This is a repost from Apt.911b by Shumonik, who graciously gave me permission. I, for one, very much welcome input from pro-peace self-identified Jews on this site!

Part One: Breaking the Silence Barrier

"My column will include voices so often excluded, people whose views
the media mostly ignore, issues they distort and even ridicule."— Amy
Goodman from her first piece for her weekly column "Breaking the Sound
Barrier"

“Of course, there will be those who demand silent obedience. We
expect that from the ultra-right, and anyone with a little familiarity
with history will expect it from some left intellectuals as well,
perhaps in an even more virulent form. But it is important not to be
intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as
one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human
consequences of what one does, or fails to do. All truisms, but worth
bearing in mind. Beyond the truisms, we turn to specific questions, for
inquiry and for action.”—Noam Chomsky from the last page in his
pamphlet “9-11”

I start with these statements from two prominent public
intellectuals because, beyond both being Jewish people, their words
hint at a matured, compassionate and wise Jewish approach to engaging
the world. I also bring them up, in resonance with my namesake
Jeremiah, to point out the latent hypocrisy and failure, so far, of
these two Jewish heavyweights of public life to live up to their
powerful words in relationship to the Truth of 9-11, just as the
ancient Hebrews failed at many points to live up to the potent words of
the Torah before ultimately bringing forth many of its profound
teachings into our present world.

I include the words “so far” because any attempt to invoke the name
of a prophet such as Jeremiah is not about freezing people, or a
people, in time and projecting it inevitably forwards, but about a
notice and warning of the dire consequences of omissive and dismissive
hypocrisy, and, more importantly, a catalyst for the opening of
possibility. Transformation is the desired result of any proper
Jeremiad.

Despite common and simplistic notions of the interminable Jewish
tendency towards suffering and existential hopelessness, we Jews hold
with deep care the possibility for Redemption at any moment. Yes, some
of it is always delayed, but its pulsing presence is repeatedly being
traced in the little over-comings and larger transcendences of our
lives. I should say at the outset that I consider myself to be a Jewish
man, Ashkenazi by blood, who draws deeply from my Jewish roots in my
spiritual and philosophical outlook.

Before I go too far philosophically and psychologically, let me be
clear about my belief in regards to the Jewish and/or Israeli role in
9-11. We, ‘Da Joos, didn’t do it any more than the Christians or the
Muslims did it. However, Jewish people, or at least people who call
themselves "Jews" have played important roles in the wide spectrum of
the 9-11 attacks and their aftermath. At the very least, people who
call themselves ‘Jewish’ and have great allegiance to a certain image
of ‘Israel’ have played an overwhelming role in the 'intellectual'
justifications and reasoning behind the War on (or of) Terror. And,
from my perspective, this overwhelming ‘Jewish’ presence on the side of
those propagating the myth-drenched War on Terror is inversely
proportional to the underwhelming presence of real, forthright Jewish
intellectual weight on the side of the 9-11 Truth movement.

Thus far, there has largely been a simplistic type of thinking
around this issue: "Da Joos did it" versus "shh, don't talk about
Israel, people will associate 9-11 Truth with anti-Semitism." Real talk
has been lost in the gulf. That is why this essay points to the great
void of public Jewish intellectuals who grapple with 9-11 Truth from an
open and proud Jewish perspective. There was some really good work in
the book “9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews and Muslims Speak
Out,” edited by Kevin Barrett, John Cobb and Sandra Lubarsky. But
overall, not much above a hushed whisper has been consistently
expressed from people who openly proclaim and stress their Jewishness
while pointing to the clear aspect of a ‘Jewish’ and/or ‘Israeli’ role
in 9-11 and the aftermath.

It shows the crazy “doublespeak” state of our language right now
that the word "anti-Semitism" is used to squash talk about Israel, when
the large majority of people actually in the ruling elite in Israel are
not technically Semitic. I have made the point before that the War on
Terror fueled by the Big Lie of 9-11 is an anti-Semitic endeavor, being
that Arabs are Semitic people. To be more honest and accurate, we
should talk of “anti-Jewishness” and there definitely is that spectre
on the fringes of the 9-11 truth movement.

The issue of talking about "Jewishness" in relation to geo-politics
and 9-11 points to the crucial need for a thick and complex
understanding of people, institutions, religious groups, nations. The
whole "The Jews did it," “The Muslims did it,” "The military did it,"
"The US government did it" scenario-building enterprise is dead in the
water and we need a much more sophisticated thought process that allows
us to call out bigoted and, frankly, stupid analysis while allowing
real talk about real people and real forces in our world.

The people who architected the attacks of September of ’01 are not
‘Jewish’ any more than they are ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim,’ or in that
case, ‘American,’ ‘Israeli’ or ‘British.’ The people who architected
9-11 are from an international, or more accurately, trans-national
criminal over-class of fascists, supremacists and oligarchs. And they
can come in any color, creed or proclaimed nationality or religion.

However, as I suggested earlier, the neo-con ideology that helps
drive this global, criminal project, represents a confluence of British
and American Imperialists along with a large number of Israeli Zionist
Supremacists. Additionally, the enemy image necessary for Western
societies to muster the necessary will for the Global Domination
Project articulated by everybody from neo-con intellectual Puba Leo
Strauss to American Cultural Imperialist Samuel Huntington and
Realpolitik pundit and practitioner Zbigniew Brezinski, is unusually
torqued and acute in the Jewish psyche. Having been the recipient of
that projected enemy image persistently throughout our history, there
has been a certain taking on of that mantle among the Jewish peoples.
Similar to Tupac Shakur’s proclamation of “It’s Just Me Against the
World,” the Jewish Diaspora has a tendency to take a “It’s Just We
Against the World” stance.

At the very same time, the wiser and more mature aspects of the
Jewish psyche have transmuted historical ostracism into deeper
compassion for the suffering of others and the need for justice.
Evidence of this is the large number of Jewish people who were involved
in the civil rights movement.

A Jew is a person of God. And the Torah and our history as a people
have taught us that an essential part of being a “person of God” is to
seek justice for all people. It's time, in my mind for we Jews of good
faith to call out the impostors who seem more like Nazis than Jews in
their ideologies about Palestinians as savages and their actions in
support of a total war to dominate the Arab world. Because, as
evidenced by the European Holocaust, more ethically devastating than
the horrific actions of a small criminal cabal, is the silence of way
too many of the rest of us ‘good’ people.

An attempt at being authentically Jewish, especially at times of
moral crisis, necessitates the possibility of speaking one’s conscience
in the face of oppressive, violent and, potentially, catastrophic
silence.

To come in Part 2-“What can Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality bring to the 9-11 Truth and Justice Dialogue?”