9/11 mom and Moussaoui mom share a hug

I grew up in White Plains, New York.

Down the street from White Plains High School, of which I am an alum, is a church called the Memorial United Methodist Church. I can't tell you how many I drove, or was driven, past that church, but I never realized that it was a church of moonbattery.

On Sunday, at that church, the mother of a September 11 victim and the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui shared a hug.

The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui was tearfully embraced by the mother of a World Trade Center victim at a church gathering.

Aicha el-Wafi appeared at the "welcoming gathering" on Sunday in White Plains, about 25 miles north of ground zero, before returning home to France. The event included peace workers, anti-death-penalty activists and mothers from Memorial United Methodist Church.

The story paints a fairly sympathetic portrait of Moussaoui's mom, Ms. el-Wafi, who lamented that her two sons were lost to the equivalent of a drug gang or a cult.

El-Wafi, who raised four children alone while working as a cleaning woman, said that she lost her son to an Islamist movement just as another mother might lose hers to drugs or a cult.

She said that her older son has also joined an Islamist movement, in Lebanon. "In these movements, they look for the little cracks to get into people's minds and control them," she said.

You can almost feel sorry for the woman, really. From the NY Daily News account:

El Wafi told the church members that she is angry with her son - and worried about another son who has joined a radical Islamist group in Lebanon. * * *

She told of her arranged marriage at 14 and raising four children on a cleaning woman's salary when her husband left. "She has no words to explain or express how terrible she feels," the interpreter said. "She never asked for any of this. She would love to be just a mother."

But the woman I expected to feel sorry for, the mother of the September 11 victim, leaves me cold.

At Sunday's gathering, Connie Taylor, who lost her 37-year-old son, Bradley, on Sept. 11, stepped toward el-Wafi and embraced her. Many of those who formed a circle around them also began to cry.

Taylor said she had concluded that el-Wafi's plight was greater than her own.

"She is blaming her son, in part," Taylor said. "That must be so horrible. I didn't experience that."

And if you want to know why my being left cold is turning to outright disgust, read the New York Post's story, which reports that Ms. Taylor offered some other thoughts on the subject.

Her son was a securities trader, working on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower, when the first hijacked plane struck. Taylor said that right after Sept. 11, she was asked to speak at a gathering of peace activists near the United Nations.

"I told them how grateful I was my son never had been afraid to walk down the street or get into an airplane," she said. "We can't say the same thing now."

After she spoke she was touched when "a boy from Palestine came up to me and said, 'There's never been a day in my life when I wasn't afraid.'"

Because, you see, we Americans may be afraid of attacks on our airplanes, but innocent boys from "Palestine" are afraid of attacks by the evil Israelis every day. To her, apparently, acts of Israeli self-defense are the same as al-Qaeda attacks.