"Dancing Israelis" Arrested On 9/11 Later Sued The Govt, But Lost Their Case!

By Martin Hill

Remember the Israelis who were arrested by New Jersey Police on 9/11/01 as the attacks occurred? 

They were arrested, interrogated, held for 71 days and eventually all sent back to Israel under suspicous circumstances. Many researchers have documented this as evidence of Israeli complicity in the attacks. But did you know that the Israelis later sued numerous government employees for civil rights violations? This is not widely known.

There is a lot of information which outlines the initial stories of the "Dancing Israelis", including WhatReallyHappened and KillTown. The website 911Myths, while defending the establishment's story, also has a lot of good information on the case. LibertyFight.com disagrees with 911Myths conclusions and analysis but credits them with providing links to some information that many other sites do not have.

This article will give an update on the "Dancing Israeli" situation, with new information which hasn't been reported by anyone previously, to our knowledge. What has not been reported at all, either in the mainstream media or alternative media, is the conclusion of their civil case. The Israelis federal civil rights lawsuit was tossed out of court!

The viral youtube video "History they don't Teach you In school" covers a brief history of Israeli false-flag terrorism operations. There is an amusing backstory about this. The video, made by ZionCrimeFactory, was the video that spawned a call to police by a Texas Rabbi in 2010. Rice University Jewish Studies Professor Shira Lander called the police after a Houston man e-mailed her a link to ZCF's youtube video. The Rabbi had advertised a public lecture series entitled "The History of Anti-Semitism" with a flier that asked "Why did some blame Jews for 9/11?" and the man simply responded to her question via e-mail correspondence. After that story broke, Dr. Kevin Barret invited Rabbi Lander, his academic colleague, to engage in some "interfaith dialogue" on his radio show regarding the matter, but she didn't accept the offer for some reason.


Nevertheless, ZCF's video features numerous mainstream news reports of Israelis being arrested by police that day, including footage of an interview with the New Jersey cop, Scott DeCarlo, who arrested the dancing Israelis at gunpoint. We will recap a bit here regarding the "Dancing Israelis":

5 men in a van owned by URBAN MOVING SYSTEMS were spotted by New Jersey residents following the 9/11 attacks dancing, laughing, posing for pictures, smiling and exchanging high-fives. A woman named Maria called the police. New Jersey police officer Scott DeCarlo told of how he had to arrest them at gunpoint after they failed to comply with his orders. History Commons has an excellent detailed account of events involving DeCarlo that day with news links. Ten years after the attacks, in September 2011,

AmericanFreePress later conducted an exclusive interview with DeCarlo, now a Sergeant, who told AFP that this will be his first and last statement on the matter: 9-11 Cop Breaks Silence
 
The actual police and FBI reports were declassified and released in 2011, and can be read in their entirety through the following links. (911Myths notes that they originally retrieved the 6 documents from scribd.com.):
East Rutherford police documents View on Scribd

FBI Documents, section #1 View on Scribd

FBI Documents, section #2 View on Scribd

FBI Documents, section #3 View on Scribd

FBI Documents, section #4 View on Scribd

FBI Documents, section #5 View on Scribd
 
CBS reported "A truckload of explosives" and CNN reported "a ton of explosives" in a van stopped "near the George Washington Bridge", with three men arrested and in custody. Later, CNN ran a press conference with Mayor Rudolph Guliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik in which Kerik denied that any exposives were found. All three news videos can be seen at the very bottom of this page. An Irish news agency also ran the story 'Three arrested with van full of explosives' but later ran an update, 'Police confirm arrests but deny explosives find'. There is contention about whether the van with reported explosives was the same van with the five Israelis. However, as we will discuss berlow, note that the Jewish publication reporting on the civil lawsuit on 9/14/04 ran the headline Israelis detained on George Washington Bridge on 9/11 sue Department of Justice.

The Owner of Urban Moving Systems, an Israeli citizen named Dominick Suter, left the country immediately following the arrests, and abandoned his business entirely:

State Granted Access to Moving Company's Storage Facility
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 13, 2001
"NEWARK- The State Division of Consumer Affairs ("Consumer Affairs") is asking all citizens who have goods stored at Urban Moving Systems' Weehawken warehouse to immediately contact Consumer Affairs, Attorney General John J. Farmer, Jr., and New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs Director Mark S. Herr announced today. The State on Wednesday obtained a court order giving inspectors from Consumer Affairs access to the facility allowing consumers access to retrieve their goods and belongings. The State, at the same time, filed a lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court against Urban Moving Systems and its owner Dominick Suter alleging violations of both the State's Consumer Fraud Act and regulations set forth in the Public Movers and Warehousing Licensing Act. According to the complaint, on or about September 14, 2001, Suter departed from the United States and left no one acting as an agent for Urban."

On September 15, 2001, 'The Record' of Bergen County, NJ), reported FIVE HIJACK SUSPECTS HAD LINKS TO N.J.; 'MATERIAL WITNESS IN CUSTODY IN N.Y.C.; THE INVESTIGATION, which read, in part. "An employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his name, said the majority of his co-workers are Israelis and were joking on the day of the attacks. "I was in tears," the man said. "These guys were joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now America knows what we go through."

ABC's TV News Program 20/20 did an episode on the matter June 21, 2002,: "Five Israeli men arrested soon after 9/11 might have been working for Israeli intelligence, but likely did not know beforehand about the attacks". They also ran a news story titled The White Van. ABC's 20/20 interviewed a former CIA chief for the segment:

"Vince Cannistraro is a former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with the Central Intelligence Agency. Now he's a consultant with ABC News. He says many in the US intelligence community believe that some of the men arrested in the white van were in the US working for Israeli intelligence. They speculate that Urban Moving was being used by Israel as an intelligence front."

I suggest reading the entire transcript of the 20/20 segment because it is very interesting and gives a lot of details. The five Israelis were eventually released after lengthy interrogations: "Sources tell 20/20, after high-level negotiations between Israeli and US government officials, a settlement was worked out." ABC interviewed two of the Israelis, brothers Paul and Sivan Kurzberg. Paul is quoted as telling 20/20 "(Through translator) I went to work over there because, I don't know, the situation here is not the best." Sivan Kurzberg said "(Through translator) They took away two months of my life. During that time I was supposed to be on a trip that I had planned when I started my military service."

20/20 transcript excerpt:
MILLER: (VO) This is Kurzberg's younger brother, Sivan, who was one of the three men on top of the van that morning. Although Paul and Sivan would not talk with us about the incident, Sivan and two of the other detainees did go on an Israeli talk show after their return. Oded Ellner denied they were laughing or happy that today.
Mr. ODED ELLNER: (Through translator, from Israeli talk show) Nothing of the kind, the fact of the matter is, we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."

The mens' defense attorney Ram Horvitz, who was also interviewed by 20/20, denied all wrongdoing and denied the men were Mossad agents: "This story about the five boys being connected with Israeli intelligence is the most stupid and ridiculous story that I ever heard, and it is nonsense. I don't know who invented this story." Mark Regav, the spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, also spoke with 20/20 and denied any Israeli intelligence connection to the five men, claiming "The story is simply false."

Channel 4 in the UK later produced a documentary called "The 9/11 Conspiracies". They interviewed Maria, the woman who initially called the police on the men, and also interviewed three of the Israelis. While the Israelis didn't talk to 20/20 about the incident in June 2002, they did speak about it in the UK documentary. It is an excellent must-see segment and canbe found towards the bottom of the page here.

In 2004, four of the Israelis, Paul Kurzberg, Silvan Kurzberg, Israelis Yaron Shmuel, and Omer Gavriel Marmari filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and wardens of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The four were represented by New York attorney Robert Joseph Tolchin and Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. They claimed that their detention was illegal and that their civil rights were violated, suffering racial slurs, physical violence, religious discrimination, rough interrogations, deprivation of sleep, and many other offenses. The lawsuit also stated "As Israelis and as Jews, plaintiffs themselves are sworn enemies of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden."

Regarding the "dancing Israelis", 911Myths.com notes "One curious footnote to this story appeared three years later, when four of the Israelis filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice. We've not yet discovered what happened to the case, and the lack of information suggests it never reached court. Still, bringing the case at all is hardly what you'd expect if these really were Mossad agents somehow connected to 9/11. Surely three years on they'd want to keep their heads down, not re-open the whole affair?"
There are three archived news reports on the lawsuit from September 2004. The first is an Kokhaviv Publications IMRA Newsletter titled "Israelis detained on George Washington Bridge on 9/11 sue Department of Justice dated September 14, 2004.

The 2nd is an archive of a Jerusalem Post article titled Four Israelis sue Ashcroft dated September 14, 2004.

The 3rd is from the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, titled Four Israelis sue Ashcroft, FBI director over 9/11 treatment dated Friday, September 17, 2004.

The Public can access Federal Court records by registering with a system called PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) at pacer.gov. There is a fee for this service and a charge for each paid viewed. Sometimes, litigants or others may choose to post legal documents from civil cases for the public on other sources outside of the PACER system, on their own sites or websites such as leagle.com.

LibertyFight regularly reviews various legal filings and writes about interesting cases, such as the case involving the Oregon man who sued the police for falsely arresting him after he flipped them off (he won), the woman who was arrested for allegedly avoiding jury duty in Colorado, the lawyer from Los Angeles who beat her red light camera ticket, or the U.S. Department of Justice's letter to the cops outlining the people's right to film police.

In the case of the Israelis arrested on 9/11, some of the documents have been made public on leagle.com. The case is KURZBERG v. ASHCROFT 619 F.3d 176 (2010). The document is from the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. The Docket No. of the case is 07-0542-cv. It was argued on November 17, 2009 and decided on August 30, 2010.

To put it plainly, the case was dismissed not because of any of the issues involved or merits of the case, but because the plaintiffs failed to serve the defendants properly as per the rules of the Federal Court. Because the plaintiffs sued Attorney General John Ashcroft along with many others working for the government, as the appeals court put it, "the plaintiffs were required to serve process on both the individual defendants and -because the individual defendants were sued for acts or omissions occurring in connection with their performance of their duties - the United States." Ashcroft early in the proceedings actually waived his right to be personally served, but the plaintiffs had to officially serve the U.S as well. As the court explained, "by its plain text, requires service both upon the individual defendant and upon the United States officially; one will not suffice for the other." They actually gave the plaintiffs numerous chances to accomplish this, which was literally as simple as going down to any post office and mailing a certified letter! As the court further explained in their ruling,

"In order to serve process on the United States, the plaintiffs were required to deliver a copy of the complaint to the United States attorney for the district in which the action was brought and also send a copy of the summons and complaint by registered or certified mail to the Attorney General. Here, the plaintiffs failed to comply with Rule 4(i) because they did not effect service on the United States. The plaintiffs failed to do so despite receiving repeated reminders from the defendants that left the plaintiffs with sufficient time to complete service."

The court also noted:

"The time period for completion of service extended under Rule 4(m) elapsed without the plaintiffs serving process on the United States through service on the Attorney General by registered or certified mail. They did, however, attempt to serve the United States three days before the time period expired by sending a copy of the summons and complaint by first-class mail to the mailing address for the Attorney General at the Department of Justice; the attempt was insufficient because it did not make use of registered or certified mail. After the time period granted by the court had expired, several of the defendants, including Ashcroft, moved in the district court to dismiss the action on grounds of improper service of process, including failure to serve the United States through service on the Attorney General by registered or certified mail. The district court (John Gleeson, Judge) dismissed the case with respect to all of the defendants, including those who had not raised an improper service defense by pleading or motion. See Kurzberg v. Ashcroft, No. 04 Civ. 3950, 2006 WL 2738991, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68680 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 25, 2006)...

---

...CONCLUSION "Serving process on the United States through service by registered or certified mail on the Attorney General might seem, from a practical standpoint, to be nothing more than a formality inasmuch as the Attorney General, who is charged with determining whether the United States will provide representation to individual defendants, was himself an individual defendant in this lawsuit. That does not, however, excuse noncompliance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The district court did not err in so holding. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court."

This seems like an unbelievable and absurd thing to happen when there are at least two professional lawyers handling the case for the plaintiffs. It might be understandable if a person was trying to wade through the courts and represent themself. Federal court rules can be very complicated and burdensome to the average person not versed in the legal system. Many times, cases are thrown out even when plaintiffs do have attorneys, such as in the case of when Jesse Ventura tried to sue the TSA or the ridiculous case of when Ron Paul tried to sue a youtube user (that case was rightly tossed out). Many times, the court will dismiss a case based on what seems like a "technicality", such as "standing", "jurisdiction" "Venue", failing to respond on time, etc. Fred Rodell, Law Professor at Yale University, wrote a classic essay in 1939 on the fraud and pig-latin type jibberish used by lawyers and judges. It's titled WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS! and is an excellent, must-read treatise. (The phrase is from Luke 11:46:"But he said: Woe to you lawyers also, because you load men with burdens which they cannot bear and you yourselves touch not the packs with one of your fingers.")

But for a team of international lawyers in a high profile case, to let the case be tossed out literally because they failed to serve the U.S. Attorney general properly? According to press reports at the time the case was first filed in 2004, the plaintiffs' lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said: "The infamous arrest of these young Israelis on 9/11 has been used by anti-Semites worldwide as 'proof' of Israel's involvement in the World Trade Center attack. Our clients are seeking compensation for the harm they suffered in the MDC by prison officials. In addition, the law suit will serve as an important public forum to debunk the lie that Israel or the Mossad was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It will show that there was no Jewish conspiracy as the Arab world continues to claim and put an end to this racist blood libel."
 
If it were so important to have a public hearing and "debunk the lie that Israel or the Mossad was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks", why would the lawyers allow the lawsuit get tossed out for such an absurd and avoidable reason?! In 2004 when the suit was filed, many people across the U.S. and the world were researching and finding out the truth about 9/11. Could it be that the lawsuit was filed at a time to deflect attention away from Israeli complicity and paint them instead as the abused victims?

It was tossed out for not sending a certified letter. Do you know how simple it is to send a certified letter, with a return reciept? You can do it at any U.S. Post office for usually less than $5 bucks. Strange days indeed.

At the bottom of this page in the green section are some relevent excerpts from the Appeals Court's 2010 ruling.


Martin Hill is a Catholic paleoconservative and civil rights advocate. His work has been featured on LewRockwell.com, WhatReallyHappened, Economic Policy Journal, Strike The Root, ZionCrimeFactory, FreedomsPhoenix, Rense, Infowars, PrisonPlanet, National Motorists Association, WorldNetDaily, The Orange County Register, KNBC4 Los Angeles, Los Angeles Catholic Lay Mission Newspaper, KFI 640, The Press Enterprise, Antiwar.com, IamtheWitness.com, BlackBoxVoting, and many others. Archives can be found at LibertyFight.com

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