When the Unimaginable Happens, and It's Right Outside Your Window

By Clyde Haberman
New York Times

Do you get it now?

It is a question that many Israelis wanted to ask yesterday of 
America and the rest of the finger-pointing world. Not in a 
smart-alecky manner. Not to say, "We told you so." It was simply 
a question for those who, at a safe remove from the terrorism 
that Israelis face every day, have damned Israel for taking 
admittedly harsh measures to keep its citizens alive.

"Suppose I had intelligence reports telling me that someone was 
going to hijack a Boeing 757 and crash it into the World Trade 
Center," an Israeli official said yesterday. "And suppose I used 
an M-16 to kill him. According to the arguments being used against 
us, I'd be an assassin, illegally using American weapons."

This official was referring to the international condemnation 
Israel has endured for killing certain Palestinians, people 
accused of not only masterminding anti-Israel terrorist acts in 
the past but planning more in the near future. The American 
criticism of Israel has been sotto voce. But it is there. 
And in this Black September, after the worst act of terrorism 
in history, the question arises from Israelis like this official:

Do you get it now?

"We are now going to see a very resolute, and possibly global, 
approach to dealing with terrorism," Joseph Alpher, an Israeli 
strategic analyst, said by phone from Tel Aviv. As for his own 
country, he said, "People will understand with how much reserve 
we have responded — and after this, criticism of the response 
will lower."

That question — do you get it? — came almost instantly to mind 
yesterday to me, too, after having just spent two months reporting 
from Israel. It was asked on more levels than merely how to deal 
with those who kill Americans for having committed the unforgivable 
sin of being Americans.

You can't avoid the question when, again, as on many occasions 
while working in Israel in the first half of the 1990's, you have 
seen the human wreckage caused by the suicide bombs that go off 
with sickening frequency. You ask it because Jerusalem offers a 
glimpse of what New York may become. Some likened the assault on 
the trade center and the Pentagon to the attack on Pearl Harbor 
in 1941. If the point was that we Americans may never be the 
same, the analogy is apt. Jerusalem points the way.

JUST three days ago, I wrote about the fear that now grips 
Israelis, how they listen for the sirens, how as the ambulances 
keep coming, they reach for cell phones. Frantically, they call 
to make sure that loved ones are all right. Often, they cannot 
get through because so many people are phoning at the same time. 
They try to hold the panic at bay.

All of that happened in New York yesterday.

Even without knowing who was behind this monstrous act, you 
could not shake off the televised images of crowds of Palestinians 
— not a handful of bloodthirsty extremists — chanting "God is 
great" and joyously handing out candy in celebration on the 
streets of Nablus in the West Bank. Same as when a bomb went off 
in Jerusalem and killed children and their mothers in a restaurant.

The funerals for yesterday's victims will, you may be certain, 
become national events and, for many, occasions for political 
statements. Same as in Jerusalem.

In Israel, there is no such thing as six degrees of separation. 
In a country that small, two degrees is more like it. If you don't 
know a bombing victim personally, you almost surely know someone 
who does. You may safely bet that an extraordinary number of 
New Yorkers will have the same relationship to someone whose 
life was cruelly extinguished yesterday in Lower Manhattan.

"It's all very personal there, and now it's all very personal 
here," said David Harris, executive director of the American 
Jewish Committee.

More clearly than ever, Americans now understand that they may not 
assume any public place is safe. Same as in Jerusalem.

Remember the suicide bomber who killed 15 innocent people at a 
Sbarro's pizza outlet in downtown Jerusalem last month? As timing 
would have it, that restaurant is supposed to reopen today. 
No doubt an armed guard will be posted at the entrance, as one is 
these days at almost every restaurant and outdoor cafe in central 
Jerusalem.

We certainly have no shortage of Sbarro outlets in New York. 

Do you get it now?