911: The Israeli angle

Briefly: This piece by Christopher Ketcham relates what we know about the mysterious Israeli "movers" and "art students" who, it is alleged, played a role in the 911 disaster. Perhaps they were observers, perhaps they were participants, but on some level, they knew:

They had not been told the reasons for their arrest. Yet, according to DeCarlo's report, "this officer was told without question by the driver [Sivan Kurzberg],'We are Israeli. We are not your problem.Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.'" Another of the five Israelis, again without prompting, told Officer DeCarlo ­- falsely ­- that "we were on the West Side Highway in New York City during the incident". From inside the vehicle the officers, who were quickly joined by agents from the FBI, retrieved multiple passports and $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock. According to New Jersey's Bergen Record, which on September 12 reported the arrest of the five Israelis, an investigator high up in the Bergen County law enforcement hierarchy stated that officers had also discovered in the vehicle "maps of the city with certain places highlighted. It looked like they're hooked in with this", the source told the Record, referring to the 9/11 attacks. "It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park."

And:

What is perhaps most damning is that the Israelis' celebration on the New Jersey waterfront occurred in the first sixteen minutes after the initial crash, when no one was aware this was a terrorist attack. In other words, from the time the first plane hit the north tower, at 8:46 a.m., to the time the second plane hit the south tower, at 9:02 a.m., the overwhelming assumption of news outlets and government officials was that the plane's impact was simply a terrible accident. It was only after the second plane hit that suspicions were aroused. Yet if the men were cheering for political reasons, as they reportedly told the FBI, they obviously believed they were witnessing a terrorist act, and not an accident.

After returning safely to Israel in the late autumn of 2001, three of the five New Jersey Israelis spoke on a national talk show that winter. Oded Ellner, who on the afternoon of September 11 had, like his compatriots, protested to arresting officer Sgt. Dennis Rivelli that ‘we're Israeli’, admitted to the interviewer: ‘We are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event’. By his own admission, then, Ellner stood on the New Jersey waterfront documenting with film and video a terrorist act before anyone knew it was a terrorist act.

I can add this. The owner of Urban Moving Systems was a man named Dominik Suter, then all of 31. He fled to Israel like a shot after the arrests of the students. Few people know that young Suter kept a second residence here in Los Angeles. It was an expensive apartment in an upscale area of the San Fernando Valley -- "South of the Boulevard," as we say in the Valley, the Boulevard being Ventura. We less-affluent northerners refer to those living in the hills of the south as SOBs. At any rate, few 31 year-old non-citizens could have afforded Suter's pad as a primary residence, let alone as a second home on the other side of the country.

The Israeli "moving company" scam deserved greater attention than it has ever received, and not just in the context of 911. Basically, the "students" would quote a low-ball price to get a gig. Once the furniture was loaded into the trucks, the movers would demand a much higher price before releasing the furniture. If the customer did not cough up, they kept the goods in a warehouse. This scam was played out all across the country; numerous complaints and legal actions resulted. I think most such operations have been shut down. If you know otherwise, please tell me.

The Israeli "art students" -- suspected of being spies, since they were often seen skulking around DEA offices on flimsy pretexts -- were also a strange lot. Many of them had multiple addresses, which is very odd when you consider that they were supposed to be ill-to-do students working illegally. One, based on the East Coast (as I recall), kept a mail drop at a Mailboxes, Etc. on Ventura Blvd., a couple of miles down the road from Suter's palatial digs. Another kept an apartment within walking distance of Suter's on the north side of the Boulevard.

For a while, these "art students" sold their crummy paintings (knock-offs of Thomas Kinkaide and Michelangelo, made by an assembly line in China) in front of the Sears in the Northridge Mall. I tried to chat up one of the girls working the booth; she seemed nice, but distant. Aside from admitting that she was from Israel, she would discuss nothing involving the operation. I tried speaking to her on a one-artist-to-another level, and quickly became convinced that she had no actual interest in art.

The guys working that spot perpetually glowered at everyone. I can't believe they sold much. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing anyone at that booth making a sale.

(The comments are a no-tranny zone today. You don't like my rules? Go play elsewhere.)