Norway: Synagogue ‘peace ring’ organizer believed Jews responsible for 9/11

Yesterday I reported that some of the organizers of the 'peace ring' were pro-Palestinian activists.  One had called for a general boycott of Israel.  Now it seemed another organizer held more hard-core antisemitic views.


Via JTA:


Ali Chishti confirmed on Saturday in an interview with Verdens Gang, a highbrow Norwegian newspaper, that he delivered on March 22, 2008, in Oslo a speech on the alleged involvement of Jews in planning the 9/11 Twin Towers bombings in New York. The speech’s title was:”Therefore I Hate Jews and Gays,” the paper reported, though Chishti said he was not the one who came up with the title.


“There were several thousand Jews away from work in the World Trade Center, and why there were more Jews in Mumbai when Pakistani terrorists attacked than usual?” he said then, repeating the conspiracy theory that Jews knew in advance of the attack that killed thousands. “Jews are a small group, but everyone knows that they have a lot of power,” he said.


In Saturday interviews, he retracted his words. In an interview with the daily Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, he said they were “anti-Semitic” and “unacceptable.”


“I was angry,” he told Verdens Gang. “I have since changed my views.” But he also said he “dislikes” people who support “an occupying force that has been condemned in several United Nations resolutions.”


“I think it is important to distinguish between being critical of Israel and anti-Semitism,” he also told Verdens Gang.