Blame the Mossad

[Behind the Aegis]

In recent years, one phenomenon that directly impacts on Israel and our regional standing has become increasingly prevalent in the Arab world. It is the belief that anything bad that happens in the region is the result of an Israeli and Western conspiracy against Arab interests. The chief culprit is always Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, like the Mossad, the CIA or the British MI6.

One recent example of this is in the former chairman of the Jordanian Writers Union, Fakhri Qi'war, who claimed the Mossad was behind the fatal bombings in Amman in November. Anyone who happened to be in Sinai after the bombings there would have heard locals repeating the claim that Israel was responsible for the atrocities, since "Al-Qaida does not have a terror infrastructure in Sinai." Many even claim that Bin Laden and Zarqawi are fictions of Western intelligence agencies' imagination, created to take the blame for attacks carried out by the CIA. After all, they argue, if this were not the case, they would have been caught long ago.

Other examples are accusations that Israel was behind the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri because of his links to Syria, and the claim that the Mossad and the CIA were behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, which, they claim, served American and Israeli interests. In this context, the urban legend that Jewish employees of companies in the Twin Towers were tipped off about the attacks and did not go to work on September 11 is often repeated.

This phenomenon is prevalent among all levels of Arab society, including the educated classes. Among those who subscribe to the theory are officials, such as diplomats, army officers, academics and senior civil servants. After the death of Yasser Arafat, I was asked by one Arab diplomat, "What is the truth?" In other words, did Israel really murder him? And the phenomenon is not limited to the Middle East; it occurs among people of Middle Eastern descent now living in the West. That explains why Muslims living in the United Kingdom blamed Israel for carrying out the London bombings this summer.

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(Mods...this is already posted in I/P for cross purposes. I didn't know where to post here, since it is an op-ed piece or in 9-11 because it (the piece) deals with conspiracy theory.)