Conspiracy theories on Bin Laden’s death

May 4, 2011 - 2:45 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: News 

I’ve been keenly following the many articles that have appeared across the web reporting details on the death of Osama Bin Laden, but I’m just not getting it. Now, I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but there are so many holes in the official story released so far, that I had to confirm my suspicions. So I turned to Debka.

Debka is a Jerusalem-based English and Hebrew language website that reports on military intelligence and security issues around the world, with a focus on the Middle East. Launched in 2000 by journalists Giora Shamis and Diane Shalem, Debka is unabashedly right wing and alarmist – any rumor regarding a threat against Israel or the West is reported in screaming headlines. Which makes it utterly compelling. Even if I don’t believe half of what I read, whenever a topic involving terrorism starts to trend, I open up Debka to get the inside scoop.

I turned to Debka this time because it seemed unfathomable that a three-story heavily fortified luxury villa could be built 100 meters from a Pakistani military academy in a small town that also houses a full military base, without the Pakistani authorities having any idea what was going on. It also makes no sense that the U.S. could operate for 11 hours at the Bin Laden mansion, much of it in full daylight, without the Pakistani military taking any action whatsoever. Didn’t a U.S. helicopter have to be blown up? Did Pakistan take no notice of a large explosion right under its collective nose? Either the Pakistanis are a sloppy amalgamation of amateurs (with nuclear weapons), or there’s more to the story (aiding and abetting the enemy springs to mind).

As I was pontificating on my speculations around the dinner table the other night, Debka was reporting these same questions…and more. The official U.S. report, for example, said that none of the computers in the house were connected to the Internet and there wasn’t even a phone inside. Debka claims that photos released show both a satellite dish on the roof as well as “cables and wires snaking along the outer and inner walls.”

Debka reported in 2007 a readership of 1.3 million and that 80% of its reports turn out to be true. Yediot Achronot reporter Ronen Bergman, on the other hand, said that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10% of the site’s content to be reliable.

Call me a conspiracist, but a lot of readers rely on Debka for their daily dose of inflammatory analysis, including me at times. I wonder what they have to say about the ongoing Obama “birther” controversy?

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Osama’s house?

September 6, 2010 - 5:51 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Israeliness, Politics 

The Bin-Laden family home in East Jerusalem?

It might be just a crafty pitch to draw in the tourists, but an East Jerusalem attorney is claiming that a house in the city’s Shuafat neighborhood was once owned by the Bin-Laden family. Not only that, but Osama himself stayed there “on several occasions in the 1960s,” says the property’s current owner, Advocate Mu’in Khoury.

“Bin-Laden’s father came from Saudi Arabia in the 1940s, bought the house and lived in it from time to time,” the lawyer told Israel’s Globes newspaper. Since then it has changed hands several times until it was eventually purchased by Khoury who put it up for sale yesterday.

The Globes story has some holes in it. The newspaper calls the house “a place of pilgrimage for local residents and the curious,” but Khoury says that, until now, “I have not talked about it with anybody.”

In Jerusalem, where property prices are already sky high, an “historical” attachment – even it is to the family of the world’s foremost terrorist – could drive the home’s price even further up.

But if you fancy yourself the new owner, Khoury says to hold your horses. “The house is not for sale to anyone,” he cautions. “But if Osama makes me an offer, I will be willing to consider it.”

Somehow, I’m thinking that Osama Bin-Laden might have a tad trouble crossing over the Allenby Bridge to vacation in his new Jerusalem abode.

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Nostalgia Sunday – 9-11

September 6, 2009 - 11:13 PM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: General, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Travel, War 

9-11_collage_150In five days, it will have been eight years since September 11, 2001 and it looks like this year’s 9/11 anniversary is going to pass without much media fanfare. (Unless something happens, of course, and you know what I mean by “something”). So I thought I would finally share the story of what happened to me that day and how I ended up in a refugee camp in Amsterdam.

Yes, the International Red Cross runs — or ran, at least — four refugee camps in Amsterdam but for the life of me, I cannot tell you where exactly I was sent to stay from Schiphol Airport. That is because 9/11 was, as we Israelis say, a big “balagan”. I can tell you that when I landed there at about 1:30 on a stopover en route back to Israel, the airport was functioning normally. I can tell you that at about 2:15pm, I saw a bunch of people over at the airport lounge staring, transfixed, at the bank of TV screens. I traipsed over in my high-heeled boots to see all the screens, save one, tuned to CNN’s coverage as the first tower was hit. That last screen was broadcasting a bike race. This was Holland, after all.

My initial reaction was, “I’d better buy a pair of comfortable shoes because I think I’m going to be here awhile.” So I trundled off to the Timberland store and purchased a pair of slides, during which time the second tower was hit. I went back to the lounge and watched as news of the Pentagon attack came in. That damn bike race kept on going. Then Schiphol, in the first of a number of panicked moves, announced that it was shutting down the televisions — ostensibly to keep people from panicking.

News began circulating among passengers that airspace around the world was shutting down, and people began rushing towards the various airline counters, trying to find out what was happening to their flights. “You’ve got to get organized,” I said to the KLM counter attendant who was busily shooing the Israelis away from her space. She looked at me and said something completely un-Israeli. “I don’t have to get organized,” she said. It was my first encounter with the concept known as the Dutch Uncle.

On a grander scale, Schiphol decided to do the exact same thing. They decided they didn’t have to get organized. The airport announced that it was shutting down, that all passengers had to vacate the premises, and take their luggage with them. And then, Schiphol proceeded to unload all the suitcases, all at once, from all of the planes. 18 baggage carousels began disgorging bags, one after another, without any rhyme or reason. People were crawling all around through a maze of suitcases. Six hours later, I found my stuff.

For me it was an eye-opener as to how quickly systems can break down. Imagine if Schiphol had been an attack target, as management apparently feared. Someone, however, was astute enough to call in the Red Cross — and that is when things did, indeed, get organized. Red Cross staffers came in with bottled water, soft drinks and potato chips. Also, as the hotels in town were now completely full, they had arranged for transport to take us to a place where, they promised, KLM would be able to see to our flights and where there was a place to sleep. And so, with suitcases in tow, my new, comfortable shoes, and visions of Anne Frank in my head, I boarded a bus full of strangers and rode out into the cold, wet, dark night.

And ended up in an enormous refugee camp on the outskirts of Amsterdam where I handed over my passport, was registered, and in return issued a tan fleece blanket, a KLM washkit and some supplies produced for the Red Cross by a company called De Ridder B.V. These included a toothbrush pre-embedded with toothpaste…shampoo packets… and paper underwear, pairs of which the KLM staffers — sensitive as always — had jokingly put on their heads.

The name “de Ridder”, is Middle Dutch for ‘knight’, ‘rider’, ‘horseman’. The Crusader aspect of the name was lost neither on the company, whose logo at the time was a knight in armor on a horse, brandishing a sword and shield with a red cross on it, nor on myself. (The logo has since been downsized to a knight with a sword and shield but no horse). I stood there in the communal washroom, looking down at the shampoo packet, and realized that the Crusades were still going on. I knew the attackers knew they were fighting a holy war, and I also knew that the attacked didn’t know this.

I couldn’t find any Israelis till I ran into Mira from Rehovot who told me she’d heard that all the Israelis had banded together immediately and gone en masse to another camp. “I don’t feel comfortable here,” she said. “There aren’t any other Israelis. I’m going back to the airport. I heard they’ll put you on a plane if you go there.” And there went my only homeland connection.

I spent the first two days and nights in my refugee camp, as I’ve come to call think of it, in a haze of jet-lagged confusion, wrapped in a blanket, watching the endless hours of wreckage, feeling like the end of the world had come, eating junk food (the Red Cross kept us well-supplied with kuchen and krispen), and watching a group of Sudanese boys playing on the two foosball tables. I asked one of them what the letters on his sweatshirt stood for and he spelled out the name of an international relief agency, explaining that he and his friends were on their way to be resettled in the US. Oh, it suddenly hit me. These were real refugees.

So I snapped out of my funk. Chatted with people who kept on coming in and heard their stories: one couple’s flight had been turned back an hour out of Chicago, another rerouted to the Nova Scotia airport in only their summer clothes. Stuck to the KLM staffers like the proverbial white on rice and on the third day they called my name over the camp loudspeaker and told me El Al had arranged a flight back to Israel. KLM were pretty complimentary about El Al’s functioning — apparently there were other airlines that didn’t get organized.

At the airport I ran into my pal Mira who — despite her best efforts — had made no more progress than I. “They’re all Antisemites here,” she said. “We’ve been sleeping on the floor. They didn’t even give us a blanket.” She stomped off to try her luck at the El Al counter while I was hustled onto an ISSTA charter flight to Ben Gurion Airport. Granted, it was my worst travel nightmare come true: flying with a planeful of unwashed, guitar-playing post-IDF grads after their year in the Far East but at least I was on my way home.

So here’s how I would rate the whole experience:
redcross_v_klm copy

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