Thursday, May 16, 2002

This from our Friendly Neighborhood David Duke Fisker:

Here's the link to his website: David Duke, for those of you inclined to see the world view this guy is pushing. And here's the link to the essay itself: Israeli Terror. I've read this version of the essay a bit more carefully, and his argument that the Israelis somehow knew of the WTC attacks strikes me as utterly ludicrous, and incapable of withstanding minimal scrutiny. That the Israelis knew about or were somehow complict in the attacks is neither plausible nor an open question. As far as I'm concerned, his claims are just an extended exercise in undiluted anti-semitism, and should be readily recognizable as such.

I did some elementary digging with respect to some of the claims that Duke makes about Sharon, mainly because there have been severe (and what are known to be basically legitimate) criticisms about some of his actions in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebannon. Yet even here, Duke distorts what is known about Sharon's actions, and he does this just to make his larger point about how evil Israel is (and by extension, the Jews).

So here's some of what Duke says:

Duke states that on "the night of September 16, 1982, Sharon sent Phalangist murder squads into two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Chatila. With Israeli tanks and troops closely surrounding the camps to prevent any of the Palestinians from escaping, the murder squads machine-gunned, bayoneted, and bludgeoned Palestinian civilians all that night, the next day and the following night; all while the Israelis surrounding the camps listened gleefully to the machine gun fire and screams coming from inside."

The picture here is of Sharon ordering the Phalangists into the camps to go kill women and children, with the Israelis listening "gleefully" to the massacre. So we're somehow supposed to believe that the Israelis actually enjoyed listening to a slaughter. But what's Duke's evidence for this? Does he cite any eyewitness accounts or refer to any other reports of this supposed Israeli response? The answer is no. He either made it up or is simply assuming it. What about Sharon giving orders to kill the civilians? Duke provides no support for this claim, only saying that "a formal Israeli Commission found Sharon personally responsible for the Lebanese massacres." The commission he cites is the Kahan Commision report. This is what the report actually says:

"The Commission determined that the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla was carried out by a Phalangist unit, acting on its own but its entry was known to Israel. No Israeli was directly responsible for the events which occurred in the camps. But the Commission asserted that Israel had indirect responsibility for the massacre since the I.D.F. held the area, Mr. Begin was found responsible for not exercising greater involvement and awareness in the matter of introducing the Phalangists into the camps. Mr. Sharon was found responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge when he approved the entry of the Phalangists into the camps as well as not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed." Kahan Report

So while the report did not find Sharon to be completely blameless, and in fact severely criticizes him for what happened, it did not say that he was "personally responsible" for the massacres, nor does it say anywhere that he ordered the Phalangists to carry them out. As Defense Minister, he was the man in charge, and should have known better and taken necessary precautions with the Phalangists.

And, by the way, the Phalangists were an independent Maronite Christian group that had been involved in the Lebannese civil war, which, incidentally, started in 1975, seven years before Israeli invaded Lebannon. As the report points out, massacres were committed throughout the early years of that civil war by both sides, Muslim and Christian alike. It further points out that by the time of the start of Israel's 1982 war in Lebannon "the prevailing opinion among the Mossad agents who had maintained contacts with the Phalangist leadership was that the atrocities and massacres were a thing of the past, and that the Phalangist forces had reached a stage of political and organizational maturity that would ensure that such actions would not repeat themselves." Of course, you wouldn't know any of this from reading Duke's article. Yet this sort of information is directly relevant to a proper assessment of what happened at Sabra and Shatilla and of who was to blame. Go to the Dahan report and read it for a complete breakdown of what is known about what happened. (The report is incredibly detailed and thus quite long.)

Duke also makes a claim about the number of people massacred at Sabra and Shatilla. He claims that "at least 1500 Palestinian men, women and children were butchered, and perhaps as many as 2500. (An official Lebanese investigation set the figure at 2500) Even after the efforts of Sharon’s bulldozers, many Palestinians remained unburied, and Red Cross workers found whole families; including hundreds of elderly and little children, with their throats cut or disemboweled."

Duke provides no concrete references for these numbers. He does refer to an "official" Lebanese investigation, but doesn't cite any references so it can be independently verified by the reader. Also, by referring to what the Red Cross apparently found, the reader gets the impression that the Red Cross had also come to basically the same conclusion about the numbers of dead, and that it had found that the dead were primarily "elderly and little children."

(Note by the way how Duke conveniently tries to protect his claims of thousands dead with the phrase "[e]ven after the efforts of Sharon’s bulldozers, many Palestinians remained unburied..." So if it turns out that lots of bodies aren't in fact found -- evidence which would contradict his claims -- well, that must mean the bodies were buried by Israeli bulldozers. His claims thus take on an air of irrefutability. The evidence ceases to matter. What matters is what you *already* believe about the Israelis and what they're capable of. Nice touch, eh?)

This is what the Kahan Commission report concluded as to the numbers, conclusions based on independent reports, as you can see:

"According to a document which reached us (exhibit 151), the total number of victims whose bodies were found from 18.9.82 to 30.9.82 is 460. This figure includes the dead counted by the Lebanese Red Cross, the International Red Cross, the Lebanese Civil Defense, the medical corps of the Lebanese army, and by relatives of the victims. According to this count, the 460 victims included 109 Lebanese and 328 Palestinians, along with Iranians, Syrians and members of other nationalities. According to the itemization of the bodies in this list, the great majority of the dead were males; as for women and children, there were 8 Lebanese women and 12 Lebanese children, and 7 Palestinian women and 8 Palestinian children. Reports from Palestinian sources speak of a far greater number of persons killed, sometimes even of thousands. With respect to the number of victims, it appears that we can rely neither on the numbers appearing in the document from Lebanese sources, nor on the numbers originating in Palestinian sources. A further difficulty in determining the number of victims stems from the fact that it is difficult to distinguish between victims of combat operations and victims of acts of slaughter. We cannot rule out the possibility that various reports included also victims of combat operations from the period antedating the assassination of Bashir. Taking into account the fact that Red Cross personnel counted no more that 328 bodies, it would appear that the number of victims of the massacre was not as high as a thousand, and certainly not thousands."

These few examples should, I hope, make evident the kinds of distortions that are found in Duke's article. And these aren't necessarily even the worst ones.

Further examples of Duke’s selective use of facts:

There were many Israel nationals that worked in and around the WTC(Duke quotes 2000).

Yea, and so what? 50,000 people worked in the WTC -- that's of course not counting the thousands of visitors the WTC would get each day. Guess what the official death toll is now? It's just under three thousand. What accounts for the fact that 47,000 people got out alive? Well, by Duke's logic *they* must have had advanced warning too.

"The next thing I researched was to see if there were any confirmed warnings to Israelis prior to the attack. I quickly found an article in Newsbytes, a news service of the Washington Post, titled “Instant Messages To Israel Warned of WTC attack.”(35) The Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, also confirmed the prior warnings to Israel and confirmed that the FBI is investigating the warnings."(36)

Unfortunately, I couldn't verify the Ha'aretz story, since if you go to their website, their archives section is currently under construction. Duke does not quote directly from the Ha'aretz article. Given the free use he makes of sources -- as I pointed out earlier on Sharon -- excuse me if I'm more than a little skeptical. But even putting that aside, why would the Israelis advertise their supposed prior warning to the world by publishing it in one of their dailies? Moreover, how could the Mossad, which Duke describes as "a secretive, foreign intelligence organization" and as "one of the largest and most sophisticated intelligence organizations" let the supposed fact that Israelis were warned slip out into the press? If they can so skillfully infiltrate Al' Qaeda, why can't they keep a lid on one of their own papers?

Duke does go on to quote the Washington Post Newsbytes article, though. This is what he quotes:

Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks.
But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack.

Here's the link to that article: Newsbytes

Unfortunately, Duke conveniently ignores a subsequent article from Newsbytes on the Odigo text messages. Here's the link: Newsbytes 2

Why does he ignore it? Because of this little bit of information: "Diamandis today in a telephone interview also said the warning message did not identify the World Trade Center as the attack target. "

Also, Duke's reference to Ha'aretz suggests that there were "warnings to Israel," but in fact the latter Newsbytes article makes clear that Ha'aretz was simply referring to the same message that the two Odigo employees received at Israel offices.

Oh yea, Duke also claims that Odigo had "offices in both the World Trade Center and in Israel." He doesn't cite anything to show that they in fact did have offices in the WTC. He also claims that Goldman-Sachs and the Solomon Brothers, which he refers to as "two of the richest firms in New York," both "have offices in the Twin Towers." (Of course, the implication is that they're in cahoots with the Israelis). And again, he doesn't provide any references to show that they did. Guess what? According to this complete list of the tenants at the WTC, none had offices at the WTC: (Note: actually Salomon Smith Barney is a division of Citigroup, which did have offices in the WTC)

Tenant List

There was only one Israeli national killed, and none wounded, in the WTC attack.(Dukes numbers again, not verified).

Actually, thus far, there are two or three Israelis who died, depending on how you read the following official breakdown: Victim List The portion linked to lists the dead only "by birthplace," and thus doesn't list any Israelis among the dead. But a large portion of Israelis are immigrants, and thus have been born in different places, like the US and Russia. (In fact there's only one been one Israeli Prime Minister who was a native born Israeli.) (Note. Most Israelis I know are dual citizens and may have been listed as Americans)

Anyway, here's the conclusion Duke draws from the fact that there were so few Israeli's killed:

"When I found out the truth that only one Israeli had died, there could be no doubt that there had been a prior warning for many Israelis. Having only one Israeli casualty among the 4500 dead at the WTC is simply a statistical impossibility. Even if the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Jerusalem Post had grossly overestimated the number of Israelis in the World Trade Center by say 3,000 (400 percent), there still should have still been 1,000 Israelis there at the time of the attacks. Again, even if only a few hundred Israelis were present at the time of the attack, only one Israeli death occurring there is statistically absurd. Either September 11 had to be a big Jewish holiday, or a number of Israeli citizens had some advance warning of the impending attack."

I'm not sure what kind of statistical analysis Duke is applying here, but it's total bunk. Like I pointed out above, over 50,000 people worked in the WTC, and yet the official death toll now is just under 3,000. By Duke's own reasoning the fact that "only" 3,000 died must be a "statistical impossibility." So there must be some other, more nefarious, explanation of why 47,000 people lived.

"The Mossad is the most ruthless terrorist organization in the entire world. It is also one of the largest and most sophisticated intelligence organizations. No other nation comes even close to its scope and power in the Mideast region. It prides itself on infiltrating every sizable militant Palestinian and Arabic organization on earth. Knowing these facts, there can be little doubt the Mossad has deeply penetrated one of the oldest, largest and what is considered the most dangerous Arabic terrorist organization on earth; bin Laden’s al-Qaida."

Note first how he points out how the Mossad "prides itself" on infiltrating every sizable Arab militant organization on earth. Of course, he doesn't specify just what level of "infiltration" he's talking about; apparently that's supposed to be obvious. And he doesn't ask whether this pride is misplaced or not, or even whether the Mossad itself makes such claims. He doesn't support in any way the claim that they in fact have infilitrated "every sizable militant Palestinian and Arabic organization on earth." Yet the impression the reader is supposed to get is that the Mossad has in fact deeply infilitrated every sizable Palestinian and Arab militant group in the world -- so much so that the Mossad can instigate these groups do virtually anything the Israelis want them to do. (In which case, you'd think these groups wouldn't be around anymore.)

In any case, Dukes conclusion just doesn't follow: it simply doesn't follow that "there can be little doubt the Mossad has deeply penetrated" Al Qaeda. First off, note how he goes from "infiltrated" to "deeply penetrated" without so much as blinking, or arguing for the claim that the Mossad has "deeply penetrated" Al-Qaeda. Secondly, the inference to his conclusion is a bad one. I pride myself on being extremely good at every popular video game on the market, therefore "there can be little doubt" that I'm good at Asteroids. That just doesn't follow. That might provide *some* support for my being good at Asteroids, provided that my pride is not misplaced and I actually am good at every popular video game. But it could also be that my pride is misplaced, that I'm not good at *every* popular video game. In any case, even if I am in fact good at every popular video game in the market, I might happen to suck at Asteroids, because it's different from the other popular games out there.

So whatever support is provided by the antecedent claim, it can't give you virtual certainty. And the degree of support depends on how well-established the claims supporting your conclusion themselves are. In this case, those claims (e.g., that the Mossad basically has free reign within every sizable arab militant group) have virtually no support at all.

Of course, in the rest of his article Duke treats the claim that the Mossad infiltrated (oops, sorry "deeply penetrated") Al-Qaeda as established fact, and proceeds to draw conclusions from it.

Now notice the moves he makes below:

"Furthermore, the FBI and the CIA have clearly stated that the attack on the WTC and Pentagon was a huge covert operation using an international network of at least a hundred terrorists, spanning three continents. Could Mossad agents in al-Qaida as well as the rest of Mossad’s vast network of thousands of infiltrators and informants, not have known about the most extensive and ambitious Arabic terrorist operation in history?"

"But, powerful evidence is mounting that Israelis had foreknowledge of the September 11th attack on America. And, if indeed they had foreknowledge of these murderous acts of terrorism – and then had the cold-blooded mentality not to warn the United States because they saw a horrendous massacre of thousands of Americans as good for Israel - it follows that they would have felt no restraint from actually instigating and covertly aiding this terrorist plan through their own agent provocateurs."

He tacitly moves from the Mossad's having foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks to their instigating them. Of course, he doesn't give an argument for this move, he just makes it. The closest he comes to giving an argument is the conditional (if-then) in second paragraph:

IF the Mossad had foreknowledge of 9-11 and didn't warn the US, then IT FOLLOWS that they would had no problem instigating and covertly aiding the planning of 9-11.

How is that supposed to follow? That claim is somehow supposed to show that they were *willing* to instigate and aid the planning of 9-11, simply because they knew before hand about 9-11 and they *willingly* didn't tell the US. Of course, this all depends on assuming that they did in fact have foreknowledge of 9-11. But his argument, which I went over above is pitifully weak. (His only support are those two articles, one from Newsbytes and the other from Ha'aretz.) In any case, even if they were *willing* to instigate and aid in the planning of 9-11, it doesn't follow that they had the capability to do so. It depends on their, first, having infilitrated Al-Qaeda, second, infiltrated the highest ranks of the Al-Qaeda, or the ones responsible for all the planning and decision making, and, thirdly, once infiltrated at this level, that they were able to "instigate" the decision makers and planners to go attack the WTC. Duke provides no support for any of this. But, then, again, how could he?

I hope this puts a rest to this crap.

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