Israel Matzav

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

#NeverForget

Via Jake Tapper.

Labels: 9/11, Islamic terrorism, Jake Tapper, our friends the Saudis, World Trade Center

Monday, July 15, 2013

Oh my... World Trade Center mastermind Ramzy Youssef behind TWA 800 explosion?

Last month, I reported on a new video that looks into claims that TWA flight 800 from JFK to Paris was shot down 17 years ago this week.

On Sunday, London's Daily Mail reported that Ramzy Youssef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, was behind the explosion, that the FBI knew in advance of a plot to blow up a plane, but didn't know which one, and that the source of the FBI's information was recorded conversations between Youssef and his next door neighbor in prison, mob boss Gregory Scarpa, Jr. According to this version, the plane wasn't shot down - it was blown up, maybe by someone on board (Hat Tip: Curtis F).

Yousef was being held in a cell next to Scarpa Jr, Lance explained: ‘The feds were so wary of Yousef’s skills at making improvised bombs that they wouldn’t even let him keep mouthwash or toothpaste in his cell.’

But they provided Scarpa Jr with a tiny spy-camera to photograph the ‘kites’ or pieces of paper pushed from Yousef’s cell through a connecting sink U-bend into his own.

Scarpa Jr had convinced his neighbor that the mafia was sympathetic to al Qaeda’s cause and that ‘his people’ on the outside could help make Yousef’s plans a reality.

The plot revealed in Yousef’s ‘kites’ was startling and clear.

Lance said: ‘They planned to bring down a plane and call for a mistrial in his case. Yousef, who was representing himself and doing not a bad job of it, would argue a bomb went off that was identical to the one I’m accused of and I’ve been in jail for a year and a half…’

Documents prove that the Feds set up a false telephone exchange, the Roma Corporation, which Scarpa Jr told Yousef could safely patch calls through to his people.

Federal translators listened to the calls. But while the translators spoke Arabic, Yousef spoke Balachi or Urdu.

Among the documents copied verbatim or photographed by Scarpa Jr is one entitled, How to Smuggle Explosives into an Airplane and dated 19 May 1996. Just two months before TWA Flight 800 came down.

Lance stated that one former FBI agent, familiar with the intelligence described it to him as ‘weapons grade plutonium.’

He said: ‘It was a blueprint that could have led the Bureau not just to Yousef’s role in the crash of TWA Flight 800 but to 9/11 as well.’

TWA Flight 800 was brought down the day before the most damning evidence in Yousef’s Bojinka trial was due to be revealed – a confession from a co-conspirator.

...

Traces of the high explosive PETN were found on the plane’s right wing near the mid-section. Two metal seats in the 23rd row had fist-sized holes blown through them and explosive RDX was discovered near the PETN above the center wing fuel tank.

RDX was the very explosive mentioned in Yousef’s ‘How To…’ document.

Key to the official dismissal of the presence of a bomb was investigators’ contention that the presence of these explosives was actually due to a sniffer dog trial conducted on the craft some weeks earlier.

The officer conducting that K-9 test was Herman Burnett.

In an interview with Mr Burnett, Lance revealed: ‘He told me categorically that he didn’t carry out the test on that plane.’

The test was conducted on a sister aircraft.

He added: ‘In other words there was no reason for explosives to be found.’

Read the whole thing.

Labels: al-Qaeda, Islamic terrorism, JFK Airport, Paris, World Trade Center

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

War on terror celebrates 20th anniversary two years too late

Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, February 27.

1) It's been more than 20 years

Jonathan Tobin writes in The Day the War on America Began:

Exactly 20 years ago on this date, a terrorist attack at the World Trade Center took the lives of six people and injured more than a thousand others. The tragedy shocked the nation but, as with other al-Qaeda attacks in the years that followed, the WTC bombing did not alter the country’s basic approach to Islamist terrorism. For the next eight and a half years, the United States carried on with a business-as-usual attitude toward the subject. The lack of urgency applied to the subject, as well as the disorganized and sometimes slap-dash nature of the security establishment’s counter-terrorist operations, led to the far greater tragedy of September 11, 2001 when al-Qaeda managed to accomplish what it failed to do in 1993: knock down the towers and slaughter thousands.
All these years after 9/11 and the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden, are there any further lessons to be drawn from that initial tragedy? To listen to the chattering classes, you would think the answer is a definitive no. Few are marking this anniversary and even fewer seem to think there is anything more to be said about what we no longer call the war on terror. But as much as many of us may wish to consign this anniversary to the realm of the history books, the lessons of the day the war on America began still need to be heeded.
The truth is that the war on America didn't begin with the first World Trade Center bombing. It began two and a half years earlier. El Sayyid Nosair was an associate of those who carried out the bombing. He also was the killer of Rabbi Meir Kahane.

In the wake of the World Trade Center bombing, the New York Times reported Trade Center Blast Prompts Kahane Case Review:

It was not clear to what extent the disciplinary action and the reopening of the Kahane investigation were part of an effort to pressure Mr. Nosair to divulge information that could help in the bombing case. A senior law-enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, maintained that Mr. Nosair had been thrust into the bombing investigation because of his contacts with others under investigation.
Federal agents, meanwhile, continued to trace the flow of foreign money into bank accounts of two of the arrested suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh, a 25-year-old illegal immigrant who was born in the West Bank, and Nidal A. Ayyad, 25, a chemical engineer who was born in Kuwait.
...
Throughout the Nosair investigation, Chief Borrelli has insisted that the assassination was the work of a gunman acting alone. While he said yesterday that he remains convinced that no one else was directly involved in the killing, he allowed for the first time that Mr. Nosair might have been involved in a terrorist organization that had ordered the rabbi executed for his hard-line approach toward Palestinians in Israel.
It took two and a half years until Nosair's connection to others was investigated. Until the World Trade Center attack, authorities insisted that the Kahane murder was an isolated incident. However as the New York Times reported a few months later in RENO SEES GROWING EVIDENCE AND MAKES CALL; New Charges Give U.S. 2d Chance to Try Kahane Suspect:

And when Mr. Nosair was arrested on Nov. 5 in the Kahane shooting, a search of his home in Cliffside Park, N.J., turned up formulas for the construction of bombs, political tracts and documents, video and audio tapes advocating the destruction of symbolic statues, tall buildings and buildings of political significance, the indictment said.
Investigators have said that the reams of materials, all in Arabic, sat in boxes untranslated until the bombing of the World Trade Center, and that the emergence of associates of Mr. Nosair as suspects led them to reopen the Kahane case.
Think about that. There was potential evidence at Nosair's house but no authorities bothered translating it. There was an assumption that Rabbi Kahane had brought his fate upon himself. It is incredible that many documents at Nosair's house were not analyzed. Had authorities done that they might have prevented the first World Trade Center bombing!

And yet despite this, there are those who think that authorities are too aggressive in seeking to prevent terrorism. Matthew Continetti recently wrote in the Matter in Handschu:

Elshafay, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to five years in federal prison in 2007. Siraj is serving a 30-year sentence. Their conspiracy is just one of the 16 known terrorist plots against New York City that have been foiled in the decade since nearly 3,000 men, women, and children were murdered in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. Hard to argue, it would seem, with the NYPD’s 12 years of keeping its city safe. But people do argue, intensely, and with a lack of proportion and context that is simply mindboggling. Consider: For years now, the February 9 New York Times editorial page breathlessly informed readers, New York police officers, “deploying an army of spies,” have been “spying on law-abiding Muslims” and “targeting Muslim groups because of their religious affiliation, not because they present any risk.” Such is the allegation of a motion lawyers connected with the New York Civil Liberties Union filed in federal court in early February. “New York City police,” the motion details, “routinely selected Muslim groups for surveillance and infiltration.” Which is “more than ample reason,” concludes the Times, “to be concerned about possible overreach and unconstitutional activity.”
... At issue are the so-called Handschu Guidelines, an unwieldy set of judicial protocols that limit NYPD surveillance of “political activity.” These guidelines, named after Black Panther attorney Barbara Handschu, are the result of a class action filed against the police in 1971 and settled in 1985. “No other police department in the country is bound by these rules,” notes former director of NYPD intelligence analysis Mitchell Silber. And no other police department in the country has had to deal with such a persistent and adaptive terrorist threat, while assuring critics in activist groups and the media that no, sorry, martial law has not been imposed on the five boroughs. A federal judge recognized as much in 2003 when he modified the Handschu Guidelines to allow the NYPD freedom to uncover and disrupt incipient plots.
The scrutiny given the NYPD would be comical if it weren't so dangerous. There is still a hesitance among certain elites to acknowledge religious based violence, when the perpetrators are Muslims. Tobin is correct when he writes:

All these years after 9/11 and the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden, are there any further lessons to be drawn from that initial tragedy? To listen to the chattering classes, you would think the answer is a definitive no. Few are marking this anniversary and even fewer seem to think there is anything more to be said about what we no longer call the war on terror. But as much as many of us may wish to consign this anniversary to the realm of the history books, the lessons of the day the war on America began still need to be heeded.

My only disagreement with him is that February 26, 1993 reflected one of those unheeded lessons.

2) Iran vs. Israel

Yesterday I cited a New York Times report that the Al Aqsa Martyr brigades claimed credit for the recent rocket fired into Israel breaking the three month old ceasefire that ended Operation Pillar of Defense. However taking credit (and whatever that reflects) is not the same thing as being responsible. Avi Isacharoff reports for the Tower, Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Operating in Gaza; Grad Rocket Fired at Israel:

Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are currently in the Gaza Strip, high-level Palestinian security sources tell The Tower. The Iranians, according to our security sources, are experts in missile production, and are in Gaza to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad develop long-range missiles. Israeli security and political officials declined to elaborate, telling The Tower only that this isn’t the first time delegates from Tehran had entered the Hamas-controlled territory. ... This morning’s rocket attack was apparently not carried out by Hamas, but by its rival Islamic Jihad, a smaller organization believed to be largely, if not entirely, under Iran’s control. Two weeks ago one of Islamic Jihad’s leaders in the West Bank, Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi, told TheTower his group enjoys “warm and positive” ties with the Islamic republic. There are also reports in Arabic media that Fatah has claimed responsibility.
While it doesn't prove that the IRGC was behind the Grad attack, the presence of the IRGC in Gaza is notable as Israel (apparently) recently killed an IRGC commander in Syria. It would appear that Iran - nuclear weapons or not - is attempting to project its power against Israel by its proxies.

3) Has the New York Times ever tried this?

Simply Jews and Honest Reporting note an excellent tactic employed by the New York Daily News. Pesach Benson of Honest Reporting explains:

Here’s something I never saw before: After Omar Barghouti was given op-ed space in the NY Daily News to explain the BDS movement, the paper itself slammed Barghouti with a staff-ed. It’s one thing to present dueling op-eds. But responding with a sharply worded staff editorial — which represents the paper’s official view — is much stronger. I also liked the staff-ed’s style. Bloggers would refer to the point-by-point refutations as a fisking.
A few years ago in defending the New York Times for publishing an op-ed by a Hamas spokesman, the paper then-public editor wrote The Danger of the One Sided Debate:

Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that’s the way a free society decides what’s right and what’s wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.
This was silly on a number of levels. Fundamentally the problem is that the New York Times, if it is one-sided any way, it one-sided against Israel. The New York Times doesn't shine light on extreme anti-Israel opinions as much as it reinforces them. The behavior of New York Daily News is an admirable counterpoint to the dishonesty of the New York Times.

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Gaza, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Middle East Media Sampler, Rabbi Meir Kahane, rockets, Soccer Dad, World Trade Center

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Egyptian President Morsy demands US free World Trade Center bombing mastermind

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy has told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he wants the US to free the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, who was behind the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center in New York. Morsy says that he intends to raise the issue with President Obama when he visits the US.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Memeorandum via Breitbart.com).

The scariest part about this is that Hussein Obama just might free him.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood, Omar Abdel-Rahman, World Trade Center

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Image: Ground Zero flooded with sea water

Above is another image from the New York City Fire Department.

Yes, that's the construction site at Ground Zero flooded with sea water.

Labels: Hurricane Sandy, New York City, World Trade Center

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Video: Islamic apostate explains real reason for embassy attacks

Here's an Islamic apostate explaining the real reason behind the Muslim attacks on US embassies and consulates in the Middle East.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: The Right Planet).

Labels: Egypt, Islam, Religion of Peace, World Trade Center

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

'When did honoring the dead become an occasion for fleecing the living'?

If it were up to me, most of the World Trade Center site would have been turned into a simple memorial with names, pictures and stories of those who worked and died there. In fact, one such story on my blog has been drawing a huge number of hits today, as it always does on 9/11.

Instead, the World Trade Center site is once being turned into the most expensive office building in the United States, with a Disney-like museum and a huge - and hugely out of place - mosque. The profiteering is running rampant. And the victims are forgotten.

This video bothers me on so many levels... including both the fact that it was made and the fact that it had to be made.

Let's go to the videotape.

No one should ever be able to walk in the area of the World Trade Center without remembering what happened there and all the people who died there. No one.

Labels: 9/11, World Trade Center

Sunday, July 01, 2012

Egypt's Morsy vows to free blind Sheikh behind first World Trade Center bombing

In an address to thousands of wildly cheering Egyptians at Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday, newly elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy vowed to free the 'blind Sheikh,' Sheikh Omar Abdel el-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for his role in planning the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).

He also addressed popular demands, vowing to work for the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York landmarks, as well as detained Egyptian protesters facing military tribunals.

‘I will do my best to free all detainees, including Dr. Omar Abdel-Rahman,’ he said, pointing to a group of protesters holding a poster of the spiritual leader of men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Supporters have called for the sheik to be repatriated to Egypt on humanitarian grounds.

Morsi, a 60-year-old U.S.-trained engineer, narrowly defeated Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister and a former air force general, in a runoff race that deeply polarized the nation. Initially put forward as a back-up candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, he addressed the crowd with a booming voice, flanked by several security guards.

His victory has given Islamists a new boost after they overcame decades of suppression and arrests under Mubarak's secular regime to become Egypt's most influential post-revolutionary political force. However, the military has fought to check the Brotherhood's rise and maintain its hold on the reins of power.

At one point he opened his jacket to show the crowd he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest, saying he ‘fears no one but God.’

Aren't you glad we got rid of Mubarak? What could go wrong?

Labels: Islamic terrorism, Mohammed Morsy, Omar Abdel-Rahman, World Trade Center

Thursday, March 01, 2012

World Trade Center bombing planner to be returned to Egypt with Kahane assassin for American democracy activists?

Citing an al-Arabiya report in Arabic, Robert Spencer reports that the United States has offered to trade Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who is imprisoned in the United States for a conviction stemming from the first (1993) World Trade Center bombing, along with 49 other Egyptians being held in American prisons, for the 19 Americans currently being held in Egypt on charges of promoting democracy.

Al-Arabiya is reporting, in Arabic only so far, that the U.S. is talking with the Egyptian government to free the blind Sheikh and 49 other Egyptians currently imprisoned in the U.S. in exchange for the freedom of the 19 Americans the Egyptians are holding.

The blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, is in prison for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center jihad terror bombing. If he is freed, it will be the apotheosis of Obama's policy of appeasement toward the Islamic world.

I pulled a Google translation of the Arabic article. No names are mentioned other than Rahman, although there is talk there about how Egypt should not 'miss the opportunity' (a phrase that ought to make the US State Department consider banning travel to Egypt) to free all 500 Egyptians being held in the US.

But I would assume that one of the 49 others to be included with Rahman is El Sayid Nosair, the man who murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane, and was later acquitted on a technicality (he has since admitted that he murdered Rabbi Kahane). Nosair is a disciple of Rahman and was also convicted on charges related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Nosair should never see the light of day (neither should Rahman).

Spencer is right. This 'exchange' would indeed be the apotheosis of Obama's Presidency. For now.

Labels: Omar Abdel-Rahman, Rabbi Meir Kahane, World Trade Center

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Al Azhar Sheikh working for release of terrorist in US

I suppose that this should not be a big surprise.

The sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Muhammad Al-Tayeb, said that intense efforts are being made to arrange the release of Sheikh 'Omar 'Abd Al-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheikh, a member of the Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiyya organization who has been imprisoned in the US since 1996 for involvement in the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. Al-Tayeb said that the coming days will see a breakthrough in this matter. Tomorrow (April 21) a demonstration is to be held in front of the US embassy in Cairo in demand for the sheikh's release.

I'm just waiting for Obama to tell us that he's letting al-Rahman go because how much harm could a blind old man be? (Can you say Ahmad Yassin)?

Labels: Ahmad Yassin, al-Azhar, Barack Obama, Omar Abdel-Rahman, World Trade Center