Israel, United States and South Africa Connection
The 9/11 commemoration on TV news networks was subdued this 2017. There was an explanation.
While the attention this 9/11 remained death and destruction on mainland America, it had competition. The nature of wrath was not Islamic terrorism of 16 years earlier but Mother Nature of the present.
Irma overshadowed al-Qaida, as a hurricane dominated the airwaves.
The only surprise here is that BDS opted not to blame – yet – Israel for the Hurricane!
Who can forget that when Israel was the first country to set up medical clinics in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010, allegations appeared in The Palestine Telegraph and elsewhere that IDF medics were harvesting organs from Haitians to use in transplants. This horrendous defamation was easily gobbled up by a gullible world. You only have to read the transparently anti-Semitic Electronic Intifada and South Africa’s Media Review Network (MNR) to see the masters of lies and distortion spin Israel as the cause for the world’s ills.
Conduct Becoming
While few in the world would know that Israel solemnly marked the sixteenth anniversary of 9/11, even fewer would be aware that the Jewish state is the home to the only memorial outside the US that bears all names – nearly 3000 – of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It was here that Israel held the ceremony.
The 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza on a hill in Arazim Valley, Jerusalem, is a cenotaph measuring six metres and made of granite, bronze, and aluminum.
Memorial Service 2017 at the Twin Tower Victims Memorial in Jerusalem Hills, Israel
The artwork is compelling.
Set on a base of melted metal from the ruins of the Twin Towers, the structure above is of an American flag, waving and transforming – reminiscent of the collapse of the towers in a cloud of dust – and then morphing into a memorial flame at the tip of a hand-held torch. The names of the victims – including five Israeli citizens – are embedded on the metal plate and placed on the circular wall.
Twin Towers Memorial – Jerusalem Hills (courtesy: Ynet.co.il)
Addressing the ceremony, the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman displayed courage and honesty, in making bold comparisons that few other ambassadors ever do. His words did not only his country proud but the spirit of the last line of his country’s national anthem:
“…the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”
The diplomat’s words were exemplary.
Following the horrendous terror attacks in recent years in Europe, America, Asia, and the Middle East – from vehicle-ramming, bombings, knifings and shootings – world leaders and political commentators rattle off comparing one city after another of terrorist attacks around the world, hardly – if ever – mentioning any cities in Israel where the same type attacks occur.
The obvious inference: “Jewish lives” lost in Israel “don’t matter”.
Not so for Ambassador Friedman!
Standing before the memorial in Jerusalem, he said, “On September 11, we all fell victim to the genocidal force of our time – radical Islamic terrorism,” but then went on:
“No country has paid a greater price in the battle against radical Islamic terror than the State of Israel.”
Listing many of the acts of terror directed against Jews since the 1929 Hebron massacre, Friedman said it that was appropriate that “Israel is home to the only memorial outside the US that bears all the names of the victims of the attacks.”
Strong Bond
Another linkage between Israel and the US is that the architect of the 9/11 memorial at the site of the World Trade Center’s (WTC) Twin Towers is Michael Arad who served in the reconnaissance unit in the Israeli military from 1988 to 1991. His father, Moshe Arad, is the former Israeli Ambassador to Mexico (1983-1987) and the United States (1987-1990).
It was not simply that the then young Israeli’s design won – with Peter Walker – the competition. Arad was designing before there was ever a competition! He was in New York when the attack took place and watched the second plane hit the South Tower from his roof on the Lower East Side.
His earliest sketch, which he made about a month later, was an attempt to capture his own feelings about the attack as well as its aftermath.
“The way people came together in New York affected me greatly,” he said. “I felt a desire to respond to that.”
He made a mock-up of the design on the rooftop of his apartment building, but it wasn’t until a year later – when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) announced the design competition – that he began to fully develop his idea for the 9/11 memorial.
“I thought about my own experience in New York and how important public space is for New Yorkers – a place where people come together and stand side by side with strangers, where you can feel a sense of community and compassion and stoicism and courage. … After the attacks, there was a moment of unity – brief but beautiful nonetheless. An attack that was meant to cower and dishearten actually brought people together with great determination, and it brought the whole world together for a period of time.” This led him to creating a design for an open, street-level public plaza “punctured by two square voids.”
Aftermath & Fallout
Beyond the design of the monuments in Jerusalem and New York, what was the long-term ‘design’ of the 19 al-Qaeda terrorists that hijacked four civilian airliners changing the flightpaths into mass murder and mayhem?
Memorial Service – September 2017
The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 , and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.
It also sent a message that has not stopped reverberating to this day.
If 9/11 was a transformative event, so too was another event that occurred in South Africa only three days later in the coastal city of Durban.
The 2001 ‘World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’ that ran from the 31 August – 8th September, emerged, says the former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler as “the tipping point for a new wave of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-racism.”
He frequently quotes that “if 9/11 was the Kristallnacht of terror, Durban was the Mein Kampf.”
The former event was the physical act of desecration, destruction and death, the latter, the conniving contriving wordsmiths in the pursuit for the dastardly deeds to follow. For Jews, the Durban Conference of 2001 resonates with the Wannsee Conference of 1942, where senior government officials of Nazi Germany formulated in detail “The Final Solution”.
Durban was about the “final solution” for Israel.
No wonder those few of conscience – like USA delegation headed by General Colin Powell – walked out in disgust.
“Those of us who personally witnessed the Durban festival of hate – with its hateful declarations, incantations, pamphlets, and marches,” says Cotler, “have forever been transformed. For us, “Durban” is part of our everyday lexicon as a byword for racism and anti-Semitism, just as 9/11 is a byword for terrorist mass murder.”
An offspring from that conference was the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks not a solution to a conflict but a dissolution of the state of Israel.
Sixteen years have passed since a perfect New York blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then, Americans have lived in sunshine and in shadow, and as the former mayor New York Michael Bloomberg once said, “although we can never unsee what happened here in New York, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults; grandchildren have been born, and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost.”
In the end, the terrorists lose whether they conduct their trade in New York and Boston; London and Manchester; Paris and Nice, Brussels and Antwerp; Madrid and Barcelona and yes – in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv!
