Katsav expresses nation's sorrow
By Greer Fay Cashman
JERUSALEM (September 12) - President Moshe Katsav was hosting a Chinese delegation yesterday when his military attache, Brig-Gen. Shimon Hefetz, passed him a note about the Twin Towers disaster. An expression of dismay crossed his face and he asked Zev Sufott, executive director of the Council for the Promotion of Israel-China Relations, to tell those assembled what had happened, and the reception was cut short.
In a message to US President George W. Bush, Katsav conveyed his own personal shock and the deep sorrow of the citizens of Israel.
"All of us in Israel embrace you, express our condolences, and add our best wishes for a speedy recovery to those who have been injured. Everything must be done to defeat this phenomenon in which insane people will stop at nothing to disrupt daily life," he wrote.
Meanwhile, Israelis with relatives in New York and Washington were frantically trying to make contact. In haredi areas of Jerusalem they stood in the streets with mobile phones in their hands, vainly punching in numbers as they listening to radio updates.
In buses, the radios were on full blast, and many a passenger was heard to say: "Now the Americans will understand what we've had to endure."
In private homes, American expatriates, particularly those from New York and Washington, were glued to their televisions and radios, sometimes running from room to room to get different takes on the news.
Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, a volunteer guide at Yad Vashem, was in the Valley of the Communities when she first heard what had happened in the World Trade Center. She immediately called her son and daughter-in-law in New York. They were ok. Quint's husband, Rabbi Emanuel Quint, is a retired lawyer who used to have an office on Third Avenue and 41st Street. "We know a lot of people who have offices in the World Trade Center," she said. "I go shopping there when I'm in New York."
"There's no place that anyone's safe," Quint said. "There's nowhere for anyone to run. Am I going to tell my children to leave New York to come here?"
Jolted by television scenes of trapped Americans jumping out of the windows of the high-rise buildings, Quint recalled that "in the Warsaw Ghetto people jumped out of sixth story windows because the fires were so great. Whoever would have believed that it would happen in New York?"
Lawyer Lester Henner, who is here with the UJC Mega-mission called his parents and his wife to ascertain that they were safe. He then tried to call his office, but couldn't get through. "It's mind- boggling, unbelievable," he said.
Retired NYC schoolteacher Norma Fund described the scenes she saw on her television set as coming "right out of a Tom Clancy novel. I heard him interviewed on CNN. It's exactly what he said. I can't believe what I'm seeing. I think now the US understands Israel's situation better."
Barbara Wachspress, another retired NYC schoolteacher, was concerned by the number of Jews who work in the World Trade Center. "There are probably more Jewish casualties than years and years of terrorism in Israel," she fretted. "It's like watching a disaster movie. I have not yet been able to internalize it."
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