"My column will include voices so often excluded, people whose views the media mostly ignore, issues they distort and even ridicule."— Amy Goodman from her first piece for her weekly column "Breaking the Sound Barrier"

“Of course, there will be those who demand silent obedience. We expect that from the ultra-right, and anyone with a little familiarity with history will expect it from some left intellectuals as well, perhaps in an even more virulent form. But it is important not to be intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human consequences of what one does, or fails to do. All truisms, but worth bearing in mind. Beyond the truisms, we turn to specific questions, for inquiry and for action.”—Noam Chomsky from the last page in his pamphlet “9-11”

I start with these statements from two prominent public intellectuals because, beyond both being Jewish people, their words hint at a matured, compassionate and wise Jewish approach to engaging the world. I also bring them up, in resonance with my namesake Jeremiah, to point out the latent hypocrisy and failure, so far, of these two Jewish heavyweights of public life to live up to their powerful words in relationship to the Truth of 9-11, just as the ancient Hebrews failed at many points to live up to the potent words of the Torah before ultimately bringing forth many of its profound teachings into our present world.

I include the words “so far” because any attempt to invoke the name of a prophet such as Jeremiah is not about freezing people, or a people, in time and projecting it inevitably forwards, but about a notice and warning of the dire consequences of omissive and dismissive hypocrisy, and, more importantly, a catalyst for the opening of possibility. Transformation is the desired result of any proper Jeremiad.

Despite common and simplistic notions of the interminable Jewish tendency towards suffering and existential hopelessness, we Jews hold with deep care the possibility for Redemption at any moment. Yes, some of it is always delayed, but its pulsing presence is repeatedly being traced in the little over-comings and larger transcendences of our lives. I should say at the outset that I consider myself to be a Jewish man, Ashkenazi by blood, who draws deeply from my Jewish roots in my spiritual and philosophical outlook.

Before I go too far philosophically and psychologically, let me be clear about my belief in regards to the Jewish and/or Israeli role in 9-11. We, ‘Da Joos, didn’t do it any more than the Christians or the Muslims did it. However, Jewish people, or at least people who call themselves "Jews" have played important roles in the wide spectrum of the 9-11 attacks and their aftermath. At the very least, people who call themselves ‘Jewish’ and have great allegiance to a certain image of ‘Israel’ have played an overwhelming role in the 'intellectual' justifications and reasoning behind the War on (or of) Terror. And, from my perspective, this overwhelming ‘Jewish’ presence on the side of those propagating the myth-drenched War on Terror is inversely proportional to the underwhelming presence of real, forthright Jewish intellectual weight on the side of the 9-11 Truth movement.

Thus far, there has largely been a simplistic type of thinking around this issue: "Da Joos did it" versus "shh, don't talk about Israel, people will associate 9-11 Truth with anti-Semitism." Real talk has been lost in the gulf. That is why this essay points to the great void of public Jewish intellectuals who grapple with 9-11 Truth from an open and proud Jewish perspective. There was some really good work in the book “9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews and Muslims Speak Out,” edited by Kevin Barrett, John Cobb and Sandra Lubarsky. But overall, not much above a hushed whisper has been consistently expressed from people who openly proclaim and stress their Jewishness while pointing to the clear aspect of a ‘Jewish’ and/or ‘Israeli’ role in 9-11 and the aftermath.

It shows the crazy “doublespeak” state of our language right now that the word "anti-Semitism" is used to squash talk about Israel, when the large majority of people actually in the ruling elite in Israel are not technically Semitic. I have made the point before that the War on Terror fueled by the Big Lie of 9-11 is an anti-Semitic endeavor, being that Arabs are Semitic people. To be more honest and accurate, we should talk of “anti-Jewishness” and there definitely is that spectre on the fringes of the 9-11 truth movement.

The issue of talking about "Jewishness" in relation to geo-politics and 9-11 points to the crucial need for a thick and complex understanding of people, institutions, religious groups, nations. The whole "The Jews did it," “The Muslims did it,” "The military did it," "The US government did it" scenario-building enterprise is dead in the water and we need a much more sophisticated thought process that allows us to call out bigoted and, frankly, stupid analysis while allowing real talk about real people and real forces in our world.

The people who architected the attacks of September of ’01 are not ‘Jewish’ any more than they are ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim,’ or in that case, ‘American,’ ‘Israeli’ or ‘British.’ The people who architected 9-11 are from an international, or more accurately, trans-national criminal over-class of fascists, supremacists and oligarchs. And they can come in any color, creed or proclaimed nationality or religion.

However, as I suggested earlier, the neo-con ideology that helps drive this global, criminal project, represents a confluence of British and American Imperialists along with a large number of Israeli Zionist Supremacists. Additionally, the enemy image necessary for Western societies to muster the necessary will for the Global Domination Project articulated by everybody from neo-con intellectual Puba Leo Strauss to American Cultural Imperialist Samuel Huntington and Realpolitik pundit and practitioner Zbigniew Brezinski, is unusually torqued and acute in the Jewish psyche. Having been the recipient of that projected enemy image persistently throughout our history, there has been a certain taking on of that mantle among the Jewish peoples. Similar to Tupac Shakur’s proclamation of “It’s Just Me Against the World,” the Jewish Diaspora has a tendency to take a “It’s Just We Against the World” stance.

At the very same time, the wiser and more mature aspects of the Jewish psyche have transmuted historical ostracism into deeper compassion for the suffering of others and the need for justice. Evidence of this is the large number of Jewish people who were involved in the civil rights movement.

A Jew is a person of God. And the Torah and our history as a people have taught us that an essential part of being a “person of God” is to seek justice for all people. It's time, in my mind for we Jews of good faith to call out the impostors who seem more like Nazis than Jews in their ideologies about Palestinians as savages and their actions in support of a total war to dominate the Arab world. Because, as evidenced by the European Holocaust, more ethically devastating than the horrific actions of a small criminal cabal, is the silence of way too many of the rest of us ‘good’ people.

An attempt at being authentically Jewish, especially at times of moral crisis, necessitates the possibility of speaking one’s conscience in the face of oppressive, violent and, potentially, catastrophic silence.

To come in Part 2-“What can Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality bring to the 9-11 Truth and Justice Dialogue?”