News & Features
Editorial
Commentary
Letters
Obituaries
Sports
Socials
Submissions
Place Ad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day after bus bombing, and life goes on


by Matthew Gutman

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM -- A day after a Hamas bomber blew himself up on a bus here, taking at least 17 people with him, it seemed like everybody had a story to tell about the bombing -- but that few people cared.

The rhythm of life flowed as usual in Israel's capital.

Flags for an upcoming gay-pride parade fluttered on lampposts on Agrippas Street, just a few yards from the attack near the Mahane Yehuda market. On Jaffa Road, the scene of more than a dozen attacks over the past two years, Israeli youth with their cell phones hanging from their necks like dog tags strode down the street, sometimes stopping to admire their reflection in shop windows.

A small memorial -- a rectangular box studded with sputtering candles -- sat in the bombed bus stop, as if waiting for the No. 14 bus. Some bystanders turned their heads for a fleeting glimpse of the memorials and the kippah-clad yeshiva students who came to sing hymns at the site. Others stood and munched their lunchtime falafel sandwiches.

In contrast to cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv, which have suffered fewer bombings, Jerusalem makes informal affairs of its memorials. Following a March bus bombing in Haifa, local high school students pasted a nearby wall with 50 yards of memorial placards, and the streets ran with wax from memorial candles. Cracks of the stone wall were stuffed with little notes to the dead.

Not so in Jerusalem. One bystander, Menashe Hamo, spun around in his wheelchair to look at the little memorial in the bus stop. Hamo, 50, had been waiting near the bus stop at the time of the attack and had been slightly wounded, his wheelchair knocked backward by the force of the blast.

"But who cares anymore?" he asked. "We are being blown up in the streets daily and nothing changes, nothing happens. This is our routine."

In his pudgy hands, Hamo clutched a copy of that day's Ma'ariv newspaper. It ran a picture of him being carted off to an ambulance, his mouth gaping.

"I've read the article four times, and still I can't believe that I am here, standing on my own two feet," he said.

It was an unfortunate choice of words for a man debilitated by another bus bombing in Jerusalem in 1995.

Many Israeli left-wingers indirectly blamed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the bombing, as Hamas cited the June 10 botched assassination attempt on a Hamas leader as the catalyst -- though Israeli security officials said the bombing must have been in the works for some time. But many of those interviewed in Jerusalem placed the blame elsewhere.

"We have to invade Gaza. We have to boot Arafat and Hamas from here," Hamo said.

A few curious men leaned closer, clapping Hamo on the back in encouragement.

"Hell, we know we need two states, an Arab and Jewish one," he said. "That's why theirs has to be on the other side of the Jordan River" -- that is to say, in place of Jordan.

Hamo did not sleep the night of the bombing. "But still," he said, chuckling uneasily, "I feel lucky that I'm not permanently asleep."

Beside Hamo, a group of yeshiva students sat playing guitar and looking generally forlorn.

On the metal construction girder behind them they had put up a placard, reading, "An eternal people is undaunted by the long road." Pasted to the cardboard was an Israeli flag and front-page photographs of the bomb site from Israel's daily papers.

Next to the montage was a sign from the company installing Jerusalem's light rail system, which sounded like a commentary on the pursuit of peace over the past decade: "Thanks for the patience," it read.

"This scene is even sadder than it might be otherwise," said Idan Tzemach, who was wearing an Israeli flag knotted around his neck like a cape. "Everybody seems to have forgotten the terrible deed that happened here yesterday. Life continues and bodies are buried." Tzemach and 15 schoolmates had taken the day off from yeshiva because "it would have been hard to study on a day like this," he said. "We thought it important to identify with the people of Jerusalem."

About 30 yards from the bus stop, Nissim Mizrahi sat in Ilan Kalimi's bourekas shop. Asked if he were well, Mizrahi, 74, did not reply. A call came from the steaming kitchen: "Yeah, Nissim is suffering from post-traumatic stress. He's in shock from the bombing."

Kalimi explained that he had invited Mizrahi, who was 50 yards away when the bus exploded, to sit in his shop in order to "cheer him up."

"I was saved by God, you know," Mizrahi said, lifting up his shiny domed head and tapping his gnarled knuckles three times on the table.

A man named Yossi, who said he nearly had been killed in a bus bombing in May, strode to the bourekas counter.

"You see," said Kalimi, playing the role of court philosopher in his greasy stained shirt, "almost everyone in this city suffers from a near-death experience. This is how we live. It's not good, but it's reality."

Aside from the yeshiva students and a few stunned survivors like Hamo, the scene was given over to prowling journalists. Even some of the more cynical among them were stunned by the sparseness of emotion.

"Things here seem so normal, it's kind of weird," said one photojournalist, who had arrived in Israel just two months ago.


For updated briefs, click here to visit the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
This story was published in the WashingtonJewishWeek
on: Thursday, June 19, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Copyright 2003, Dallas Jewish Week