The little libelers over at "Discover the network" – David Horowitz’s hilariously inept datatbase of subversion – are demanding that I publish my "anti-Al Qaeda bona fides" – at least that’s how one Jacob Laksin puts it. Obviously unacquainted with the American legal system, where one is innocent until proven guilty, Commissar Laksin wants links – and he wants them now! Those busy little researchers over at Frontpage have no time, you see: they’re so preoccupied with sliming their political opponents as "pro-Al Qaeda" – an appellation made by one Steven Plaut, another Frontpage gnome – that they just don’t have the energy to back up their accusations of treason.
Instead of backing up the contention that Antiwar.com is "pro-Al Qaeda," Comrade Laksin disdains our mention of Michael Scheuer:
"Ah, yes. Michael Scheuer, it may be remembered, is the CIA’s disgraced point man on al-Qaeda, who spent his three years as the head of "operations against al Qaeda" spinning elaborate conspiracy theories about Israeli agents and the pernicious machinations of ‘wealthy Jewish-American organizations,’ all the while demonizing Israel as a ‘theocracy-in-all-but-name.’
Conspicuously more charitable was Scheuer’s treatment of Osama Bin Laden, whom he adulated as a "practical warrior," not to mention ‘the most respected, loved, romantic, charismatic, and perhaps able figure in the last 150 years of Islamic history.’ All that hard work and still we failed to prevent 9-11. Imagine. (A revealing account of Scheuer’s three years on the job can be found in the current issue of Commentary.)"
Scheuer is "disgraced" because … well, he got a bad review in Commentary. What else do we need to know? According to Commentary, Scheuer is "Buchananite" not to mention a "Chomskyite" – as if this process of labeling an opponent, rather than confronting his arguments, is at all effective (it isn’t). In any case, we are supposed to pretend, you see, that Israel’s amen corner in the U.S. is poor, and powerless. And we aren’t supposed to ask why a nation that isn’t a theocracy wants to be known as "the Jewish state". That would be in such bad taste.
Laksin wants proof – links! – that we are sufficiently opposed to Al Qaeda before he and his own little Legion of Thought Police will give us a clean bill of health. Very well, try on this little essay, entitled "Kill ‘Em – and Get Out." It is sub-titled, you’ll note, "An Action Program." While Horowitz, Laksin, and the neocons were fulminating against nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" in … Iraq, we – like Scheuer – were pointing to the inexplicable policy of letting Osama bin Laden & Co. get clean away.
Laksin mocks the effort to get bin Laden – "all that hard work" he snarks – and advises me to "consider choosing your friends more wisely." This is particularly gross coming from someone who works for the same organization as Steven Plaut, who defends a group of Israelis who were arrested in this country and held for months because they were caught celebrating and high-fiving the destruction of the World Trade Center a few hours after 9/11. Here is Plaut, who wrongly avers that only four Israelis were arrested (there were five):
"The Israelis announced they have filed a law suit against the Department of Justice in the United States District Court in New York, alleging that law enforcement officers and officials of the Bureau of Prisons unlawfully incarcerated them for an extended period of time and violated their civil rights during their more than two month imprisonment in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in 2001. The four plaintiffs claim that they were held incommunicado without access to attorneys or family, subjected to rough interrogations, physically assaulted, deprived of sleep and subjected to racists[sic] taunting by guards. The law suit seeks millions of dollars in compensation.
"The Israelis say they were working for a New Jersey moving company when their truck was stopped by police near the George Washington Bridge. When it was discovered that they possessed foreign drivers licenses, the nervous officers placed them under arrest as suspects in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They were then handed over to federal agents for weeks of interrogation.
"… Eventually, the US Department of Justice came out of the closet and put an end to all the fruitcake anti-Semitic conspiracy nonsense. But the fact that the four were eventually cleared of all suspicions and released did not put the libels to rest, and stories about the Israelis are still regularly appearing on the internet."
There’s just one problem with this fanciful scenario: it isn’t true. The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t come out of any "closet" and no one was "cleared" of anything: the Israelis were simply shipped back to their own country. And they weren’t found with "foreign drivers licenses" – they had multiple passports, and one of them had $4,700 hidden in his sock. As The Forward put it:
"… In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI’s counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel."
"According to one former high-ranking American intelligence official, who asked not to be named, the FBI came to the conclusion at the end of its investigation that the five Israelis arrested in New Jersey last September were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, N.J., served as a front."
Israeli spies, defended by Plaut in the pages of Frontpage – is this what passes for "patriotic" conservatism these days? Not only that, but Plaut is touting their lawsuit against the U.S. government, and even demanding "compensation" for alleged "abuse" at the hands of American law enforcement. That takes a lot of nerve, especially since one of their fellow employees said his Israeli 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.’”
Compensation? Heck no! These guys should be extradited back to America, and given a good dose of truth serum. For the whole story, check out The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection.
How’s that for "discovering the network," eh, Jacob?
