The recent terrorist attacks kept circling around the Shuman family. When a crazed Jordanian soldier picked up his rifle and opened fire on innocent Israeli girls, one of the girls injured in that attack is the daughter of a woman who works at the Neve Ilan Hotel. And when a bomb exploded outside a well-known Tel Aviv cafe, it had exploded in the busines owned and operated by a girl who grew up on Neve Ilan. With Israel's small population, it is impossible to distance oneself from these dreadful happenings.
Friends have asked me if my children feel fear over what is going on. At the time of the bus bombings a year ago, Merav was quite hysterical with fear. Jodie and Raute were riding the bus each day to work/school, and Jodie even arrived at a fateful intersection ten minutes after an attack. Merav was quite emotional, and we knew that the fear was eating at her inside. Yet, even though we talked with her repeatedly, only the many months of relative quiet afterwards finally eased her fears.
How does one help children deal with these issues? Television brings everything directly into our homes - and as many of the recent victims were children, this really makes its point. Why does this happen? There is no easy answer. The only help we can give is to be with them at home, watching the news together - and to try to talk to them about their fears, if we see that this is bothering them. But most of the hours of the day we have no control over our childrens' lives. At school we have to rely on their teachers to be there for them.
Why does one decide to stick it out in a country when terror strikes so frequently? I guess we always live with hope - that things will change, get better. When we came to Israel 25 years ago - there were dangers aplenty. We lived through the Yom Kippur War, not exactly all that settled in at the time. Terrorism is nothing new - we remember the Munich massacre, the tragedies of Maalot, Kiryat Shemona and the Lod Airport attacks. But, even so, at the time Israel was at war with all its neighbors. Who would have ever imagined that Sadat would come to Israel, and that there would be peace with Jordan.
Some things have changed for the better. We have to believe that deep down in his heart, even Arafat wants peace. So we argue over the borders, and the methods of achieving the peace. And there are terrorists around who want to achieve results by killing. Nothing new, but maybe in our children's children's generation there will be true peace.
There are no easy, simple answers to the fears and problems that we, as Israelis, face. Israelis, unfortunately, have had to get used to all this living with terror. One of the things reported on the news after the resteraunt bombing just a short while ago - nobody panicked. Everyone knew what to do, the rescue crews arrived promptly, the police did their checks, etc. Yet, as compared to other recent attacks, the television channels went on with their regular programming instead of cancelling shows. Except for expanded news coverage, the different channels announced that they would not let terrorism dictate the evening's television schedule.
Even in these troubled times, when we cry alot, we also continue to laugh, to sleep, to eat, to smile. What else can we do?