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By Bezalel Stern
This past month, my community was terrorized. Every morning, the first thing I did was check the news. I had trouble sleeping. I called my parents every night, and told them I loved them. I was afraid.
I was afraid because I am from Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington D.C., and the place where John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the two alleged snipers, killed randomly, almost never missing their targets, with single bullets shot from an unknown point. It was an awful time. What made the situation so unbearable, though, was not the fact that there was a murderer going around shooting people. It was the randomness of it all, and the fact that nothing anybody did could protect them. No matter what my family did, no matter what precautions they took to protect themselves, there was no guarantee they would be safe.
The murders were random, they were close to home — one of the shootings was three blocks away from my 12-year-old sister's school — and I felt impotent, weak and powerless. I was therefore overjoyed when I heard the sniper had been captured. I could breathe easily. My little corner of the world was safe.
It's funny, the last time I felt the impotence and downright terror that I felt when the sniper was terrorizing my community was when I spent time in Israel. The situation in Israel is very similar to the situation that my family and the rest of the people in the D.C. area faced over the last month. When I was in Israel, I was conscious, always, on some level, that every place I went to, every step I took, I could be killed randomly — blown up on a bus, going to a mall, a party or anywhere else. The randomness is what kills you, makes you crazy. Anything can happen, at anytime. Nobody is in control. Nobody is safe.
But, of course, there is a major distinction between the shootings in the Washington area and the terrorist killings in Israel: The ones in D.C. had a definite stop point. Muhammad and Malvo were caught and the terrorism of the area ended. In Israel, unfortunately, things are not as simple. The network of terrorism — the killing of innocent civilians randomly and haphazardly, with no regard for race, religion or way of life, as in the Haifa bombing of an Arab café — is, to the dismay of all who hope for true peace, ingrained in many from early childhood and supported and often directly funded by the Palestinian Authority. In Israel, catching one man won't end terrorism and won't terminate a life of fear.
When the sniper was carrying out his dastardly and evil attacks in the Washington area, the world was tense, waiting for him to be caught. According to Google News (http://news.google.com), thousands of newspapers ran stories regarding the killings. The daily life of a whole sub-section of the country was thrown into chaos. Myriads of people stopped pumping gas. Children, as a rule, were not allowed outside. Football games, concerts, and parades were cancelled. A section of the nation, as it were, put their lives on hold.
When the hundreds or even thousands of snipers, however, terrorize innocent civilians in Israel, life goes on. People mourn, of course, but the Jewish State has, unfortunately, become so used to acts of random terror that it is just not feasible to postpone life — like the residents of the Washington area did — in order to wait out the terror. The terror never ends.
Due to intensive police work and a good deal of luck, Muhammad and Malvo, the snipers, were caught. My family, and thousands of others who live in my small section of the country, feel safe again, protected from random acts of terror. For us, the randomness and insanity of the past month is over. With a weary look over our shoulders, we can breathe easily, and move on. For the millions of innocent men, women and children who live in Israel, however, the future doesn't look nearly as bright.
The Justice - Brandeis University student newspaper
November 5, 2002
America Sees Relief From Terror; Israel Still Captive
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