Are Novato Flyers Blaming Israel, "Jews" for 9/11 Anti-Semitic?

A flyer posted widely in Novato, California with the headline "Are Jews Responsible for 9/11?" has caused an outcry in that city and beyond. But although the headline is odiously worded to suggest an entire people can be blamed for a crime, rather than possible criminal elements within it acting in concert with other criminal elements, taken point by point, the flyer which has caused such a ruckus alludes to matters of public record.

Of course no entire people of any race, ethnicity, or religious tradition can be held responsible for the acts of a few, if in fact those few are guilty of those acts.

According to the Marin Independent Journal, police have said there will be no investigation because the flyers are protected by the First Amendment.

The Jewish News of Northern California reported:

"Anti-Semitic flyers spouting conspiracy theories about Jews appeared in Novato last weekend, sparking a unified, angry response from police, local politicians and community members. The flyers, plastered on telephone poles, storefronts and a high school campus, made preposterous claims that Jews, and Israel, were behind the 9/11 attacks. Statements included that Israelis were seen dancing on the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, that a Jewish Israeli man made billions in insurance money, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the attacks. At the bottom of the page it says, “Wake up USA!”

The hallmark of the flyer is that it sometimes mangles historical facts, but not beyond recognition. Deconstructing the flyer point by point:

Title: "Are Jews Responsible for 9/11?" - It would be more accurate to say that there is abundant evidence that Israeli state intelligence agencies, not Jews, were interested in 9/11, even as it unfolded in real-time on the ground in NYC, in the form of five young Israeli men, some of whom were confirmed to be Mossad. Mossad is Israel's equivalent of the CIA. More on this later. It is also indisputable that public documents show that some of the goals expressed by Israeli neoconservative thinkers over the years were made possible by 9/11. Finally, it is indisputable that the same neoconservatives associated with the think-tank Project for a New American Century suddenly found themselves in control of the nation's defenses after they were appointed to high positions in the defense department by George W. Bush.

So of course, all Jews are not responsible for 9/11, anymore than all Japanese were responsible for Pearl Harbor. But some parties high up in the Bush administration have long spoken of invading Iraq, and all of them are staunchly, even inappropriately, associated with the Netanyahu Likud government.

Point 1 - "Over 60 Israeli Jews were arrested on 9/11" - The Washington Post reported on November 23, 2001:

"At least 60 young Israeli Jews have been arrested and detained around the country on immigration charges since the Sept. 11 attacks, many of them held on U.S. government officials' invocation of national security."

More significantly, INS officials at their deportation hearings wanted them to be held because they were of "special interest." The Post writes:

"An INS official who requested anonymity said the agency will not comment on the Israelis. But he said the use of the term "special interest" means the case in question is "related to the investigation of September 11th."

What is also widely known is that a large Israeli "art student" ring was broken up by US authorities in the year before 9/11, which had infiltrated government offices across the US, in some cases offices which were not public knowledge.

Point 2. - "5 dancing Israelis were found celebrating on the site after the collapse of the WTC buildings."

Not exactly true. No Israelis were observed celebrating on the rubble at Ground Zero. But it is public record that five men, two of them later confirmed to be Israeli Mossad agents - Israel's CIA - were observed filming the Towers, very possibly as the first plane hit, and celebrating by giving high-fives and taking pictures of each other flicking cigarette lighters with the burning towers in the background. The Washington Post confirmed on November 23, 2001 that:

"On Sept. 11, five young Israeli army veterans who worked for a moving company were observed at a park on the Hudson River in New Jersey snapping photographs of the burning World Trade Center and seemingly clowning around. To complicate matters, when authorities arrested them they had box-cutters in their moving van, the types of weapons used by the terrorist hijackers."

The Post leaves out facts which can be seen in redacted FBI reports such as that the van the men were driving tested positive when it was subjected to an explosives-sniffing dog, and that the men had large amounts of cash, false passports, and airline tickets for departure that day on them. Also that they had lied repeatedly to police about their whereabouts and how they came to be videotaping the Towers from a perfect vantage point across the river. Also how at least two of them were confirmed to be Mossad agents, in an ABC report.

ABC News said:

"ABC News has learned that after the five men were taken to jail, the entire case was transferred out of FBI's criminal division and into its foreign counterintelligence section, which is responsible for espionage cases. One reason for the shift, according to our sources, is that the FBI believed Urban Moving may have provided a cover for agents of Israeli intelligence."

Finally, also that they had been seen scouting out the location from where they could take the pictures on the day before 9/11.

Point 3 - "9/11 marked the beginning of the "War on Terror" which heightened United States involvement in Israeli conflicts." - It has been a long-held dream of the Israeli neoconservative right to see the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as well as regime change across the Middle East focused on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. In his paper "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties," Oded Yinon advocated for a Middle East which looked almost exactly as it is looking now, with destroyed and dysfunctional Arab states across the region, incapable of challenging Israeli hegemony. Yinon, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, wrote:

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."

In 2007 General Wes Clark confirms that regime change across the Middle East, starting with Iraq, was the goal all along. Clark describes what a former Pentagon colleague told him soon after 9/11:

"This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."

And in a paper written for Netanyahu by David Wurmser, who has served as Middle East Adviser to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, and special assistant to John Bolton, in 1996 Wurmser wrote:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions."

The paper is entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm."

Wurmser served as a US Navy Reserve intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. The question may be asked if it is appropriate for an American officer to be giving foreign policy advice to a foreign head of state, in an unofficial capacity, or if this is a violation of the Logan Act.

Point 4 - "Jewish dual citizen Larry Silverstein made over $5 billion from the tragedy thanks to the aggressive insurance he took out on the buildings months before the attacks." - Silverstein took out insurance for $3.6 billion insurance for each occurrence of terrorist attack on the WTC. He convinced a court to count 9/11 as 2 occurrences, doubling the payout. Silverstein paid $3.2 billion for the WTC in January 2001.

Point 5 - "Larry Silverstein was absent from the WTC thanks to a convenient appointment with his dermatologist." - Not only WTC owner-billionaire Larry Silverstein was absent from his daily breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor of the North Tower. Also absent were both his son and daughter, who had offices in the building. Both say they happened to be running late.

It has been widely reported that Silverstein and Netanyahu are good friends, and have weekly Sunday phone calls.

One point which is reported by the Jewish News of Northern California which is not visible in the widely circulated image is that "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the attacks." The statement most likely referred to Netanyahu's widely reported remark at Bar Ilan university in 2008, also reported in The Economist, that:

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,"

The Novato flyer may be overwrought, inaccurate, and jump to conclusions. But each of its points has some truth to it. Moreover, questions about 9/11 stubbornly persist. Last week, and we are now in 2019, Afghan Taliban, in the Middle of Peace talks with the US, still denied bin Laden or Al Qaeda had anything to do with 9/11 (Washington Post: "Even in the midst of Afghan peace talks, the Taliban still deny al Qaeda was behind 9/11.")

Nevertheless, the hypothetical criminal behavior of a handful of powerful people, some of whom may happen to be Jewish, does not denigrate or impugn the Jewish people in general.

Also Read: "Evidence of Israeli Involvement in 9/11"