Jews behind 9/11
Jewishworld.jpost.com
...according to a report issued in 2006 by the ADL. These accusations brought " 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' into the 21st century, updating a familiar theme: that Jews are inherently evil and have a 'master plan' to rule the world," says the report, which profiles the 9/11 conspiracists' cast of suspected plotters and other scapegoats.
They include:
• The Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, which is accused of orchestrating and carrying out the attacks to advance the Jewish state's geopolitical agenda. "This perverse respect for the Mossad," the ADL report says, "derives in part from anti-Semitic notions that only Jews are sufficiently cunning, resourceful, and wicked to have carried out the attacks and blamed them on their enemies."
• A "spy ring" consisting of young Israelis claiming to be art students. They purportedly had been tracking the 9/11 hijackers but did nothing to stop them.
• Jewish businessmen, including owners of the World Trade Center, who plotted to destroy the structures to collect insurance money, thus perpetuating the "myth of the greedy Jew," the ADL report says.
• "Four thousand Israelis" who allegedly worked at the World Trade Center but were warned by Israeli intelligence operatives to stay home on 9/11. One of the most widely accepted 9/11 myths, some sources say it was initiated by Hezbollah's Al-Manar television network.
These assertions have been either laughed off as preposterous - or have been investigated and discredited. The "spy ring" story, for example, may have emanated from a disclosure that a number of young Israelis who violated their visas had been deported from the United States. Subsequent reports intimating that the deportees had been engaged in sinister, clandestine activities were examined by The Washington Post, among others, and found to be "nothing more than an urban myth," according to the ADL report.
But the fact that conspiracy theories have been disproven is largely irrelevant to the theories' adherents, according to Barkun. The reason, he says, is that die-hard conspiracy-mongers are united by their embrace of what he calls "rejected knowledge."
"These people are profoundly distrustful of authority. It seems absurd to the rest of us, but in the mirror world that conspiracy theorists live, anything that is rejected by mainstream institutions must therefore be true," Barkun says.
A conspiracy-tinged view of world events seems to be gaining traction in America and elsewhere, according to Lou Manza, chairman of the psychology department at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. As evidence of this trend, he cites polls indicating that suspect theories of all kinds have gained popularity over the past 10 to 15 years.
Among the possible explanations for this emerging worldview: In today's information-bloated environment, the conviction that all-powerful forces control global events makes life easier for believers by obviating the need to think critically about complex issues.
"Our environment today is not conducive to a critical-thinking approach, especially with the instant access we have to so much information," Manza says. "If it's on the Internet and the graphics are good, it must be true."
But why does it necessarily follow that the Jews in particular were the unseen hand behind America's most infamous terrorist attack? Because they had something to gain from 9/11, according to conspiracists, who contend that military retaliation against Arabs was its own reward for the Jews and Israel.
Jewishworld.jpost.com
...according to a report issued in 2006 by the ADL. These accusations brought " 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' into the 21st century, updating a familiar theme: that Jews are inherently evil and have a 'master plan' to rule the world," says the report, which profiles the 9/11 conspiracists' cast of suspected plotters and other scapegoats.
They include:
• The Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, which is accused of orchestrating and carrying out the attacks to advance the Jewish state's geopolitical agenda. "This perverse respect for the Mossad," the ADL report says, "derives in part from anti-Semitic notions that only Jews are sufficiently cunning, resourceful, and wicked to have carried out the attacks and blamed them on their enemies."
• A "spy ring" consisting of young Israelis claiming to be art students. They purportedly had been tracking the 9/11 hijackers but did nothing to stop them.
• Jewish businessmen, including owners of the World Trade Center, who plotted to destroy the structures to collect insurance money, thus perpetuating the "myth of the greedy Jew," the ADL report says.
• "Four thousand Israelis" who allegedly worked at the World Trade Center but were warned by Israeli intelligence operatives to stay home on 9/11. One of the most widely accepted 9/11 myths, some sources say it was initiated by Hezbollah's Al-Manar television network.
These assertions have been either laughed off as preposterous - or have been investigated and discredited. The "spy ring" story, for example, may have emanated from a disclosure that a number of young Israelis who violated their visas had been deported from the United States. Subsequent reports intimating that the deportees had been engaged in sinister, clandestine activities were examined by The Washington Post, among others, and found to be "nothing more than an urban myth," according to the ADL report.
But the fact that conspiracy theories have been disproven is largely irrelevant to the theories' adherents, according to Barkun. The reason, he says, is that die-hard conspiracy-mongers are united by their embrace of what he calls "rejected knowledge."
"These people are profoundly distrustful of authority. It seems absurd to the rest of us, but in the mirror world that conspiracy theorists live, anything that is rejected by mainstream institutions must therefore be true," Barkun says.
A conspiracy-tinged view of world events seems to be gaining traction in America and elsewhere, according to Lou Manza, chairman of the psychology department at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. As evidence of this trend, he cites polls indicating that suspect theories of all kinds have gained popularity over the past 10 to 15 years.
Among the possible explanations for this emerging worldview: In today's information-bloated environment, the conviction that all-powerful forces control global events makes life easier for believers by obviating the need to think critically about complex issues.
"Our environment today is not conducive to a critical-thinking approach, especially with the instant access we have to so much information," Manza says. "If it's on the Internet and the graphics are good, it must be true."
But why does it necessarily follow that the Jews in particular were the unseen hand behind America's most infamous terrorist attack? Because they had something to gain from 9/11, according to conspiracists, who contend that military retaliation against Arabs was its own reward for the Jews and Israel.
