JERUSALEM — Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass has blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Israel.
At a recent meeting in Damascus with a delegation from the British Royal College of Defense Studies, Tlass said the Mossad planned the ramming of two hijacked airliners into the twin towers as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
He also told the British visitors that the Mossad had given thousands of Jewish employees of the trade center advance warning not to go to work that day.
The Jewish-conspiracy theory started circulating in the Middle East shortly after the terrorist outrages in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The “rationale” was that Israel wanted to provoke U.S. retaliation against the Arab world.
In Israel and in Jewish circles abroad, the theory has been dismissed as a “gross lie.” It had been dismissed by Arabists as “wishful thinking” by frustrated Arabs who badly wanted to believe that Muslims were not responsible for the atrocities.
But Tlass’ comments indicate that it has been commuted to fact among senior Arab officialdom. Experts believe the false rumor has taken root in the Middle East, thanks to deep anti-Jewish sentiment propagated by Arab governments.
American Jewish leaders last week urged the Bush administration to debunk the rumor.
“Nobody is challenging this gross lie. Nobody is getting on Arab TV stations and saying it is a lie, it’s absurd and it’s a libel,” said Abraham Foxman, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League.
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, agreed.
“Perhaps the Bush administration doesn’t want to confer legitimacy on these canards by even acknowledging their existence. Sadly, this story has taken on a life of its own. It has even reached non-Muslim countries like Greece and South Africa, where Jewish communities have frantically contacted us, asking for help in refuting these charges,” Harris said.
“At this point it would be very helpful for the Bush administration and other countries not only to condemn this canard, but to call it by its real name, which is raw, unadulterated anti-Semitism,” he said.
In Iran, the hard-line Resalat newspaper recently quoted “experts” as saying the attacks were so complicated they had to have been carried out by the Israeli government and the Mossad.
In Kuwait, where some speakers on television have ridiculed the report, some people have even added embellishments, saying Jews were advised by New York rabbis to sell their holdings in the stock market the day before the attack and did so.
Public opinion data on Arab views of Sept. 11 is sparse. One poll conducted a week after the attacks and published in the Lebanese newspaper An Nahar found 31 percent of respondents thought Israel was behind the hijackings, while only 27 percent thought militant Osama bin Laden was responsible, as the United States has charged.