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Israel’s reaction to 9/11 was immediate and unambiguous and precisely what one would expect from a close friend: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared a national day of mourning in solidarity with the United States. Accompanying this column is a lovely rarity, the artist’s original drawing for Israel’s “World Trade Center Memorial” stamp (issued February 11, 2003) and signed by its designer, Michael Gross.
Israel went on to build the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza Cenotaph, which is the only monument outside of the United States to list the names of all the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Designed by award-winning artist Eliezer Weishoff, the monument was commissioned by the Jewish National Fund at a cost of $2 million.
Attendees at the poignant inauguration ceremony, which was held on November 12, 2009, included U.S. Ambassador to Israel James B. Cunningham; members of Congress; former prime minister Ehud Olmert; members of the Israeli Cabinet and legislature and other dignitaries; and family members of the murdered victims. A delegation from the Israel Fire and Rescue Services attended to pay respect to their New York City counterparts who perished as heroes on that tragic day. The monument stands as a testament to Israel’s kinship with the United States and its sense of shared pain with the American people.
Strategically located within view of Jerusalem’s main cemetery, Har HaMenuchot, it was constructed on the slopes of Cedar Valley Park in the Arazim Valley of Ramot. Made of granite, bronze, and aluminum and measuring 30 feet, it takes the form of an American flag, waving and transforming into a flame at the tip. The folded part of the flag was designed to evoke memories of the collapse of the towers in a cloud of dust, and the flag morphs into a six-meter high memorial flame representative of a torch.
An actual shard of molten steel from the ruins of the Twin Towers forms part of the base on which the monument rests, and a glass pane over the metal facilitates viewing. Embedded on the metal plate and placed on the circular wall are the names of the victims, including the five Israeli citizens murdered that day: Alona Avraham, Daniel Mark Lewin, Hagay Shefi, Leon Libor, and Shai Levinhar.
On April 14, 2010, Israel issued a postage stamp depicting the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza as a further tribute to the World Trade Center victims. Shown here is an Israel First Day Cover franked with the stamp, which is inscribed, in both English and Hebrew: “Jerusalem’s tribute to New York World Trade Center Victims.” As the official flyer issued by the Israeli postage authorities accompanying the release of the stamp so beautifully concludes: “The dust has settled and we have survived, we live, we remember.”
I thought I’d experienced the depths of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories while researching my article on Abraham Zapruder, the Jewish businessman who shot the famous film of President Kennedy’s assassination. (See “The Zapruder Film: A Piece of Jewish History” (Jewish Press, August 28). But that turned out to be nothing compared to the army of crazies who still produce mountains of “evidence” that Israel and “the Jews” were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, writing articles such as “Israel Did It,” “Five Dancing Israelis,” and “September 11: a Mossad Job.” And we all know about the “thousands of Jews” who did not report to work at the World Trade Center that morning because they had been “tipped off” by the Israeli authorities that the attack was coming. All one can do is sigh ruefully.
The great irony, of course, is that on that September 11 there were tremendous celebrations taking place in the Palestinian territories. To my knowledge, the news clips of those celebrations have been almost impossible to come by since that day, and although I have my own theory, I leave it to others to explain why that is the case. But here is the television ad that I have always wanted to produce for broadcast using those powerful images:
