On July 17, 2026, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters went on The Tucker Carlson Show and accused Israel of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. 

Waters told Carlson that “the one thing we know for sure” is that the Twin Towers didn’t fall because of the plane crashes. He claimed that every physicist, engineer, and architect on Earth agrees it was “just not possible” for the planes to bring down the North and South Towers, let alone Building 7. From there, he pointed to the old “dancing Israelis” story as proof Israel orchestrated the attacks.

It’s an old claim, one that Tucker himself has made before, and it’s completely false.

The “Every Expert Agrees” Claim Is False

There is no such consensus. The idea that planes couldn’t have caused the collapses comes almost entirely from a fringe group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, led by Richard Gage, which pushes controlled-demolition theories built around claims of “free fall” and nano-thermite residue. Their petition has picked up signatures over the years, but it represents a sliver of the engineering profession, not the profession itself.

Here’s what the actual investigation found. The National Institute of Standards and Technology spent years (2005–2008) studying the collapses and concluded:

• The planes’ impacts knocked off fireproofing and damaged structural columns.
• The resulting fires — fed by jet fuel and office contents — weakened steel floor trusses and columns.
• Floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns until they buckled, triggering a progressive collapse.

The NIST confirmed that the fires alone would not have brought down the towers, but structural and insulation damage 

Building 7 wasn’t hit by a plane at all. It came down because debris fires caused a key column to fail, setting off a chain reaction. No explosives were needed — and notably, a third building collapsing wouldn’t even make sense as part of a “false flag,” since the towers had already fallen by then.

NIST found no seismic signature of explosions and no demolition residue in the debris. The collapse speeds matched a progressive structural failure, not the near-instant “free fall” that demolition theories require. The molten metal conspiracy theorists point to was consistent with aluminum from the aircraft, not thermite.

Major engineering bodies, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, reviewed and backed NIST’s findings.

The “Dancing Israelis” Myth

This story keeps resurfacing because it sounds damning. It isn’t.

Five Israeli nationals — Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Omer Marmari, Yaron Shmuel, and Oded Ellner — were arrested on 9/11 in New Jersey after a woman said she saw them filming the burning towers from a van rooftop and thought they looked “jovial.” That’s the entire origin of the story.

The facts:

• They worked for a moving company, Urban Moving Systems — which is why they had box cutters, a standard tool of that trade, not a hijacker’s weapon.
• The FBI held and interrogated them for weeks, including polygraph tests, and searched their van and belongings.
• The investigation found nothing: no prior knowledge of the attacks, no involvement, no intelligence ties to the plot.
• They were ultimately deported for overstaying their visas, not for anything related to 9/11.

No footage or photo actually shows them “dancing.” The nickname traces back to a comment from the father of hijacker Mohammed Atta, who wasn’t even at the scene, and it spread from there. Images circulating online that appear to show them celebrating with flags are AI-generated fakes.

It’s also worth asking: if celebrating after the attacks is proof of a conspiracy, why does that logic only apply to Israelis? Footage exists of Muslims celebrating 9/11 all over the world, including in East Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. Waters and Carlson don’t treat that as added proof that Muslims orchestrated the attacks. The double standard is telling.

What About the “Hundreds of Israelis Rounded Up” Claim?

This is another layer of the same conspiracy theory. In the panic after 9/11, U.S. authorities detained a large number of people — eventually thousands — on immigration violations or suspicious behavior. Most were Middle Eastern, South Asian, or Muslim immigrants. A small number were Israeli.

Reports from late 2001 put the number of detained Israelis around 60, mostly picked up for work-permit violations or unlicensed door-to-door sales (including the “art students” who show up in a lot of these theories). Some had served in the Israeli military, which is mandatory there and unremarkable on its own. FBI and immigration investigations turned up no connection between any of these individuals and the 9/11 plot. Most were deported for visa issues, the same as the “dancing Israelis.”

What the Official Record Actually Says

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission conducted an extensive investigation — interviews, document reviews, the works — and traced the attacks to al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders publicly claimed responsibility more than once. No credible investigation, American or otherwise, has found any link between Israel, Mossad, and the 9/11 plot.

What You’d Actually Have to Prove

Set the “vibes” aside for a moment and look at what the theory actually requires to be true. To believe Israel orchestrated 9/11, you don’t just need suspicion. You need to establish, with evidence, every one of the following:

• A working link between Mossad and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda claimed the attacks, repeatedly and on the record, and built its entire ideology around jihad against the West and against Israel. No investigation has ever produced evidence of operational coordination between Mossad and bin Laden’s network. You’d have to explain why a virulently antisemitic terror organization would agree to front for the very state it considers an enemy.
• How 19 al-Qaeda hijackers were recruited, trained, and deployed by a foreign intelligence service without leaving a trace. Every hijacker has been identified, and their radicalization and training pipeline through al-Qaeda has been documented independently by multiple intelligence agencies. You’d need to show Israeli involvement in that pipeline — recruitment, financing, flight training — none of which has ever surfaced in two decades of investigation.
• Why the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s structural findings are wrong, and why the actual engineering profession, not a fringe petition group, would need to be either mistaken or complicit. This means producing real seismic, forensic, or metallurgical evidence of explosives that the NIST investigation somehow missed.
• A motive that survives scrutiny. The going theory is that Israel wanted to drag the U.S. into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But those wars destabilized the region and empowered Iran — Israel’s most dangerous adversary — by removing Iraq as a counterweight. An operation that predictably strengthens your worst enemy is a strange plot to stage.

None of this is a matter of “keeping an open mind.” An open mind still has to reckon with the evidence, and the evidence points in exactly one direction: al-Qaeda planned and executed the attacks, and no other actor has ever been credibly tied to them. The burden of proof sits entirely with the people making the extraordinary claim — and in 25 years, nobody making it has cleared that bar.

The Bottom Line

“Israel did 9/11” is false, and it’s been checked and rechecked by people with far more access to the evidence than a talk-show couch provides. It also isn’t new: blaming Jews for catastrophic world events is one of the oldest patterns there is, and this theory fits that mold precisely. Roger Waters didn’t uncover a suppressed truth. He recycled a debunked one, with a friendly assist from Tucker Carlson.

Sources

The Tucker Carlson Show, Tucker Carlson Network, Grokipedia, The Jewish Chronicle, New York Times, Snopes, NIST, 9/11 Commission Report, X, AP