A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
9/11

Bloggers in particular have a talent for making themselves the center of a story that in fact has little if anything to do with them.

That's the main reason why, aside from brief posts about a law school classmate, and a post objecting to the nonsensical 9/11 miracle stories, I've written very little about September 11, 2001.

I doubt my experience on 9/11 is much different from most New Yorkers. I was in my Upper West Side apartment, the TV tuned to CNN, when there was a strangely innocuous mention about a report of a plane having crashed into the World Trade Center. There was a frantic man describing the scene who was basically told to calm down, then the live crashing into the southern tower, the calm man on a high floor in the northern tower who was interviewed on several stations, then the falling of the southern, and then the northern tower. I remember, when the southern tower fell, the TV anchor lamenting that New York's skyline would never be the same. Presumably, he was then unable to comprehend the human toll.

I remember calling my father telling him to leave his downtown Manhattan office. Eventually he did, walking to Brooklyn. When the phone circuits went down, I called a friend in Israel.

Back then, I literally kept no food and almost nothing to drink in my apartment. So by around 11:30 I was very hungry and thirsty, and went to get something to eat at the pizza store on 91st Street.

Then there was concern for people working in the WTC. Selichos at OZ were packed that night, and there was word about a young woman in the community who was missing, as was a guy with whom I went to shiur. The young woman was in the northern tower and had no chance to get out. The man was on the 100th floor of the southern tower, decided immediately to leave, and made it safely out, even as co-workers who waited a few minutes died. He walked to a friend's apartment in midtown, stayed there for the day, only returning home the next afternoon, presumably to a constant stream of phone calls from concerned acquaintances like me, to whom he would very calmly describe his experience.

The next day I had the misfortune of being assigned to work on matters relating to 9/11. That's when I found out, in passing, about the death of my classmate. I also found out awful things about individual experiences that are better left unsaid and unknown.

My initial reaction to 9/11 was that there was a colossal failure on the part of New York's government and both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and that a commission of inquiry similar to those conducted in Israel was necessary. I still believe that. But Rudy Giuliani's superb post-9/11 performance managed to shield him from taking responsibility for the series of mistakes that caused countless deaths, and the country, not surprisingly or unreasonably, did not have the stomach for a serious internal examination.
posted on 9/11/2006