It’s time to shame the shameless
9/11 families condemn the LIV defectors as Saudi tour pitches up 50 miles from Ground Zero
TOMORROW morning, less than four miles from this scorched lawn in New Jersey, Henrik Stenson, Lee Westwood and other LIV defectors will face the cameras at trump National Golf Club.
they will tackle difficult questions and address touchy subjects. Just as terry Strada, Alison Crowther and Matthew Bocchi did yesterday.
One by one, they stood at a podium outside this public library to share their stories and state their case. Not even a crib sheet of prepared answers could swat away testimony like this, surely?
‘How can I shame the shameless PGA defectors?’ asked Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United. ‘ Maybe by pointing out: when you agree to join LIV Golf, you are partaking in the (Saudi) Kingdom’s effort to cleanse their responsibility for their murder of Christine Lee Hanson, the youngest victim of September 11 who was just two years old, killed on United Airlines Flight 175 travelling to Disneyland with her parents.
‘Just 50 miles from where they will tee off on Friday is a national museum on hallowed ground and a repository safeguarding charred remains of 40 per cent of the victims who have never been identified or returned home for a proper burial — including my husband.’
tom Strada, 41, worked on the 104th floor in the North tower of the World trade Center. His children were then seven, four and four days old. Yesterday, his widow returned to New Jersey to address this week’s Saudi-funded tournament.
Crowther remembered her son Welles, who saved as many as 18 lives in the burning South tower.
All the time, she clutched his red bandana — ‘the only protection he had’ and the way the family recognised him.
Bocchi, the eldest of four brothers who lost their father John, articulated some of the pain.
‘For us to sit here and accept that numerous well- known golfers can so easily accept blood money from the Saudi royal family is what hurts most,’ he said.
they came to plead with trump — who described the tour as an ‘incredible investment’ for ‘the image of Saudi Arabia’ in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week — LIV’s chief Greg Norman and the golfers to think again.
they handed out declassified FBI reports into Saudi links, denied by the kingdom, to September 11, when Al- Qaeda terrorists killed almost 3,000 people. they warned, as Bocchi said: ‘We are not going away.’
More protests are slated for Friday’s first round. these families accept they are unlikely to stop the tournament. Or, as Strada labels it, ‘a multi-billion dollar
PR stunt’. But that didn’t curb their ire towards Phil Mickelson, trump, Joe Biden and LIV.
‘We hope to make it very uncomfortable for them,’ Strada said. ‘I am appalled to be standing here speaking about professional golfers’ offensive, disrespectful and hurtful participation in sportswashing.’
She might go on Friday; she will keep asking to meet the players. ‘My late husband was a scratch golfer,’ Strada added. ‘He loved the game of golf… we were big fans of Phil Mickelson.’
She wrote to LIV’s left-handed poster boy. She wants to know: ‘What are all of their legacies going to be? that they took money from the kingdom that murdered 3,000 people on American soil?’