Author: Arieh O'Sullivan
Publication: Tel Aviv
Date: October 19, 2001
Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa
Tlass has blamed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center on
Israel.
At a meeting in Damascus last week
with a delegation from the British Royal College of Defense Studies, Tlass
said the Mossad planned the ramming of two hijacked airliners into the
WTC's towers as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
He also told the British visitors
that the Mossad had given thousands of Jewish employees of the WTC advance
warning not to go to work that day.
The Jewish-conspiracy theory started
circulating in the Middle East shortly after the terrorist outrages in
New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The "rationale" was that Israel
wanted to provoke US retaliation against the Arab world.
In Israel and in Jewish circles
abroad, the theory has been dismissed as a "gross lie." It had been dismissed
by Arabists as "wishful thinking" by frustrated Arabs who badly wanted
to believe that Muslims were not responsible for the atrocities.
But Tlass's comments last week indicate
that it has been commuted to fact among senior Arab officialdom. Experts
believe the false rumor has taken root in the Middle East, thanks to the
deep anti-Semitism propagated by Arab governments as well as the myth of
the "awesome power" of the Jews.
American Jewish leaders this week
urged the Bush administration to debunk the rumor.
"Nobody is challenging this gross
lie. Nobody is getting on Arab TV stations and saying it is a lie, it's
absurd, and it's a libel," said Abraham Foxman, executive director of the
Anti-Defamation League.
David Harris, executive director
of the American Jewish Committee, agreed.
"Perhaps the Bush administration
doesn't want to confer legitimacy on these canards by even acknowledging
their existence. Sadly, this story has taken on a life of its own. It has
even reached non-Muslim countries like Greece and South Africa, where Jewish
communities have frantically contacted us, asking for help in refuting
these charges," Harris said.
"At this point it would be very
helpful for the Bush administration and other countries not only to condemn
this canard, but to call it by its real name, which is raw, unadulterated
anti-Semitism," he said.
In Iran, the hard-line Resalat newspaper
last week quoted "experts" as saying the attacks were so complicated they
had to have been carried out by the Israeli government and the Mossad.
In Kuwait, where some speakers on
television have ridiculed the report, some people have even added embellishments,
saying Jews were advised by New York rabbis to sell their holdings in the
stock market the day before the attack and did so.
Public opinion data on Arab views
on the September 11 attacks is sparse. One poll conducted a week after
the attacks and published in the Lebanese newspaper An Nahar found that
31 percent of respondents thought Israel was behind the hijackings, while
only 27% thought Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden was responsible, as
the US has charged.
Historian Richard Levy, an expert
on anti-Semitism at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said such conspiracy
theories have flourished after years during which Arab governments have
encouraged crude Jewish conspiracy theories.
"They have encouraged their peoples
to explain politics and history by means of myth, lie, and fear. This sort
of demagogy will come back to bite them," he said.
"If I were a Pakistani who has internalized
what my successive governments have been telling me for years about the
awesome power of the Jews and their Israeli pawns, I might well find bin
Laden more attractive and inspiring than my so-called leaders," Levy said.
(Reuters contributed to this report.)