The five employees of Urban Moving Systems have been dubbed “Dancing Israelis” because a female eyewitness observed three of them in a parking lot in New Jersey, watching the WTC towers in flames across the Hudson River on the morning of the attacks. According to testimony she gave to the FBI later that day, “all of the males appeared to be jovial in that they smiled, hugged one another, and gave ‘high fives.’”
From the balcony of her Union City apartment, the eyewitness, Maria, observed the men photographing each other with the WTC towers in the background. When the FBI developed the film found in a Canon SLR camera on their possession, they found that the Israelis were indeed “visibly happy on nearly all of the photographs.”
In a second interview by phone with the FBI two days later, Maria characterized the behavior of the Israelis on the morning of 9/11 as “horsing around”. In a third interview with the FBI at her residence four days later, she related that the men “appeared to be happy and ‘joking around.’”
At no point did Maria or any witness allege that the Israeli men were dancing in any way. The FBI report refers to the men as the “Israeli Nationals” and “The High Fivers.” The first documented allegation that the men had danced in celebration of the Twin Towers attack comes not from any American law enforcement agency, but rather from the father of Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the Al Qaeda-affiliated cell that hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and crashed it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
On September 28, 2001, a USA Today article entitled “Conspiracy theories say Israel did it” cited Egyptian news agency MENA’s interview with the elder Atta, complaining that insufficient focus was being paid to reports that the FBI had “seized a number of Jews while they were dancing in celebration over the incidents.”