A living hell

Libby Werthan

Friday, April 12, 2002 | 4:41 a.m.

Libby Werthan is a 64-year-old writer and native of Nashville, Tenn., who has lived in Jerusalem since 1990. Her recently published novel, "The Fourth Corner," explores the lives of several Jewish families in Nashville over the course of a century. Following is her account of what it is like to live in Israel with the constant threat of Palestinian suicide bombings against ordinary citizens. It was written March 10, the day after a terrorist attack near her home.

WEEKEND EDITION

Last night as I lay in my comfortable bed in my lovely home planning a pleasant night's sleep, I could hear the guns in Gilo. And I couldn't sleep; not because I was fearful for my safety but because I couldn't help but think of all those people living in Gilo (two neighborhoods away from us) and how terrified they must be -- especially the children. Thank God only three people were injured, but 52 apartments were damaged by terrorist machine gun fire.

I would like to try to convey to you what life is like here right now. I thought the "Peace Process" was just that, a process -- that it wouldn't lead to peace. And unfortunately, it has turned out that way. At best, it was a holding period, a badly needed respite. In the years following Oslo, we had a kind of freedom -- a green light, if you will; we could travel almost anywhere, enjoy the country in relative safety.

After Arafat rejected the best deal he would ever get and the "Peace Process" came to a halt, we found ourselves under constant attack -- suicide bombers (whom one expert said was a misnomer, that they should be called Islamakazes), mortar attacks, knifings, murders and drive-by shootings. Every morning we open our newspapers and tally up how many people were killed (about 350 to date) and how many more people were permanently damaged -- losing limbs, being burned so badly that they will never leave home, seeing loved ones murdered -- they and their families will never be the same. I am talking about thousands of people in the last 16 months, mostly children and young people under the age of 30.

What happened in America on 9/11 was horrifying. Over 3,000 people lost their lives in the World Trade Center. America has a population of 278 million. Israel has a population of 6 million. If you were to compare deaths per capita, Israel has experienced almost five World Trade Centers in the last year and a half. And that's only the deaths, not the thousands permanently injured. The majority have been civilians going about their lives -- mostly women and children. It's pretty devastating when you think about it. You can imagine what this has done to the psyche of our country.

But what I find even more incredible is the response of Israel to this assault. The Israeli Army has the power and ability to go in and take over the whole Palestinian entity in a matter of days. But they haven't done it. Instead they have targeted the ringleaders, the bomb makers and their installations (and been criticized for it). They have isolated Arafat, the Father of Terrorism (and been criticized for it).

They have bombed the installations of the Palestinian Authority, but not without first telling them that they are going to do it. So when they do bomb buildings, they are empty. They make every attempt to avoid injuring any civilians. When the army entered the two refugee camps (which by the way are so vicious and independent that the Palestinian police won't enter them), they gave the civilians three hours to leave the camp, to get out of harm's way.

In view of the horrors perpetrated against us, ours is the most measured of responses. And yet the media don't report it that way -- they can't if they want to continue to have access to the Palestinians. So they talk about Israel's heavy-handedness, they talk about occupation, when 98 percent of the territories are under Palestinian control, they highlight the Palestinian deaths and overlook many of ours.

The media, when being evenhanded, will interview both a Palestinian and an Israeli. But the Israelis they pick are either to the far Left or the far Right and are clearly not representative of mainstream Israel. Last week they ran a story about a Palestinian woman coming into Israel to give birth and being wounded in the shoulder when her car ran a roadblock.

They don't follow it up with the fact that she was taken quickly to a hospital where she give birth to a healthy baby and recovered from her wound. Nor do they tell you that the very next day a pregnant Israeli woman was ambushed on the highway and shot in the abdomen as a "gift" to the Palestinian woman. We go after those who are killing us. We do not respond by targeting civilians.

I said earlier that for 10 years we had a green light. We no longer have that green light. It has been replaced by a flashing yellow light. We still live our normal lives -- go to work, go to the mall, go to the movies, make gourmet dinners, have weddings and bar mitzvahs, work out, plant gardens, go to lectures, concerts, and plays -- all the normal things one does. Except that flashing yellow light makes us more aware of where we are and who's around us. When we hear more than one siren, as we did last night, we run and turn on the news -- another suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded religious neighborhood.

When we hear an explosion, it could be something on a construction site or a car backfire, but we think bomb. You might expect us to go around with long faces and sometimes we do, but mostly not. Nevertheless we are always hurting inside. We know so many are grieving. We see the pictures of the beautiful young people who have been killed and our hearts are breaking. The hardest part for me and, I think, others, is that there is no end in sight. How long can this go on? What will happen next?

The talk is always, "Let's achieve calm, let's get back to the negotiating table." But with whom are we going to negotiate? Arafat? Arafat, the inventor of terrorism; the consummate liar! A man who prays for "the peace of the brave" on the New York Times Op Ed page and at the very same time shouts "jihad, a million martyrs on to Jerusalem" to his own people in Arabic. A man who has not only abused the opportunity offered him for peace but has brutally abused his own people by manipulation and lies.

He is every bit as vicious as bin Laden. Would America negotiate with bin Laden? With whom then are we going to negotiate? And if we do find someone, how meaningful will a signed piece of paper be? There are three generations of Palestinians here who have learned to hate Jews from birth; whose greatest mitzvah is to kill a Jew. How can that change with a piece of paper?

We are at a terrible impasse here. How do we protect ourselves and at the same time create a Palestinian entity that is self-sufficient and independent of us? This is it. This is what every Israeli wants.

And what about you? Where do you fit into this Jewish world of ours? I have told you about Israel, but what about Argentina, where over half of the Jews there are now living under the poverty line, or France where Jews are experiencing a huge upsurge of anti-Semitism?

And what about America? I don't know that much about America; but what I do know disturbs me. I hear very little raised in the way of protests against the biased media and little rallying in support of Israel coming from the Jewish communities in America. What I do know is that the Arab propaganda is so strong and effective in the United States that on the college campuses your children and grandchildren have never been more distanced from Israel and are in fact ashamed of her. American Jewish visitors are so few here that we can practically thank each one personally for coming. Our hotels and restaurants are closing. Our tour guides and bus companies are out of work.

Where are you when we need you? Are you writing to the congressmen to thank them for their support? Are you writing to the president? What about letters to the editor? Are you countering Palestinian propaganda on the college campuses? Are you writing to CNN and NPR when their reporting is clearly biased? Are you letting people here know that you care? Have you contributed to a victim relief fund? What's happening, folks?

When I was in America last month, I saw a lot of hand wringing and got a lot of sympathetic comments. Mostly, people wanted to know why I didn't come back and live there.

And what did I answer? I told them that we have had the most fabulous 12 years of our lives here. Grant you the last months have been painful. But when I think about why I am here, what it boils down to is that living here is the most important statement that I can make with my life.

Since I began this letter, the situation has become increasingly worse. While we apprehend and thwart countless attackers, we cannot catch them all. Some slip through. On Thursday I sent Moshe down to the grocery (here the grocery is so close you can walk) to pick up a few things I had forgotten. When he arrived, the whole area had been blocked off, all traffic stopped. And police everywhere.

Just minutes before, a suicide bomber had entered a very popular outdoor cafe but had been noticed by a customer who alerted a waiter and together they pushed him out of the cafe and at the same time ripped out the wires of the bomb -- and saved the lives of scores of people. These were just ordinary people, but they performed an extraordinary task. On Friday the cafe was again packed. Saturday night a bomber entering another packed cafe in the center of town was not detected in time -- 13 were killed and over 50 wounded.

In about an hour, Moshe and I and many of our neighbors are going to take a walk in the Jerusalem Peace Forest -- a part of the Promenade that looks out over Jerusalem. Perhaps you have been there. It is a popular tourist spot. Some weeks ago in this place, a young Israeli college student, a girl, was attacked by a gang of Arab teenagers and stabbed to death. Our walk is symbolic. It's our way of saying you can't take our favorite places away from us. We won't give in to your terror.

I could tell you many, many stories but I think you get the picture. This is a war that is difficult to win; if you defeat your enemy, you wind up with a captive hostile population and territories that you must occupy; if you make an accommodation with the enemy, it won't assure you of safety or that attitudes will change. It will only put you in an even less secure situation.

If you believe in prayer, please pray for us. Both the Israeli and the Palestinian populations are victimized. We are going through a living Hell.

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