Living With Terror by Michael Freund May 9, 2002 The New York Sun www.nysun.com It was supposed to have been a quiet Tuesday evening this past week in front of the television. Shortly after 11 pm, exhausted after a long and busy day here in Israel, I climbed under the sheets and put on one of those delightfully mindless programs that helps to clear your mind and drive away your worries. "The World's Greatest Commercials" it was called, and it did not disappoint. Before I knew it, I was laughing heartily at a European car commercial, and even chuckling at an English ad for tea. And then it happened. Precisely at 11:23 pm, the broadcast was interrupted, and a grim looking news anchor appeared on the screen. Sadly, before he had even uttered a word, I had a feeling that whatever he was going to tell us, it was not going to be good. Sure enough, that is what exactly what occurred. Just 20 minutes beforehand, it turned out, a Palestinian suicide bomber had entered a club in the Israeli town of Rishon LeZion, outside of Tel Aviv, and blown himself up, killing 16 Israelis and wounding 55 others. Within seconds, the comedic commercials had become a dim memory, replaced by the familiar scenes of ambulances and police cars converging on the site of yet another mass murder of Jews. Eyewitnesses burst into tears when asked by reporters to relate what they had seen. Bewildered and stunned, they described hearing a large bang, followed by the collapse of the building's roof on top of the people inside. So powerful was the explosion that it had sent several victims flying through the window and out onto the street, three stories below. To ensure maximum damage, the perpetrator of this atrocity had packed his bomb with nuts and bolts as well as sharpened screws and nails. The force of the blast turned these metal objects in flying projectiles, which easily tore through human flesh and added to the casualty count. How could anyone possibly be so cruel. In just an instant, 16 families had been destroyed forever, their loved ones torn away from them by a madman. Those who were badly injured faced months or years of painful recuperation, grappling with the trauma of having survived the attack. Whatever political gripes the terrorist may have had, nothing could possibly justify such brutality. And yet, it seems, much of the world does indeed justify it, suggesting that the Palestinians are angry and oppressed, and that terrorism, therefore, is the "natural result" of Israel's policies. Such thinking, though, is sadly distorted, to say the least. For not only does it excuse the inexcusable, but it lets the Palestinians off the moral hook, legitimizing their acts of violence and thereby encouraging further attacks. If Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sees that he can use terror against Israel and get away with it, then there is little to prevent him from resorting to such methods again in the future. And that is precisely what he has done over the past 20 months. Even though Israel had offered the Palestinians unprecedented concessions in the July 2000 Camp David summit, Arafat chose to reject Israel's overly-generous proposals. Rather than presenting a counter-offer, Arafat reached for the gun. And he has been using it ever since. But as difficult as the current situation might be, people in Israel have not lost hope. Though the aim of the terrorists is to break our spirit and crush our will, they have done just the opposite. Israelis have come together and united like never before, bound by a sense of common fate and joint destiny. Just as the people of New York so bravely demonstrated in the aftermath of September 11, a key factor in the war against terrorism is go on living as normally as possible. And that is precisely what we here in Israel are doing. Sure, we are a little more cautious, a little more alert to potential threats around us. But there is no way that we are going to allow Yasser Arafat and his team of bombers to dictate to us how we live our lives, just as New Yorkers would never allow Osama and his goons to frighten them into passivity. The Jewish people have known great suffering throughout the millennia. We have survived history's greatest tyrants and its harshest of blows. And we are determined to survive this, too. Israel has been dragged into a conflict it never wanted. We did not ask for this war, and we did not start it. But we will end it. No other country in the world would tolerate ongoing terrorist attacks against its citizens, and neither should Israel. The time has come to put an end to Palestinian terror once and for all, because we can not go on living this way. There is, quite simply, no other choice. ----------------------------------------------- The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office from 1996 to 1999. He is currently an editorial writer and syndicated columnist for the Jerusalem Post.