US, Israel And NATO Mourn 3,000 Victims On 25th Anniversary Of 9/11 Attacks

by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Chief International Correspondent

BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM/NEW YORK (Worthy News) – The United States, Israel and the NATO military alliance have marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, remembering nearly 3,000 people killed that day and thousands more who later died from related illnesses.

In New York, relatives gathered at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, where the names of the 2,977 victims were read aloud and moments of silence marked the times hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center and the towers collapsed.

Commemorations were also held at the Pentagon near Washington and at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers and crew members fought back against hijackers before their aircraft crashed.

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attended the Pentagon ceremony, where the names of the 184 people killed there were read aloud. Recalling the extraordinary sense of national unity following the attacks, Trump said, “We were all New Yorkers that day.”

9/11 LEGACY

“We will never, ever forget,” Trump added. “That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice.”

The September 11, 2001, attacks remain the deadliest terrorist assault on American soil and transformed U.S. foreign and security policy, triggering wars abroad and dramatically expanding counterterrorism and surveillance efforts.

Across the Atlantic, NATO held a solemn ceremony Friday at its headquarters in Brussels, attended by representatives of the alliance’s member nations and its diplomatic and military community.

NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska recalled that the attacks led the alliance to invoke its collective-defense Article 5—which considers an attack on one member an attack on all—for the first and so far only time in its history.

NATO REMEMBERS 9/11

“America was not alone. Your friends, your Allies, were with you then, and they are with you here today,” Shekerinska said. “One for all, and all for one.”

The ceremony included a minute of silence at the exact time the first hijacked aircraft struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “Terror did not win on that bright, blue day, 25 years ago. And terror never will,” Shekerinska added.

NATO flags were lowered to half-staff at its Brussels headquarters, Allied Command Operations in Mons, Belgium, and Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia, to honor the victims and military personnel who subsequently served in conflicts linked to the attacks.

Israel held its main commemoration Wednesday at the 9/11 Living Memorial in Jerusalem’s Arazim Valley, two days ahead of the anniversary because September 11 fell on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

ISRAEL HONORS VICTIMS

Relatives and dignitaries placed roses beside the victims’ names at the memorial, where an American flag rises in the form of a 30-foot (9-meter) bronze flame. A piece of steel recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Center is incorporated into its base.

“Twenty-five years after the horrific September 11 attacks, we remember the 2,977 innocent lives taken and the families who have carried that loss,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told those gathered.

Five Israelis were among those killed in the attacks. The Jerusalem monument, established in 2009, displays the names of all the victims.

The ceremony also linked the memory of 9/11 with Israel’s more recent experience of terrorism. Survivors of the October 7, 2023, Supernova music festival massacre participated alongside relatives of those killed.

DEATH TOLL CONTINUES

Speakers also stressed that the human toll from September 11 did not end in 2001.

Professor Marc Wilkenfeld, an occupational and environmental medicine specialist who has treated 9/11 first responders, said more than 9,000 people exposed to the aftermath of the attacks had since died, while thousands more continue to suffer from cancer, lung disease and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Thousands more struggle with cancer, PTSD and lung disease,” he said. “These are still people we have to care for.”

At the Jerusalem memorial, the personal cost was represented by Suri and Henoch Morgenstern of New York, whose 32-year-old daughter Nancy was killed while working for financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.“Here now, we wanted to talk about Nancy and have her remembered,” her mother said.

Twenty-five years after hijacked passenger aircraft struck New York and the Pentagon and another crashed in Pennsylvania, commemorations on both sides of the Atlantic underscored a message shared by relatives, first responders and political leaders: the passage of a quarter-century has not erased the memories of the victims—or the consequences of the attacks.