Remember, Remember THAT Day in September ....

“In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
~ William Blake ~  (1794)

It was Ten years ago.  Today.  I was 18 & newly in University in the UK on September 11th,  2001.  A new Academic Life in London.  It was Tuesday.  A Beautiful Early Autumn Day.  I began the day with a walk & then intended to complete my reading of 'The Guardian' from the previous Sunday with a coffee. I read an article praising the Burqua & looking at the position of women in the Islamic world. It was an apologist position, positively in favour of Burqua wearing. I was considering this article when I got a cellphone call telling me that a plane had hit the WTC in NYC.  My first thoughts were that it must be a private plane lost, then my friend suggested it looked bigger than that. It was 1.15 GMT or 9.15 am in New York.

I abandoned prep plans for my next lecture & headed to the Student lounge to see the news on tv. I arrived just in time to see the second plane strike the South Tower. I immediately understood.

I remember the tower burning,  then the second tower struck.  I remember the horrific vision, surreal, of men and women leaping and falling to their deaths from the burning towers. The only choice left to them, how to die.  I remember the scream of sirens, and the screams of onlookers.  I remember the resolute faces of rescue workers. I remember the burning towers falling. 

The horror was immediate and unmistakable .....  it occurred in what we have learned to call real time, and in real space. For we,  who were made witnesses by the long lens of television, the events were seen as through a glass, brightly. Their reality was visible but not palpable. It took hours to begin to comprehend their magnitude.  It is took days for the defensive numbness they induced to wear off.   It has taken not months ~ or years ~ to measure their impact and meaning.  It has taken much longer that that .... A Decade just to get here.  And we have not reached there yet.    The  pain, the grief, the lives lost and families devastated, the sheer barbaric ingenuity of evil. The scar that wrought in our humanity is still unhealed.

Today, The Tenth Anniversary of this Attrocity,  we remember the innocent victims of September 11, 2001.  Those trapped in the Towers.   Is there anyone who hasn’t played out the nightmare of having been trapped in one of the towers?   Is there anyone who hasn’t wondered if she would have had the superhuman composure to call and comfort a loved one while relegating her own terrors to the background?   Dozens of phone calls home were placed from the towers between the moment that the first plane hit and the time that the north tower collapsed. When words should have been most impossible to find, there were words.  Words of fear, and words of love,  and consolation.  And it is with words that today I recall & remember ...... 

I remember the rescuers ~ real heroes ~ who rushed into those burning towers,  or stayed there despite the mortal danger & gave their lives, and those who now suffer illness because they were there, trying to help. I remember the heroes on Flight 93 who fought back, armed only with courage in the face of death. And I remember every member of the armed forces, our defenders, who have given life and limb and the minutes and days of their lives, to protect us.   Since that terrible day, I have struggled to understand. The lives lost that day, and since then in my defence, the suffering of the injured and wounded, the grief of those who lost loved ones, demanded no less.  I have learned much, and I have begun to understand.

I remember three firemen defiantly raising the American flag ~ the flag of freedom ~ on a pile of smoking rubble. I remember the celebrations in the streets of Gaza as they danced and passed around candies in celebration,  (before Arafat threatened death to any who dared broadcast such images). And the 'palestinians' were hardly alone in rejoicing at the death and destruction wrought by the murdering terrorist jihadi that day. It happened throughout the Arab & Islamic world. 

In fact,  it happened throughout history.  It is Arab behaviour.  It is taught to Arab children & today's generation of Arab children are still rioting & raping today.  Still Slaying in brutality & still dancing in the Streets at Death.  Today.  One decade On.  I daresay it will be a similar story two decades on,  or ten decades on!

There is a book (one of a series) by the infamous British Historian Eric Hobsbawm, defining the long 19th Century,  which came to a close with the declaration of WWI in 1918.  And another, the short twentieth one.  That sure came to an end at 9.15am on September 11th, 2001.  Francis Fukuyama said in a famous essay that it was the beginning of the end of history ..... It has been said that the world changed.  The world did not change on September 11, 2001. Our view of the world changed.   At least mine did!!    It was as if a monstrous kaleidoscope had been turned, and an entirely different vision of the world was presented to me. In this horrific vision, we were suddenly surrounded by enemies unknown, their evil motives and goals beyond our comprehension. But they had been there all along, and they were not hiding. We simply did not see them for the evil they are or the threat they represent. I had thought just an hour before how the burqua evened the 'playing field' for the unpretty girls!!!

How naieve was I????

We must learn to comprehend the evil motives and goals behind 9/11, and the evil men who advance them. I use the word evil, for evil exists. We just have to remember a little further back to recall the horrors of the Holocaust at Nazi Hands.  These men too were truly evil & failing to recognize their essential wickedness, if we do that, we too will suffer the evil fate they plan for us.  Not just for Jews this time.  A Holocaust for All Humanity.   These men believe in Global Jihad and the establishment of a Worldwide Caliphate under Sharia law. In this evil vision, we are all of us,  slaves.  That is if you are not Jewish like me ..... for me there is no leave to breathe.  Jews are less than human in Islamic eyes .... Subhuman,  & we are to be Slain completely as a people.  Wiped from the face of the World.  According to the tenets of their beliefs,  humanity has but three options.  All humanity  must convert to Islam, or accept second-class citizenship, pay a tax for the privilege, and submit to their rule and their law. Or All must die. There are no other alternatives.

This war upon the rest of humanity, this jihad, did not begin on September 11th, 2001. It began centuries ago. It began even before the 'christian' Crusades. It is a fundamental tenet of Islam that all the societies of so-called infidels should made subject to the Caliphate, by any means. And while some would have us believe that only a small minority of Muslims supports this jihad, the silence of so many Muslims in the face of this evil belies such claims.  The Qu'ran itself proclaims that silence is assent. In fact, it is a tenet of Islam that no duty of truth or fairness is due to infidels, and deceit in the service of jihad is no sin. Therefore even the words of the apologists for Islam, those who deny the inherent evil, are untrustworthy. Their protestations of innocence and benevolence cannot be taken at face value. We must judge them by their actions alone, and be not deceived.   And History Attests to their Actions .....

In some ways, I will forever feel unworthy of the sacrifices that others have made to preserve and protect me & my way of life. Do we not have a duty to do what we can, lest their sacrifices be in vain? Europe is once again appeasing the malevolent aggressor.  Unbelievably,  America is too .....   Where is the 'safe haven'  promised for our people, for Jews???  Apparently not even our historic homeland, granted by Ha'Shem himself .... Eretz Yisrael!!

We must never Forget, we must never Forgive & we must never Surrender. It is the only fitting tribute we can give to those who sacrificed so much on that day in September.

Today, I will remember .......  We Owe the Dead No Less.

I was in London in September 2001, and this was one occasion where the British Anthem was forsaken.  I don't know of any other .... it always makes me cry!!