4000 Israeli Employees in WTC Absent. Why?

With the announcement of the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, the international media, particularly the Israeli one, hurried to take advantage of the incident and started mourning 4,000 Israelis who work at the two towers.

Then suddenly, no one ever mentioned anything about those Israelis and later it became clear that they remarkably did not show up in their jobs the day the [four passenger aircraft hijacking and crashing] incident [at the World
Trade Center, Pentagon and Pennsylvania] took place [on Tuesday, September 11, 2001].

No one talked about any Israeli being killed or wounded in the attacks. Arab
diplomatic sources revealed to the Jordanian al-Watan newspaper that those
Israelis remained absent that day [Tuesday, September 11, 2001] based on
hints from the Israeli General Security Apparatus, the Shabak, the fact which
evoked unannounced suspicions on American officials who wanted to know how
the Israeli government learned about the incident before it occurred, and the
reasons why it refrained from informing the U.S. authorities of the
information it had.

Suspicions had increased further after Israeli newspaper Yadiot Ahranot
revealed that the Shabak prevented Israeli premier Ariel Sharon from
traveling to New York and particularly to the city's eastern coast to
participate in a festival organized by the Zionist organizations in support
of the "Israel". Aharon Bernie, the commentator at the newspaper, brought up
the issue and came up with a negative conclusion, saying "no answer". He then
asked about the clue behind the Shabak's position in preventing Sharon's
participation, and again without giving an answer.

Bernie added that Sharon, who was delighted for having his speech on top of
the festival agenda, asked the head of the organization to mediate and
convince the Shabak to change its position, but his attempts were in vein.
The next day after Sharon's secretary officially announced that Sharon would
not participate the incident [at the World Trade Center] took place.

For its part, the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper revealed that the FBI arrested
five Israelis four hours after the attack on the [World Trade Center] Twin
Towers while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's
building. The FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling behavior". They are
said to have been caught videotaping the disaster in what was interpreted as
cries of joy and mockery.