How are things in Israel, anyway?

SHANA ROSENBLATT MAUER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

Efrat
Two months ago, I was in the middle of teaching my usual Friday morning body toning class at my local community centre when the irksome buzz of a cellphone sounded. Moments after answering, the face of the phone's owner, Jill, froze in a stunned stare. Over the drone of the canned aerobics rhythm, I heard her say, "What? There's been an attack in Efrat."

As the women in the class set up their mats for their workout, I rushed to cut the music and confirm that I had heard Jill correctly. "Where?" she asked. "In the supermarket? No one was hurt?"

By then, everybody was eavesdropping. For weeks, the residents of Efrat had been made aware of terrorist attack warnings. Considering the wave of suicide-bombings that had been carried out throughout Israel during that month, we had no reason to consider them a hoax. So, when the words "No one was hurt" were uttered, everyone in the exercise studio instantly understood what had transpired.

Suddenly, a routine exercise class was transformed into a makeshift intelligence operation. What should we do? Who should we call for details? The local security centre? No, they'll be busy checking for any wounded, secondary bombs and other attackers. Finally, one woman got through to her husband. The details trickled in: A terrorist had entered Efrat and opened fire in the main shopping plaza. No, a suicide-bomber had blown himself up in the local grocery store. No, a suicide-bomber had tried to blow himself up in the bread section of the local grocery store, but an alert shopper had shot him first.

By this time, everyone in the class, charged with adrenaline, was busy doing a mental roll call. Where are my kids? Where is my husband? Where are my friends and neighbors? A few women in the class immediately bolted, desperate for the sight of their loved ones alive and intact. The panic of the others was more measured. Some were certain their family had been out of harm's way. Others performed their census over their cellphones.

When it was clear that the incident was essentially over, and that no one in the room had family members who had been within close proximity, I decided to press play and return our focus to the rectus abdominus. The Israeli-born in the class resumed their tummy-tightening crunches oblivious to the disorienting absurdity of our predicament. The rest of us, Diaspora Jews-cum-Israelis, were less impervious. We were struck by the bizarre juxtaposition of events that had turned our one hour of exercise into a footnote in the annals of a situation that is war in every way except in name.

By then, those who had fled the class had returned. Everyone in Efrat was instructed to stay indoors until security teams had done a thorough sweep of the town and ruled out any subsequent threats. In the meantime, the community centre's guard was not allowing anyone out of the building. Since we were holed up inside, returning to exercise simply seemed like the most rational course of action. Yet, it was surreal to continue with bicep curls and hamstring stretches as a dead man lay hundreds of metres away with enough explosives fastened to his body to take down most of the shopping centre and the majority of the Friday morning shoppers.

In the hours and days after the incident, the details of the whole episode became public knowledge. The suicide-bomber had worked in Efrat for two years as part of a construction crew that had been building Efrat homes for more than a decade. One of his brothers had been part of this crew for eight years. His other brother had carried out a terrorits attack in northern Jerusalem several months prior. He entered Efrat without much fanfare, flashing his work papers that allowed him to pass through security unhindered.

The man who shot him, Louis, noticed him in the shopping centre right away. It was a warm, sunny morning, the kind that heralds in the spring. The Palestinian, who had been part of the crew that built Louis' own house, was wearing dark glasses and a heavy overcoat. Louis also noted that it was strange for him to be in Efrat on a Friday – the Muslim Sabbath, when the building crews do not work. Louis followed him into the grocery store on a hunch. Initially, he just watched him. Fortunately, when the Palestinian moved to detonate his explosives, they malfunctioned and just gave him a small jolt, which hurled his body several metres. Before he had another chance to execute his mission, Louis did what he undoubtedly never expected to do in his lifetime; shoot dead a male adult intent on wreaking as much damage as possible to unsuspecting Jews preparing for their Sabbath.

The Palestinian had worked on many homes in Efrat. The week before he attempted his failed attack, he had completed work on my friend Tova's house. He was in charge of all plaster work – walls, mouldings, finished detail. He had been at Tova's house frequently during that week, discussing the last few odds and ends that needed attention. He spoke amiably, attentive to her concerns and requests. Tova, like many others in Efrat, knew him by name and accepted him at face value: as a hardworking Palestinian, almost certainly keen on Palestinian independence, but ultimately concerned with the economic and emotional well-being of his wife and family. So, when the incident occurred, one could not help but wonder how this gainfully employed, likeable and trusted individual marched into an unsuspecting community and chose to play the angel of Satan. In no way did he fit the typical terrorist profile: unskilled, unemployed, single and childless. And yet there he was at the doorstep of the town where he had earned his daily bread for two years, thanking the residents with a belt packed with double the amount of explosives used in the previous year's Dolphinarium attack in Tel-Aviv that killed 17.

But gratitude of this sort rarely makes it into the papers or the breaking news banners of cable news shows. In fact, it is likely that the story was only newsworthy at all because a Jewish man from a Jewish settlement in the West Bank had killed a Palestinian. The rest of the facts were decorative, but essentially unimportant. And, I suppose we are numbed by this reductive process. I continued my class that day because no one was hurt; because Israelis are conditioned to maintain a stiff upper lip and go on with the show – a strategy that contributes to psychological stamina, but clouds the emotions and reactions that are an instinctive response to a close encounter with unfathomable evil.

Now, several months later, there are only vague reminders of that dramatic morning. The entrances to supermarkets in Efrat are now adorned with beefy looking men with automatic weapons; guards hired to make sure customers can purchase their groceries free of the worry that they might not make it to the checkout counter with all their limbs - or at all. When cellphones ring during my class, I pause, no longer annoyed with the disruption, but anxiously waiting to make sure the caller only has some benign message to deliver. When getting ready for school in the morning, my six year-old son no longer asks me to check the news in the morning to make sure there are no reports about terrorists in Efrat.

Was it right to continue with the class that day? Should we have been more contemplative, fixated on the miraculously foiled mission. Should we have been more reverant and turned the back corner of the grocery store into some sort of shrine of thwarted terror? Maybe in another time or another place, it would have been appropriate to erect a small monument, a tribute to averted catastrophe. But, awash in attacks, their victims and wounded, we could not handle the assault overload and chose to move on.

And, we have moved on. Since then, we have mourned the victims of a Netanya hotel Passover seder where the angel of death forgot to note the protective mezuzah on the doorpost. We have gaped at the charred, bloody remnants of a Haifa restaurant, where, in a matter of seconds, lunchtime customers were divided into victims and survivors. We have lit Shabbat candles while distracted by the fresh news that the open-market in Jerusalem, Mahane Yehuda, had once again become a grave of fresh corpses.

And, we have fought back. It is not a fight we wanted to enter and the cost of this fight is too high on all counts. But, we could not continue to be dealt blow after blow without responding. It is unthinkable for any nation to sit idly by as its citizens are exposed, wounded and killed by the most pernicious acts of terrorism on a daily basis. A clear message had to be sent: No matter what the situation, the severity of the grievances, this is not alright under any circumstances.

A few weeks later, again during my aerobics class, I was faced with another unusual scenario. The community centre had become a temporary army base for reservists stationed in Bethlehem as part of the anti-terrorist military action, Operation Defensive Shield. Half way through the workout our music was drowned out by the PA system, which began to blare traditional Zionist songs, background music for men who would certainly rather be at home with their wives and children. As the patriotic, admittedly sentimental songs continued, I gave up following the beat of my own music and succumbed to the optimistic, even chipper staccato of early pioneering songs, which promised better days ahead when our neighbors would no longer be our enemies.

This time, I was able to make sense of the juxtaposition of unlikely incongruities. Weeks before, we had continued our exercise class, not because we were simply insensitive or excessively jaded, but because the will to maintain a life worth living is irrepresible; because we knew that as Jews living in Israel we still had choices that would have been the stuff of dreams of generations gone by; because we knew that we would still have the desire, or possibly folly, to listen to melodies filled with lyrics that portray a different time, a tomorrow when borders do not need fences and boys do not grow into soldiers.

Shana Rosenblatt Mauer, originally from Vancouver, is a writer living in Efrat, Israel. She works as a public relations professional and grant writer for the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and has been teaching aerobics for more than a decade.

^TOP