Israeli Knowledge of Terror Attacks before 9/11?

Did the Israeli government have advance knowledge of the terror attacks that took place on September 11, 2001? I first became aware of the story of Israelis posing as art students at U.S. government facilities. If I were selling art it wouldn't be at a DEA office. Even FOX news reported this story, but later backed down.

This story from a Scottish newspaper asks this question. Did Israel know about the terror attacks and do nothing to stop them? Were they so eager to have the U.S. do their bidding in the Middle East that they allowed 3,000 Americans to die? What does our government know about this? Was the Bush administration really surprised on 9/11?

None of these articles conclusively provide answers, but they provide us with a lot of important questions. September 11th will unfortunately be like the assassination of JFK. We will never know the truth. We have a craven press and Congress who will never ask how Israeli "students" who followed Mohammed Atta later ended up in New Jersey filming the burning towers. They will never ask why Bin Laden's relatives were escorted out of the country without being interrogated. Before we call Bush the villain we should ask why Tom Daschle caved on the President's request not to investigate 9/11.

It is a shame that Imiri Baraka didn't write a poem about this but instead wrote about an internet based urban legend that Israelis and other Jews were warned not to go to the World Trade Center. If he was going to be villified it should have been over a legitimate news story.

The kid glove treatment of the Israeli government by American politicians and media spells doom for both countries. Israel is poised to build a wall separating Palestinians from Israel, from their families, from their lands and from employment. There are also plans to make Palestinians carry ID a la passes in South Africa under apartheid. Unfortunately no one dares speak. The lack of criticism of Israel only emboldens American hawks who have a kindred spirit in Ariel Sharon, who continues to stick his fingers in America's eye without so much as a peep out of the Congress or the media.

Both the U.S. and Israeli are now ruled by their worst elements and supported by fundamentalists. Is it any wonder that Tom DeLay and other right wing Christians are strong supporters of the Israeli government? Both believe in control and aggression masked as righteousness. The truly righteous in both nations must speak out against them.

Both Israel and the U.S. endanger the entire world with their arrogance and aggression. Senator Trent Lott said of Iraq, "Honestly, it's a little bit tougher than I thought it was going to be. If we have to we should just mow the whole place down, see what happens." How telling. We stupidly think that we can invade and occupy a country under the guise of liberating it from a tyrant (although when Saddam Hussein was our tyrant we didn't care), insult the people who live there because we know jack about their culture, and then express surprise when some of them want to kill us because they don't like being occupied.

The attack on the Army helicopter that killed 16 Americans will not be the last. We can't open Baghdad's airport because there are thousands of missing shoulder fired missiles. Lovely. Yesterday's New York Times asked the question, "Who Botched the Occupation?" The author makes good points but never acknowledges that the effort was doomed from the start.

It is truly terrifying that we are ruled by a clique so drunk with power that they thought this ill fated venture was going to work. Did they really believe that Shiites oppressed by Saddam Hussein would gain freedom but want to be ruled by infidels? Did they know that the holy places of the Shiite faith are in Iraq? If they knew did they understand the significance of that fact? Probably not. You can't be empathetic and imperialistic. The two just don't go together.