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| Image Source: The UN |
A media release from the United Nations explains that it has decided that today, August 21, 2018, should be known as the International Day of Remembrance, and of Tribute to, the Victims of Terrorism.
Unless you’re a diplomat accredited to the UN in New York City or one of the speakers in the multimedia presentation that is at the heart of the commemoration, you might not know.
We’re not in those categories so we knew nothing about the whole thing till we stumbled across a link this morning.
The stated goal, as explained by the UN Secretary General, sounds somewhat uplifting:
For the first time, we have gathered in one place the testimonials of individuals whose lives have been affected by terrorism, to hear first‑hand how this has impacted their lives, and what they have achieved. I applaud the courage and resilience of everyone represented here. I thank those who are with us here today and who are willing to speak out against terrorism, and I thank the thousands of others who stand up and speak out every day, everywhere. We are here for you and we are listening to you. Your voices matter. Your courage in the face of adversity is a lesson inspiring us all. Commemorating the forthcoming International Day of Remembrance, and of Tribute to, the Victims of Terrorism on 21 August is an opportunity to recognize, honour and support victims and survivors, and to lift up the voices of those left behind. The United Nations stands in solidarity with you.
How to say this politely? Our experience as terror victims, the parents of a child murdered by an Islamist terrorist in the service of Hamas, hasn’t brought us to feel that the UN – or really anyone else in the world of major organizations – stands in solidarity with us.
Actually, quite the opposite. We’re working hard to get the mastermind of the terror attack that took our Malki’s life to be extradited from her cosy, well-funded comfortable life as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan‘s leading celebrity jihadist and brought to a federal court-house in the United States. So far, that process has been moving slowly as regular readers of our blog know.
But the multimedia presentation described in the UN’s promotional materials (we have not viewed it and don’t know yet whether it’s accessible online) reminds us of an opportunity we were given a few years ago to testify about being the victims of terror.
Arnold Roth was a guest of a European association of terror victims which embarked on a project to record the experiences and thoughts of a couple of dozen assorted terror victims with very different outlooks. The film-making took place in Madrid, Spain, in March 2014. The timing was no accident – it coincided with major Spanish events commemorating what they call 11-M, referring to the events of March 11, 2004 when the catastrophic terror attack on Madrid’s trains took place.
It wasn’t, and still isn’t, entirely clear what the eventual goal of the project was, though it appears that demonstrating ‘resilience’ was involved. In some respects, it might still be a work in progress. As far as we know, no marketing effort (and we’re trying not to sound unkind to the people involved in its making) was ever devoted to creating serious awareness. Or else we just missed it.
But since video presentations about being victims of terror are getting some attention in New York City today, here in the video clip below is what that project of four years ago did with Arnold Roth’s testimony.
Our understanding is that all of the videos in that set from 2014 were, or are being, translated into a variety of languages. Not all the speakers spoke in English (most probably did not) and the intended audiences can choose from among Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish, German and Italian sub-titled versions. Not a small undertaking.
Arnold speaks comfortably in public and had a good idea of the points he wanted to convey: especially about how terrorism is poorly understand by commentators and especially by politicians, and the sometimes disastrous ways terrorists are treated.
We got the sense, once we saw the final product, that his intentions probably were not a good match for what the sponsors of the project were out to achieve. He explicitly mentioned Hamas and Ahlam Tamimi – who plotted the assault on the Sbarro pizzeria – at several junctures for the obvious reason that they are central to the difficult times we have endured and they continue to play an embittering role in our lives today.
But those parts of the interview did not survive the editing suite.
If this momentous day, and the things it seeks to remember and to pay tribute to, got some attention where you live, we would be glad to hear about it.
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