Witness to Terror: Watching the World Trade Center Implode and Listening to Security Sources in Israel

The terror at the Twin Towers caught me in Lower Manhattan, where I was giving briefings on how the PLO, the seemingly legitmated peace partner with Israel, had incorporated the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations and philosophy within the PLO’s Palestinian Authority, in its school books, media, maps, and evolving legal system.

Indeed, the new constitution of the Palestinian Authority, prepared as a framework for a new state, excludes any juridical status for Judaism or for Christianity within the new state. The borders of the state remain all of Palestine. The Islamic impulse to regain and liberate all of Palestine remain the dominant features of the PA school system. The entire population of the Arab refugee camps are mandated to return to the precise homes and villages that they left in 1948.

All this, at a time when the PLO’s Palestine Authority and UNRWA, the agency that runs the Arab refugee camps under the premise and promise of the right of return, have received massive help from around the world. The director of the European Union in Israel, Mr. Jean Breteche told me in an interview that the EU has poured more than $3 billion into the Palestinian Authority, an entity with no accountability whatsover, whose ideology could easily be described as Islam uber alles.

Before my scheduled lecture on the subject of the PA’s absorption of Islamic extremism scheduled for the afternoon of September 11th, I gazed in horror outside of the office that I was working in the 24th floor at 401 Broadway. Following the two plane crashes into the Twin Towers, I was witness to a towering inferno on top of a Twin Tower closest to us. I quickly cocked my camera in the direction of the building and caught the picture of its explosion and collapse.

Throughout the next 12 hours, I contacted trusted security sources in Israel to hear what they had to say.

Their feedback: to look beyond Bin Laden to determine who was responsible for this horrendous crime.

One source at the Israeli prime minister’s office noted that Israel was warning the US to examine the cooperation of several governments, NOT individuals,in the perpetration of this act: Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, coordinated with Syria and the PLO.

A Former advisor on terrorism to Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Mr. Rafi Eitan, told Jerusalem investigative reporter Dennis Eisenberg that all signs pointed to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as trhe leading perpetartor.

Another Israeli intelligence expert remarked that the Israeli government had warned that US airlines may have been infiltrated by Moslem personnel who could have been activated to carry out such attacks.

Meanwhile, my conversations with Palestinian reporters made it quite clear that the demonstrations of joy that occurred immediately following the attacks in the cities under the Arafat’s control could not have been organized without the direct approval of Yassir Arafat. Middle East Newsline Director Steve Rodan reported that Arafat’s personnel were out there at the forefront of the Palestinian street demonstrations that lauded the Twin Tower attacks. And most important,it was the PA that alerted and invited the AP, Reuters, BBC, CNN and NBC to film the mass Palestinian demos of support for the terror attacks against the US.

On the eve of Arafat’s first diplomatic visit to Damascus in a generation, it became clear that the PLO chieftan wanted to let the Arab world know that his people supported direct terrorism against ALL targets in the US, civlian and military.

However, Arafat condemned the attacks a few hours after the demos of joy took place, so that he could benefit from both worlds with two messages: Arafat successfully conveyed to the west that he condemned the action and successfuly conveyed to his own people that they should express their support for the attacks.

It will now be incumbent upon those of us to cover the Palestinian Authority to provide the media with the precise message that Arafat conveys to his own people in his own language, so that the world will judge whether or not the message that Arafat conveys is one of war or one of peace.

After a decade in which the US state department has asked Israel to ignore Arafat’s rhetoric and to get down to negotiations no matter what Arafat says, it will be interesting to note if the American people maintain that same level of patience when and if the official media of the Palestinian Authority continues to endorse terror.

There is only one way to tell: And that is to publicize the official message of the Palestinian Authority: Islam uber alles, from sea to shining sea.