The Dancing Jews Redux

Justin Retardo couldn't resist the new CounterPunch article giving him a hook to republish his crap about the five dancing Jews and the Israeli art students.

The story of how this line of investigation was suppressed, both in the law enforcement community and in the media, is a saga in itself. I know that Ketcham worked on this story long and hard, and had supposedly firm commitments from both Salon.com and The Nation to publish his work. Both projects were killed at the last minute, in one case an hour before it was scheduled to run. What’s particularly stupid, in the case of Salon, is that they ran his previous piece, on the "Israeli Art Student Mystery," years ago – and now refuse to follow up their own story.

And the reason for this mysterious refusal? It's because Ketcham is just recycling the same old story, with no new revelations.

As usual, Retardo takes basic facts--that five Israelis were jailed on 9-11 for suspicious behavior, that some Israeli art students were trying to infiltrate the Drug Enforcement Adminstration--and tries to weave it into Israeli foreknowledge of 9-11. But of course, the weak link is always this last part.

Ketcham, utilizing the public record, news reports, and his own sources, has painted the clearest portrait yet of the "urban mover" Mossad cell, and how they shadowed the five hijackers who took over American Airlines flight 77, which struck the Pentagon to such devastating effect. Living, working, and socializing within a six-mile radius of Bergen County, these two groups circled each other until, on 9/11, as a dark pall fell over Manhattan and much of the rest of the world, one applauded the others’ handiwork.

Oooooh, they lived within a six-mile radius of the hijackers on Flight 77! Now, as it happens, I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey. According to the Census Bureau, Bergen County had a population density of 3,774 persons per square mile in 2000. A circle with a radius of 6 miles has an area of 113 square miles. Thus on average, there are approximately 425,000 people in a 6-mile radius in Bergen County, and that increases as you get closer to New York City, where the population is even denser.

Retardo isn't above patting himself on the back for his bravery in covering this story:

I have to tell you that it hasn’t been easy following this story over the years. I was told in the beginning, and in no uncertain terms, that this line of investigation is forbidden, that it’s "too hot to handle," and, implicitly, that the truth and the facts have to take second place to political correctness. To even mention this story, in certain quarters, is considered prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism. Case closed.

But hey, he's a tough guy and can handle the pressure; we can tell by that cigarette drooping from his lower lip.

Look, do I buy the notion that the Israelis may have been spying on the US, or on radical Muslim groups in New Jersey? Sure. Do I buy the possibility that the five dancing Jews may have insensitively celebrated the attacks because they saw it as waking up America to the dangers of terrorism? Sure. But do I buy that Raimondo and Ketcham have proven that Israel had foreknowledge of the attacks? Nope.

Update: For an exercise, check out the laughable comments on this story over at 9-11 Blogger. Remember, many of the Deniers don't believe that the hijackers existed and the rest think they were just "patsies", so Raimondo's claim that the Israelis were shadowing them causes quite a bit of cognitive dissonance, although of course many of them want to believe the Jews were responsible. When John Albanese rightly points out how hard it is to fit this into the rest of the conspiracy theory, they promptly vote his comment down three points. LOL!

They don't care if it fits any theory, it's just an opportunity to say, "Woo!"