Al Arabiya Poll: Some Arabs Justify 9/11 And Deny Al-Qaeda’s Culpability; I Say: Yeah, So What? (II)

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In part I, I discussed the new Al Arabiya poll, of questionable validity, that is making the rounds in the anti-Muslim cyber-world.  Another finding of the poll, per MEMRI:

Out of the 220,000 Arabs who participated, 23% believed Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and 26% did not.

Anti-Muslim websites are absolutely beside themselves at how unbelievably gullible Moozlums are, how they are miserably steeped in conspiracy theories, and how they can’t just admit the fact that Moozlums did 9/11.  Yet, as the Al Arabiya article, which the Islamophobes themselves linked to (but can’t read), says: these findings are not much different than those of other places in the world, including the West.

Indeed, we find that outside of the United States there is “no consensus who was behind Sept 11″ as noted in this Reuters article:

No consensus on who was behind Sept 11: global poll

Seven years after the September 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published on Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.

The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a collaborative project of research centers in various countries managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in the United States.

In Europe, al Qaeda was cited by 56 percent of Britons and Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans. The U.S. government was to blame, according to 23 percent of Germans and 15 percent of Italians…

Therefore, the fact that 26% of Arabs don’t believe Al-Qaeda is to blame, according to the Al Arabiya poll, is not completely out of line with world opinion.

That only in the United States is there a consensus that Al-Qaeda did it is not something very surprising, considering that the U.S. government quickly, repeatedly, and emphatically pointed the finger at Al-Qaeda.

But, you know who else the government blamed?  Iraq.

These anti-Muslim bigots are snickering at how these Moozlums are just so absolutely stupid for thinking Israel or America could be involved in the 9/11 attack, when in fact the entire country–led by neoconservatives, Zionists, and anti-Muslim bigots like them–invaded a country on the false belief (the conspiracy theory) that Iraq was linked to Al-Qaeda and had something to do with 9/11.

Indeed, a January 2004 poll by Newsweek found that a majority of Americans (49% vs. 39%) believed that “Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.”  Amazingly, long after even the Bush administration admitted they were wrong, 41% of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was responsible for 9/11 (as seen in a June 2007 Newsweek poll).  This is a belief that Americans continue to cling on to even today!  Oh, but how utterly deluded those Moozlums are for thinking Israel was involved!  

Israel National News says:

Only 23 percent believe that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, while a large number – 26 percent – think that the terrorist organization did not plan and carry out the hijack-bombings….

In Iran, the percentage of those denying  Al Qaeda’s involvement is even higher. The government controlled press continues to claim that the official version of 9/11 is false and that unaccounted for explosions brought down the Twin Towers in New York City.

How absolutely primitive of a government to issue statements blaming someone other than Al-Qaeda for 9/11!  That is totally unlike completely similar to the U.S. government linking Iraq to Al Qaeda and 9/11.  As Prof. Stephen Walt pointed out, this was all done with Israeli encouragement.  And now, the Israelis are blaming Iraq Iran.

All of this was perfectly depicted in a Family Guy clip:

Interestingly, even in the United States, “more than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”  So really, what’s the big deal if 26% of Arabs don’t believe 9/11 was done by Al-Qaeda?

Of note also is the fact that it is almost conventional wisdom, often heard even by liberals (implied, for instance, by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 911 and even the dog in the Family Guy in clip above), that Saudi Arabia has responsibility for 9/11 (“it was the Saudis that were involved, not Iraq”).  This utterly ignorant idea is seriously discussed in somber terms.  Whether it’s Israel, Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia, the fact is that Muslims do not have a monopoly on 9/11 conspiracy theory.  There is plenty to go around.

In any case, the fact that the United States weaponized 9/11, by using it as an excuse to bomb, invade, and occupy multiple Muslim countries makes more Muslims gravitate towards 9/11 conspiracy theories, for reasons that should be patently obvious.

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MEMRI also notes, commenting on the Al Arabiya poll:

16% considered the assassination of Osama bin Laden a criminal act, 48% did not, and 36% were undecided.

The assassination was definitely illegal under international law, for multiple reasons: Firstly, it involved the flagrant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty; would there be any question about legality if Pakistani commandos landed on Ellis Island?  The illegality of this act is not limited to the capture of Osama bin Laden, but can be seen in the continued violation of Paksitan’s sovereignty on a day-to-day basis with U.S. drone attacks that maim scores of civilians.

Secondly, Osama bin Laden was unarmed and yet was shot dead.  If we were truly a civilized people, someone wouldn’t really need to explain why it is illegal to shoot unarmed men.  Bin Laden was killed so that he wouldn’t face trial, which is a bedrock of our legal system.  This too is not limited to Osama bin Laden, as the U.S. has a hit-list out for other American citizens too.  Furthermore, the government continues to deny countless number of Muslims the right to a trial.

Thirdly, there is the larger issue, which is all the illegal actions that took place between the time the Taliban agreed to hand over Osama bin Laden, an offer which the U.S. refused, to the time the U.S. assassinated him.  If all of these actions (i.e. the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) were part of America’s strategy to capture Bin Laden, then certainly this entire process is illegal.  This fact underscores the biggest problem with the so-called War on Terror: terrorism should be dealt with using a combination of policing and negotiation, not war and destruction.

Therefore, my question is: if 16% of Arabs thought that the Osama bin Laden assassination was a criminal act, so what?

The Connection Between Zionism & Organized Islamophobia – The Facts

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Conspiracy Theory?

Much has been said about the disproportionate Zionist presence in the world of organized Islamophobia. Now we learn that there is more to that claim than unfounded conspiracy theories. It turns out the main funder of anti-Muslim blogger/anti-Park51 organizer Robert Spencer and his hate site JihadWatch are husband and wife duo Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, the same couple are ardent supporters of Zionist causes and major funders of pro-Israel groups across the country.

Aubrey Chernick according to Politico,

A onetime trustee of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aubrey Chernick led the effort to pull together $3.5 million in venture capital to start Pajamas Media, a conservative blog network that made its name partly with hawkish pro-Israel commentary and of late has kept up a steady stream of anti-mosque postings, including one rebutting attacks by CAIR against Spencer — who Pajamas CEO Roger Simon called “one of the ideological point men in the global war on terror.”

Politico lists some of the Zionist propaganda organizations and pro-occupation front organizations that Aubrey and Joyce Chernick have funded over the years:

• The Zionist Organization of America
• MEMRI, a group that distributes translations of inflammatory Arabic language material
• The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a group that tracks what it depicts as the threat of radical Islam, run by notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson
• CAMERA, a group that tracks what it says is anti-Israel bias in the media and that is associated with Daniel Pipes
• The Central Fund for Israel, a clearinghouse for moneys directed to pro-settler groups
• A number of conservative think tanks that are aligned with the Likud.

The Chernicks are also major funders of Jewish groups including: The American Jewish Congress, The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, and The Anti-Defamation League.

Lauren Rozen goes into more depth as far as the contributions and think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, Defense of Democracies, Central Fund of Israel, etc. (via. Richard Silverstein), including some well-known anti-Muslim and Islamophobic initiatives (in bold below).

Laura Rozen has discovered that Chernick’s charity-giving is done through the Fairbrook Foundation ($66-million in assets). According to its 2008 IRS 990 report, among the far-right pro-Israel groups he’s funding are:

• Ateret Cohanim ($30,000), involved in the Judaization of East Jerusalem through “appropriation” of Arab homes
• Muslim-basher Bridgette Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth ($50,000)
• Aish HaTorah, funders of the anti-Muslim films Obsessed and Third Jihad ($14,000)
• the anti-Palestinian media advocacy group MEMRI ($100,000)
• American Freedom Alliance, another Muslim-bashing group, founded by Avi Davis, which defends western civilization from the unwashed hordes ($120,000)
• Gary Bauer’s American Values ($80,000)
• Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture ($160,000)
• The anti-Arab media advocacy group CAMERA ($25,000)
• The Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an Arab-bashing group established by a Pakistani neocon ($160,000)
• Defend the West, yet another Muslim-turncoat group founded by Ibn Warraq ($130,000)
• Hudson Institute ($50,000); Heritage Foundation ($50,000)
• The Jewish neo-con security think tank JINSA ($15,000)
• The anti-Arab media advocacy group Second Draft ($40,000)
• Stand With Us ($20,000); and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum ($180,000).
• In 2005, Chernick gave $60,000 to the Central Fund of Israel, one of the largest pro-settler ‘philanthropic’ advocacy groups.

This information is quite disturbing on a number of levels, foremost amongst them being the scant media attention being given to it as opposed to hyped-up stories such as the most recent attempt to sabotage the Park51 project with ten degrees of seperation/guilt-by-association smears against one of the investors in Park51, Hisham El-Zanaty.

The non-news story smears Zanaty by claiming that his one time donation to the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) of $6,050 in 1999 indicts him as a terror supporter. HLF was accused of giving aid to Hamas in the guise of charitable work.

So Zanaty was supposed to have foreknowledge about the HLF that even the US government didn’t have? Is it reasonable then to assume that everyone who gave money to the HLF in 1999 knew that the HLF was giving money to Hamas?

This AP news story sums it up quite nicely,

Many other donors to the foundation gave thinking their donations would fund humanitarian programs.

Other people and companies who donated money, equipment or services to the foundation the year Elzanaty gave included NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon, the Microsoft Corp., and a medical equipment company owned by General Electric, according to tax records.
When the foundation’s leaders were indicted, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, the case was not “a reflection on the well-meaning people who may have donated funds to the foundation.”

Even the Attorney General under George Bush, the one who was instrumental in the implementation of the Patriot Act affirmed what is obvious common sense, the case was not “a reflection on the well-meaning people who may have donated funds to the foundation.”
However, for some reason this non-story about Zanaty eclipses the very real story about the implications surrounding the funding of leading Jewish and Zionist organizations, JihadWatch, and Conservative groups many of which are the chief proponents behind the anti-Mosque drive.
How comfortable do the leaders of the ADL, AJC and others feel about receiving money from a couple who at the same time are the chief funders of an organization and a group of anti-Muslim bigots who are leading the charge in fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment across the United States?
Will they be coureagous enough to return the money they have received from the Chernicks and say that they do not want to be tainted by people such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer who as we have documented are thoroughly anti-Islam and anti-Muslim? Will the media drop its willful ignorance and double standards and begin to look into the glaring data out there?