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October 10, 2003/Tishri 14 5764, Vol. 56, No.3
Human cost of terror
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
I've been there many times.
Cafe Hillel, that is.
Israel's answer to Starbucks, a new chain of coffee houses in Jerusalem.
We frequented the one on Emek Refaim Street in the German Colony almost every day during our summer stay in Israel.
It was usually buzzing, the outdoor patio jammed. Twenty-somethings, older couples, families with kids, even the occasional dog cum walker vying for tables, and someone always pulling up an extra chair.
It was a great place to relax, to soak up the atmosphere.
We loved being part of the scene, lingering over coffee with friends, imagining even for an hour or so that this was what it was like to be an Israeli, thinking that we had even an inkling of what it meant to live in the Jewish state.
And then we received word of the suicide bombing last month at "our" Cafe Hillel.
A terrorist scuffled with a security guard - Which one? We felt as if we knew them all - and then detonated his explosive-laden belt shattering the lively hum and spattering the floor and walls with flesh and blood.
We were horrified, stunned as much with the devastating news as with our own ingenuousness. We had been lulled into thinking that normalcy was as easy as sipping a cappuccino at the corner cafe. But now we knew that we were just lucky tourists who happened to be in Israel during a pause in the violence, a charmed few weeks when the hopes for peace buoyed us like the balmy summer evening air.
What hubris to even think we could ever understand.
And then the scene repeated itself last week in Haifa. Maxim's, another popular gathering spot, was filled with patrons lunching on a sunny afternoon overlooking the sea.
An ordinary lazy Saturday for many.
Until a pony-tailed young woman strode in and blew herself up along with 19 Israelis.
Idle pleasures become palpable horror. Again.
My mind replays the evenings at Cafe Hillel, the lunches and dinners at local cafes. I think of the waiters who practiced their English with us, the security guards who joked as they searched our bags, the counter people who inevitably got our orders wrong (their English or our Hebrew?). I recall the couples pushing babies in strollers, often a toddler or two in tow, the families strolling with ice cream cones, the teenage couples walking, arms entwined.
And I think of the Applebaum family, who instead of marrying off a daughter, buried her along with her beloved father, both victims of the Cafe Hillel attack. And I think of Liran Zer-Aviv, who did not even get to celebrate his fourth birthday, killed in last Saturday's bombing in Haifa, and the hundreds of other victims of the senseless violence.
Numbers are numbing, nameless digits that belie the vast human toll.
I can never understand what such devastating loss means. But I can express my horror, I can laud Israel's defiance, I can defend its right to protect its citizens.
And I can go back.
See you at Cafe Hillel.
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.
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