Arabs Didn't Do It; All Evidence Against Them is False

Many columnists in the Arab press disregarded FBI and Western media reports concerning the identities of the perpetrators, stolidly maintaining that no Arab was responsible. Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, wrote in the movement's mouthpiece Saut Al-Haqq Wa-Al-Hurriyya that it was puzzling that, "the manifests of the two airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines, whose planes crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, included not a single Arab.... Yet three days later the FBI released the names of 19 Arab passengers, claming that they were the hijackers of the four planes."[3]

Palestinian columnist Khalil Al-Sawahri wrote in the Palestinian Authority-sponsored daily Al-Ayyam that the letter left by the hijackers was forged. "Its disseminators are the circles of Orientalists who are making efforts to tarnish the image of the Arab Muslim. [They] began with falsifying history, deceitfully falsifying and attributing to themselves the stories of prophecy [and later Islamic history] and [continued with] modern films, particularly American [films] in which Hollywood made an effort to present [Arabs] as thieves, terrorists, bandits, base, dirty, and so on....

"The [security] apparatuses that faked the contents of the black box of the Egyptian plane downed [in October 1999] off the coast of New York, and turned Captain Al-Batouti into a suicide attacker are the same ones [now] claiming that the black boxes of the other planes [of the September 11 attacks] were destroyed and burned - yet at the same time, they claim that they found letters [left by the terrorists] 'safe and sound.'

"Furthermore, the will found in the luggage of the Egyptian Muhammad Atta was obviously forged - how can a man planning to blow himself up in an operation that will fuse iron and stone focus his will on the handling of his body and rituals for washing it, when he knows that his body will turn to ashes and be scattered all over...."[4]

There Are Non-Arab Potential Suspects

Dismissing the possibility that Arabs carried out the attack did not satisfy some of the writers quoted here, and many offered their own lists of suspects. Al-Ayyam columnist Tallal 'Ouqal, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), suggested that the Americans look "far from the Middle East," writing: "...Why can't the motive be a settling of historical accounts from World War II? Why can't the background [of the attack] be protest by those harmed by globalization; we noticed the strengthening of the spirit of their battle in Seattle, Genoa, and Athens ...? Why can't the motive be linked to those harmed by the missile defense system?" [5]

In the same vein, columnist Abd Al-Jabbar 'Adwan wrote in the Saudi-owned Arabic-language London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:
"...It is known that the American government intends to push forward the missile defense shield project. China, Russia, and several other European states are opposed to this, and President Bush is not interested in their position...." [6]

Columnist Hassan M. Yussef wrote in the Syrian government daily Teshreen: "There is a possibility that this was an [act of] ancient retribution.... The U.S. declared war on Japan-and used the atomic bomb for the first time against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [The bomb] killed more than 221,983 Japanese, and was the cause of the Japanese defeat and the end of the war in 1945." [7]

Some pointed their fingers at the American administration itself. For example, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat columnist Samir 'Atallah raised the possibility that the attacks on the U.S. were the product of a conspiracy led by President George W. Bush, explaining his reasoning as follows: "George W. Bush was the president who garnered the least support of all U.S. presidents throughout history. He won the election by a miniscule majority that would not have won a village council [position] in southern Egypt. His presidency was in doubt from the beginning. It was said that the poor way in which he entered the White House would divide the American nation. It was said that he is not worthy [of being president], that he is a man who takes no interest in what is happening in the world, a man who does not know the name of the president of Pakistan....

"[But] after September 11, George W. Bush is the first president since Roosevelt with both parties behind him, with no one opposing him. He is the first president in the history of the U.S. to have received an unprecedented amount of financial, political, and military support, and to have it approved so quickly by Congress...." [8]

The Jerusalem Arabic weekly Al-Manar ran an article by Dr. Abdallah Al-Sheikh, in which the author claimed that the CIA and FBI were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Al- Sheikh offered the following evidence: "As is known, over time, the American security apparatuses turned into mighty institutions with influence in the political, economic, social, and scientific echelons, and they cannot be ignored. Similarly, they formed liaisons according to the so-called survival model, or the bureaucratic model. This model states that after the establishment of an institution - and primarily an American security institution - the first priority is survival, even if this leads it to cooperate with Satan. This is the dominant model in the most powerful intelligence apparatuses in the world, headed by the American CIA and FBI.... The operation itself [i.e. the attacks] is characteristic of operations by these apparatuses." [9]

Columnist Mussa Hawamdeh, writing in the Jordanian government daily Al-Dustour, stated, "... We all know that there are extremist religious groups in the U.S. who believe that the coming of the Messiah is near, and who aspire to purify Americans of all their human crimes. Among them are those who believe in committing suicide in order to reach Paradise, through punishing the human race. Mass suicide of entire groups has already occurred." [10]

However, the most popular view among the Arab columnists reviewed in this report is the possibility that Israel, world Zionism, the Mossad, or, simply, the Jews carried out the attacks.