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Reliving the horror: sparks of a third Intifada bring back memories from almost a decade ago

[additional-authors]
November 11, 2014

Growing up in a (relatively) small central town in Israel, hopping on a bus to Tel-Aviv with your friends is a must-do when you’re a teenager looking for a way to express your recently acclaimed adulthood. During the holidays (and sometimes in school days,) it is considered “cool” to spend the day in the “big city,” shopping and eating out. I only got to enjoy those “road trips” when I turned 16. Until then, I was not allowed to ride the bus, for the fear that it would blow up.

Between ages 10 and 15, I lived under the shadow of the second Intifada. I only left the house when it was necessary, and my parents avoided dining outside. During that time, there wasn’t a day gone by without a suicide attack, leaving children orphan, spouses widowed and parents bereaved.

Repeatedly, we have experienced that feeling of uncertainty, fear and shock. That moment we’ve got to know too well, when you sit at home, or at school or at work, and suddenly feel that something has happened. At first, you notice a strange look of shock on people's faces, as they face their laptop or Smartphone. Then, you hear the whispering around you, saying “Something's happened.”  No need to add more words to that sentence to understand exactly what this “something” is. The next step is to figure out where and what. You just sit in front of the screen and refresh the page until the news website you're at will upload more details. At that moment, you don't speak, hardly breath, and just sit nervous on your chair, bouncing your feet and looking sideways to see if someone knows something.

Then, you see it: “A bus exploded in Tel-Aviv,” and then, the scariest part begins. It is when you try to call everyone you know to make sure they are alive and well. You start with people you know live close by to the “event's” location. Then, you zoom out, because maybe someone you know and love and have a car, decided to take a bus that day for god knows why. You don't seek for logic, you just want to know everyone's okay. Then, in the middle of the calling list, the phone lines fall, because everyone else in the country is also making the very same type of calls.  It happens almost every time, and you know it's coming, but when it does, and you can't reach someone, you can never be sure if it is because of the lines that just fell or because he or she was there.

It's scary. These two or three minutes that last forever. It's scary even in the 20th time it happens, because the fear of losing someone you love to terror is something you can never get used to. Nonetheless, as the years passed by, we stood on our feet and learned to live again. We decided we won’t let terror win, hopped on the bus, ate outside and learned to put fear aside. Security guards stationed at the entrance of every public place helped us feel even safer.

A few years of relative silence made us a little bit too calm. The security guards laid down their guard, and we stopped looking for suspicious packages in public places and transportation. Those of us who were lucky enough to not to lose a loved one during the Intifada had the privilege to almost forget that scary time. The past two weeks brought everything back, as signs of a third Intifada sparked.

This time around, they don’t use bombs or suicide vests, but vehicles and knives. They are smarter than that, and fully aware of the way the media works in the age of social networks and instant information. They know that the media can’t afford to spend time on waiting for the full information, so they just post the initial information, and let the story roll. The vehicular terror attacks are being framed as “car accidents,” and the stabbing attacks are being framed as “acts of despair” by the “oppressed” Palestinian population.”

Sadly for us, we live in the real world, not the fabricated one being brought to the audience by the international media. We are now forced back into this horrifying reality of the moments after a terror attack. We now relive this familiar yet always shocking experience of uncertainty, of fear from the possibility of a next time, of worrying, which threatens to stop your heart from beating.

Ideology, despair, boredom- the reason doesn't matter. All that matters is the result: the anxiety and the pain that never lets go. Terror must be stopped.

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