Palestinians Cheering a HOAX!!!

Jeff:

Where did you hear this?

There was also a rumour that these scenes were of taped footage from another event, but that was discredited.

I have no doubt that these people represent the minority view point, but I also have trouble believing the media would be so machiavellian a mere two hours after the tragedy.

Besides, if this were true, then why did many Arab politicians take the problem seriously? Arafat was very upset.

 

I'm a little confused, but didn't they quote that lady? From the pictures I saw, it looked like alot of partying going on there.

 

Jeff,

It has been known from the beginning that a very small minority of the Palistinians were cheering. It was even said they act like that when camera crews come around, regardless of the occassion.

Now don't think for a second that there weren't people doing it. Im sure there were plenty, even here in the US. It was just blown out of proportion, like most things in the media.

 

Media blow things out of proportion? NO WAY!............

 

I heard about this a while ago. I have watched that piece of footage many times. If you don't focus on the little street crowd in the foreground with a lady and a bunch of kids with a car honking and driving by....everyone else was looking at it like we do and going about their business. From looking at the lady's face, I truely believe she didn't know what she was smiling about.......probably about these silly kids in the street dancing.

Did anyone see anything about the Pakistan supporters? They said they had a positive rally with thousands of people to support their govt. and the US. However, I have not seen any video footage of the rally. Is there any? Or is it a smoke screen? Supposedly, the govt. took great care in organizing this rally.

Anyone want to burn an Osama doll on Westheimer? You bring the beer.

Surf

 

I know that Arafat was clearing people off the street, he was very upset. He went into spin control trying to clear up the problem, including donating blood. What about all the quotes from people that were giving? Don't know where that came from. There's no telling. All I know is whoever put that piece together should be fired.

 

Thanks Jeff. Where did you hear it though?

Well anyways, the damage has been done. The media should just maybe a little bit more responsible. But then that might be asking for too much.

 

Internet rumor. There's been a ton of them surrounding this whole mess.

http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/cnn.htm

 

Yes, I too was amazed at how quickly the sensible American public was taken in by this obviously fraudulent display. Who would ever think that your average Palestinian in the "occupied territories" would have contempt in their heart for America or their policies in the ME. In fact when I see burning US flags and parade banners with "death to USA", I am sure they are really speaking out against the policies and really don't wish any of us ill will.



Wasn't Arafat the first terrorist to show the world that hijacking an airplane and killing the passengers was a way to get your message heard?

Why is it so hard to equate Bin Laden and Arafat? Both want nearly the same goals and have both shown nearly identical tactics to achieve it. Is one a terrorist and the other a freedom fighter and if so which one is which?



Cracking Down on bin Laden
Arrests of Militants With Bin Laden Links Put Israel on Alert

Aug. 22 2000— Israeli officials today said security forces would remain on alert after their success at cracking a network of militants linked to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden.

Israel said Monday that over the past few weeks it had arrested 23 suspected guerrillas allegedly planning bombing attacks on Israelis. Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s security adviser Danny Yatom said he had no information about where the bin Laden cell was planning to strike.
“We know of no specific place that had been targeted but terrorist organizations will continue to try to attack us and we have to be prepared,” Yatom told Israel Radio.
The militant Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have in the past tried to sabotage Israeli-Palestinian peace deals by launching large-scale bombing attacks against Israeli targets which have killed scores of people.
Palestinian officials denied Israel’s assertions they were involved in the crackdown against the militants and that a Palestinian man called Nabil Aukal, who Israel arrested in June, was the cell’s ringleader.
“The whole story about bin Laden is a big lie,” said Palestinian security chief in Gaza, Mohammad Dahlan.
Aukal’s family in Gaza said he had no connection to Islamic militants. They said he had been in Pakistan recently but only for religious reasons.
However, U.S. officials today confirmed the arrests. The United States believes many of the arrested individuals were planning terrorist attacks to undermine the peace process.
A U.S. congressional report issued in Washington Monday warned that bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in Israel to thwart Middle East peacemaking. It said some Hamas members may be gravitating to bin Laden, who lives in exile in Afghanistan.
Sign of Bin Laden’s Influence in Israel
U.S. officials believe this is the first major signal of bin Laden’s influence in Israel. The U.S. embassy in Israel issued a warning to all Americans of an increased possibility of a terrorist attack in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. That warning, issued Aug. 16, will remain in effect until Dec. 16. Americans are specifically warned to not use public buses.
The United States wants bin Laden to stand trial on charges of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 220 people.
Security analyst Yoram Schweitzer from the International Policy Institute for Counter-intelligence said many of bin Laden’s Palestinian recruits had been taught to use explosives in training camps in Afghanistan.
“They were planning several things. They were planning mass casualties attacks, part of it was to fire a missile at a settlement, kidnap soldiers and set off large explosive charges with a remote control in a very highly populated area,” he said.

‘A Dangerous Combination’
Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who last week warned that Iran was encouraging Palestinian militants to attack Israel, said the bin Laden cell had a dangerous combination of “enormous financial and organizational abilities and religious fervor that is very extreme.”
Schweitzer said bin Laden would continue his attempts to recruit Palestinian operatives from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs for training in Afghanistan.
Three of the militants arrested were Israeli Arabs, Israeli officials said.
Jordan and Lebanon have both uncovered militant cells linked to bin Laden and tried dozens of members accused of planning attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in Jordan.
Schweitzer said bin Laden’s group was also targeting Israelis and Jews in other parts of the world. “To kill a French Jew is like killing an Israeli. There is no difference [for him], so when he attacks a Jewish target it’s like attacking Israel,” he said.

ABCNEWS’ Barbara Starr and Reuters contributed to this report.

 

My bad. I saw "Palestinians" and "hoax" and jumped to conclusions. That is unfortunate if true.

 

Hey Jeff, how about the two men that they interviewed and asked what they thought about the bombings? One of the guys, with a huge grin, said he would never have believed this day would come. The other guy had a similar comment. There were also pictures and reports of Palestinians shooting their rifles into the air in celebration. Was that a hoax too? Glynch posted an article by a Pakistani professor that said people gathered around public television sets and cheered when the WTC collapsed. Oh sure we condem it... wink wink nod nod.

 

sure! check this out, maybe we can get an OBL piñata from McAllen?

see ya there Surf!

rH

 

According to the snopes article:

The footage was real. It's a shame, in fact, that its provenance was doubted because the lives of journalists who have attempted to capture similar acts on video have been threatened. That this tape made it out at all is a miracle.

.. snip ..

Subsequent rumors that the "Israeli Defense Agency" sent a film crew to hand out candy to Palestinians in order to induce them into staging a "celebration" for the cameras appear to be equally unfounded.

I'm not denying that the media is a propoganda machine, but I don't think there's any lack of anti-US sentiment abroad.

 

Timing,

I'm sure even in the US you can find a group of people in a backwards area stating that we should nuke the Middle East and throw all the muslims out of this country. If you're looking for a particular statement hard enough....its not THAT hard to find.

What Jeff and others are stating is that its not indicative of the majority of the population.

 

I don't think we can speculate what % of Palestinians actually viewed the WTC crash positively or negatively. What I do know is that there definitely is anti-American sentiment everywhere, not just the Middle East. It may be more prevalent there though. The celebrations don't surprise me as much as they appall me. This is an unfortunate situation.

 

I doubt the footage was an outright hoax, and I'm sure many Palestinians did cheer. In fact, there are very credible reports from the wire services that Palestinian security officers confiscated similar video from other TV reporters.

But the larger point is that you can't draw conclusions about all Palestinians from video of some of them cheering, any more than you can generalize about any other ethnic or religious group.

A few years ago I saw video of an Israeli man taking his son to the grave of Baruch Goldstein, the settler who had massacred dozens of Palestinians in a mosque. Guided by his father, the little boy bends down and kisses Goldstein's grave.

Does this mean all Israelis or all Jews think it's cool to massacre Muslims? No way.

When you see footage like this, remember what an infinitesimal fraction of the group in question you're looking at.

 

Last night there was a report on MSNBC about the Pakistani government orchestrating marches in support of the US. The reporter said a "few thousand" people showed up. He then went on to say that a day or so earlier there were marches by Muslim groups denouncing the US, etc. and that "hundreds of thousands" of people showed up. I think that's pretty indicative of where the majority stands.

 

Terrorist attacks spawn wave of online rumors, hoaxes


http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/109476p-1233658c.html


<i>By ERIC HANSON and JON TEVLIN, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

(September 28, 2001 11:22 a.m. EDT) - Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans have grieved and vented, and the world has commiserated on Internet discussion groups and in e-mails. Among the
more unexpected voices is a Canadian broadcaster who died 17 years ago.

Gordon Sinclair's feisty defense of America has been forwarded countless times, as if in response to the terrorist attacks. Sinclair's speech, originally an essay called "The Americans" or "America, the
Good Neighbor," was written nearly 30 years ago during the Vietnam War.

Its reappearance is one of dozens of attack-related hoaxes - exaggerated or half-true stories, out-and-out lies, petitions and requests - that have been streaming across the Internet since the attacks.

That the Net is a breeding ground for rumors, conspiracy theories and dubiously sourced "eyewitness accounts" is no surprise - but the volume of these e-legends surprises even professional myth-debunkers
and Internet experts.

"I believe this is the first major world event where the Internet is being used (in this massive scale) to pass information," said Richard Davis, a psychologist and Internet behavior expert at York University in
Toronto. "This (crisis) is highlighting the great things the Internet can do, and also the bad things it can do."

"Our site is getting absolutely hammered," said Barbara Mikkelson, in California, who with her husband, David, writes books about urban legends and runs the six-year-old Urban Legends References Pages.
They've created a link to a separate page solely to collect and investigate urban legends concerning the terrorist attacks.

"It started late September the 11th, but by September the 12th it just started coming in waves. We've seen a tenfold increase in traffic. By the 13th, it was just wild," she said.

Among the bogus stories is a Nostradamus prophecy about World War III being brought on by the fall of two brothers (supposedly represented by the World Trade Towers) and a report that CNN used
old footage to falsely depict Palestinians celebrating after the attack.

Other false rumors are spreading fast. Among them:

- An image, supposedly recovered from the ruins, that purports to be a snapshot taken on the World Trade Center observation deck with the approaching hijacked jet in view.

- A nationwide call to light a candle at a specified time for a photo to be taken by satellite.</i> I was duped by this one.

<i> - A warning that sponges have been saturated with a deadly virus and are being mailed in blue envelopes anonymously and randomly.

- A claim that people can aid the search for Osama bin Laden by donating money to a group of Estonian computer hackers.

- The account of a man who was trapped high in one of the collapsing World Trade Center towers and rode the falling debris to safety.

"We've never seen anything like this before," Mikkelson said. "A huge number of people from all over the place suddenly were fascinated by all of these rumors that were picked up both online and in face-to-face
contact."

Davis said false stories are usually started by people who feel helpless, but want to do something to help.

He received many of the e-mails mentioned on Mikkelson's Web site and most were preceded with the words, "I never forward these, but... ."

"It can be a way for people to find solace that other people feel as devastated as they do," Davis said.

Other stories that would appear to be questionable have turned out to be true, Mikkelson said. A British record label actually did yank an upcoming CD from the production process to change its cover art,
which depicted the twin towers exploding.

Also true is the story about a United Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15. The pilot made a stirring patriotic speech that advised what to do if a terrorist attempts to take over, the e-mail says, and by
the end the passengers were applauding and in tears.

"It's all a reaching-out," said Mikkelson, "to say, 'I'm worried about this. Are you worried about it, too?"'

But some of the e-legends are spreading racist propaganda. According to one report, thousands of Jewish citizens were warned in advance of the attack in New York and managed to escape. Not true. Another
e-legend, which has been around for years and is being dredged up again, advises that the Microsoft Word program contains particular letter combinations in its Wingdings and Webdings fonts that would
appear anti-Semitic. Mikkelson has known of that legend for about 10 years, and posts Microsoft's official statement on her Web site.

"There is a very strong thread (among anti-Zionists) that blames the terrorist attacks in America on the Israelis," said Mikkelson. "More generally, there are a number of rumors coming up that have to do with
so-and-so had previous knowledge of the attacks - as in, all the taxis were missing from in front of a hotel close to the World Trade Center that morning, or that so-and-so, who is highly placed in the government, called his daughter the night before and told her to get out of New York.

"These are backlash rumors. (People are thinking) 'How could something so horrific happen and nobody could have known?' For some, the mind rejects that and says, 'Well, someone must have known,' and the
stories just go on from there. "There's harm in some of this: It's creating a larger, more enveloping atmosphere of fear, where every shadow needs to be jumped at."

Davis said that recipients of e-mails should be prepared for misinformation, and judge it accordingly. "Unlike Desert Storm, this war won't be followed on television - a lot of it will happen out of view," he said. "And two things start rumors: a lack of information and fear."</i>