Fear of death a way of life in Israel
Posted on 05/02/2002 5:23:49 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Fear of death a way of life in Israel
'We all live with the feeling that we could be shot at any time'
05/02/2002
JERUSALEM - Before she leaves for work each day, Yael Brooks quickly scribbles a little goodbye note to her family, just in case she doesn't come back.
"I'll write something to my sister like, 'Went out. If I get blown up, I'm sorry for taking your pants without your permission. I won't do it again,' " the 20-year-old Jerusalem resident said.
Ms. Brooks admitted the notes are heavily tinged with cynicism, but this is the way some Israelis are coping with the constant fear after a tumultuous year of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants.
No one knows if or when another round of attacks will occur. Security remains tight everywhere around the busy Jaffa Road commercial district, where most of the attacks have happened. But no matter how many Israeli soldiers and policemen patrol the streets, there's no mistaking the nervousness on the faces of the relatively few Israelis who venture out to shop or sip coffee at a curbside cafe.
"It's so sad to walk around here," Ms. Brooks said during lunchtime at Zion Square, the site of a bloody December attack. "The whole atmosphere is really down. It's sad, it's gray."
| Also Online | ||||||||||||||||
|
A student at Hebrew University, Ms. Porat said she and her fellow students often hear the sound of gunfire at night in the dormitory rooms, situated near the "green line" between West Jerusalem and the largely Arab eastern side of the city.
"We all live with the feeling that we could be shot at any time. If I hear shooting when I'm in the dormitory, I get really, really nervous," she said. "You lock the door, sit down and turn off the lights."
BARBARA DAVIDSON / DMN An Orthodox Jew makes his way past an Israeli soldier outside the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, the area shaken by the last suicide bombing. |
The Interior Ministry recently reported being deluged with applications for gun permits. Thousands of applications have been filed in the last few weeks, prompting the ministry to post the permit form on the Internet to reduce traffic at the application office.
"I need the gun to feel more secure," said Noah Stefaniki, who described himself as a businessman and volunteer policeman, as he emerged from the office where the forms are collected for processing. "We feel insecure, and we have to look after the country."
Many shops and restaurants around Jaffa Road have closed their doors because their clientele has disappeared.
Nathan's kosher deli, a landmark establishment that had kept its doors open since 1916 through four wars and all kinds of Palestinian-Israeli strife finally called it quits after the year of relentless suicide attacks made it impossible to keep the business going.
Across the street at Sbarro, all customers have to submit to a search by an armed guard before going inside. Sbarro, a fast-food Italian eatery, was the target of one of seven attacks to rattle Jaffa Road in the last year.
A constant state of wariness permeates life in the district. At the Bikur Cholim Hospital a block away, doctors and nurses are on call 24 hours a day to respond when the bomb alarm sounds.
"We don't need to get the call from the Israeli Red Cross or the police or anyone else. The bomb goes off, the building shakes. There might be one split second of silence, and then everyone goes into action," said Alex Farkash, hospital spokesman.
In the last five years, 20 bombings or armed attacks have been carried out within 500 yards of the hospital.
The emergency room is only one big enough to handle 25 patients under normal circumstances. But some bomb attacks have caused the emergency room to be flooded with 120 or more victims at a time.
"The people are very fast to get here. The motivation for creating and saving life is at least as high as the motivation is on the other side for destroying it," he added.
BARBARA DAVIDSON / DMN An elderly Israeli woman sells religious mementos close to the spot where a Palestinian woman blew herself up in the last Jerusalem suicide bombing. |
Mr. Farkash quickly corrected himself and stated the hospital's official policy of treating all patients Muslims, Christians and Jews without regard to politics or religion. Doctors have even worked feverishly to save the life of bombers who survived their own attacks.
For Dr. Raphael Pollack, an obstetrician, the sound of an explosion prompts an immediate sensation of dread with ugly memories of previous carnage on the hospital's doorstep.
"You think, oh no, not again," he said. "There's this smell of burning flesh in the air. When the patients come in, they're burned, their clothes are burned. There's that gunpowder smell everywhere."
After one bombing, a human leg landed just outside his office.
The hospital's policy of never turning away patients has a new, nerve-racking twist for Dr. Pollack. The last suicide attacker two weeks ago was a Palestinian woman disguised as a pregnant woman someone he would have received for treatment had she walked into the hospital, her tummy protruding with hidden explosives.
"It's gotten to the point where if I'm in the area when a bomb goes off, and if they don't call me, I don't come in," he said. "I can do without the experience."
Last week, one of his patients, Sigalit Haroush, gave birth to a boy after defying the odds and surviving a bomb blast on Jan. 27 at the shoe store where she was working. She was six months pregnant at the time and went into premature labor, which doctors were able to stave off for three months.
"We can't stop our daily life just because of the bombers," Ms. Haroush said. "I'm still very afraid. I have difficulty sleeping at night because of the anxiety about bombs or that the terrorists will come into my house."
Nureen Shamuel, 20, whose family emigrated from Iran 18 months ago, has seen the worst that life in Jerusalem can offer. Her father has been injured in three separate bomb attacks.
On March 17, she was working at an infant clothing store on King George Street when a bomb exploded outside the shop.
"I came home with blood all over my clothes. I was in shock, so they took me to the hospital. When my mother saw me, she went into shock," she said. Now her mother is receiving psychiatric care to help her cope with the stress.
"Sometimes I leave for work, and I think I might not come home in the evening," Ms. Shamuel said. "I make sure I kiss my mother before I leave. I say, 'Mother, I'm sorry for anything bad I've done to you.' But she smiles and pushes me away and says, 'Stop this nonsense.' "
Getting on a city bus is another nerve-racking endeavor for Israelis, given the suicide attackers' seeming preference for blowing them up.
BARBARA DAVIDSON / DMN Buses are a frequent target of Palestinian terrorists in Jerusalem. |
Ms. Brooks said she tries to calculate bomb blasts and survivability before she boards a bus. She used to sit in the back of the bus, she said, reasoning that a bomb blast would send her flying through the back window and away from the burning wreckage.
Jerusalem residents are far from alone. In the Mediterranean coastal city of Netanya, Park Hotel manager Eric Cohen is still cleaning up after a bomb blast one month ago during Passover that killed 28 guests out of about 180 at a ground-floor party. Blood still stains some tabletops in the hotel lobby.
"Tourism has stopped. People say they do not want to come to Netanya anymore," he said. "We will reopen the hotel, even if nobody comes. We don't want to give satisfaction to the people who did this."
Even hotels in East Jerusalem are suffering, though the Arab side of the city has been spared from attack. The new, 350-room Novotel hotel closed its doors in January for lack of guests.
Next door at the 18-month-old Olive Tree Hotel, general manager David Ashkenazi complained of similar problems. The 300-room, $35 million hotel is at "20 percent occupancy or less," he said, declining to be more specific. He has reduced the 220-employee staff to 30.
"There's no question about it. Tourists watch television, they listen to the media. They think this is a dangerous place to come," he said.
Mr. Ashkenazi's occupancy figures appeared to be significantly inflated. Last Thursday evening, every room in the hotel was darkened, as was the hotel lobby. The entrance was locked tight, with a barrier placed across it.
E-mail trobberson@hotmail.com
Before she leaves for work each day, Yael Brooks quickly scribbles a little goodbye note to her family, just in case she doesn't come back.
"I'll write something to my sister like, 'Went out. If I get blown up, I'm sorry for taking your pants without your permission. I won't do it again,' " the 20-year-old Jerusalem resident said.
Ms. Brooks admitted the notes are heavily tinged with cynicism, but this is the way some Israelis are coping with the constant fear after a tumultuous year of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants.
What a way to have to live...........
Here is a very good, very related article:
A LETTER FROM ISRAEL
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/news/658193/posts
Nureen Shamuel, 20, whose family emigrated from Iran 18 months ago, has seen the worst that life in Jerusalem can offer. Her father has been injured in three separate bomb attacks.
You can look at that as bad luck, or as a miracle to have survived three separate bomb injuries. And the family is still staying.
"I'll write something to my sister like, 'Went out. If I get blown up, I'm sorry for taking your pants without your permission. I won't do it again,' " the 20-year-old Jerusalem resident said.
I wonder: How long we would tolerate such a state of affairs in this country? Let me take that back - I really don't wonder, as I know that the answer is "until we could assemble the requisite forces to kill anyone associated with such a condition, and to utterly ruin the place that they came from." What I really wonder is why the standard is any different for Israel which, as a sovereign nation, has the same right to protect its citizens as the US or any other nation.
TC
What a terrible thing it must be to live in such fear day in and day out. This is so sad.
Bush and his closest advisors agree with you. The public pronouncements that Bush expects Israel to end its military actions against the Palestinians are for the benefit of Arab ears and are made so the U.S. can distance itself from the (morally supportable) actions of the Israeli government while holding together a very fragile consensus for the toppling of Saddam. In order for this to be achieved the cynical Arab leaders want the appearance of an unruly Israel unwilling to do the U.S.'s bidding and Bush wants the rest of the Arab world to know that Israel isn't our puppet.
International politics is a complicated game because the same sort of PR that works on typical Western minds won't work on Middle Eastern muslims. In order to wage war on Saddam, Bush needs the support of the Arab moderates. He won't get that support without making public pronouncements designed to make Arab minds believe he's holding Israel's feet to the fire.
Remember, Saddam is at most three years away from a long-range missile delivery system for nukes. He must be utterly destroyed. Play-acting with Israel to achieve this goal is an unfortunate must.
I know that the public (including all of us) don't know what is really going on behind closed doors, and I certainly don't envy Bush his job (though I wouldn't mind having it for a few days) - I'm just losing heart, that's all. I just don't trust that all of those weak sisters at State aren't feeding Bush bad info and recommendations, as happened with his Dad. I pray that I'm wrong and you're right. I dream of the day when my gut instincts about Bush (that he's a smart dude with his heart in the right place, just play-acting the role of the dumb hick to lull his enemies at home and abroad to sleep) are renewed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
