By Esther Korson
One day a few weeks ago my oldest son and I were reminiscing about how different life was here in the early 80’s. It was a time in this land when Arabs and Jewish people got along fairly well. My sons were in high school at the time, and we had many Arab friends.
Bethlehem in those days was primarily Christian, there were no walls, and Israelis loved to visit the village, especially on Shabbat when the Israeli Jewish shops and restaurants were closed!
The menus in Bethlehem were in Hebrew and visiting Israelis received a warm welcome. Our favourite place there was a pizza restaurant. Whenever we would arrive, the waiters, who knew us, would yell, “Hey, do you want some wahrer?” It was a joke, since one time an American tourist arrived and, mumbling a bit, asked for some “wahrer” and the staff had no idea in the world what he wanted! So, since we are Americans, they always joked with us about it. (‘wahrer’= ‘water’, by the way…) We always had fun!
En route to Tiberias via the Jordan Valley, Israelis loved to stop at the ancient town of Jericho—to visit the archeological site that proved that the walls fell in an unnatural direction—and to have a bite to eat or to visit the shops. The country was open and for the most part, the Arab residents were trusted.
Everything changed drastically, however, beginning on a December day in 1987. An Israeli Army truck struck a car and accidentally killed four Arab residents. A lie spread rapidly that it had been an intentional act, and at that moment the First Intifada (uprising) began. (It ended in 1991 with the Oslo accords. The Second Intifada began in 2000 and lasted until 2005). Life as we knew it was never the same again.
The First Intifada was violent from the start, but the Second Intifada was even worse. It was unthinkable that the PLO would encourage their own people to kill themselves in order to kill as many Jewish people as possible, but that was how the phenomenon of the ‘suicide bomber’ was born. Children in the Arab sector were taught that the best that they could aspire to would be to die as a martyr while killing Israelis. And so the carnage began. The majority of the causalities were indeed caused by suicide bombings, although Israelis were also killed by planted bombs, shootings, lynchings, rockets, and other methods of attack. They chose to randomly attack whichever civilian targets were accessible. 78% of the 1137 Israelis killed during those Arab terrorist attacks were civilians. Another 8,341 Israelis were wounded during this time.
It was a terrible time. We would be alerted to a terror attack by the sound of ambulances rushing to the scene. The local news later showed pictures of those who were killed, shared with the public a portion of each funeral along with comments by bereaved friends and relatives. This is a small country and people really care, so every single act of terrorism saddened us all—and there were many.
I’m going to include a partial list. They will be familiar memories to everyone here. The list includes suicide bombings, massacres and bombs: HaSharon Mall, Dimona, Nahariya train station, Egged bus # 841, Dan bus # 87, Mike’s Place Pub, King George St., Liberty Park bus bombing, Jerusalem bus # 19, Beersheba massacre, Mercaz Ha Rav massacre, Kiryat Menachem bus, Shmuel Hanavi bus, Rishon LeZion, Netanya market, Megiddo Junction bus, Herzilia Shawarma restaurant, Itamar attack, Immanuel bus attack, Neve Shalom St., Tel Aviv Central Bus Station massacre, Hebrew University Cafeteria massacre, Davidka Square bus bombing, Café Hillel, outdoor mall, Jaffa St., Café Moment, Passover Massacre in Netanya hotel, Ben Yehuda St., Mahane Yehuda market bombing, Pardes Hanna bus, Sbarro restaurant, Yeshivot Beit Yisrael massacre, Haifa bus, Shomrom Mall, Seafood Market, Maxim Restaurant, Ha Sharon Mall, Dolphinarian Discotheque, the murder of Koby Mandell, aged 13, and Yossi Ishran, 14. <complete list>
In addition, people were killed in their cars, in their homes, and individually all over the land. The long lists read like this (I’m listing just a few): man shot and killed; man murdered; two killed when a roadside bomb exploded alongside a school bus; school teacher and driver killed on their way to work; two killed when terrorists opened fire on a crowded bus stop; five teenagers shot; family killed in their home; elderly woman shot to death in her home; Rabbi shot dead while driving with his wife and children to a pre-wedding Sabbath celebration; infant killed in stoning attack;, man’s bullet-ridden body found; terrorists enter several homes, fire on people in their bedrooms, 4 killed; two women killed in a drive-by shooting: the list goes on and on. Talli Hatuse, aged 34 and 8 month’s pregnant was murdered with her four daughters, aged 11, 9, 7 and 2. The youngest victim of the intifada was an Israeli baby who was 9 hours old, so young that he had not as yet been named.
At the scene of each bombing or explosion, the Zaka Rescue Team with their mobile units would arrive at once. Zaka was founded in 1989 to respond to terror attacks. It was their bravely done and grim job to gather body parts so that they could be identified and buried. A truly heartbreaking task!
I imagine that this was not easy to read. It was not easy to write and it was even harder to have lived through that terrible time. We would leave from home in the morning uncertain if we would return alive again at the end of the day! Whenever someone boarded a bus, everyone would look at them suspiciously, wondering, “Could that person be a suicide bomber?” Restaurants and all public buildings had to hire security guards. The Arabs, who were once our friends, could no longer be trusted, and that was sad for them as well. Our lives had changed irrevocably.
It was easy for terrorists and suicide bombers to come from the ‘West Bank’ since the entire area was open. But the government knew something had to be done to protect the citizens of Israel. It was during that time, on the 23rd of July, 2001, that the Israeli Government decided that the only way to protect the nation from the carnage was to erect a security fence. Otherwise it was impossible to stop people from entering the rest of the country! It was also soon clear that the Security Fence would have to be contiguous in order to be truly effective. And so the building of the wall began in earnest. And it worked.
On Sunday, the 25th of May, the Pope visited what he called the country of Palestine. While in Bethlehem, he visited the security fence. The world thinks by now that it’s a barrier to persecute the “Palestinians”. So I felt very strongly that it was so important to send forth a message on the real reason that the fence was erected. We were being killed in horrible ways day after day, and it is the job of this country to protect its citizens. The wall has proven to be incredibly effective as a defensive tool, and for that we are grateful. Please do understand why the wall was necessary and do remember the terrorism that caused it to be built in the first place. Most of the world, it seems, has chosen to forget…
By the way, it’s against the law now for Israelis to enter Bethlehem, Jericho, or any other place under control of the Palestinian Authority. The reason is simple. We could be killed. It is all so different now than it used to be!
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