Worry and anger in Bellmore-Merrick after Paris terror attacks

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On Sept. 11, 2001, Bellmorite Vince Proto was marching warily on Broadway in Manhattan, from the World Trade Center to Brooklyn, shortly after Al Qaeda terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers. Proto worked for Deutsche Bank, at 1 Liberty Plaza, in the towers’ shadow.

Suddenly, one of the towers came crashing down. Proto ran as fast as he could amid a massive crowd escaping the catastrophe. A cloud of white ash rushed toward him. He could hardly breathe.

He and a colleague ducked into the Downtown Athletic Club. “The whole street was a cloud of dust,” recalled Proto, who remains with Deutsche Bank as a vice president today. “We just got in …We were just thankful they let us in.”

That moment of terror came rushing back for Proto when he learned of the terrorist attacks that killed 129 in Paris last Friday, paralyzing the French capital over the weekend.

When it comes to terrorism, he said, “You’re just waiting to see where the next shoe will drop. We just have to show strong leadership, wherever it comes from. Where is the leadership coming from?”

It was a question asked around the globe in the tense days following the Friday the 13th attacks, perpetrated by eight Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers.

“I was saddened [by] the fact that these things are happening, and happening more frequently,” said Proto, the former president of the Mepham High School Sports Boosters. “New York is always on patrol, always on alert.”

Fahad Qamer, of Merrick, is general secretary of Jaame’e Masjid in Bellmore. He, too, was deeply saddened by last Friday’s attacks, as was, he said, Bellmore-Merrick’s Muslim community.

“We want to express our deepest sympathies to the people of France and our condolences to the families of the victims,” Qamer said. “When people hear about something like this, the atrocities committed by ISIS, they equate these actions with the religion of Islam and Muslims. Our Muslim community strongly condemns and denounces the attacks.

“Murder is murder,” he continued. “It’s strictly forbidden in Islam.”

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