people who i judged and who i hated showed me kindness. the first time i met a gay friend, it was clear did not approve of his lifestyle and yet he showed me kindness. i decided i didn t want to perpetuate the same cycles and violence and hatred that my father advocated for. do you think at a certain point there was an expectation for you to continue in your father s path? i m certain of that. as a little boy, zach remembers the twin towers and playing with his father, right here along the waterfront. that s my siblings and i standing in the park with the world trade center behind us. wow. when i look at this picture, i wonder if it s a fun family photo or if he was taking it as some kind of surveillance. it s hard for me to look back and figure out exactly what his goals were.
point there was an expectation for you to continue in your father s path? i m certain of that. as a little boy, zach remembers the twin towers and playing with his father j right here along the water front. that s my siblings and i standing in the park with the world trade center behind us. i look at this picture, i wonder if it was a fun family photo or if he was taking it as some kind of surveillance. it s hard for me to look back and figure out what his goals were. before my father went to prison, i would often spend time with the men involved in the world trade center bombing. my father started take meg to a shooting range. one of the proudest moments i recall was how happy he was i hit the target. my uncle turned to another man and said like father like son. they all the laughed. at the time you heard that, like father like son, how did it
and windows, soot covering people s faces. before 9/11, there was another terrorist attack on the world trade center. the 1993 bombing claimed six lives that day and a federal investigation would reveal 10 men had conspired to plan it. one of them was zach s father, sayyid. nearly three years before the bombing he was put in prison following kahane s murder. but that didn t stop him from conspireing with the blind sheik and others to bomb the twin towers. at trial, a federal grand jury charged sayyid with seditious conspiracy, and under federal racketeering law, retried him for kahane s murder. he was found guilty and sentenced to life. when you did realize your father had a role in this thing you had seen on television, how did you feel? the first thing i thought was, there is no excuse for this.
a militant far right ultranationalist group i merging in the u.s. his death astonished the country, but it was the image of the gunman that stunned zach s mother. authority says he is 34-year-old el syed moser. i was asleep in my bedroom, and my mother came flying in and said we had to leave. so we all piled into my uncle s car and he drove us to his apartment in brooklyn, and there were already two detectives waiting there. zach s father was now in jail, charged with murder. i couldn t put together how i could have a loving father capable of such terrible things. as a child, zach new little of the man his father was accused of killing, rabbi meier kahana. he was controversial, radical. i want to make it clear to those dogs standing there, there
and that the implications of our beliefs matter, and understanding them matter. ladies and gentlemen, here s zach ibrahim. [ applause ] thank you. this is model united nations. thousands of high school students from all over the world have gathered here to learn how to become future leaders, and now zach has their full attention. i was 7 years old when my father went to prison, and there is not a day that goes by that i had wish he had chosen a peaceful path. instead, he exposed me from a very young age to the intolerance and radical nature of extremism. and yet i stand before you all today with this simple message. that no matter the level of violence you have been exposed to, it doesn t have to define your character. that in all of us is the ability to change our paths. jen and zach s stories are