Jews
worry that "baseless" report on Sepember
11 could be a blow to Israel

By Matthew E. Berger

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (JTA) --
American Jews have been
complaining that a four-part series on Fox
News last week insinuated that Israeli
intelligence had foreknowledge of the
Sept. 11 terror attacks but didn't tell
American authorities.

Israeli officials have called the
stories "totally baseless," and the
reports were not picked up by other
media outlets. Still, some American Jews
are concerned the report will foster
negative images of Israel that they feared
in the immediate aftermath of the
attacks.

"In the conspiracy media world and the
hate groups, its going to have lots of
legs," said Alex Safian,
associate director of the Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
America, or CAMERA.

The series,
reported by Carl Cameron in
Washington, alleges that Israeli
intelligence may have had foreknowledge
of the Al Qaida terrorist attacks because
Israelis have been spying on the
movements of Arabs in the United
States.

"There is no indication that
the Israelis were involved in the
September 11 attacks, but
investigators suspect that the Israelis
may have gathered intelligence about
the attacks and not shared it,"
Cameron said in the first segment of
the series. "A highly placed
investigator said there are 'tie-ins.'
"

Israeli officials denied the spying
charges, and said that most of the
Israelis rounded up after the Sept. 11
attacks were held for minor visa
infractions and have since been
released.

Later parts of the series accuse an
Israeli telecommunications company, Amdocs
Ltd., of not protecting private call
records and billing data, which Fox said
could have hindered the American
investigation into the terrorist attacks.

A second Israeli telecommunications
firm, Comverse Infosys, is accused of
illegal moves in providing private phone
information to the Israeli government.

Critics say the pieces offer no
on-the-record sources and rely heavily on
innuendo and hypothesis.

Safian cites one example, in which
Cameron says the U.S. government "looked
at Amdocs" when trying to determine the
cause of leaks in a Los Angeles drug
investigation of suspects linked to
Israeli organized crime.

What the reporter fails to mention,
Safian says, is that someone unrelated to
Amdocs later pleaded guilty to leaking
the information.

Other charges against Fox News -- which
Jewish groups felt generally has been fair
in its reportage on Israel -- is that
the station did not seek on-camera
comments or rebuttals from Israeli
officials or the companies cited, and that
it recycled previously aired stories.

However,
American Jewish and Israeli officials
are baffled about what might have led
Fox or Cameron to pursue so
controversial a story on the basis of
evidence they regard as so
flimsy.

Jewish groups that have spoken to
reporters following up on Cameron's
charges have been told that American
government sources have debunked the
allegations. Virtually no other American
media organization has run a piece on the
Fox allegations -- a sign that the story
lacks merit, Jewish leaders say.

A Fox News spokesman said, "We stand by
the story," but would not go into further
detail.

American
Jewish leaders and Israeli officials
said they are holding conversations
with Fox News representatives, but
refused to elaborate.

Jewish organizations have been
receiving frantic calls from Jews
concerned that the reports may fuel
anti-Semitism. In the first days after the
Sept. 11 attacks, Jewish organizations
feared attempts to link the attacks, and
Al Qaida's hatred of the United States,
to U.S. support for Israel.

While such linkage has been
successfully refuted, those fears have
been reawakened by the Fox report.

Fox
"comes to the conclusion that if maybe"
the Israelis "spied, they had the
information and didn't share it," said
Abraham Foxman, national director
of the Anti-Defamation
League. "That's insidious. It almost
said the Israelis were responsible for
what happened."

Foxman said the report falls just "one
step below" Arab claims that Israel was
responsible for the terrorist attacks. So
far, there is no evidence that Arab
countries or groups are incorporating
the report into their anti-Israel
propaganda.

Most Jewish organizations have chosen
not to issue formal statements about the
Fox News report for fear that it would
give the allegations undue exposure.

"When a serious news outlet decides to
run with a story that is factually
incorrect, I think that more public
damage is ultimately going to be done to
the reputation of that news outlet than
the target of the story," said Mark Regev,
spokesman for the Israeli embassy in
Washington.