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September 14, 2001
'Avoid Israel so we can be safe and sound in New York?'
By Ari L. Goldman
All New Yorkers became Israelis this week.
When two hijacked planes came out of the sky and reduced the two towers of the World Trade Center to a mountain of rubble, we stayed glued to our television sets. We tried frantically to reach our children to be sure they were safe. We used our cell phones until the signal was jammed. We jumped nervously every time the phone rang, afraid of what news it would bring.
Our government reacted not unlike the Israeli government at times of crisis. Our borders were sealed; there was no getting on or off the island of Manhattan. The police set up checkpoints at regular intervals, both to search for evidence and to keep people away from the epicenter of the disaster.
New Yorkers, notorious for looking the other way when people are in trouble, helped one another like never before. We lined up by the hundreds to give blood and offered reassuring looks to the shell-shocked people on the street that we usually ignore.
And it suddenly dawned on us that the terrorism that Israel had experienced over the last year - at its bus stations and army bases and restaurants - was only a warm up act for the big prize: New York.
I live in upper Manhattan and have most of my life. I've never seen the city like this. The morning after the disaster struck, I got on my bike and headed downtown toward the plume of white smoke rising from the place on the skyline where the trade center towers once stood. What struck me was what an absolutely beautiful day it was. Overhead, the sun was bright, the skies were clear, the temperature in the cozy 80s with a tender breeze was blowing down the avenues. I thought about all those gorgeous autumn days we enjoyed when we lived in Israel four years ago. I was on my bike on Broadway, but I could have been in the heart of Jerusalem.
Manhattan traffic, famously heavy on a normal weekday morning, was remarkable light. Police had opened the bridges to outgoing traffic, but it was still impossible to bring a car into the city, unless it was an emergency vehicle. I could see the license plates from states all over the northeast; there were rescue teams from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania. On the sidewalks, I could see New Yorkers somewhat incongruously enjoying their morning coffee in chic cafes. Children, unexpectedly off from school, were laughing and climbing in the city's playgrounds. I drove through Central Park, passing joggers and roller bladers. The park's famous carousel provided a carnival-like soundtrack for their exaggerated motions.
I headed further south along the West Side piers. One pier had been turned into a makeshift hospital; another (normally a ritzy health club) was a morgue. At yet another pier, uniformed National Guard units were bivouacked. Hundreds of ambulances, rescue vehicles and street cleaners were getting ready for another sweep through lower Manhattan.
At 14th Street, I could begin to smell the smoke. The World Trade Center site was less than a mile away. Police had barricaded off the avenues to vehicular traffic, but pedestrians and cyclists could still pass. Just the day before, people ran for their lives from this area, but now I was pressing ahead trying to get as close as I could.
About a quarter mile later, at Canal Street, the police had set up yet another roadblock. Below this thoroughfare, electrical power had been lost when a Con Edison substation exploded the day before. Only representatives of the press and those involved in emergency assistance could enter. The police were loading reporters and photographers on two flatbed trucks and took them into the area. It reminded me of the way that the military normally escorts the press into a war zone.
The whole experience made me long for Israel. As I biked back uptown to my home, I thought about how my wife Shira and I had recently decided to forgo a family trip to Jerusalem because of the violence there. We had been scheduled to go to Israel for our nephew Asaf's bar mitzvah but then decided it was too dangerous for us to take our three children. Shira would go alone and represent us, we decided. I would stay home with the kids.
How ironic. Avoid Israel so we can be safe and sound in New York? My bike ride to the horror of lower Manhattan convinced me that we had no choice but to go to Israel as a family. We were no longer simply New Yorkers. We could not avoid Israel any more than we could avoid our own home. After the last few days in New York, we are not just New Yorkers. We are Israelis. We belong there. We're going.
Ari L. Goldman is an associate professor
at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The World
Israel and the Middle East
Ground Zero
Editorials
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