|
The
three men stood about twenty-five yards from each other along the
Ben Yehuda promenade in Jerusalem, one dressed as a woman. One probably
gave a signal, maybe a nod of the head, and all three tripped switches
that detonated crude bombs hidden under their clothes—about
five pounds of explosives each, packed with nuts and bolts to act
as shrapnel.
Already when the first "whump" sounded, many people instinctively
knew what it was. Fighter jets routinely break the sound barrier
over Jerusalem, but they sound more like a thunderclap. Still, people
will freeze until they hear the fading rumble that confirms a jet.
The bombs have a different sound, a muffled, nearby thump. People
who have heard one recognize it immediately. Even before the second
and third explosions sounded on September 4, 1997, many people felt
the gruesome familiarity of the sound.
I was on my way to pick my wife up at the school where she worked
and had just crossed Ben Yehuda when I heard the blasts. Though
I had never heard the sound before, I also knew what it was. In
two years in Israel, I had covered the aftermath of nine suicide
bombings, and, like everyone else, I was always waiting for the
next. I also knew what would happen next. First the cautious pause—terrorists
have been known to wait until emergency services congregate to set
off another bomb. Then the screams of the wounded and the horrified,
the sirens, the chaotic convergence of medics, police, detectives,
soldiers, and black-bearded Orthodox Jews who collect every bit
of Jewish flesh and bone for a proper burial. Cellular service is
overwhelmed, and people search frantically for available phones
to reassure their homes.
And everyone there feels that horrible helplessness, that empty
rage. "It's almost a sense that this is a fact of life we have
to live with," said a young lawyer, Jonathan Shiff, watching
the commotion from his window above Ben Yehuda. "It's no way
to live, but we do it anyway," interjected a woman standing
alongside us.
A suicide bombing is unlike any other act of violence. There is
no real defense against an attack that is essentially random, or
against a man—all suicide bombers in Israel have been men—so
crazed by religion and despair that he is prepared to die. In the
communiqués that followed, Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic
movement, described the bombers as martyrs and soldiers. But really,
they were only suicides and killers. The twelve-year-old girl slain
by their bombs was not a soldier, nor an enemy. Nor were the other
victims, a man and two women.
By its very design and purpose, terrorism is a violation of all
norms of behavior, law, and combat. Its objective is to demoralize,
dehumanize, humiliate, and horrify through acts of random and demonstrative
viciousness.
And almost instinctively, the human spirit fights back by reaffirming
the very spirit that terror seeks to erode. Within hours the streets
were clean of blood and glass, and by morning thousands of Israelis,
many from far away, defiantly strolled along Ben Yehuda, filling
it with resolve and life.
|
