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20 years after the twin disaster, events in Afghanistan prove we have learned nothing
No one will forget where he first watched the planes that crashed into the famous pair of buildings.
Despite the hope learned from the events of 9/11, Western culture is still under siege by organizations that are not interested in democracy or human rights.
Even if the West responds to the tragedy in Afghanistan, it may be too late
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World Trade Center disaster
September 11 attacks
Nir Kipnis
Friday, August 20, 2021, 5:00 p.m.
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The shock of that day seems impossible to forget.
Veterans can argue about who started with whom and childhood friends can argue forever about where they sat when the winning goal was scored in that derby, but no one seems to forget where he first watched, with wide eyes wide open, in a play that overcame any horror film: planes crash, one after another, Into the most famous pair of buildings in the world - and after a few hours, these collapse down, to their deaths, to the foundations - to our deaths and to the foundations of our existence in this world.
Many will not like this comparison, which ostensibly turns vile murderers into heroes, but the balance of power can not be ignored: the Goliath of modern times, the country that entered every home in the world - from TV series to Coca-Cola, a bloody layer on the floor known as "Ground Zero" - He lay bleeding on the floor, after his entire arsenal of smart bombs and elusive planes had been defeated (even for a moment) by Arab terrorists with Japanese knives.
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The shock of that day seems impossible to forget.
September 11 attacks (Photo: AP)
That sight that turned the bowels of the whole world, was mesmerizing: it was very difficult to bear, it was impossible to take the eye off it even for a second - even in a thousand reruns. There is hardly a person who has not tried to imagine what the people in the second tower felt when the plane approached them, after having already seen what had been done to the first tower. How did they feel on the floors above the hit, when they realized they had no chance of escaping safely? What would we do in their place? Would we, too, in our despair, have jumped out of the window of the century floor, provided we did not burn alive? And to whom would we send last minute text messages?
But we did not gather to talk about the personal tragedy today, but about the group, cultural tragedy of anyone who sees himself as a member of Western culture.
It was written here earlier that mirrors turned the bowels of the whole world - and this is perhaps the first lesson that emerged as a result of the events of September 11, 2001: The world, as we usually call it, is merely the upper left corner of the map, , Through Japan to Australia.
This is the quarter of the world responsible for Western culture, the history we learn in school, the deals we see from the economics sections, the music we listen to, the movies, the books and even the jeans with the t-shirt most of us currently wear.
This quarter ball, which has grown in the last centuries to be the center of the world, is only a quarter ball, and is under siege.
There is nothing new in the West
Here is Catch 22, or if you will, Capture 11/9 of the Western world: To win a war with the forces of darkness that threaten not only your physical existence as an individual, but everything you believe in, you will be required to give up some of what you believe in. We, in Israel, who are constantly debating whether a Jewish state can also be democratic and vice versa, are aware of this conflict, and in general it can be said that even peace-loving Israeli liberals understand that this privilege (wanting to live a life of freedom and peace) is reserved for the victors.
Why? We are tired of explaining to the world, but there are places where even a hand reaching for peace is merely a preliminary or complementary move next to the other holding the gun. Try to explain this to a resident of Western Europe or North America (in general) and you will see that he does not understand, how a person like you who wears the same clothes, laughs from the same series and jumps in those exiles, does not understand that there is no such thing as a bad Muslim, but only a bad Muslim. Of course not even all Israelis share this view, but most of us have grown tired of banging our heads against the wall of Western logic that simply cannot contain this built-in conflict between noble thoughts and the basic instinct for survival.
Sooner or later (too late?) The eyes of the West will be opened to see what we, here in Israel, have known for a long time: this is not about negotiating territory, as it is very easy to make a mistake and think, A war of attrition is raging, or if you call a child by his name: Jihad.
It is difficult to make complaints to Americans who are trying for their lives from Afghanistan.
Taliban fighters at the presidency, this week (Photo: AP)
It is easy to roll over to the West for not being willing to pay the price required to fight, let alone win, and of course above all our immediate fear is that before the West understands what we have already learned in the flesh, it will try to make us (Israelis and Jews) conquer Between him and radical Islam.
The problem is that with us, too, the distance from the conflict increases as we have something to lose.
In other words - and without dragging MK David Amsalem and Dr. Avishai Ben-Haim into this discussion now: it is no coincidence that here too rich and spoiled children go to serve in intelligence, while the eastern religious children from the periphery fill the battalions in the infantry brigades. Reverse cases, but I have already warned: today we generalize.
That is why it is very difficult to make claims against Americans who are trying for their lives from Afghanistan, leaving its citizens who believed in them and them, as prey to the Taliban - one might think that we did not do the exact same thing to the SLA, somewhere 20 years ago, when mothers in Tel Aviv refused to pay the heavy price collected War of Attrition Lebanon.
perhaps because of this creeping despair to the heart. it's nice to blab about civil rights while sipping Cosmopolitan, literally, on the bar from Manhattan to Tel Aviv, but would not it be colonialism, Arab intellectuals hitting sinned at all possible for them Was not the occupation? Was not the occupation (not in the Israeli context) the cornerstone that enabled the establishment of the countries in which students go out today for full demonstrations with good intentions?
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Apocalypse Now
Let us leave for a moment a philosophy that confronts us with everything we hoped we knew about ourselves, and required practice: the Western world does not respond well to aggression. This is true of Putin invading the Crimea, it is true of the Chinese war games in the Sea of China, and it is true even of the inability to enact and enforce emergency laws in a reality in which, in the heart of the French capital, people whose sin was an unflattering cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.
Yet there is a difference between the first two and the latter: Russia and China seek territorial achievement that will project on their hegemonic political status, that is, violence of the old and bad kind, that we know and know how to fight or how to contain and treat (also) by diplomatic means. The last couple is not a war for territory or for political hegemony, but for a worldview, for "life itself," for democracy, for human rights, for everything that converges under that word that distinguishes those who crashed a plane into one eye of the United States. , And the one who jumped from her century floor.
The events of the past week prove that we have learned nothing from what happened in Manhattan.
Afghans who fled their homes last week (Photo: AP)
I remember the mood then in Israel: they will finally understand, at least we hoped so, that they will understand that we are at war with a demonic enemy who will not be satisfied with anything other than the complete destruction of any cultural value known to us.
This mood lasted only a short time, followed by the well-known and understandable digging into the pleasures of life that the West still has to offer, repression they call it.
Even in the United States, both in Europe and here in Israel, restraint is often talked about as a symbol of power.
The problem is that he is a symbol of power only in the eyes of those who know how to resist.
In others it is perceived as a weakness - the tallest towers in the world (for their time) collapsing to the ground, are the triumphant image of the Taliban, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra (and yes, I know that not all of these names are one piece, but in relation To the west, precisely yes), yo nim it.
As we watched wide-eyed at the symbols of the West collapsing one after another, we hoped we would at least learn the lesson, but the events of the past week in Kabul, Afghanistan, prove we have learned nothing from what happened in Manhattan, New York, exactly twenty years ago: And the only question now is whether it will be too late.
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