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September 11, 2002
Calev Ben-David's SNAP JUDGMENT:
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No safe harbor
From my bedroom window in the suburban Long Island home where I grew up, it was possible to just make out the faint shape of the Manhattan skyline off in the distance. The only individual buildings discernible were the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center, shimmering on the western horizon as a promise of New York City's powerful allure.
Years later, after succumbing to that allure, I lived for a few years in a Brooklyn apartment whose windows looked out over a tree-lined street of single-family homes. But hovering above this relatively pastoral view, like some kind of giant alien spacecraft, were the sleek, glistening glass-and-metal tops of the Trade Center buildings.
Like many native New Yorkers whose life-span roughly coincided with that of the twin towers, these awe-inspiring structures comprised an integral part of both the external physical and interior psychic landscapes of my hometown. Thus it was that their sudden destruction one year ago today was for many of us the single most mind-boggling event of September 11, even more disturbing in some ways than the far more tragic loss of some 3,000 innocent lives. Comparison can perhaps be made with the impact of the sinking of the Titanic on the world nine decades earlier.
The relative ease and speed with which a handful of terrorists, with the benefit of little more than a few flying lessons and some box-cutters, were able to bring down these modern marvels of technological ingenuity and urban ambition had the disorienting effect of shaking up one's core confidence in the security and solidity of the modern world.
One year ago I can recall hearing voices here in Israel saying things like: "Now at last Americans will maybe understand how it has been for us, living with terror." Even today I hear similar voices arguing that the horrifying loss of life experienced here during the past year is in some ways comparable to the tragedy of September 11.
Yet despite my being a Jerusalem resident who more than once has heard the blast of the suicide bombings and seen their devastating impact, I can't agree. While we Israelis now live daily with the threat of a similar "mega-attack" that is no longer beyond imagination, the sheer scale of the September 11 strike and the physical disruption it created in New York City is one plague that blessedly has still not been visited upon us.
THERE IS another aspect of September 11 from my vantage point in Jerusalem which is profoundly unsettling.
Growing up in America among the post-Holocaust Jewish generation meant one was imbued with the sense of Israel as a sort of lifeboat, a geopolitical insurance policy or last resort for Diaspora Jewry. One frequently heard talk like "If what happened in Nazi Germany happens here or elsewhere, at least Israel will be there for us."
Though I reject, or at least find exaggerated, such a pessimistic view, I can't deny having osmotically absorbed a fair portion of that belief into my bloodstream.
But after moving here many years ago, another concept began to take hold in my consciousness. In strictly personal terms, as an Israeli holding American citizenship in a country and region that increasingly looks headed in the direction of a major military conflict, I've almost grudgingly come to view the US as a potential safe harbor for my family, as a lifeboat and insurance policy for my loved ones if something catastrophic were to happen here.
In a broader sense, what has taken root is a notion I suspect is quite common to many Israelis, and indeed to countless people around the world who live outside America: The notion of the United States as the last refuge of security, stability and sanity in an increasingly uncertain world, as the foundation of a modern civilization that looks surprisingly frayed at the edges once one exits that nation's borders.
As an American, I fully understand the shock my native countrymen felt while watching the events of September 11 unfold and saying to themselves: "I can't believe this is happening here!"
But even more unsettling, even more disturbing for me was the Israeli side of my brain, seeing the skies above New York City rent with smoke and flames, and saying: "I can't believe this is happening there!"
Living outside the US all these years, especially in a nation like Israel whose future is by no means assured, has only made me more appreciative of America as, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "the last best hope of mankind."
Maybe even more so than many Americans. Visiting my hometown this summer, I was struck by what seemed to me a surprisingly complacent attitude among the people I met. Much of the media seemed more preoccupied by a spate of local child kidnappings than the hunt for al-Qaida or the debate over Iraq. America hardly seemed like a nation at war, or even preparing for war.
I hope that impression is mistaken. Looking at the Manhattan skyline with my own eyes and not seeing the twin towers felt like peering into an alternative universe albeit the one in which we all now live.
The one overriding lesson of September 11 for me, and for all those who look to America as the rock of the free world, is simply: "It can happen there."
And that makes living in the 21st century, especially for those of us in Israel, a far tougher proposition than any of us ever imagined. The World
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