Did Jews Bring Down the Twin Towers?

Did Jews bring down the twin towers? No, they did not.

I wanted the title of this post to sound a little inflammatory. That is the intent of some conspiracy theorists, to irritate and inflame. To make you feel more than you think. This is the motivation of those who make up such hateful propaganda. It is disgustingly disrespectful to the memory of the thousands of Americans murdered that September morning to shift blame away from the true enemy, Al Qaeda. I would go as far as to say that these types of conspiracy theorists are aiding our enemies.

Read on to find out more about this dark story and its roots.

The dust had not even settled from the attacks of September 11, 2001 when a number of conspiracy theorists on the far right and far left, as well as in the Muslim and Arab worlds, blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad or the Israeli government for the attacks. Today, those theories are even more widespread and have grown to claim that Jewish members of the Bush Administration directed specific government agencies in planning the attacks for the benefit of Israel. Like a stubborn virus, these fantasies have persisted despite efforts to combat them.

Four days after the attack, the Syrian newspaper Al-Thawra reported that 4,000 Jews failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 after being warned by Israeli intelligence.

"Around 4,000 Israelis working in the World Trade Centre [sic] had been issued a secret directive before the incident not to report for duty on September 11 which they complied with. This is evident from the fact that not a single Israeli or American Jew working in the WTC was reported killed or missing." -Islamweb

The truth is this: The attacks of 9/11 killed without regards to race, creed or color. Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists alike all fell together. Ordinary people of all nationalities suffered. Nevertheless, there were those with an anti-semitic agenda who want us to believe Israel had advance knowledge of the attacks and managed to alert those of Jewish heritage to avoid the World Trade Center on September 11^th. I can only imagine how this might have happened, “Hello Mr. Rosenblatt, this is the Mossad. Listen; don’t go in to work next Monday. Call in sick or something. Something big is going down. Don’t say anything to your gentile friends; let’s just keep this among the chosen people”.

Why would the people of Israel want to cheat their closest ally and doom thousands of Americans to death? There is no rational answer to this question. Of course, many Jews and Israelis were killed in the attacks. A September 21st ABC News report stated that 130 Israeli nationals were killed on the 11^th.

In at least one case, individuals have moved from beyond words to bloodshed. On June 10, 2009, one alleged 9/11 conspiracy theorist and holocaust denier opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, killing a security guard. The perpetrator, James von Brunn, then 88, died before the case could come to trial.

Conspiracists also turned their focus to what the Jewish owners of the World Trade Center stood to gain from its destruction. This conspiracy theory uses the myth of the “greedy Jew” to try to make people believe the twin towers were destroyed so that their owner, a Jewish businessman, could collect their insured value.

As is true with numerous conspiracy theories, there is a thread of truth upon which this lie is built. Just a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks, in July 2001, New York real estate developer Larry Silverstein signed a 99 year lease on the World Trade Center complex. It was the first time that the complex changed hands since its creation during the 1970’s.

After the attacks, certain right wing news organizations (among them The Gospel News Alert and The American Free Press) claimed that Silverstein wanted the buildings destroyed so he could collect millions in insurance money. They reported that Frank Lowry, an Israeli businessman from Australia, insured the shopping concourse of the WTC complex against terrorist attacks and now stood to make a huge sum of money as a result of the attacks. Like any commercial business owners, both Silverstein and Lowery had insured their investments. However this standard business practice was seen by anti-semitic conspiracy theorists as an act of “Jewish greed”.

There are numerous other theories of Jewish involvement in 9/11. Time and space prohibit their inclusion here. To find out more, I recommend reading this article from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

Unfortunately, the momentum of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories shows no sign of slowing down. What makes these theories particularly disturbing is the fact that they are bringing disparate groups of anti-Semites (white supremacists, American far-right extremists, elements within the Arab and Muslim worlds) together. Although these conspiracy theories have not been accepted by the mainstream of American citizens, the same cannot be said of those in the Arab and Muslim worlds where there is considerable belief that the Jews and Israel were behind the 9/11 attacks.