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BOGUS BUT PERTINENT EMAIL - Bonus Blog 1/8/2010 9:06:15 AM
Did you catch the Spielberg classic MUNICH, arguably one of the ten best docu-dramas so far this millennium? No? Too bad. It’s based on the undocumented and suspicious exploits of “Golda Meir’s former bodyguard, an Israeli operative” named Juval Aviv whom the prime minister supposedly sent to apprehend the Palestinian terrorists who had kidnapped Israeli athletes and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.
That night on my TV show I recall saying tongue-in-cheek, “Really makes you proud to be part of the human race.” This was, of course, decades before I’d ever heard of Osama Bin Laden nor paid any attention to the benign, peace-loving religion of Islam.
It was while researching my novel, ROSALIND’S WEDDING, that I learned Ms Meir allegedly gave Israeli members of the elite “Wrath of God” militant group a “license to kill” similar to what James Bond possesses in Ian Fleming’s British fictions. (I say “allegedly” because I can find no historical evidence that Golda Meir had any association with Mr. Aviv and his cohorts, or that he was anything more than a gate guard for El Al Airlines at Kennedy Airport. I can find no record that he ever served in Mossad or any Israeli Intel organization. Reviewing transcripts of TV programs does not give credence to Mr. Aviv’s supposed appearance on Fox News Network prior to the terrorist attack in London on July 8, 2005; it is mentioned here simply because a fraudulent e-mail has been circulated extensively, and some of his suggestions contain relevant caution and advice.)
While lecturing a while back, Juval Aviv, president of New York-based Interfor, Inc. (a corporate investigations firm,) made some rather startling announcements to which we might take heed. For example, he said he had predicted on the Bill O’Reilly show there would be a London bombing attack, and he claims he was mocked and laughed at. O’Reilly sneeringly was to have said, “Right, sure. I want you back when it happens!” Within a week, the terrorists struck, and O’Reilly conveniently reneged on his demand. Truth is, Aviv’s only known guest shot was AFTER the bombing had occurred.
About a month before September 11, 2001, Mr. Aviv did share with the Bush Administration the intelligence his group had allegedly gathered in the Middle East. “They will use planes as bombs and target high profile building and monuments,” his is said to have stated. Although this report was not acted upon, the e-mail goes on to say he has since been hired (by Congress) as a security consultant (again, I cannot confirm any of this.)
At his recent lecture, however, he predicted the “next terrorist attack . . . will occur within a few months. Terrorists will never again try to hijack a plane, because they know the people onboard will not go down quietly—you would think the heroes on United’s flight over Pennsylvania had been trained in Israel!”
Aviv is convinced our airport security is a total and laughable waste of time. “You have been reactionary,” he says, “rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.”
He claims our technology is outdated; we look for metal, while the new explosives are plastic. He talks about how some idiot tried to set his shoe on fire—and now everyone has to take off his or her shoes. Another bunch of bozos tried to sneak aboard liquid explosives—he seriously suggested some suicidal maniac would pour an explosive powder in his under garments, “at which point the TSA will have us all traveling naked!”
He points out that so far we only focus on airport security when people are heading to the gates. Aviv says that if terrorists target airports in the future, they will pay more attention to the front end of the airport where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take a suitcase or briefcase of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person to watch his bags for a minute (despite the public address system announcements no one pay any attention to,) and then detonate the bags from a distance before the TSA even gets involved. In Israel, of course, Security checks bags BEFORE people even ENTER the airport!
Aviv says “the next terrorist attack in America is imminent and will involve radicals in places where large groups of Americans congregate: Disney properties, casinos in Las Vegas, major cities, the Super Bowl, as well as shopping malls, subways, train stations—even in rural America such as Montana and Wyoming.” Ski resorts?
According to Aviv, these attacks could be simultaneous detonations “at various sites and could involve a number of cities as well as rural areas.” He says terrorists probably will avoid “suicide bombers” in larger venues; at places like the “MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas [where] they can simply hand the keys to a valet parking attendant to stash a van loaded with explosives—and walk away.”
What is most disturbing is that this Walter Mitty-like Israeli affirms all of this is known in “intelligence circles;” no one belabors the subject because our government has for years wanted to avoid alarming its citizens. Aviv contends the world is quickly becoming “a different place. . . .Issues like political correctness will become totally irrelevant.” If it looks like a terrorist, walks and talks like one, he tells us it most likely is!
He goes on to say that we Americans don’t have to “be overly concerned about being nuked.” He points out that terrorists desiring to destroy our country will rarely, if ever, use “sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It’s cheap and effective, and they have an infinite abundance of young militants willing to fulfill their destiny.”
Aviv also says the next level of terrorists “will not be coming from overseas. They will be mostly men who attend or have attended our own schools and universities.” We should be on the lookout for those “who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East; young terrorists most dangerous because they speak fluent English and understand Americans.” What is disastrous, he claims, is that we know and understand so little about them.
As Americans we are, according to Aviv, unaware and uneducated about “the terrorist threats you will undoubtedly face. You have only a handful of [Intel staffers] who speak Arabic and Farsi, and that’s a critical situation you must quickly change!”
So, the question is sorely begged: what can we do to protect ourselves? Aviv says we need to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We “must follow Israel’s, Ireland’s and England’s hands-on examples” of what he calls “human intelligence,” from both an infiltration perspective to “trust aware citizens to help.” We need to engage and educate our people and not “let your government treat you like babies and continue to think you cannot handle the truth or the realities of terrorism. Your government is concerned that you’ll panic if you see the truth of those realities.”
Juval Aviv asserts, “This is a deadly mistake.”
The Israeli claims to have recently created and executed a security test for Congress by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In Chicago, he says, someone even tried to steal the briefcase!
By comparison, Aviv says, “the citizens of Israel are so well trained that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by people, even little kids, who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The people themselves would quickly and calmly clear the area.” But, unfortunately, he states, “America has not yet been hurt enough by terrorism for your government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens, or for the government to understand that it’s their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.”
Aviv is also concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten on 9/11, who were “lost without parents being able to pick them up,” and about our schools that have “no plan in place to best care for students until parents can come and get them.”
He stresses the importance of having such a plan, one that’s agreed upon by families and school administrations, in the event of a terrorist emergency. “I urge parents to contact the schools and demand they develop a plan of action, as they do in Israel.”
Does your family know what to do if you cannot contact one another by phone? Where would you agree to gather in an emergency? Aviv says we should all “have a plan that is easy for even the youngest child to remember and follow.”
According to Mr. Aviv, our government does have a plan in force that “in the event of another terrorist attach, they will immediately cut off all cell phones and Blackberries, as these are the preferred devices used by terrorists to detonate their explosives.” How will we communicate with each other if we cannot call electronically? Aviv says, “You must have a plan!”
Even though the original e-mail about Juval Aviv is blatantly bogus, I have not written this Blog to frighten anyone or to cast aspersions on our government or any of its leaders or agencies. We are a placid people, a sleeping giant now awakened by a radical force that out of greed and envy wishes to annihilate us, just as the Palestinians sought to crush the Munich athletes thirty-eight years ago.
If you are concerned about Juval Aviv’s perspicacious, if spurious, observations, you must also be compelled to alert every parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle—whomever—that a plan of action is necessary. If in the end nothing happens, what have you lost? If the inevitable, however, does occur and you have done nothing, this Blog, even though it may be riddled with inaccuracies and innuendo, will most certainly come back to haunt you.
