Myth Busters (Huffington Post readers’ continuing obsession with Israel)

This is cross-posted at Huffington Post Monitor.


It’s become a byline among the Huffington Posters that Israel is responsible for 9/11. Notdirectly responsible, of course (though there are a few people who think the Mossad did it), but that 9/11 was a direct result of US aid to Israel. I have often seen comments along the lines of, “Israel costs us billions per year and all we get in return is 9/11.” This is incredibly misleading because it implies that if the US did not support Israel the 9/11 attacks never would have happened. This is a myth that I will put to rest right here and now.

I’ll start with citing the Arabs themselves who did not feel that Osama Bin Laden was in any way motivated by Israeli actions against the Palestinians. The President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak said, ““Osama bin Laden made his explosions and then started talking about the Palestinians. He never talked about them before.” Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, dean of Shar’ia and Law at Qatar University said, “In their hypocrisy, many of the [Arab] intellectuals linked September 11 with the Palestinian problem — something that completely contradicts seven years of Al-Qaida literature. Al-Qaida never linked anything to Palestine.”

Even Yasser Arafat agreed: ” [ Bin Laden] “never helped us, he was working in another completely different area and against our interests.” And we know that Arafat would not turn down help from anyone, no matter how odious they were.

So then this begs the question: What was Bin Laden motivated by? This question would better be answered in a book but quite simply he didn’t like the American presence in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. One short quote:

“The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH’S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka’ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies.”

He likes to ramble but you get the idea. Read the whole Fatwa if you like, though I would be remiss to say that there is a lot of attacks on “the Zionists” as well, however they remain of secondary importance.

Even more simply, there’s a reason why radical Muslims refer to America as “the Great Satan.” It isn’t because they simply disagree with its actions. You don’t call someone with whom you disagree “Satan,” because that term is the embodiment of all that is evil. Perhaps that distinction is a little too obvious for the Huffington Posters. If America cut off aid to Israel I find it difficult to believe that it would stop being “the Great Satan,” unless it was never all that great to begin with. Which I doubt!

So then I can’t help but wonder: Why do the Huffington Posters believe this, if it is so obviously a half-truth? Well it is common among leftists to blame America for everything bad that happens to it, but that’s pretty cold for a mainstream internet community. But they also don’t like to hold Muslim terrorists accountable for their own actions, so that’s out as well. Maybe this works as a middle ground: They can blame America (not really) and also use the 9/11 attacks to foster their own political agenda, i.e. cutting American ties with Israel. It also works out quite nicely when you combine this theory with the Zionist Occupied Government conspiracy theory which is also common on the Huffington Post. Hey, maybe the Jews are directly responsible for 9/11 after all…

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