9/11 Yanked the Veil From my Eyes: Evil Exists; We Must Stop It

For years I stayed up all night, with some tiny part of my soul believing if I was vigilant, if I was watching, it wouldn't happen again. And staying awake, I read the news on the computer ceaselessly. By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus Published: September 11th, 2014 You are currently on page: 1 2 All Pages Share Share Share Share Share PRINT 9/11 aerial attack on World Trade Center 9/11 attack on Twin Towers: Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons This is the thirteenth anniversary of one of the most horrific days in American history.

Who can forget what they were doing when they heard the first report? And then the second? And then the third, which for me, clinched it. This was not a small private plane that veered off course, as was the first report I heard as I drove to a meeting at the Jewish Federation building in downtown Philadelphia.

I was listening to NPR (I used to listen to that station. That was before. Before 9/11. Before the uprising by the Palestinian Arabs when my friend was murdered. Before. When I was a different person.) and heard the first calm report of a small plane striking one of the Twin Towers. I pictured one of those little prop planes and could not imagine how or why someone would fly near the City in one of those. It didn’t sound like a huge deal, barely a blip on the mind of someone looking for a parking spot.

When I arrived at the Federation building, there was a sign on the door which said, I don’t recall exactly, either that the building was closed or that the particular meeting I was to attend was cancelled.

Mild annoyance, why couldn’t they have sent an email so I hadn’t wasted an hour of my life driving into town, parking, then getting back out to where I live, in the Philly suburbs? Whatever.

I took the opportunity to walk along the street and went into a store. As I meandered through the aisles, I heard snippets of the radio playing next to the cashier.

Another plane had hit the other Twin Tower. And as I walked over, we heard the news that the Pentagon, the epicenter of America’s defense, had been struck by yet another airplane.

Everyone stared at each other with eyes straining to comprehend, and began moving, like zombies, to the door.

I remember walking in a semi-trance to the car. People were standing on the streets, staring with empty eyes. People sat in cars with the doors open and the radios on.

Residents leaned out of their apartment windows, moaning, as a low wail began to rise in my ears. I still don’t know if the sound was made by people whom I passed, or if it was just the sound of grief and loss – loss of so much, of a way of life, of innocence, of political and global stupidity, ricocheting through my mind.

I called my husband, but he was in a deposition and didn’t answer the first five times I called.

And then I focused and found a purpose to squash back the fears and loss of control that were threatening to unravel me. My children were all in one school building, at a Jewish day school in the Philadelphia suburbs. And there I went, barring the door, manning the desk, helping the new school receptionist who was overwhelmed by the calls of the frightened parents and the demands to shut the school, and the headmaster who was out on a trip for the day with the middle school students.

Living in the world of Jewish day school, at least in the Philadelphia suburbs, can mean that you know every parent and just about every child. You know who has siblings there and who doesn’t. You know how to speak with each parent and you know how to do your best – that’s all you can do – to soothe the fears of Jewish parents who have, for the first time, smelled the whiff – thank God only the whiff – of potential extermination that their parents or grandparents tried to explain but which these parents considered anachronistic annoyances. Many parents came to pick up their children. For their own comfort, no doubt, the children did not yet know and would not understand.

For years I stayed up all night, with some tiny part of my soul believing if I was vigilant, if I was watching, it wouldn’t happen again. And staying awake, I read the news on the computer ceaselessly.

I had to learn who did this, I had to learn who else was out there, I had to catch up on the lifetime of paying attention only to domestic politics, of chanting, “keep your laws off my body” and thinking I was confronting the biggest evil out there.

Just a few weeks later, the daughter of a close friend became a bat mitzvah. At the party celebrating the milestone, the band played both the American national anthem and Hatikvah. Everyone rose and sang. In the history of my generation, of “my crowd” of my generation, my Jewish crowd, my upper-middle class crowd, my materialistically non-materialistic crowd, the band would not have played those songs, and we would not have sang the words if they had, and we certainly would not have stood.

I remain fixed in the place to which I was jolted by the attacks of 9/11. Almost all of my (now former) friends drifted lazily back to a place of comfort.

A few years later I was sitting in the backseat of a car, on the way to another bat mitzvah celebration, with friends. It was longer than a 15 minute drive, so as usual I had my stack of reading material.

I started to read out loud what I thought was a particularly important bit of information – at this point I was zeroing in mostly on what was happening to Israel. I was shocked by the idea that anti-Semitism still existed. I thought that pretty much ended after World War II.

“You know?” my friend interrupted, the man who was driving, inclining his head towards the back seat, where I was.

“The Jewish people have existed for 5,000 years. And they are going to exist for another 5,000 years,” he intoned.

“That’s because there will always be people like me standing in front of the people like you,” I said.

It was not a kind thing to say. It pretty much created a rift that never healed over. But it illustrated, at least for me, the chasm that had been created.

I was forever on one side, the post-9/11 side, the post murder of Noam Apter side, the there-is-evil-in-the-world side, the side that believes the slogan “Never Again” is blasphemy in the mouths of those who will not be working, fighting, clawing, to stop it from happening again.

I highly doubt this lady stayed up all night, for years afterwards, unless she had some other kind of mental stuff going on or something. This just sounds like a bored woman who wants to make 9/11 all about her instead of about the poor victims that died that day and the Muslim threat that killed them.

That’s a pretty nasty take, pla9999. My reading of the article suggests just the opposite: that she had to look at herself and realize she’d been wrong, precisely because of the impact on the Western world — including the 9/11 victims — of the Muslim threat. I think if you reread the article you’ll see that she realized she should be focused precisely on the Muslim threat: learning about it and trying to figure out how to help (and persuade) the world to stop it.

Life is hard enough when you have to do battle with the people who actually are wrong. Why pick a fight with someone who’s trying to tell you she agrees with you?

Your diagnosis of the writer says much more about your own cynical state of mind than it does hers.

Welcome to FR.

My only complaint about the article is she keeps referring to those former friends as “the other side”. Lets call them what they are, the socialist, “peace activist” left.

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