Yet Moron Jonathan Elinoff

It becomes more obvious why Elinoff decided to break his "art students" story on Kevin "We should support the Taliban" Barrett's show. Of course, most of what Elinoff has to say has been published before; most notably by Christopher Ketcham in Counterpunch (reprinted here). What Elinoff is laboring mightily to do is to get us to connect the dots. Look, there was an arts project in the World Trade Center! Dot! Look there's an arts student mystery. Dot! Connect the dots! But there is zero indication that the Israeli arts students are connected in anyway to the (remember) Austrian and German artists known as Gelatin staying in the World Trade Center.

There's some good discussion of the claim that Serfati and others were renting an apartment close to where Mohamed Atta lived in Hollywood, Florida here. As it turns out:

As you can read below, the DEA picked up a group of Israelis for questioning on March 1, 2001, including Hanane Sarfati, 24 (also referred to as Hanan Serfaty in the DEA memo; the French report has yet another spelling), Eli Cohen, 23, and Oshirt Zaguri, 23. Cohen and Zaguri gave their addresses as apartments 207 and 4205 respectively in the building at 701 S. 21st Street. Apparently French intelligence has trouble understanding American address nomenclature. Anyway, two and a half months later, on May 13, Atta and Al-Shehi moved into their own rented apartment at 1818 Jackson Street, a half mile south west of the place Cohen and Zaguri had been staying at. (They apparently picked the place after a couple nights at the Bimini Motel Apartments, several kilometres east). There is no evidence the two pairs of Mediterranean tourists were ever renting their respective apartments at the same time: obviously spying on Atta when Atta was actually IN TOWN would have been too easy for these highly trained Mossad SpyKids (23? Come on...), so they decided to do their spying months before he even ARRIVED.

Fabled Enemies Part III: Dancing Jews

Alex Jones had mentioned a few months ago that this was the first film he'd been involved with that went into the Israeli connection. We get the story of the lady who phoned the police about the five dancing Jews outside her apartment. We get Michael Rivero, of What Really Happened talking about them. We get the supposed van full of explosives stopped outside of Manhattan, and the Israeli art students mystery.

(Note: The dancing Jews existed. I don't mention this much, but a client of mine who's Jewish and fanatically pro-Israel was the first person I talked to on 9-11 and his immediate comment to me was, "Now you know what Israel goes through every day." So I can imagine some Israelis reacting in an inappropriately celebratory manner, knowing that America had discovered what terrorism was all about.

The van full of explosives on the GWB did not. I don't know the truth or falsity of the Israeli art students story. If we catch Israelis spying in the US, I'm 100% in favor of arresting and imprisoning them.)

We're told that the Israelis routinely spy on the United States; this seems to be true from everything I've heard. The question is whether it's really sinister or just an example of the (justified) paranoia of that tiny country. I don't approve of their actions, but I understand them, and I would be the first to say that Jonathan Pollard should not be released.

Jason assumes that the Israelis had a prior knowledge of 9-11. He notes that one of the dancing Jews said that their purpose was to document the attacks; as somebody noted in the last post on this, the news cameras of CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS were also there to document the attacks; this does not mean that the news media knew beforehand.

This is another "Merry Pason" confession. The conspiracy theorists all seem to think that evil people are compelled to blurt out their guilt on TV.

We get something about a van exploding on King Street between 6th and 7th; this is the first I've heard of that. Then there's a discussion of an Israeli company that does the billing for most US phone calls. Carl Cameron points out that this means that they could track people; all very true, but you'd need a starting point.

Overall, Jason puts a lot of dots in this section, but does little connecting.

A Reasonably Good Article

On the Deniers:

If a new investigation took place, would government agencies co-operate? Would the White House stifle co-operation? Would pro-conspiracy investigators be prepared to accept evidence they do not like from structural engineers? Are pro-conspiracy investigators then going to cherry-pick the evidence they want? One wonders if the 9/11 Truth Movement isn’t working backwards. Have they first decided the verdict, and then, second, gone about seeking the evidence to substantiate it?

Precisely, as do all conspiracy theorists. The article isn't perfect; for example, he buys into the ridiculous CounterPunch article on 9-11 foreknowledge by the Israelis:

In his superlative article of investigative journalism, What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks? (Counterpunch,Vol. 14. No.3/4, February 2007), Christopher Ketcham asks several questions:What did the U.S. government know in advance of 9/11? Why did our government do nothing with information handed to it by Israeli agents working (illegally) in the U.S? A close study of Ketcham’s article might make one wonder if the CIA (illegally) subcontracts work to the government of Israel.

A closer study would reveal that the supposed foreknowledge is a bunch of BS. Still, overall, the article is a good one.

The Band Was Playing Hava Nagila...

The Dancing Jews return along with the Israeli art students courtesy of Counterpunch, which uses up the accumulated goodwill gathered during its 9-11 Debunking series a few months ago.

But how many Deniers caught this bit near the end:

JUAN GONZALEZ: And I’d like to ask Marc Perelman, were you surprised when the 9/11 Commission Report came out that there was no mention of -- at all in the reports of possible knowledge by Israeli agents in this country of the attacks or tracking of some of these suspects?

MARC PERELMAN: Yes and no. I mean, I was surprised, because, since there have been questions that are still being asked now, that at least the commission would address the issue, even to debunk it. That being said, my reporting was narrow, was about those movers and what were they doing. And the conclusion was that they were essentially spying on radical activists in the region, and that they had been let go, because the American authorities had determined that they did not have foreknowledge of the attacks, which is different than what the article says, because it implies that they were essentially shipped to Israel because of the Israel lobby, and because they knew, whereas what I have been able to find out is that they were sent home because they did something they were not supposed to do and without the knowledge of the American government, which is an issue, obviously, that should be discussed publicly.

AMY GOODMAN: That the Israelis were spying on US soil.

MARC PERELMAN: Right, without the approval of the US authorities. Sometimes friendly governments have agreements, where they can kind of like spy together. Apparently, this was a case where it was not happening.