When one nation creates a permanent memorial to another nation’s dead, it is more than a gesture of friendship. It is a declaration of shared memory and moral responsibility.
In the Jerusalem Hills, Israel has made that declaration. Its 9/11 Living Memorial is the only memorial outside the United States that lists every person murdered in the attacks. Its deeper importance lies not in its design, but in what Israel chose to remember and why.
For a nation that has endured so much loss of its own, Israel could have kept its mourning close. Instead, it made room in its own landscape for American grief.
I have visited the memorial myself. What struck me was not simply the American flag or the fragment of the Twin Towers. It was that an American tragedy had been given a permanent home in Israel’s landscape, where nearly 3,000 people were remembered with tenderness and dignity. They were not treated as strangers. Their loss was embraced as though the responsibility to remember them crossed every border.
That made President Isaac Herzog’s visit with first lady Michal Herzog ahead of the 25th anniversary so significant. Israel’s head of state did not merely issue a statement. He stood at the memorial and paid tribute on behalf of his country.
Herzog put the meaning of that moment into words when he shared his reflections with me.
“Standing at Israel’s memorial to the victims of 9/11, here in the hills of Jerusalem, we bow our heads in memory of the thousands who were murdered on that dark day in New York, at the Pentagon, and in the fields of Pennsylvania,” he said.
His words honored not only those who were murdered, but also the families who have carried their absence for a quarter century.
“We pray for the wounded and their healing. We salute the families of those who lost loved ones, and we continue to bear witness to their sacrifice,” Herzog continued. “We will never forget the courage and heroism of the first responders and emergency services, together with everyday New Yorkers, who rushed into the fire and dust to save the lives of their fellow citizens.”
What stood out to me was that Herzog did not speak only of presidents, governments, or alliances. He spoke about the people whose courage, sacrifice, and loss defined that day.
Herzog remembered those murdered in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. He honored their families and the first responders and ordinary Americans who ran into fire and dust to save others.
He also delivered the moral center of the commemoration: “There is simply no justification for the targeting of innocents, whether they are American, Israeli, or any other nationality.”
His words were morally clear, but also deeply human. These were parents, children, spouses, colleagues, and friends whose absence has been carried by their families for a quarter century.
The meaning of Herzog’s visit was captured by New Yorker Steven Fisher, who was also there. Fisher played ice hockey alongside police officers and firefighters who became, in his words, brothers. On 9/11, he lost some of them, men who ran into burning buildings while others tried to escape.
Whenever Fisher is in Israel on Sept. 11, he visits the memorial, places a small stone beside his friends’ names, and sends a photograph to their families.
“Their families often tell me how deeply touched they are by this remarkable gift from the people and State of Israel, which honors their loved ones personally,” he said.
That photograph carries a message no diplomatic statement can fully capture: Your loved one is remembered here, too. Your grief matters here, too. You are not carrying it alone.
This year, Fisher encountered Israel’s president there. His annual pilgrimage takes the U.S.-Israel relationship out of political slogans and restores its human meaning.
Alliances are usually evaluated through military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and national interests. Those are essential, but not the whole relationship. An alliance that exists only when every policy aligns is not much of an alliance.
The relationship runs deeper because the two nations recognize something in each other’s wounds. The memorial also reveals something essential about Israelis. A people who know grief chose to carry another nation’s sorrow. They did not have to build this place or return year after year. They did so because friendship means showing up in grief as surely as in celebration.
As a reporter covering antisemitism, Israel, and terrorism, I have watched precision give way to evasion. Terrorism becomes a “cycle of violence.” Murder becomes an “escalation.” Context overwhelms the atrocity until its perpetrators disappear.
Context matters in journalism. It can explain motive, but it must never become an alibi. When terrorists target civilians, the moral line is clear. Herzog drew it without qualification.
His words carry particular weight after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Sept. 11 and Oct. 7 were not identical, and they should not be collapsed into one event. But they shared a defining moral fact: terrorists deliberately attacked civilians to traumatize a nation and turn ordinary life into a battlefield.
A quarter century later, an entire generation has no memory of the collapsing towers or photographs posted by searching families. The danger is remembering the images while forgetting the moral lesson and the individual lives behind them.
Herzog’s visit offered a necessary reminder. It said to Americans: Your dead are remembered here, your grief is not foreign to us, and the fight against terrorism is not yours alone. We are still standing beside you.
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That is what Israel’s 9/11 memorial represents. Its significance is not that no other country cares. It is that Israel chose permanence, solidarity, and responsibility. It is an act of remembrance, but also an act of love from one people to another.
America should not need a memorial in the hills of Jerusalem to remind it of the moral clarity demanded by 9/11. But we should recognize what Israel built there, what it says about the Israeli people, and how fortunate we are to have that kind of friendship.
Ariella Noveck is a journalist specializing in antisemitism and Middle East affairs, with extensive experience covering Jewish communities worldwide. She can be followed on X and Instagram @AriellaNoveck