Book excerpt: Shadows Under the Doric Towers
For years allegations have been lobbed at five movers from Israeli that they were involved in the 9/11 attacks. No one has addressed them, until now.
Thank you for reading JAFFA so far. If you’re wondering where I’ve been lately, it is because late in July I took it upon myself to start writing a book, something I’ve tried and failed to complete several times since I was a kid. Ironically the topic of this book draws on the most significant world event of my teen years, the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As a millennial I still believe it defines my generation’s loss of innocence, similar to the way baby boomers felt about the JFK assassination. Many Americans disbelieve the official version of events captured in the 9/11 Commission Report released in July 2004, classifying it as a “whitewash” for avoiding certain sensitive topics like possible foreign government involvement with the hijackers. Unfortunately, this lack of transparency has spawned a counter movement loosely called 9/11 Truth, and within these circles there was rampant speculation about the involvement of five movers arrested on 9/11 from Israel. While dismissed at the time by most due to the larger body of evidence that implicated Al-Qaeda, this theory - called the “Dancing Israelis”, has gained greater attention in recent times as a new generation has grown up having not experienced 9/11. Often the discussion of this theory takes on vicious undertones, because despite having scant hard evidence that the accused knew ahead of time about the attacks, its believers often go so far as to say that it was they, and not Al Qaeda, that perpetrated them. The following is an excerpt from the book where I refute the fallacious claims of the various promoters of this theory.
Chapter 1
Back to Square 11
The Twin Towers were an icon of American commerce and wealth as well as New York City’s status as a financial hub. The sight of them after American Airlines Flight 11’s crash into the North Tower was a wake up call to every American the morning of September 11. We only watched the actual impact at some point later on replay since at the time (8:37 AM EST) there had been no live news coverage and only three individuals were able to capture footage of the aircraft journeying toward its first impact. Coincidentally, all of them were foreign born: A French-American journalist, a German video artist named Wolfgang Staehle, and a Czech immigrant commuting to work from Brooklyn. I was in my tenth grade earth sciences class at the time and remember my first reaction was rather cynical, saying to a classmate named Andre that the only thing that would come of this is that someone was getting fired. But only 17 minutes (9:03 AM ET) after AA 11 another plane crashed into the South Tower, United Airlines Flight 175. This was followed at 9:37 AM when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and lastly at 10:02 AM when United Flight 93 crashed into an empty field near the town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. More than seven hours later Building 7 of the World Trade Center also collapsed. For those of my generation 9/11 was our JFK assassination, a traumatic experience that dispelled our naive assumption that America was a safe, peaceful haven from violent world events.
Much has been written about both the attacks, the reaction, and the overreach that resulted from them. This book concerns allegations of what happened at another building along the New York-New Jersey skyline that morning, the Doric Towers in Union City, New Jersey, and the significance of the men accused of filming the 9/11 attacks as part of a mission. The allegations suggest that they had foreknowledge of the attacks, were able to see Flight 11 crash into the North Tower live, and then celebrated the attacks. There are even those that believe something even more sinister occurred, that they had been part of a larger plot that was the “real” cause of 9/11, not the 19 hijackers or the Al Qaeda terror group that sent them. The five men, illegally working as movers for a local company, were from Israel and while witness statements and files released in 2015 show that they did behave suspiciously, there has never been any hard evidence they video recorded the 9/11 attacks, whether before the Flight 11 impact or afterward. Nevertheless they are the target of numerous speculative articles, memes, and graffiti alleging that “Israel/Jews/Mossad did 9/11”.
One of the reasons that the “Dancing Israelis'' narrative has been believed by so many is that the average viewer does not have the patience to look into the matter and ask some basic questions. Conspiracy theories consist of a series of facts posed against a background coinciding in such a manner that an observer is compelled to ask whether they are just a coincidence or signs of a plan. Or as I like to analogize, a machine. The more convoluted theories are like Rube Goldberg machines with many moving parts and everything synchronised and calibrated exactly right in order to work, but as long as there are key elements: a WHAT (action), WHO (actor), HOW (process to complete the action), WHEN (adequate time) and WHERE (place) the machine/theory has a chance of working. This is reminiscent of the “5 W’s of Journalism”, but I left out the WHY, because it pertains to issues of motive, which is overemphasised. This doesn’t mean that the motive doesn’t matter, however in many historical mysteries that spawn conspiracy theories too much time is spent on the motive, asking qui bono (“who benefits?”) and then jumping to a conclusion. In the JFK assassination the question of who benefited had many answers, ranging between the FBI, Teamsters, Cuban exiles and the Cuban government they opposed, CIA, Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, and more. Asking some basic questions beyond just “who benefits?” can help show whether the theory/machine works and completes the process that the theorist maps out, or not in which case it is speculative to the point it cannot be proven. In a recent X Space stream titled “Israel did 9/11” pre-eminent theorist Ryan Dawson and his colleague Adam Greene repeatedly responded to callers who proposed their own far-fetched ideas of how 9/11 was a hoax or inside job with angry insults and rantings. Dawson, who I debated once in 2019, insists that getting bogged down in the details of how 9/11 was staged is a distraction, because it is so obvious (to Dawson) WHO committed it and WHY.
I don’t know how many times I have seen it cross my computer screen, but understandably discussion of the “Dancing Israelis” theory percolates the most during the lead-up to or on the 9/11 anniversary. Those questioning what happened were not quick to follow the saga of the arrest and detention of the men, with the first mention of the men detained in the wake of 9/11 coming as early as a September 12 article in the Bergen Record (now nj.com). September 17 in an article by Yossi Melman for Ha’aretz, an Israeli daily that is the most widely read abroad. According to this report, by then the detained suspects had already been interrogated and released to the Immigration and Naturalization Services (I&NS, the precursor to ICE). Melman reported that in the six days since their arrest the men had been subjected to being stripped and blindfolded, three days of solitary confinement, and hours of questioning. Whether this account of their treatment is accurate is not known. Also reported was that they had been arrested while filming the attack from the roof of their company’s building after being spotted by a neighbour. This detail turned out to be erroneous as they were not arrested on a rooftop and they were not sighted by a neighbour on their company’s warehouse rooftop but rather from her window while they were standing on the roof of her apartment’s ground level garage. Similarly, the Bergen Record article claimed they were sighted at Liberty State Park “jumping up and down”, which also is not substantiated by any later report. Lima’s article would be seized upon by theorists like Christopher Bollyn (Solving 9-11, the original articles, p. 3) of the American Free Press who would jump to the conclusion that these men were the perpetrators of a “false flag attack” based solely on these very early reports.
Now that it is established that there was an arrest of the five men, there are other details that are often mentioned in connection with this episode that should be clarified.
Were they dancing?
Neither the witness (known as Maria) nor any other person who encountered the men that day claimed to have seen them dancing. However, both photographs taken of them during the attacks and the witness testify that they were behaving in an inappropriately light hearted or even joyful way, including flicking cigarette lighters and horsing around. This certainly would have ignited the suspicion of anyone watching them, so how is it that they came to be called the “Dancing Israelis”? The root of this moniker is oddly enough someone who was not present at the time, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, the father of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta who was reported by USA Today less than three weeks after the attacks to have said that US authorities “seized a number of Jews because they dancing in celebration over the incidents”. The article is useful not just in illuminating on the origin of this term but also why the “Dancing Israelis” and other Israel or US orchestrated false flag theories are popular, both in the Arab world and in the United States. Examining the quotes of the other cited sources along with the elder Atta’s reveals a lot:
“The recent attacks are actually those of professional criminals like [Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon and his ilk”. Attributed to the Syria Times newspaper, affiliated with the government of Bashar al-Assad.
“I can smell Israeli fingers behind this. . . The scope of the attacks is beyond the capability of Arabs. . .Only the Israelis have the ability to do such things.” Quoting an interview by Salim Abu Sultan, a Palestinian diplomat in the Gulf News of the United Arab Emirates.
An editorial in Gulf News speculating that Sharon had orchestrated the attacks in order to be a smokescreen for his actions in Israel.
An editorial cartoon in Pakistan’s The Nation portraying Israel as a pig defecating in a stream while the Arab world is a lamb and the USA is a wolf blaming the lamb for polluting the water.
All of these are examples of a theme of inward racism within the Arab and Muslim worlds towards their own societies. Monumental events like plagues, wars, revolutions, and major terror attacks must be the result of a calculated plot by outsiders (the CIA, Israel, UK), because supposedly Arabs or Muslims are either not sophisticated enough to do it themselves, or are too upstanding and devout to even attempt such acts. There have been studies of Arabs compared with Arab-Americans that have shown the former to have lower self-esteem than the latter. This inferiority complex is often evoked through articles or social media postings exulting in how the Qur’an or other Islamic texts are lauded in the West, often by embellishing stories in order to magnify the impact of the Qur’an and Islam on the subject. However in the form seen in the article it is manifested otherwise, where Arab and Muslim commentators deny the veracity of the Al-Qaeda plot to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon, not because they can refute the claims of responsibility by Osama Bin Laden and other leaders of the group, but rather because it could not be Arabs (or Muslims) who would have the know-how and discipline to perpetrate such a spectacular terror attack. Also, such carnage is not the way of “true Muslims” in the eyes of these commentators.
Only a group with a truly fiendish nature would even attempt it, they say. It must therefore have been, as Atta and almost everyone else in the article immediately says, the Jews! Unlike in the west where open expressions of prejudice were considered impolite and backward, commentators in the Arab world do not have to cloak such beliefs in any euphemisms like “Zionist”, “colonialist” or “settler”. The reason for this dim view of their society rests on the self-perception of Arabs and Muslims in their own society, and that of westerners toward them as being backward and fanatical. Indeed, the Arab world was subjugated for hundreds of years by the Ottoman Turks and after them other colonial powers. In the more cosmopolitan places of the Middle East like Beirut the upper and middle classes seek to be seen as westernised and European, and may look down upon the more traditional sectors of their society residing in the slums and the countryside. National setbacks like defeats in the Arab-Israeli wars and dependency on the US military during the Persian Gulf War to defeat Iraq play into the perception by many Arabs and Muslims that their nations are weak and their people are not mentally sharp enough to be capable of complex terror acts that they may be attributed to them. This has resulted in many terror attacks being labelled as “false flags” even when they have been claimed by terror groups. The traditional stereotype of Jews as being conniving villains lends itself to these “pied piper” explanations of how the trail leads back to them even if the culprit is unconnected to them.
It is from this type of attitude, disparaging the Arab/Muslim intellect, lauding his moral rectitude, and passing the blame to someone else that enlivens the narrative that Al-Qaeda could not have perpetrated 9/11, at least not without sinister enablers like Israel and the US government itself. It is not very different from the response described in the introduction where Jews or Israelis reflexively defend the actions of Jonathan Pollard, or people that believe in an ironic inverse to Arab insecurity that the Oklahoma City bombing had to have Islamic or Arab involvement, because there is no way simple bumpkins and losers like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols could have planned it themselves.
However, it is only one side of the coin with the other one being how this feeds into how westerners view Arabs and Muslims as too ignorant and primitive to have pulled off a complicated terror plot - or, at least not without help. This image that many have in their heads of Arabs as corrupt, lecherous oil sheikhs or wandering, thieving marauders ignores the reality that there are 22 different Arab nations, each with their own level of societal education and development, or to broaden it even wider 57 Muslim nations that have even greater differences between each other. Indeed, if one looks at the scope and breadth of Al-Qaeda’s influence just within the framing of September 11 there were players from Saudi Arabia (Osama bin Laden, 17 of the hijackers), Egypt (Mohamed Atta), the UAE (Marwan al-Shehhi), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Kuwait/Pakistan), and Ziad Jarrah (Lebanon). Looking at Al-Qaeda as a whole there were many who hailed from Morocco, Yemen, Israel/Palestine, and Libya. Three of the pilots (Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah) had been pursuing highly technical degrees in Germany and each came from relatively westernised households. The image of Al-Qaeda as being a ragtag gaggle of bearded hermits in caves does not negate the success of the network at performing spectacular attacks that are not disputed such as the Bali bombings of 2002 in Indonesia that killed 202 people, among them many tourists from Australia and elsewhere, 2004 Madrid train bombings (193 dead, 2,050 injured), or the 2005 London bombings (56 dead, 784 injured).