Suicide Bomber Kills 3, Injures 24 at Netanya Mall\n\nAt least three people were killed and 24 wounded in a suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Netanya on Tuesday. Islamic Jihad released a statement claiming responsibility for the blast at a shopping mall.
In Sidney Lumet\’s searing short film, \”The Rachel Aria,\” a fanatical Jew tears a Torah scroll while making a horrific vow: He\’s decided to let himself and his adopted child be boiled alive rather than convert to Christianity; he won\’t save her by revealing she\’s actually the daughter of the cardinal, his arch-nemesis.
Early Friday morning a few weeks ago, I was on a bus to Jerusalem\’s Central Bus Station. I planned to take another bus from there to Mevasseret Tzion, a suburb of Jerusalem, to get a ride to Bet Shemesh for my weekly job in a school there. I was right on schedule. On the bus, I went over my notes for the day, jotting down any new ideas that came along. The bus sighed as we curved around a sharp bend in the road, and I looked around at the other passengers.
I love riding public transportation because I see the most interesting people. I find myself staring at them, picking them apart, and imagining their stories. I examine their clothes, their hair, their belongings, their facial expressions, note whether they are traveling alone or in a pack, if they meet my gaze or if they are also looking around at the other passengers. With all of these bits of information, I piece together their histories and where they are going. It was a gorgeous day, a preview of spring, and the tension that continuously hangs in the Jerusalem air seemed lighter. Though it was early, people were already out preparing for Shabbat.
The burnt-out hulk of an Israeli bus destroyed by a Palestinian suicide bomber had just arrived at The Hague on Sunday, when a second bus was blown up at a busy intersection in Jerusalem.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya\’alon was describing the Palestinian Authority\’s strategy of terrorism, when a small commotion erupted in the corner of the room.
Rabbi Binny Freedman, the educational director of the international Jewish organization Isralight, was nonchalantly eating his baked ziti in the back of Jerusalem\’s Sbarro\’s pizza store when a suicide bomber detonated his bomb there.
\”It was the loudest explosion I have ever heard, and I am an Israeli army officer who has been under artillery fire,\” Freedman said of the August 2001 incident. \”People started screaming, and then a huge ball of fire swept through the entire front and there were flames everywhere. It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. I was coming down the stairs, and I saw a woman lying on the ground, looking at me trying to say something. I kneeled down next to her and I saw the light go out in her eyes. I watched her die. There was a man who had been at the table to my right, and he had been blown back against the wall, and he was lying there without his legs.\”
Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head and troubling my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim his weapon at a mother and her two little children and kill them?
When a suicide bomber walked unimpeded into a crowded supermarket in Efrat earlier this month and set off a small bomb, the explosion damaged a section of the store\’s bakery.
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