nmah3055.xml

nmah3055.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I witnessed the planes crashing into the towers and the buildings collapsing by watching the news coverage on television.
At first I thought the attacks were occurring in Israel because I was so used to hearing about daily Palestinian terrorist attacks there. Because I am religiously and emotionally connected to Israel, I felt as if my own extended family was being attacked. When I realized the attacks were carried out on the World Trade Center in New York, I felt a strange surge of emotions rush over me: First, I felt relieved that Israel was not being attacked again, but as the reality sunk in that I -- my own country -- was being attacked by some unknown enemy, I went into immediate denial. I had always thought of America as the one secure country, the one country that was cool and in control. An American plane overtaken by foreigners crashing into the towers and the Pentagon, America's symbol of strength, was too absurd to believe.
The attacks suddenly drifted farther and farther from my reality with every video clip the news showed of the burning buildings, the fleeing people, the thick black smoke choking the sky. This was happening to the little world inside the TV, not to my world, not to me.
I went to school and sat in history class as everyone expressed her own theories about who did it and why, which made the reality seem even more remote because the events were being turned into yet another political argument.
At the conclusion of morning prayers at school, one of our rabbis sounded the shofar (rams horn), which is customarily blown during the days preceding the Jewish days of judgment (during which September 11 had fallen) in order to awaken our souls to reflect upon the past year and return to the right path. One of the reasons why the shofar is used for this job is because the sound it makes resembles a long, wailing cry.
When I heard the shofar blasts on that day, the sounds chillingly echoed the masses of shrieking people running down the streets of New York, the screams of people trapped in the collapsing towers, the sickening moans of those realizing their loved ones will never come home. I think the sound of the shofar was what solidified the event in my consciousness and made it into something real.
When I came home, I saw on one of the news channels live footage of the international reaction to the terrorist attacks. I watched in disgust as Palestinians in Israel danced in the streets to music blaring out of loudspeakers and threw candy. Finally, I thought, the world has revealed the twisted mentality of a group of people that thrives on death. At last the world will understand Israels frustration when the UN condemns Israel for being unable to negotiate a peace plan with people who do not value human life. How wrong I was. Slowly, the footage of those gross celebrations began to be pulled out of the news coverage of September 11th as if they had never happened. The U.S.s policies regarding Israel and the Palestinian Intifada remained unchanged. Instead of realizing that we are all fighting against the same enemy, a fine distinction has been drawn between acceptable terror in the name of a supposed cause (against Israel) and plain intolerable terror (against America).

After September 11th, I now realize how twisted are the minds not only of the terrorists who perpetrate these attacks but of the people who fail to internalize the blatant messages that are revealed by these horrible events.

If we do not learn from every moment of our precious lives, which we found out are even more fleeting and irreplaceable after the attacks, what truth is there to learn from?