We have not rejected the idea that we could suffer real blow-back Mr. Holland, we just don't think that blow-back explains what happened on 9/11, and with very good reason. On the other hand, we have Chomsky like a modern day Procrustes trying to fit 9/11 into his worldview by chopping off the bits (the HUGE bits) that don't fit in with his pet theories. Sure, if you ignore half of the facts or more, you can make a plausible case for 9/11 having been blow-back, but if you're going to ignore facts you could just as easily blame 9/11 on little green men from Mars. Instead, what the facts (all the facts that can be reliably verified) reveal is the not shocking fact that arab muslims probably had nothing to do with the events except to have been framed so as to galvanize public opinion behind the president's policies--not on their own merits but by a knee-jerk response that could have been foreseen by the blindest of the blind--aptly summed up as "let's kill us some ragheads".

In fact, it's not hard to see where people like Noam Chomsky run into personal problems with what happened on 9/11. With it's very existence threatened not by evil arabs but by the simple fact that it is an illegitimate and abusive state, Israel found that with the election (such as it was) of George W Bush that a slew of amoral and rabidly pro-Zionist hacks had come to power in the US. Whoever came up with the idea of demolishing the world trade center and blaming it on murderous arabs--whether American neocons or Israeli hawks, the facts are uncomfortably clear--in addition to the financial windfall for the military industrial complex, Israel presumably found its only friend in the world smacked into unthinking allegiance with those who are threatened by the existence of strong arab states like Iraq and Iran. Enter Larry Silverstein, who signed a 99 year lease on the WTC complex six weeks before 9/11, insuring it heavily against terrorist attack. Silverstein is not only a Zionist, he spoke weekly on the phone with none other than Israeli hawk Netanyahu. Circumstantial evidence such as this is not in itself conclusive, but circumstancial evidence in sufficient quantities is at least enough to warrant a closer investigation. We can add to this disturbing set of facts the presence of Israeli agents in New York that morning behaving more than suspiciously--the so-called Dancing Israelis are yet another unexplained aspect of 9/11 that undermines the official story.

Sadly, no nation or peoples are immune from bad leadership, as we in America well know. Why should we hesitate, when our very survival and personal safety is at stake, to impugn the integrity and motives not just of our domestic tyrants but of those in Israel, who indeed have a history of framing arabs for crimes they themselves committed (see for one the Lavon Affair)? Those of us who dare point out these unthinkable facts are routinely and without exception decried as bigots and hatemongers. Wethinks they doth protest too much! To deny a priori the possibility that 9/11 was intended by its planners and executors to usher in a new era of fanatical anti-arab and muslim feeling and that as such fanatical partisans of Israel--both American and Israeli (and in some cases like that of Michael Chertoff, who released the dancing Israelis, both--he is a dual citizen) is the height of folly, whether you are Jewish or not. In fact, plenty of Jews understand this, but are afraid of the consequences that are in store for "self-hating Jews" as evidenced by the existence of groups like the JDL (a terrorist group per the FBI) and webistes like www.masada2000.org. To stand by or worse yet actively participate when the "anti-semite" or "self-hating" smears are used to discourage investigation of Israeli and American involvement in the events of 9/11 is tantamount to assisting criminals hiding behind genuine concerns of bigotry, and that is unconscionable given the stakes.