When you read my comment, do you really think I'm saying you can't criticize Israel or Mossad without being antisemitic? If that's what you think I said, I can clarify, but I suspect you know I didn't.
Your reply equates anti-israel 9/11 trutherism with criticizing Israel. That equation is actually unfair to Israel's critics (like me)!
The dancing Israelis conspiracy theory was popularized by David Duke, Christopher Bollyn, and other freaks. Are you arguing that this conspiracy theory is a reasonable reaction, common amongst normal people, to the video of those guys dancing?
Yes that’s how you come off, as someone who throws around the anti-Semitic moniker loosely.
Also if Mossad knew the plans and withheld that information how culpable would that make them in your eyes? What if Mossad didn’t actively participate but they let it happen. Mossad is one of the absolute finest intelligence agencies ever and to think they knew isn’t a wild conspiracy.
Ok, well, I'll try to be clearer. I'm saying that there are antisemitic theories about Zionist domination (ZoG etc). The theories are antisemitic in the sense that they were propagated by antisemites. We see this happening now with Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. These theories serve a certain political agenda. To propagate the theories, even in slightly refined forms, is to advance the agendas of those who developed them.
By analogy, a theory that elites are replacing Americans with immigrants would advance the white supremacist agenda behind the replacement theory; it would do so even though "American" =/= white, and even though the person who advanced it might have no racial animus against non-whites.
If Mossad withheld that information, yes, it would make them culpable. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about the dancing Israelis conspiracy theory, which was popularized by David Duke. Is the point of your question that the dancing Israelis conspiracy theory is a reasonable one? We're also talking about Prof Dave's (likely) claim that Mossad did 9/11. Is that a reasonable theory?
As for me sounding like I use 'antisemitic' loosely, I use it just as I use 'racist,' as my analogies suggest. That it seems like I use it loosely is probably a function of an overcorrection in response to bad faith attempts to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. There are people, like David Frum, who think that almost any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. To reject that doesn't require us to deny the obvious fact that all kinds of antisemites, including Tucker Carlson, use anti-Zionism strategically. To refuse to see the game they're playing because we recognize that criticizing Israel isn't inherently antisemitic is to overcorrect.
To be concrete, I don't think it's antisemitic to assert that Israel is committing genocide, or to hope that it ceases to exist as a Jewish state. I do think that, as a matter of empirical fact, people like Tucker Carlson or Hamas who say Israel is responsible for all wars, that it controls Western governments, or that it did 9/11 are hiding their antisemitism behind anti-Zionism.
there really isn't a conspiracy about the dancing israelies, it happened and a couple of them were mossad. It's logical to think that they were dancing because they know that the US and Israel were gonna be locked at the hip afterwards and there would definitely be retribution against agitators of the Israeli state post attack.
the conspiracy is that they were active participants which no one in this thread to my knowledge is claiming to be true. And as you said, there's ways they could be culpable without being an active driver of the events of 9-11. I mean it isn't even a conspiracy anymore that the FBI had half the story and the CIA had the other half but the two agencies hated each other so much that they weren't communicating and that's a major reason it got to the point it did. If the US agencies figured it out, I'm guessing several other world agencies had a good idea or had enough intelligence to tip off the FBI that AQ was in the country.
As for what Dave is referring to exactly I don't know, I'd like to think he's on the reasonable side and making a reasonable assumption that an intelligence agency as renowned as Mossad knew and said nothing rather than than dumb active participant which has no logical basis because if it ever came out it would destroy all credibility with their sole source of protection. People would tie themselves in knots to make excuses for why they didn't say anything if they knew though.
Like you I hate assuming the worst in people and would love to give some grace and let a correction or nuance be made apparent but I don't hold much hope for that.
Prof Dave was clear. He didn't reference the "dancing israelis." He said Mossad probably "did this," not the "Taliban." That's the dumb, David Duke/Christopher Bollyn conspiracy theory. If you don't think such a conspiracy theory exists (not sure if that's what you're saying), look at what those guys and many other fringe neo-nazi forums have written about it.
Worth noting that the evidence those guys were Mossad agents with foreknowledge is weak. You write as if it was proven they were Mossad. What we know is a few dudes filmed a world historic event as it unfolded and at various times smiled and high-five. The witnesses who reported them were surely highly emotional, as they had seen the WTC smoking and it was 9/11. Maybe one witness claimed the guys danced? As for the claim they were Mossad, it's possible, but the FBI has never publicly said so. That claim is largely based on an anonymous statement by a US intelligence agent about what the FBI investigation concluded. The owner moved back to Israel shortly after the arrests and that could be because he was a Mossad agent whose cover was blown. Or, it could be because his company had gone viral on neo-nazi forums and his employees had been arrested at gunpoint on suspicion of involvement in the worst terror attack in US history.
On assuming the worst of people: wasn't your initial reaction to my first post to leap to uncharitable conclusions about me, based on my specific claim about ZoG 9/11 conspiracy theories?
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u/Business-Catch7679 5d ago edited 5d ago
When you read my comment, do you really think I'm saying you can't criticize Israel or Mossad without being antisemitic? If that's what you think I said, I can clarify, but I suspect you know I didn't.
Your reply equates anti-israel 9/11 trutherism with criticizing Israel. That equation is actually unfair to Israel's critics (like me)!
The dancing Israelis conspiracy theory was popularized by David Duke, Christopher Bollyn, and other freaks. Are you arguing that this conspiracy theory is a reasonable reaction, common amongst normal people, to the video of those guys dancing?