Last Updated on September 11, 2023
In the aftermath of 9/11/2001, both ABC and Fox News extensively reported on possible Israeli connections to the day’s terror attacks, with ABC focusing on a group of men known as the “dancing Israelis” who were caught filming and celebrating the attack on New York City’s World Trade Center. That same group of men helped form the basis of a journalistic investigation from Fox News, exploring possible Israeli links to the 9/11 attacks. The investigation uncovered massive Israeli intelligence operations on US soil and indicated that Israel, at the very least, likely had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
The apprehension and eventual deportation of five “dancing Israelis” who anticipated, photographed, and then celebrated the 9/11 attacks on Manhattan has for years led to speculation that Israeli intelligence officers had foreknowledge of the terror attacks.
In a June 2002 report from ABC News, a woman named Maria, who asked reporters not to use her last name, recounted the morning of 9/11/2001, and the group of dancing Israeli men whom she saw celebrating the attack.
After a plane hit the first tower, according to the ABC News report, Maria grabbed her binoculars and zeroed in on Manhattan, watching the destruction unfold. When she did, a group of young men gathered on and around a moving van near her apartment building caught her eye.
Maria told ABC News that the men “seemed to be taking a movie,” and appeared to be “happy” about what they’d just witnessed.
“They were like happy, you know…They didn’t look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange,” she told ABC News.
Later that afternoon, the van was pulled over by police, who documented a total of five men, between the ages of 22 and 27, and removed them from the vehicle at gunpoint, placing them in handcuffs.
According to the police, at least one of the men had $4,700 hidden in his sock while another carried multiple foreign passports. A pair of box cutters, the same weapon reportedly used by Islamic hijackers to kill 9/11 pilots, were also found in their possession, and the men told police that were Israeli citizens.
“We are Israeli. We are not your problem,” the men reportedly told police, immediately laying blame for the attack on Palestinians. “Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
When film from one of the group’s cameras was developed, what Maria said she witnessed was proven true, as more than 70 photographs were found of the men’s 9/11 celebration.
After a holding period that lasted several weeks, the men were deported to Israel. They are later reported to have appeared on an Israeli TV show where, according to translations, they claimed that they were in the United States with cameras and recording equipment to “document” the 9/11 attacks.
Providing more background and information on the “dancing Israelis” and alleged Israeli foreknowledge of 9/11 was a four-part series laying out the findings of a journalistic investigation by Fox News, which aired on the Special Report With Brit Hume program between December 11th and 14th of 2001.
The investigation, which has been largely wiped from the internet but is preserved by archived video footage held by third parties, was led by Fox News reporter Carl Cameron.
Cameron cited high-ranking US officials and classified documents indicating that the Israelis expected the 9/11 attacks to unfold.
Cameron reported that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, more than 60 Israeli nationals, some of whom were “active Israeli military” were detained by American authorities and that several of them had failed polygraph tests “when asked about alleged surveillance activities against, and in, the United States.”
“Investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it,” detailed Cameron.
“A highly-placed investigator said there are, quote, ‘tie-ins’, but when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, quote, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’”
Cameron’s report went on to document several Israeli intelligence “front operations” posing as legitimate businesses in the United States, including a chain of mall kiosks that sold a highly popular helicopter toy for children. He also revealed that Israeli agents had “penetrated” highly secure US government facilities and had a vast network of operators that spanned nearly the entire United States.