The Five Dancing Israelis Arrested on 9-11

9-11 Attacks: The Five Dancing Israelis Arrested on 9-11

A Mossad surveillance team made quite a public spectacle of themselves on 9-11. The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers priorto the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards. (1) Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. (2) "They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness. (3) [T]hey were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage. (4) Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. (6)

"It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park." (7)

One anonymous phone call to the authorities actually led them to close down all of New York's bridges and tunnels. The mystery caller told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that a group of Palestinians were mixing a bomb inside of a white van headed for the Holland Tunnel. Here's the transcript from NBC News: Dispatcher: Jersey City police. Caller: Yes, we have a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there, they look like Palestinians and going around a building. Caller: There's a minivan heading toward the Holland tunnel, I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniform. Dispatcher: He has what? Caller: He's dressed like an Arab. (8) (*Writer's note: Why would this mystery caller specifically say that these "Arabs" were Palestinians? How would he know that? Palestinians usually dress in western style clothes, not "sheikh uniforms")