The New Republic
Post date 03.30.02
Anger and Action
by Michael Rubin
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=rubin033002
I was at a Seder in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevassaret Zion when I heard
news of the terror attack in Netanya. We were waiting for my university
colleague's extended family to arrive. They were coming from the coastal
plain. It was pouring rain, but given Israeli driving habits, downpours
wouldn't account for the hour-long delay. Finally, they stumbled through the
door. "Sorry about that," the uncle apologized, "There was some sort of
attack in Netanya, so we got caught in a traffic jam on the outskirts."
Israel is a tiny country, and many people learn about attacks not from
television news, but from family members and friends who live in the area.
Everyone knows someone "clear across the country," which in Israel's case is
at most a 45-minute drive, if that. Geography remains at the heart of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it frustrates Israelis to no end that the
chattering classes in Europe and the armchair academics in the United States
have very little concept of how small Israel is. When I lectured at Yale, I
could see a pizzeria, nightclub, and library from my office. From my desk at
Hebrew University, I can see across the entirety of the West Bank, the
northern tip of the Dead Sea, and, on a clear day, I can pick out villages
on the Jordanian highlands.
When I lived in Tajikistan in 1997, the U.S. defense attaché gave me a pearl
of wisdom: "When you hear gunshots, carry on. But if you hear return fire,
get under a desk." It was a simple lesson I somehow missed in my years of
Quaker schooling, but one that has come in very handy in places like
Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, lone gunshots probably mean a drunk
checkpoint guard, a guy just got engaged, or the girl's father wasn't
impressed with her suitor. Return fire is much more serious: a gun battle
between rival political groups.
In Israel, there is a similar rule with sirens. If an ambulance passes, no
one looks up. It's probably just a heart attack. Two ambulances, and people
look up, though it's probably just a case of food poisoning from gefilte
fish gone bad. But three or more ambulances means trouble, and Israelis rush
to their radios and start dialing every number on the cell phones to make
sure friends and family are okay. Israel is small enough that it is often
not the television anchors that break the news, but relatives or family
friends. Living in Jerusalem, I've been within earshot of three suicide
bombings. People still go out, but are increasingly cautious. For example,
in a café I make sure whomever I'm with sits between me and the door (which
probably explains why there have been so few second dates recently).
On Friday, I was in my Aza Street apartment when I heard the first sirens. I
counted twenty. A couple minutes later the radio reported that a suicide
bomber--a 16-year-old girl--blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket.
People who knew my roommate was going shopping started calling to see if he
was okay. He came back an hour later. He had indeed been headed for that
market. But, at the last minute, he and his friends had decided to go to a
different shopping center.