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World Trade Center Jumpers, 9/11/2001, Reuters
Above, Jumpers, 9/11/2001, Reuters photo
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10/12/2001, “One month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, right, hands New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a check for $10 million for relief efforts [which Giuliani later returned] on Thursday, October 11, 2001, in New York. Prince Alwaleed, a member of the Saudi royal family who was sixth on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest men for 2001, also visited ground zero. (AP Photo/Stan Honda, pool)”
10/12/2001, “N.Y. returns $10 million gift over policy critique," New York Times
“Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said yesterday that New York City rejected a $10 million charitable donation from a wealthy Saudi Arabian prince after he criticized the U.S. government’s policies in the Middle East.
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal was one of many foreign visitors who have gone with the mayor to ground zero at the destroyed World Trade Center since the terrorist attacks last month. The prince, who is also the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Co. and one of the world’s richest men, attended a memorial service at the site yesterday, where he handed the mayor a check for $10 million for the Twin Towers Fund, one of various charity funds set up to benefit survivors of the attack.
Giuliani initially accepted the check, as he has several times from government and private industry leaders. Along with it was a letter from the prince, in which he expressed his condolences for “the loss of life that the city of New York has suffered.”
The letter added, “I would also like to condemn all forms of terrorism and in doing so I am reiterating Saudi Arabia’s strong stance against these tragic and horrendous acts.”
What the letter did not say was what a press release attached to a copy of the letter did: “However, at times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.” The press release attributed the statement to the prince.
“Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek,” the release read.
The mayor, who had been told of the press release just moments before his daily briefing but after receiving the check, was visibly annoyed. “I entirely reject that statement,“ he said. “That’s totally contrary to what I said at the United Nations,” he added, referring to his address there last Monday.
“There is no moral equivalent for this act,” the mayor said. “There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people. And to suggest that there’s a justification for it only invites this happening in the future. It is highly irresponsible and very, very dangerous.”…
“”So I think not only are those statements wrong, they’re part of the problem,“ Giuliani said.”…
The mayor added that he might consult with the State Department before deciding what to do with the check; an hour later, his press office released a statement attributed to the mayor that the check would not be accepted.
A spokesman for the prince, Amjed Shacker, who was reached on his cell phone as he prepared to board a plane for Saudi Arabia, said he knew of no such rejection and indeed seemed perplexed to learn of it.
“The mayor took the check at 9 a.m.,” he said. “We have no knowledge of that. He accepted the check.””
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Added: More 9/11/2001 jumpers
- Above, “The Falling Man,” 9/11/2001, ap photo by Richard Drew, via Esquire
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Added:
9/10/2011, “The 9/11 victims America wants to forget: The 200 jumpers who flung themselves from the Twin Towers who have been ‘airbrushed from history‘,” UK Daily Mail, Tom Leonard
- “Almost all of them jumped alone, although eyewitnesses talked of a couple who held hands as they fell.”…
9/10/2011, “Children of 9/11: Life with a parent missing,” Newsday, Carol Polsky
- “Nearly 3,000 children under the age of 18 lost a parent on Sept 11. The average age was 9. A total of 108 were born in the months after their fathers died.”…
9/9/2011, “WaPo’s Dionne: ‘Time to Leave 9/11 Behind’ as ‘A Simple Day of Remembrance’,” NewsBusters
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Added: A witness describes importance of watching the jumpers:
9/6/2010, “September 11: Recalling my day at the World Trade Center,” the experiencejunkie.com by msw
“Then the crowd let out a collective gasp, I looked to see the first of many people falling through the sky. The television stations and the newspapers downplayed this aspect of a day already filled with enough shock and terror, but I place great importance on it because it immediately humanised the situation for both myself and those around me. This wasn’t just a burning building; it was suddenly full of people, friends, and family. For me, it is the most haunting memory of the day. When I focussed on what the crowd had noticed, I too let out a cry so involuntary and so primeval that I barely recognised it as my own. It was not a piece of building falling to the ground, but a man, recognisable by his flapping tie and flailing arms and legs as he fell through the air. The situation was surreal no longer; my body shook with shock, my knees buckled and a light-headedness overwhelmed me with such severity that I thought I was either going to throw-up or fall down.
I sat down and looked up only to see more people jumping. I thought for a moment that they might have fallen, but there were too many people, their arms windmilling as they subconsciously tried to fight gravity and avoid the inevitable. Haunted by these visions numerous times since the incident, I have tormented myself by trying to imagine the extreme conditions that those people must have faced that they should choose certain death by leaping from the building over clinging to any hope of rescue. What were they thinking when they jumped; what did they think on the way down?…But my fear is that to forget is to fail the lesson and lose the opportunity. That’s why this raw wound will never completely heal and that things can never go back to ‘normal’. Because even as a simple bystander I have a responsibility to incite change for the rest of my life or I watched all those people die in vain.”
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