It’s
like Alexander Stille said (although the quote has been misattributed to Nazi
propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels): “If you repeat a lie often enough, people
will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
Such
is the case with the claim that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
has been repeating over the last week and a half; the claim that hundreds or
perhaps even thousands of Muslims were seen in northern New Jersey on September
11th, 2001, celebrating the attacks.
In
recent interviews with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and Chuck Todd
of CBS’s Meet
the Press,
Trump has
stated that in either Jersey City or Paterson, the town’s Muslim
and Arab populations were shown on television, in tailgate-style
parties, celebrating the terrorist attack which brought down the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center.
On
ABC’s This Week, Trump told Stephanopoulos, “There were people that were
cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab
populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down”,
continuing, “It was well covered at the time”. Trump says he has a clear memory
of this, and that many people agree with him, and remember the same thing.
The
Anti-Defamation League called Trump’s comments “irresponsible” and “factually
challenged”. Chuck Todd responded that Trump has no evidence of this, and that
all he has to go on is “re-tweets” and “hear-say”. Stephanopoulos told Trump
that the police said it didn’t happen. However, Trump has refused to back down
on the claim, and has even doubled down, asking “Why couldn’t it have happened?”. This is certainly no rational
scientific basis for proof.
New
Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former New York Governor George Pataki, and
Florida Senator Marco Rubio – all Republican candidates in the 2016 race for
the presidency – have asserted that no such thing happened. To date, Trump has
not been able to provide any evidence supporting this claim, although he claims
that the Washington Post reported it.
Although
it is true that Paterson and Jersey
City do have sizable Muslim populations (Paterson has 25 or 30 thousand, and
Jersey City has 10,000) – and although it is also true that some 1,100 foreigners were arrested in the United
States in the days after the attacks (mostly from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and
Egypt) – it is fair to say that Trump might be confused.
While
many Americans remember seeing televised of images of foreigners celebrating
9/11, those images were of foreigners in
foreign countries. Also, it is not clear whether the images were filmed
immediately following 9/11, or instead simply footage of Muslims chanting
“death to America”, filmed before the
attacks.
What
seems more likely than what Trump and
his supporters seem to remember, is that they have mixed-together in their
minds, the images of foreigners overseas celebrating, with what they heard from
reports of people appearing to be Arabs
seen celebrating the attacks in northern New Jersey.
Shortly
after 8:46 A.M. on September 11th, 2001 – right after the first
tower was struck by a plane – a homemaker, identifying herself only as “Maria”,
living near Liberty State Park in Jersey City, called the police. She reported
seeing three men sitting on top of a white Chevrolet van, which was parked on
the roof of the rear parking lot of The Doric Apartments in adjacent Union
City, near a waterfront park.
The
men were videotaping the smoldering tower, smiling, laughing, cheering,
dancing, giving each other high-fives, and posing for pictures. “Maria” wrote
down the van’s license plate, and called the police, saying that they were
wearing Arab dress, and that she thought the men were Palestinians. She later
said “they didn’t look shocked”.
At
3:30 P.M. that day, a B.O.L.O. (“Be On Look-Out”) bulletin was issued to police
regarding the call. Around 4 P.M., in the nearby city of East Rutherford, New
Jersey Police Officer Scott deCarlo and Sergeant Dennis Rivelli pulled over a
vehicle – a box truck – on Route 3 / Route 120, near the former site of the New
York Giants Stadium. The five occupants refused to exit their vehicle when
instructed, so the officers pointed their firearms at them.
The
occupants – Paul Kurzberg, Sivan Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari, and Yaron
Shmuel – were all men in their twenties, and were Israeli citizens who had
admittedly served in the Israeli military. In their possession were foreign
passports (one man had both an Israeli and a German passport), maps of the New
York City area with routes highlighted, socks containing $4,700 in cash.
During
the arrest, one of the men was reported to have said “We are not your enemy”,
and according to some reports, continued, “the Palestinians are your enemy.” One of the men had booked a flight to
Thailand for September 13th.
The
men were held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, spending 71 days in custody,
until they were released around Thanksgiving of 2001. The men were questioned;
one of the men refused to take polygraph tests, while tests were administered to at least two of
them.
The
white Chevrolet van that the men were driving was owned by their boss, Dominic
Otto Suter, the owner of moving company Urban Moving Systems. The company –
based in Bayonne, New Jersey – was located at 3 18th Street in
Weehawken, right across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, the location of
the World Trade Center.
On
September 14th, 2001, Suter left the United States, leaving nobody
acting as the company’s agent. He later returned to the U.S., confident that he
would never face prosecution. On June 22nd, 2001 – three months
before the attacks – the company received $498,750 from the U.S. Federal
Government Assistance Program, an arm of the Small Business Administration. The
company’s warehouse was later raided by the F.B.I..
Urban
Moving Systems has been alleged to be a front for the Israeli Institute for
Intelligence and Special Tasks, commonly known as M.O.S.S.A.D., the State of
Israel’s military intelligence agency. While the five men were being held in
federal prison, their families were asked to stay quiet, and their parents
enlisted the help of then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and then- Mayor of
Jerusalem Ehud Olmert (who later became the Prime Minister of the State of
Israel) for assistance with the case.
Steve
Gordon was hired as the men’s attorney in the United States, and Ram Horvitz
was hired as their attorney in Israel. Alan Dershowitz also negotiated with the
U.S. government on their behalf.
In
November 2001, three of the five men later appeared on an Israeli television
talk show, and one of them said "our purpose was to document the
event", a statement which arguably suggests they had foreknowledge of the
attacks. The same man said that the five were questioned regarding their possible
connection to M.O.S.S.A.D..
On
June 21st, 2002, Barbara Walters reported the story on 20/20, although a
video of the report cannot be easily found online.
Additionally,
on September 12th, 2001,
at noon, another Urban Moving Systems
van was directed to pull over into a rest stop. The vehicle was traveling east
on I-80 near the town of York in northern Pennsylvania. The occupants, Roy
Barak and Motti Butbul, were charged with having a broken turn signal and a
missing fire extinguisher. A box cutter, or multiple box cutters, was found in
the truck.
Both
men were fingerprinted and photographed, and were incarcerated in York for
nearly two months. Barak spent his first week in a cell, and his second in
solitary confinement. Barak, a former paratrooper, was given two polygraph
tests, and was found to have overstayed a six-month visa in the U.S.. Butbul, a
former cook, declined to be interviewed, and was found to have no work permit.
Both men, like the five arrested in New Jersey, were Israeli citizens in their
20s. Both men were deported to Israel on November 9th, 2001.
Out
of 1,100 foreigners arrested in the days and months following the 9/11 attacks,
sixty of them were Israelis, according to U.S. sources. However, according to
Israel’s Foreign Ministry, between 90 and
100 were Israelis. The Washington Post reported in late 2001 that thirteen
of the people arrested by federal authorities in connection to the attacks were
from northern New Jersey.
Then-
Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Israelis were arrested.
Furthermore, in December 2001, a four-part series on FOX News, reported by Brit
Hume and Carl Cameron, uncovered more Israeli connections to 9/11, including
allegations that Israeli agents posed as art students in Florida, and toy
salesmen in American malls.
These
facts come in addition to reports that a van full of explosives was pulled over
on or near the George Washington Bridge on the day of the attacks, and that a
van bearing an image of the Twin Towers on fire was also seen in New York City
soon after the attacks.
It
is not easy to tell whether these vans were one and the same, but there exists
an image of a white van, with a mural painted on its left side, depicting the
two towers, with one of them being struck by a plane, and at the top, the words
“Urban Moving Systems Incorporated.” Some have pointed out that the word
“M.O.S.S.A.D.” (the Israeli equivalent of the C.I.A.) can be found in the name
of the company: “urban MOving SystemS incorporAteD”. This adds (ahem) jet fuel
to the possibility that Urban Moving Systems was a front for M.O.S.S.A.D..
It
has been said that the outcome of America’s future lies in the country’s
response to “Who did 9/11?”.
Although
Donald Trump’s supporters tend to be hard-core nationalists and protectionists who
oppose political corruption – and, therefore, would be likely to respond with
outrage when presented with information that members of any nation were
seen celebrating the attacks – Trump’s open admission that his money fuels that corruption (and his past
statements that “We love Israel”, and prefers to have his accounting done by
“funny little guys in tiny little hats”) seem to assure that his statements
about seeing Muslims celebrating 9/11 in northern New Jersey, will most likely not undergo the thorough investigation
they deserve.
But
if Trump or his people do happen to
stumble upon the “dancing Israelis” story – as it is “popularly” known, at
least among the 9/11 Truth community – the chances are high that the story will
be ignored by mainstream media, and that the Anti-Defamation League would
continue to condemn any statements by Trump suggesting an Israeli role in the
attacks.
Written on November 30th and December 1st, 2015
Edited on February 8th and 10th, 2016,
and May 24th, 2019
and May 24th, 2019