NEW YORK (September 13) - "One of the most heinous acts in world
history," was how Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described Tuesday's unprecedented
attack upon his city and the US.
When and if a final death count
is ever completed, the numbers will no doubt back him up. As of late
yesterday afternoon, giant plumes of smoke from the collapsed towers of
the World Trade Center were still visible from dozens of miles away and
the acrid stench of the cataclysmic explosions was still pungent as far
away as midtown.
America is under assault as never before, and all
this witness to the cataclysm can think about is a conversation I had in
the elevator on the way up to 110th floor of the World Trade Center 18
hours before it was destroyed. Having just arrived from Jerusalem, I found
myself with an hour between sales calls and decided to do what millions of
others have done before me. I forked over $13.50 and was shuffled into the
large elevator that shuttled tourists to the top of the symbol of New
York.
Standing next to the door, I struck up a conversation with
the man operating the elevator, a strikingly pleasant, hard-working fellow
in his late 50s. When asked, this native of mainland China said he came to
America in 1994 because he wanted his children to have a better life than
he had. It was the same thing that brought my grandmother's family from
Poland.
The same thing that brought all of us.
Like
thousands of others, that man was undoubtedly at work when the towers were
destroyed. I wonder if he is still alive. I woke up yesterday morning
worried about the safety of my family, left behind in Jerusalem.
Did my son make it home from school safely? Did my wife manage to
get all the chores she had planned in town completed in safety? By
breakfast time, they were the ones worried about me. I was fine I assured
them. "Hurry home", said my wife. To Jerusalem? Hurry home?
Yes,
it is true, Jerusalem, the capital of a besieged Israel suddenly seems
safe. Certainly safer than New York. At least for now. At least until the
US is able to implement and adjust to the measures necessary to survive
and function in the face of a new enemy and a new kind of warfare. A kind
of enemy and warfare Israel has faced for decades.
A warfare that
knows no refuge and spares no one. A warfare where women and children are
the desired targets, not collateral damage.
It has been said that
in the war against terrorism, Israel is the world's miner's canary. Before
subjecting themselves to potential threats of noxious fumes, miners used
to lower canaries into their mines to see if the air below was breathable.
The sad lesson of yesterday was that the fumes of terrorism are more toxic
than anyone in America could bring himself to believe. While Israel was
the first democracy to find itself fighting terror every day and on all
fronts, it was destined not to be the last.
Just as the Jewish
people throughout history have often been the first to suffer new kinds of
discrimination, punishment, and genocide, we have never been the last.
Those who have been wishing and working to destroy Israel for
decades have now declared war on their ultimate and real target.
Israel's war is no longer its alone. It has now struck at the
heart of the greatest power in the world. How that power responds to an
attack against the very symbols of its economic and military might will
almost surely shape the contours of the world our children are destined to
inherit.
If still alive, perhaps the World Trade Center elevator
operator I met could help us muster some of the strength free countries
will need to fight back. Perhaps he would tell us that, in his native
Chinese, the words for "crisis" and "opportunity" are one in the same.
Perhaps Americans, now united in their grief, will soon emerge united in
purpose, committed to what Abraham Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom"
and resolved to take the steps necessary to protect its institutions and
its people.
As Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday:
"Tonight, all Israelis are Americans." Today, America can use all the help
it can get from here on Earth and from heaven above.
(The writer
is the publisher of The Jerusalem Post.)
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