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DID ISRAEL KNOW ABOUT THE 9/11 ATTACKS BEFOREHAND AND NOT SAY ANYTHING?
by attentive
Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 at 7:52 AM
For PghIndymedia: interesting commentary and proof that Israel and the US have been hiding information regarding Israel's knowledge pre-world trade center attacks
dsc00004.jpg, image/jpeg, 960x1280
http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707
Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin
Towers on September 11, 2001 ...
Were they part of a massive spy ring which shadowed the 9/11 hijackers and
knew that al-Qaeda planned a devastating terrorist attack on the USA? Neil
Mackay investigates
THERE was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New
Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned
and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever
committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.
Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda,
surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis and at least two of them
were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of
MI6 or the CIA.
Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact.
To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day,
the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had
been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East
through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared
to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive?
To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.
After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would
mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: Its very good. Then he corrected
himself, adding: Well, its not good, but it will generate immediate
sympathy [for Israel from Americans].
If Israels closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths
at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond
with the worlds only hyperpower and an effective free hand in dealing with
the Palestinian terrorists who had been murdering its innocent civilians
as the second intifada dragged on throughout 2001.
Its not surprising that the New Jersey housewife who first spotted the
five Israelis and their white van wants to preserve her anonymity. Shes
insisted that she only be identified as Maria. A neighbour in her
apartment building had called her just after the first strike on the Twin
Towers. Maria grabbed a pair of binoculars and, like millions across the
world, she watched the horror of the day unfold.
As she gazed at the burning towers, she noticed a group of men kneeling on
the roof of a white van in her parking lot. Heres her recollection: They
seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know ... they didnt
look shocked to me. I thought it was strange.
Maria jotted down the vans registration and called the police. The FBI was
alerted and soon there was a statewide all points bulletin put out for the
apprehension of the van and its occupants. The cops traced the number,
establishing that it belonged to a company called Urban Moving.
Police Chief John Schmidig said: We got an alert to be on the lookout for
a white Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration and writing on the
side. Three individuals were seen celebrating in Liberty State Park after
the impact. They said three people were jumping up and down.
By 4pm on the afternoon of September 11, the van was spotted near New
Jerseys Giants stadium. A squad car pulled it over and inside were five
men in their 20s. They were hustled out of the car with guns levelled at
their heads and handcuffed.
In the car was $4700 in cash, a couple of foreign passports and a pair of
box cutters the concealed Stanley Knife-type blades used by the 19
hijackers whod flown jetliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon
just hours before. There were also fresh pictures of the men standing with
the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image
showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings,
like a fan at a pop concert. The driver of the van then told the arresting
officers: We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our
problems. The Palestinians are the problem.
His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzbergs
brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were
dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBIs
Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence
Section the bureaus anti-espionage squad.
A warrant was issued for a search of the Urban Moving premises in
Weehawken in New Jersey. Boxes of papers and computers were removed. The
FBI questioned the firms Israeli owner, Dominik Otto Suter, but when
agents returned to re-interview him a few days later, he was gone. An
employee of Urban Moving said his co-workers had laughed about the
Manhattan attacks the day they happened. I was in tears, the man said.
These guys were joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, Now
America knows what we go through.^
Vince Cannistraro, former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with
the CIA, says the red flag went up among investigators when it was
discovered that some of the Israelis names were found in a search of the
national intelligence database. Cannistraro says many in the US
intelligence community believed that some of the Israelis were working for
Mossad and there was speculation over whether Urban Moving had been set up
or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation
against radical Islamists.
This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within
American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11
hijackers simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks
were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them.
After the owner vanished, the offices of Urban Moving looked as if theyd
been closed down in a big hurry. Mobile phones were littered about, the
office phones were still connected and the property of at least a dozen
clients were stacked up in the warehouse. The owner had cleared out his
family home in New Jersey and returned to Israel.
Two weeks after their arrest, the Israelis were still in detention, held
on immigration charges. Then a judge ruled that they should be deported.
But the CIA scuppered the deal and the five remained in custody for
another two months. Some went into solitary confinement, all underwent two
polygraph tests and at least one underwent up to seven lie detector
sessions before they were eventually deported at the end of November 2001.
Paul Kurzberg refused to take a lie detector test for 10 weeks, but then
failed it. His lawyer said he was reluctant to take the test as he had
once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.
Nevertheless, their lawyer, Ram Horvitz, dismissed the allegations as
stupid and ridiculous. Yet US government sources still maintained that the
Israelis were collecting information on the fundraising activities of
groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mark Regev, of the Israeli embassy in
Washington, would have none of that and he said the allegations were
simply false. The men themselves claimed theyd read about the World Trade
Centre attacks on the internet, couldnt see it from their office and went
to the parking lot for a better view. Their lawyers and the embassy say
their ghoulish and sinister celebrations as the Twin Towers blazed and
thousands died were due to youthful foolishness.
The respected New York Jewish newspaper, The Forward, reported in March
2002, however, that it had received a briefing on the case of the five
Israelis from a US official who was regularly updated by law enforcement
agencies. This is what he told The Forward: The assessment was that Urban
Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it.
He added that the conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local
Arabs, but the men were released because they did not know anything about
9/11.
Back in Israel, several of the men discussed what happened on an Israeli
talk show. One of them made this remarkable comment: The fact of the
matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our
purpose was to document the event. But how can you document an event
unless you know it is going to happen?
We are now deep in conspiracy theory territory. But there is more than a
little circumstantial evidence to show that Mossad whose motto is By way
of deception, thou shalt do war was spying on Arab extremists in the USA
and may have known that September 11 was in the offing, yet decided to
withhold vital information from their American counterparts which could
have prevented the terror attacks.
Following September 11, 2001, more than 60 Israelis were taken into
custody under the Patriot Act and immigration laws. One highly placed
investigator told Carl Cameron of Fox News that there were tie-ins between
the Israelis and September 11; the hint was clearly that theyd gathered
intelligence on the planned attacks but kept it to themselves.
The Fox News source refused to give details, saying: Evidence linking
these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence
that has been gathered. Its classified information. Fox News is not noted
for its condemnation of Israel; its a ruggedly patriotic news channel
owned by Rupert Murdoch and was President Bushs main cheerleader in the
war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.
Another group of around 140 Israelis were detained prior to September 11,
2001, in the USA as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected
espionage ring run by Israel inside the USA. Government documents refer to
the spy ring as an organised intelligence-gathering operation designed to
penetrate government facilities. Most of those arrested had served in the
Israeli armed forces but military service is compulsory in Israel.
Nevertheless, a number had an intelligence background.
The first glimmerings of an Israeli spying exercise in the USA came to
light in spring 2001, when the FBI sent a warning to other federal
agencies alerting them to be wary of visitors calling themselves Israeli
art students and attempting to bypass security at federal buildings in
order to sell paintings. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report
suggested the Israeli calls may well be an organised
intelligence-gathering activity. Law enforcement documents say that the
Israelis targeted and penetrated military bases as well as the DEA, FBI
and dozens of government facilities, including secret offices and the
unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel.
A number of Israelis questioned by the authorities said they were students
from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, but Pnina Calpen, a spokeswoman
for the Israeli school, did not recognise the names of any Israelis
mentioned as studying there in the past 10 years. A federal report into
the so-called art students said many had served in intelligence and
electronic signal intercept units during their military service.
According to a 61-page report, drafted after an investigation by the DEA
and the US immigration service, the Israelis were organised into cells of
four to six people. The significance of what the Israelis were doing didnt
emerge until after September 11, 2001, when a report by a French
intelligence agency noted according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and
suspected terror cells lived in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as in Miami and
Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity
to the Israeli spy cells.
The report contended that Mossad agents were spying on Mohammed Atta and
Marwan al-Shehi, two of leaders of the 9/11 hijack teams. The pair had
settled in Hollywood, Florida, along with three other hijackers, after
leaving Hamburg where another Mossad team was operating close by.
Hollywood in Florida is a town of just 25,000 souls. The French
intelligence report says the leader of the Mossad cell in Florida rented
apartments right near the apartment of Atta and al-Shehi. More than a
third of the Israeli art students claimed residence in Florida. Two other
Israelis connected to the art ring showed up in Fort Lauderdale. At one
time, eight of the hijackers lived just north of the town.
Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11,
or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on
American soil, but did nothing to warn the USA. But thats not quite true.
In August 2001, the Israelis handed over a list of terrorist suspects on
it were the names of four of the September 11 hijackers. Significantly,
however, the warning said the terrorists were planning an attack outside
the United States.
The Israeli embassy in Washington has dismissed claims about the spying
ring as simply untrue. The same denials have been issued repeatedly by the
five Israelis seen high-fiving each other as the World Trade Centre burned
in front of them.
Their lawyer, Ram Horwitz, insisted his clients were not intelligence
officers. Irit Stoffer, the Israeli foreign minister, said the allegations
were completely untrue. She said the men were arrested because of visa
violations, adding: The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11.
Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would
never know the truth, saying: If we found evidence of unauthorised
intelligence operations that would be classified material. Yet, Israel has
long been known, according to US administration sources, for conducting
the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any US ally.
Seventeen years ago, Jonathan Pollard, a civilian working for the American
Navy, was jailed for life for passing secrets to Israel. At first, Israel
claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but the government later
took responsibility for his work.
It has always been a long-accepted agreement among allies such as Britain
and America or America and Israel that neither country will jail a
friendly spy nor shame the allied country for espionage. Chip Berlet, a
senior analyst at Bostons Political Research Associates and an expert in
intelligence, says: Its a backdoor agreement between allies that says that
if one of your spies gets caught and didnt do too much harm, he goes home.
It goes on all the time. The official reason is always visa violation.
What we are left with, then, is fact sullied by innuendo. Certainly, it
seems, Israel was spying within the borders of the United States and it is
equally certain that the targets were Islamic extremists probably linked
to September 11. But did Israel know in advance that the Twin Towers would
be hit and the world plunged into a war without end; a war which would
give Israel the power to strike its enemies almost without limit? Thats a
conspiracy theory too far, perhaps. But the unpleasant feeling that, in
this age of spin and secrets, we do not know the full and unadulterated
truth wont go away. Maybe we can guess, but its for the history books to
discover and decide.
02 November 2003
this is what they could have prevented had they just spoken up
by attentive
Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 at 7:52 AM
Article and link to DEA report
by tito jackson
Tuesday, Nov. 04, 2003 at 3:17 PM
scary stuff
www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-03-20/fishwrapper.html
Yassar?
by U.S.S. Liberty
Thursday, Nov. 06, 2003 at 6:42 AM
Where's your excuse or apology for this one?
So tell me ...
by 2Beers
Thursday, Nov. 06, 2003 at 12:14 PM
Just how many of those hijacker mass murderers on those planes were Isreali? I doubt that the Mossad had anything to do with the attacks.
Cui Bono?
by U.S.S. Liberty
Thursday, Nov. 06, 2003 at 2:27 PM
Shit, I have no idea who the hijackers were, and it seems funny that the sorry ass FBI cracked the case in three hours despite their ignoring all the obvious warnings.
It would appear that the Peacocks knew about the attacks, but so did SF Mayor Willie Brown and Mullah Ashcroft. Brown was told not fly a few days before and Ashcroft was told to buy a private plane a few months before.
Why were CIA warfighting units on the ground in Afghanistan in January 2001?
Why did the Taliban get $245 from Pat Robertson's beloved state department in April 2001?
Nothing to Apologize for
by Yassar Datsmibebe
Friday, Nov. 07, 2003 at 7:08 AM
yassardatsmibebe@ummah.com
There is nothing to apologize for. There are no excuses to be made. If the Mossad had any idea that this was about to happen, this is a terrible failure on the part of Isreal.
It is not news that the Mossad has been conducting intelligence operations in the U.S. for years. But if they in fact knew about 9-11 then the U.S. needs to respond harshly to Isreal.
As for the idea that U.S. officials were forwarned, I think that is probably conspiracy theory nonsense. It was clearly a U.S. intel failure, with none of the agencies communicating with each other. But I find it inconceivable that any U.S. officials knew of the time or place of the 9-11 attacks. There had been public warnings of possible terrorist activity for several months before 9-11, with heigtened airport security. I can remember since I had been traveling quite a bit that Summer, and in fact had been in NYC the week before and was due back there the week after 9-11. I encountered security lines, bomb-sniffing dogs, and a generally higher alert level at the airports. We were even detained at an airport because we did not clear the gun powder test machine due to some trace chemical that several in our group had on themselves following a plant visit.
Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel
by SFGate
Friday, Nov. 07, 2003 at 12:47 PM
For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security - - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.
The mayor, who was booked to fly to New York yesterday morning from San Francisco International Airport, said the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement."
In fact, at the time, he didn't pay it much mind.
"It was not an abnormal call. I'm always concerned if my flight is going to be on time, and they always alert me when I ought to be careful."
Exactly where the call came from is a bit of a mystery. The mayor would say only that it came from "my security people at the airport."
Mike McCarron, assistant deputy director at SFO, said the Federal Aviation Administration "routinely" issues security notices about possible threats. He said two or three such notices have been received in the past couple of months,
but none in recent days.
Whatever the case, Brown didn't think about it again until he was up, dressed and waiting for his ride to the airport for an 8 a.m. flight to New York, where he was to attend a state retirement board meeting. That was when he turned on the TV, and like millions of other Americans, saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumble and the Pentagon go up in smoke.
Before the mayor was even out the door, District Attorney Terence Hallinan - - the man Brown said just last week should be recalled -- was checking in and offering help.
What followed was a conversation made up of equal parts gravity and formality.
"You know, you're the first call I've gotten on this," Brown said to Hallinan, as they were signing off.
With that, the mayor hung up and headed for City Hall. Along the way, he made the call to close all city buildings for the day and city schools as well.
He also talked with representatives of the Bank of America building and the Transamerica Pyramid, who agreed that because the structures were such high- profile symbols they too should be closed for the day.
Once Brown arrived at City Hall, calls were made in quick order to Municipal Railway director Michael Burns: "I want a complete backup in case anything happens to the subway tunnels," Brown said.
The Coast Guard: "To make sure the bridges were being protected."
And to the health, police and fire departments to make sure they were staffed for the emergency.
The last call went to Tom Ammiano, the mayor's longtime political nemesis and president of the Board of Supervisors.
"We may have to declare a state of emergency, although it's not something I want to do at this point because it kicks in all sorts of things -- but we may have to be ready," the mayor said.
Ammiano apparently agreed, because an hour or so later -- when the two sat next to each other at a city department heads meeting at the command center -- the call was made for only a "limited" state of emergency. One that would allow the courts, city offices and schools to close, but still keep the city pretty much in working order.
"What I want," the mayor said, "is for things to be to run as normally as possible, but sagely."
And for the most part they did. As for what comes next?
"With any luck, we'll be back to normal by tomorrow -- but with a heightened sense of awareness," Brown said as he sipped coffee with reporters at Citizen Cake on Grove Street.
But as for long-term safety?
"We can only do what we can," the mayor said, adding, "Hell, if they can't protect the Pentagon from attack, what can they protect?"
BART BLOCKS: Don't go looking for a rest room on BART -- they're all locked.
According to BART information officer Ron Rodriguez, a memorandum went out yesterday ordering all station rest rooms to be locked until further notice. They've also put out the word to watch for suspicious packages.
THE OTHER BROWN: Over in Oakland, Mayor Jerry Brown was trying his best to keep things normal as well.
"We're carrying on," Brown said. "I think the most important thing is for people to stay calm and understand that the power of terrorism is psychological.
"The goal is to sow disunity and to undermine our faith in the leadership of the country."
A few blocks away, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin sat in his office high- rise and wondered about the long-term effect of the attacks.
"It's like one part Pearl Harbor, one part Northern Ireland and one part I don't know what," was how Maslin summed it up.
Maslin -- who does polling for Gov. Gray Davis, among others -- said the strangest call he got yesterday was from one of the biggest Democratic consultants in Washington, D.C., who had just bolted his apartment.
"This was a grown man in his 50s, and he was scared out of his wits because he'd heard that a second plane was headed for the Pentagon," Maslin said.
"We can't even begin to gauge the long-term effects of this yet, but I will say, I don't think we'll ever be the same."
Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. They can also be heard on KGO Radio on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Matier can be seen regularly on KRON-TV. Got a tip? Call them at (415) 777-8815.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN22938...
Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings
by CBSNews
Friday, Nov. 07, 2003 at 12:49 PM
Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.
"Had I know that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," Mr. Bush told U.S. Air Force Academy football team members who were visiting the White House on Friday. It was his first public comment on revelations this week that he was told Aug. 6 that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes.
CBS Senior White House Correspondent Bob Schieffer reports that other top officials were less forthcoming. The usually talkative Attorney General John Ashcroft just stared when reporters asked him about the terror warnings. FBI Chief Robert Mueller also refused to comment.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration was aware of the 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence pointing toward a specific plot but rather included assessments about how terrorists might strike.
"What it shows is that this information that was out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody," Fleischer acknowledged.
Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the report was written, said officials long have known a suicide hijacking was a threat.
"If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane into a missile, nobody would have ruled that out," he said.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress Friday raised the volume of their calls to investigate what the government knew before Sept. 11.
"I think we're going to learn a lot about what the government knew," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during an appearance in New York. She said she was unaware of the report created in 1999 during her husband's administration.
Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees, demanded the CIA inspector general investigate the report, which he called "one of the most alarming indicators and warning signs of the terrorist plot of Sept. 11."
Meanwhile, court transcripts reviewed by The Associated Press show the government had other warning signs between 1999 and 2001 that bin Laden was sending members of his network to be trained as pilots and was considering airlines as a possible target.
The court records show the FBI has known since at least 1999 that Ihab Mohammed Ali, who was arrested in Florida and later named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, had been sent for pilot training in Oklhhoma before working as a pilot for bin Laden.
He eventually crashed a plane owned by bin Laden in Sudan that prosecutors alleged was used to transport al Qaeda members and weapons. Ali remains in custody in New York.
In February 2001, federal prosecutors told a court they gained information in September 2000 from an associate of Ali's, Morrocan citizen L'Houssaine Kherchtou, that Kherchtou was trained as an al Qaeda pilot in Kenya and attended a meeting in 1993 where an al Qaeda official was briefing Ali on Western air traffic control procedures.
"He (Kherchtou) observed an Egyptian person who was not a pilot debriefing a friend of his, Ihab Ali, about how air traffic control works and what people say over the air traffic control system," then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a New York court.
"And it was his belief that there might have been a plan to send a pilot to Saudi Arabia or someone familiar with that to monitor the air traffic communications so they could possibly attack an airplane perhaps belonging to an Egyptian president or something in Saudi Arabia."
That intelligence is in addition to information the FBI received in July 2001 from its Phoenix office that a large number of Arabs were training at U.S. flight schools and a briefing President Bush received in August of that year suggesting hijacking was one possible attack the al Qaeda might use against the United States.
The September 1999 report, entitled "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?" described suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks the al Qaeda might seek for a 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
The report noted an al Qaeda-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a mission.
"Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters," the report said.
Bush administration officials have repeatedly said no one in government had imagined such an attack.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for federal agencies.
"This information was out there, certainly to those who study the in-depth subject of terrorism and al-Qaeda," said Robert L. Worden, the agency's chief.
"We knew it was an insightful report," he said. "Then after Sept. 11 we said, 'My gosh, that was in there.'"
Gannon said the 1999 report was part of a broader effort by his council to identify the full range of attack options of U.S. enemies.
The vice president has repeatedly asked Congress not to investigate the intelligence failures. But with the new commotion, the White House now says it will cooperate with an investigation if it's done the right way.
�MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press and Reuters Limited contributed to this report.
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml
abc
by abc
Sunday, Nov. 30, 2003 at 6:15 PM
Just because Israeli men were dancing does not mean they knew about the attack. I'm sure there were many more than five people filming the whole thing. I'm sure there were hundreds. If they knew about the attacks why did so many Israeli's die? Why wouldn't they tell America aren't they our allies?
Kucinich headlines Muslim fund-raiser
by Hamas
Sunday, Nov. 30, 2003 at 7:57 PM
Kucinich headlines Muslim fund-raiser
CAIR group tied to Hamas, Islamist goals
� 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON � Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich headlined a fund-raiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with ties to the Mideast terrorist organization Hamas and an agenda for an Islamic USA.
CAIR announced its national fund-raising campaign had topped its goal of $1 million thanks in part to the standing-room-only banquet Saturday evening attended by more than 1,000 people, including Kucinich and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
"We would like to thank all those who helped us reach our fundraising goal," said CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad. "These added resources will enable us to continue and expand our work defending civil rights and promoting a positive image of Islam."
Kucinich has taken part in other CAIR events recently, including a Ramadan iftar, or fast breaking, on Capitol Hill hosted by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. That event was co-sponsored by co-sponsored by Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Kucinich, Conyers, D-Ohio, Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
At least one elected official, Meeks, has second thoughts about participating in the CAIR event. When questioned about his attendance of a CAIR dinner earlier this month, he told the New York Sun: "I don't want to be associated with anyone who condones suicide bombers, anti-Semitism, or any group that condones the extremism in Islam." He added, "I'm going to do some checking into this right now. I am going to talk to some of my colleagues, particularly some of my Jewish colleagues."
He said that based on his conversation with the Sun, "I will probably not attend."
CAIR came under fire in the last year as individuals associated with the organization were indicted on federal terrorism charges.
Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of the Texas chapter of CAIR, was indicted Dec. 17, 2002, in the northern district of Texas for engaging in financial transactions with Hamas leader Musa abu Marzook.
Ismail Randall Royer, a CAIR communications specialist between 1997 and October 2001, was indicted by a grand jury in the eastern district of Virginia in June 2003, on charges that he and 10 other Muslim men were part of a conspiracy to support violent jihad overseas. According to the indictment, Royer traveled to Pakistan and trained with automatic weapons at a training camp associated with Lashkar E-Tayyiba.
CAIR's former director of community relations, Bassam Khafagi, was indicted in January on bank fraud charges.
Stephen Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project, a nonprofit group that examines terrorist connections in America, says the investigation was part of a larger terrorism case by the Justice Department.
"CAIR has been apologists for Islamic terrorism," said Emerson.
CAIR was criticized by some for not condemning Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization for the Sept. 11 terror attacks until three months later.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants the United States to become a Muslim country.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," Hooper told the Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Founded in 1994, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association of Palestine, identified as a "front group" for the terrorist group Hamas, according to Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section. Another ex-FBI counterterrorism chief, Oliver "Buck" Revell, has called the Islamic Association For Palestine � Hooper's former employer � "a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants."
CAIR advisory board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White on Feb. 2, 1995, as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993.
Ahmad, the chairman, reportedly told a rally of California Muslims in 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
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