January 3, 2008 | 3:12 pm

The easy answer: The Jews did it

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, The Jewish Journal ran a cover story that superimposed these words over silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers: “THE JEWS DIDN’T DO IT, YOU IDIOTS!”

I mentioned this in September as one of many immortal fallacies,  and was just reminded of it while reading a remembrance of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated last week.

Bhutto told me she knew that if she returned to Pakistan, she’d probably be killed. She was, on December 27, shot after a rally in Rawalpindi, the military garrison town abutting Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. No one who knew her — or understood what she was — was surprised.

Least of all Hamid Gul, the former director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s notorious intelligence service, famously aligned with Islamist extremists, and still known as the man at the ISI’s controls. Days after my first conversation with Bhutto, I met with Gul in his home in Rawalpindi, a few hundred yards from where Benazir was to die. First, Gul told me he knew for a fact that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks, and that Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli agent sent by Tel Aviv to undo the Clinton presidency. Then he said, matter-of-factly, “Being prime minister again is a job Benazir will not do.” He paused and cocked his head. “But she can try it if she likes.”

Tucked in there, right in the middle, are two less-than-flattering-but-oft-mentioned maligns of Jews. These are, in essence, the descendant lies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And not only in the Muslim world.

Season 10 of “South Park” saw Cartman finger Kyle, the fourth grade’s only Jew, as the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks. Here in Los Angeles, the head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council pondered on the radio whether Israel  was behind the attacks “because, I think, this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories, so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.” He later apologized for the remark.