf war, who dared
speak truth to power, and was smeared for it: the war on
Iraq, he said, serves the interests of the Israeli Defense
Ministry and its amen corner in the US, while the US has
nothing to gain. We are glad to see that Chris Matthews has
finally caught on.

NOW I GET IT!

Back in November I made note of a rather curious news
report about the arrest of five Israelis who were caught
videotaping the World Trade Center as it burned, all the
while laughing and joking uproariously. This odd group was
turned in by suspicious neighbors, and all five were jailed
for two months, then deported back to Israel. This story,
when first reported, was baffling: what, I wondered, were
they laughing about? Today, the likely answer seems all too
horrifically clear.

TURNABOUT

If and when it comes out that the Israelis stood by and
watched as the terrorists took down the twin towers and the
Pentagon, they are finished as our principal ally in the
Middle East. As Americans begin to realize the enormity of
the Israeli betrayal, and more details of the "sprawling"
Israeli spy operation are revealed, the Israeli lobby will be in
roughly the same position as the Arab-American community
in the wake of 9/11. The backlash will be a tidal wave of
anger, and it could get ugly. The same bullies who turned
on their fellow Americans of Arab descent could just as
easily turn on Jewish Americans, collectively condemning
them as a "fifth column" in classic anti-Semitic style – and a
grave injustice will be compounded.

PASSIONATE ATTACHMENTS

From all this, Americans will relearn an important lesson,
one originally taught to us by George Washington in his
"Farewell Address" and long since forgotten, especially
where Israel is concerned:

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another
produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite
nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common
interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and
infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the
former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the
latter without adequate inducement or justification. It
leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of
privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure
the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily
parting with what ought to have been retained, and by
exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in
the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld."

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU

Since this is one of those "don't say I didn't warn you"
columns, I want to note that on the same day [December
11] the report on the Israeli spy operation came out, we also
heard the news of Irv Rubin's arrest in a plot to blow up a
large Los Angeles mosque and the office of Congressman
Darrel Issa. Rubin is the self-styled "international chairman"
of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a group of violent
nutballs responsible for several bombings over the years.
The JDL was founded by the infamous racist and fascist
Meir Kahane, whose Kach movement is outlawed as a
violent hate group in Israel.

Kahane held that the Arabs are subhuman, and therefore it's
okay to expel them from the territory of a Greater Israel:
indeed, for Kahane and his followers, ethnic cleansing
amounts to a religious duty. When Rubin, who has been
arrested more than 40 times, was touted by the Libertarian
Party as its latest recruit, and a big spread boasting of this
glorious achievement was featured on the front page of the
Libertarian Party News, I wrote a column partially devoted
to warning of the possible consequences: "This guy is a
walking time bomb," I opined, "just waiting to go off."

Don't say I didn't warn you – and, remember, you read it
here first….

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