It is such a monumental event that it is known just by the day and month. September 11 or 9/11. We all know what it refers to. It seems incredible that 20 years have passed since that date became etched in the collective memory of mankind. It might be hard to recall what we were doing this time last week, but it’s hard to forget where we were two decades ago when we heard The News.
As many have noted, Americans of a certain age will always remember where they were when they heard that president Kennedy had been shot and Israelis never forget what they were doing the night they learned Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated, but 9/11 affected everyone, everywhere.
When Jerusalem Post Magazine editor Erica Schachne asked Post staff to write their recollections of the event it triggered a flood of stories – each personal, depending on age and place, and yet each with that central event in common.
I was tending my newborn son. He was just 10 days old – a very early age for me to break my promise never to watch news programs while feeding him. I sat in a rocking chair in the living room of my Jerusalem apartment and watched the New York skyline – and the geopolitical map – being forever brutally redrawn.
My much-missed late dad called my mother over and her reaction is also engraved on my mind. As we watched the footage of the Twin Towers collapsing as if a horror movie had been accidentally inserted into the news broadcast, she instinctively realized something that many experts had yet to take in: This was war.
“I think I’ll go and collect the baby’s gas mask tomorrow,” she announced.
Looking back now, I realize how significant it was that even before 9/11 Israel was equipping the entire population with gas masks. When we were sent home from the hospital maternity unit it was with medical notes, the APGAR score and the necessary paperwork to collect a kit to be used in the event of biological warfare.
It had been a decade since the Gulf War in which Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles on the country – another event that produced unforgettable memories for all those Israelis who donned masks in sealed rooms. By September 2001, Israel was in a war of terrorism. It was the height of the Second Intifada. Gilo, a Jerusalem neighborhood not far from where I lived, was under mortar fire from Bethlehem and Beit Jala – places Israel had handed over to the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords. There were terrorist ambushes. Above all, it was a time when homicidal bombers were blowing themselves up with as many innocent people as possible. Those memories, too, are indelible – the tales of personal narrow misses and of terrible losses. The numbers killed were so great that many of the dead lost their individual identities and became known collectively as the victims of atrocities such as the Sbarro pizza bar bombing (in which 15 people were killed) or the Dolphinarium discotheque bombing with its deadly toll of 21, almost all of them teens.
The newspaper headlines that I read as I lay in my hospital bed were generated by the First Durban Conference, a UN-sponsored gathering that turned into an anti-Israel hate fest. Ironically, the official title was the World Conference on Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. Apparently, racism and related intolerance were acceptable as long as they were directed at the Jews, whom you labeled “Zionists.”
Twenty years on, it is disheartening that the UN is scheduled later this month to hold a special Durban IV conference to celebrate the original event – as if that one wasn’t enough of a travesty. On the bright side, several countries – including Canada, the UK, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia, the Netherlands, France and the US – have declared they want no part in a repeat performance.
The world has grown 20 years older and a little bit wiser. It is wisdom born of pain. When Israel all those years ago was warning of global jihad by Muslim extremists the message had not yet hit home in most Western capitals. In the past two decades a list of major cities around the world has come to understand the devastation that can be wrought by terrorists carrying knives, laden with bombs or using vehicles to plow into crowds.
The beginning of the millennium was the decade of al-Qaeda. The focus subsequently moved to ISIS but their quest is the same – as is their willingness to use martyrs for the cause. Clearly one of the changes of 9/11 was that it showed anyone could become a victim.
When my son was born there were some wonderfully naive well-wishers who predicted that by the time he had grown up, there would be no more wars or terrorism – that he would not have to serve in the army. So much for that. The fact that there were three attacks in Israel on the day of his brit – September 9, 2001 – should have been a clue that all was not right in the world.
As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s impossible (or at least unwise) to ignore the recent rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan of US and Western forces. The original reason for the US presence there was, after all, because Afghanistan under the Taliban had hosted al-Qaeda terrorists. Somehow we are meant to now believe that the Taliban are a moderate force, a potential ally of the forces of good.
Another strong memory I have is hugging my by-then toddler son as news of journalist Daniel Pearl’s murder was published. He was killed by al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his almost last words being: “I am Jewish.” His beheading was a sign of what would become a regular mode of operation under ISIS. Designed to instill fear, it is terrorism in its most literal sense.
Osama bin Laden was later found and killed in Pakistan, a not particularly stable nuclear power. It is clear that Pakistan has often played a double game, hosting terrorists while nominally being a US ally.
As Afghanistan disintegrates under the tribal Taliban, I can’t help but wonder (and fear) what happens if unconventional weapons end up in the hands of terrorists for whom the cult of martyrdom is, perversely, a way of life.
Israel is the immediate target but no country is immune. Iran and others who provide the weapons to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon do not harbor any sympathy for the West. Palestinians, I recall, celebrated the 9/11 attacks the same way they cheered Saddam’s Scuds the previous decade. The Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco were born partly out of the recognition of the need to tackle Islamist extremism – whether Sunni or Shi’a – together with Israel, which has out of sad necessity specialized in this threat.
Twenty years after 9/11, in the age of social media, it is a stain on the world that it tries to look the other way when Islamists from various jihadi movements commit appalling massacres in Africa and parts of Asia. Ignoring terrorism does not make it go away. Surely the world should have learned that by now. Calling out Islamist extremism is not Islamophobic. Refusing to recognize jihadist terrorism puts everyone, of every religion, at risk: Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist and more.
We owe it to the nearly 3,000 victims never to forget what happened in the multiple attacks in the US that day. September 11, 2001, was not just any day in history. It was the start of a new era – one that has not yet ended.
liat@jpost.com