Let’s agree that Central Asia is sometimes behind the rest of the world.  This is not due to decline or inability, but distance and difficulties in translation.  For example, when the Internet was first speeding up and going broadband, no one was really expecting it to hit Central Asia before the year 2005.  Similarly speaking, I’m afraid that technology and internet memes are not the only things to hit Central Asia slowly.

While living in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in Central Asia, I heard many conspiracy theories.  One assumes most theories serve a purpose – to easily explain something away, leaving a smoking gun in the hand of the people you trust/like the least.  I recently heard one that made my blood boil.  I should say it made my blood boil again, as it is something I have been discounting to my Arab and other Muslim friends literally since the autumn of 2001.  Let me be the first person writing under the name Timur to try and put this straight.  The ridiculous rumor goes something like this.

On the morning of September 11th, about 4000 Jews did not show up for work at the World Trade Center.  This number is supposed to imply that either no Jewish people died in the attacks, or that at least a disproportionate number were warned by Mossad. What’s more, the Israelis had some diabolical part to play in the overall conspiracy, whose primary goal was to implicate the Muslims of the Middle East, and help jump start the second Iraq War, whilst, and at the same time, diverting Western attention from the thieving murdering actions of Jews in Israel.

I think Islamic Fundamentalism is an import into Central Asia, not something fundamentally homegrown, and this imported conspiracy theory is one damning piece of evidence.  What the hell do Turkic Hanafi Muslims in Central Asia care about the problems of Arab Nationalism, the Ba’ath Party, and the anti-Zionist movements?  Need someone remind the Central Asians that the Ba’ath Party isn’t exactly arranging slumber parties and sock-hops for the Turkmen, Kurds, and other non-Arabs already in the Middle East?

So, with the help of Snopes.com, here is a blow-by-blow to this ridiculous conspiracy.  I know that it really doesn’t matter how many times I explain this version of events, because if you want to believe Jews are evil, conspiratorial, wily, [insert adjective here] no-good-niks, this blog post isn’t going to get in your way.  But at least I have the US Government on my side.

September 11, 2001

2,976 victims and 19 hijackers die in massive terrorist attack articulated in New York City and at the Pentagon.

September 12, 2001

The daily edition of the Jerusalem Post reported:

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has so far received the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the attacks.

September 17, 2001

Lebanese Hezbollah-owned satellite television channel Al-Manar reports that 4,000 Jewish people called in sick on September 11th.

And that’s it.  There you have it.  That’s where the mythical number came from, that’s the short time line between tragedy and propaganda.  From there, the story was grabbed and spun, eventually making it to Pravda, not as news, but as hearsay to show the historically anti-Semitic Russian public that there were alternate stories to 9/11.  I doubt many people would take Pravda at face value, but there’s something to be said for the lie told a thousand times eventually being mistaken for the truth.  Have you heard the one where the Jews are responsible for the Sphinx’s missing nose?  I’ll save that one for another day.  I’ll let Snopes have the last word.

Why would Israel follow such a course of action, betray its staunchest ally, and doom thousands of innocent Americans to death?  There are no rational answers to that question, only ugly progandistic ones.  “Israel wants to draw American into a final showdown with its Arab enemies, so they didn’t warn us” – the same conspiracy theory that posited our leaders knew about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and allowed it to happen in order to galvanize public support for a war.  Old theory, new clothes.  Even darker is the implication that Israel, not content to wait for an attack which would embroil America in a Middle Eastern war, forced the issue by pulling off a monstrous act of terrorism against the USA themselves.