Up in Smoke

Six weeks before the terrorist attack in New York, Larry Silverstein leased the Twin Towers for 99 years, paying $3 billion. Their collapse was also the collapse of the deal of his life, and since then, he has been trying to put the pieces back together in the face of fierce public criticism, some of it anti-Semitic.
His business dealings in Israel haven't given him much satisfaction either.

Shortly after the events of September 11, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Larry Silverstein, a Jewish real estate magnate in New York, the owner of the World Trade Center's 110-story Twin Towers and a close friend, to ask how he was. Since then they have spoken a few more times. Two former prime ministers - Benjamin Netanyahu, who this week called Silverstein a "friend," and Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a job as his representative in Israel - also called soon after the disaster. Yaakov Terner, the mayor of Be'er Sheva, sent a letter of condolence.

Many Israeli politicians are acquainted in one degree or another with the 70-year-old Silverstein. For 10 years, he tried to bring about the establishment of a free-trade zone in the Negev, until the project fell apart. "This is a tragedy," Silverstein, deeply disappointed, said then.