Hi all.

Much to my surprise, Mark Weitzman answered my e-mail from a few days ago. I posted that e-mail in the comments section of the previous SWC thread (Not the ae911truth one, but the one several days before). Today, I received a response. I don't know it's a form response he's writing to all his 9/11 related letters, so I'll be interested to hear if Weitzman has written any of you all. I'll post my e-mail to him first, followed by his response:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hello.

I am writing to protest the SWC's conflation of 9/11 truth and
research sites to digital terrorism, hate, and anti-Semitism. Calling us "9/11
deniers" is extremely insulting to the millions of concerned American
(and world) citizens with legitimate questions about what really happened
on 9/11.

To question the true identity of the perpetrators is NOT analogous to
holocaust denial. While a small minority of 9/11 activists openly mix
holocaust revisionism with 9/11 skepticism, this only represents a
tiny fraction of the 9/11 movement at large, and as a violinist who studied
with Auschwitz survivor Henry Meyer, I am incensed by the conflation
of the two. Suggesting that there might have been a clandestine element of Israeli
intelligence involvement or knowlege in 9/11 is NOT anti-Semitic or portraying hate towards Jews.
Likewise, suggesting that Dick Cheney might have been the real mastermind does not make me "un-American." I love
my country, and through the democratic process, I intend to fix what's wrong
with it.

You see, nobody is suggesting that 9/11 didn't happen, or that 3,000
didn't really die. Rather, we are questioning the true identity of
the perpetrators. 9/11 was a staged event to launch a series of wars in
the middle east under the guise of a "war on terror" and to scale back
civil liberties in the USA, just like Hitler's Reichstag fire.

I urge the SWC to live up to its mission of truly being committed to
not letting history repeat. A good start would be to retract its
assertions and apologize to the 9/11 research community, including the family
members.

Sincerely, Kameelyun

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mark Weitzman's response:

Over the past few days I have received a number of emails regarding my
testimony to the House Committee on Homeland Security. Much of those
emails
appear to have been based on misapprehensions of my testimony. My
testimony
was about about the Internet as a tool for violent radicalization, and
not
about 9/11. My reference to 9/11 consisted of 1 sentence out of 6 pages
of
testimony, and in those sentences (with 2 out of 38 accompanying
PowerPoint
slides) I referenced how 9/11 is viewed in some eyes, including those
who
applauded it as well as some conspiracy sites. I then continue by
illustrating the type of conspiracy theory often found online, such as
those
based upon of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous
antisemitic
text, or that generally blame the US government in a pernicious manner
(i.e.
for intentionally spreading the AIDS virus), or that have the entire
Western World engaged in a conspiracy against Islam. Nowhere in there
is
there any mention of 9/11! In this regard our only concern with 9/11 is
when
the inquiries slide into incubators for hate (i.e. This fake Hamas
soldier
wearing a "Star of David" is as much a Zionist as the 9-11 terrorists
Chertoff
covers for. Chertoff is the son of a terrorist himself. Don't let him
off the
hook!).

Finally, in my recommendations, I never urge any type of censorship. In
fact,
I specifically state that (#5) that any steps taken in regard to the
Internet
must be done legally, and over the course of a decade in dealing with
this
issue I have consistently stressed that the First Amendment must be
maintained
in the virtual as well as the real world. I have even argued that in
conferences in Europe when attempts were being made to impose
international
controls on the Internet, saying, as I did last year in Berlin that we
should
avoid getting bogged down in a useless debate on the First Amendment
because we (in the US) are not going to erase it, nor should we.

Please feel free to share this with any interested parties.

Mark Weitzman
Director, Task Force against Hate
Chief Representative to the United Nations
Simon Wiesenthal Center
50 East 42nd Street, Suite 1600
New York, New York, 10017
tel. 212.370.0320
fax 212.883.0895