September 11, 2008

New Jersey had its brush with what can only be called “9/11 denial” when our one-time poet laureate used his art as a megaphone for conspiracy theories linking Israel to the attacks. That feels like old history, but seven years after the Twin Towers’ fall, delusions about Al Qaida’s attacks on Western civilization are rampant in the Arab world.

Michael Slackman of The New York Times reports this week that in coffee shops and taxicabs across the Muslim world, the belief is widespread that the 9/11 attacks were not the work of Al Qaida, but were in fact perpetrated by the United States with the cooperation of Israel. According to this thinking, the United States needed the excuse of the attacks to invade Iraq, secure its oil supplies, and dominate Islam. A corollary to these fantasies is the canard, put to verse by our former poet laureate, that Jews “stayed home” from the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Slackman suggests the Western world pays too little heed to these fantasies, and at its own peril. “Americans might better understand the region, experts here said, if they simply listen to what people are saying — and try to understand why — rather than taking offense,” writes Slackman. “The broad view here is that even before Sept. 11, the United States was not a fair broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it then capitalized on the attacks to buttress Israel and undermine the Muslim Arab world.”

The United States should heed the conspiracy mongers, but not capitulate to them. If the United States has not been a “fair broker,” that’s in large part because Arab governments have continued to foment lies and suspicion that prevent anything like a “fair” picture of Israel or the United States from emerging among their people. Conspiracy theories about Israel are a staple of the Arab media, pre-dating 9/11.

The United States is not above blame in its failed attempts to win Arab “hearts and minds,” but the idea that it should abandon Israel is not the lesson to be learned. Waging a campaign for the truth must begin at home — in the countries where the lies took root.

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