The tiny human figures who threw themselves from the windows had already crashed to the ground, but a few hours after the attack on the Twin Towers, I had no trouble finding people who described the jumpers in the present tense, as if they were still seeing them right before their eyes. Huge and stinking grayish-yellow plumes of smoke and dust cast a pall over the city and would do so for many days to come.
I remember shock and horror, great difficulty in finding the proper journalistic words, and a dull, nagging, almost despicable and shameful feeling - that even amazing and wonderful New York could be hit with such a disaster. And the next day, near Central Park, I was just as stunned by the sight of open shops and people going about their business - albeit in something of a daze - as if the death clouds weren't still hovering in the air. Already, on that very Tuesday.
I wasn't ready to accept this right away, but as the years have gone by, it has been increasingly pushing itself to the forefront of my memory. In every country in the world, people believed then that life after the attack would never be the same as it was before; I too subscribed to this cliche. But when I returned to New York a year later, to see what the terror attack "had done to the city," I could hardly point to anything deeper than a shallow wave of patriotism that had washed over America in the meantime, with bereavement commercialized like a Hallmark greeting card and a cult of hero worship that enveloped the modern cowboys, the firefighters. I also discerned some very Israeli-like sentiments, such as "The whole world's against us" and "We have no other country."
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This week, therefore, I read, almost with gratitude, the new issue of the bimonthly magazine Foreign Policy, with the cover story: "The Day Nothing Much Changed." At last, it's okay to say it out loud: The September 11 attacks left the world, including America, as it was. The day that genuinely changed the world dawned 15 years ago, and not five years ago, says magazine editor William Dobson: It was the day when the Soviet Union came apart for good and the Cold War ended. Ever since, the United States has been the sole superpower. Thus it is on the receiving end of more hostility than in the past, including the terror attack in New York.
But the world is still moving along the same channels in which it moved prior to September 11: The U.S. is leading it toward economic and cultural globalization. China continues to grow stronger, and the primary centers of tension haven't changed: Dobson quotes a number of newspaper headlines from the morning of September 11, including one from the Washington Post: Israel is encircling a city in the West Bank. The routine in America hasn't changed, unlike what those who seek visas at the U.S. Embassy here might think: It hasn't closed its gates and shut itself off from the world. More immigrants and foreign students than ever are coming in, and more American tourists are traveling abroad.
The world has become more violent; the American defense budget has risen by close to 40 percent. The U.S. waged war in Afghanistan and occupied Iraq. According to Foreign Policy's calculations, since the attack on the Twin Towers, approximately 18,000 people around the world have been killed as a result of terrorist actions, mostly in Iraq, Israel and the territories. In the U.S. itself, three were killed. But the attack on the Twin Towers doesn't indicate that the world is immersed in a clash of civilizations, because it's not.
Millions of Muslims say in response to researchers' questions that they yearn for a Western-style democracy; a large majority of those surveyed in North Africa and Turkey say that an immigrant to the United States can look forward to a better life there. Lots of Muslims share the American dream, often while disdaining only the sexual permissiveness common in the United States; millions of American conservatives share this view. Lots of Muslims oppose the occupation of Iraq, but lots of people in Europe and the United States itself agree with them. George Bush may not have won a second term if it weren't for the terror attack, but otherwise, at this stage at least, the attack doesn't seem to have altered the course of history very much.
And so the fifth anniversary of the attacks brings with it a big question mark: How is it that it claims such a central place in the collective Israeli memory? One reason the question arises is that there are no memorial days here for terror attacks, as if in obeisance to an urge to repress them or let them be forgotten. September 11's place in the Israeli memory also stands out in consideration of the fact that more important historical events have sunk into oblivion, as if they never occurred. Ehud Barak, for example, fled from Camp David because he didn't dare let the Palestinians have sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Barak, therefore, is to blame for almost everything that has happened here since then, and that was just back in 2000, only a year before the Twin Towers. But who ever mentions this anymore?
September 11, on the other hand, might as well have happened yesterday. Maybe it's because New York is as dear to many Israelis as a second homeland; there are good reasons for this. And everyone wants to forget Ehud Barak, and there are good reasons for this, too.
How to lose a German passport
They're increasing at a rate of 10 a day, about 300 every month, and together they now number about 70,000: Israelis with German citizenship. They are not automatically eligible to participate in elections in Germany, nor are they obligated to serve in the German army or to pay social security in Germany; an Israeli citizen who is arrested in Israel cannot expect German consular aid, even if he also possesses a German passport.
But a German passport is a European passport, and enables the holder to live, work and study in the countries of the European Union. It exempts the holder from the need to obtain an entry visa prior to traveling to the United States. Not many are aware of this, but German citizenship also restricts the Israeli from doing what Israeli law permits every other citizen: serving in the standing army.
Yes, that's really the case, confirmed the head of the legal and consular division at the German Embassy, a young, friendly and energetic woman. It's all in accordance with the law, she emphasized. Each case in keeping with the appropriate clause. If I understood her correctly, German law tends to limit a person's ability to hold dual citizenship and in many cases penalizes him for it by revoking his German citizenship.
As of 2000, this restriction was added: A citizen of Germany who holds another citizenship and volunteers for military service in another country - automatically loses his German citizenship. There is no prohibition on compulsory service. This applies to all the armies in the world, but is particularly relevant, of course, to citizens of Israel whose parents hold German passports and who, upon completing their compulsory military service, go on to serve in the standing army, even if only for a few months. Be duly warned: When you go to the German Embassy to renew your passport, you'll be asked if you were in the standing army. If you tell the truth and admit it, there goes your passport.
The consulate rummaged through all the legal clauses and clarified: First of all, the rule does not apply to Israeli citizens who served in the standing army before they requested German citizenship, and that service in the standing army does not affect their right to receive it after their service. Second, there is a possibility of requesting and receiving special permission ahead of time to serve in the standing army. Third, the number of Israelis who serve in the standing army and thereby lose their German citizenship is not large - maybe five a year.
It's a fascinating story that really begins in the 1930s. Some of the yekkes (German Jews) who settled in Palestine when the Nazis rose to power did not lose their German citizenship, and there were even some who, when living here, still did their best to adhere to the citizenship regulations of the Third Reich. In 1938, many of them went to the German consulate in Jerusalem to ask why they needed to add to their names the Hebrew names that the Nazis imposed on the Jews - Sarah for women and Israel for men.
After the Holocaust, the yekkes were among the first Israelis who tried to repair relations with Germany, but holders of German passports hid them in shame. So did those yekkes who applied to the German authorities in subsequent years with a request to renew their citizenship. As time went by, this became easier, as a consequence of a decision by the German Supreme Court. Starting in the 1990s, the shame was all gone: Israeli lawyers starting publishing ads offering to handle the acquisition of German citizenship, and the newspapers printed them without hesitation.
People say they want to get European citizenship for their children's sake; many also seek citizenship from Poland and other countries. Still, practically nothing else better illustrates the post-Zionist atmosphere in Israel; practically nothing else better illustrates the sense many Israelis have that their country's future is not secure. In tense times, the number of calls to the German consulate rises. During the last war, it was several times greater than normal, said the German consul, adding that she hears similar information from her colleagues at other embassies. It has an almost musical air to it: the ringing of telephones in Tel Aviv accompanying the thunder of the Katyushas in the North.
It was a delightful conversation. It occurred to me to take the opportunity to ask whether the 70,000 Israelis with German passports were eligible to have Germany evacuate them in a time of emergency, as it evacuated its citizens from Lebanon. My mind flashed on the images of the people hanging on desperately to the last American helicopters that took off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy after the fall of Saigon in 1975. The consul was so startled she nearly swallowed her teaspoon, but she promised to find out. She did, and the answer was yes. Israelis who hold German passports are indeed eligible, if they so desire, to be among the German evacuees. But just to be perfectly clear, the consul also explained: The evacuees would have to cover the cost of the flight themselves.
Searching for the sign (2)
A few months ago, this column reported that the Jewish National Fund had installed a plaque in Canada Park near Latrun naming the Arab villages that were destroyed in the Six-Day War, after their inhabitants were expelled. The JNF did not put up the sign willingly, but only after a long struggle that included an appeal to the High Court. The man behind the sign, Eitan Bronstein, has put up similar signs on the ruins of other Arab villages. But he doesn't stop there: Every so often he also goes to see how his signs are doing. Recently, he discovered that the sign in Canada Park had been vandalized. All that remained were the first nine lines, which relate the history of the place through biblical, Byzantine and Crusader times. The lines mentioning the destruction of the villages had been covered in black paint. Perhaps whoever went to the trouble to do this is ashamed of the destruction of the villages - or else, worried that the memorial plaque might make it harder to destroy other villages in the future.
In any case, the JNF acceded to his request to clean the plaque and it is now fully restored, Bronstein says
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