The Horrific Realities of Israel That Outsiders Will Never Understand
Hence why, on the world stage, very little sympathy gets thrown our way.
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I will never forget my first “suspicious object” moment in Israel.
It was a random weekday. I had just awoken in my new apartment on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, a few weeks after moving to Israel in 2013.
After getting ready, I walked down the apartment building stairs as usual, made my way onto this bustling street, and suddenly saw a massive group of people in front of me on the sidewalk.
Confused, I walked a few more feet to the outskirts of the crowd, stood on my tippy-toes, and tried to see what was happening. Outside of a police siren and some black and yellow caution tape, I could not understand what all the commotion was about.
Was it a parade of some kind that I did not hear about? Was it because of a construction site? A car accident? Did then-U.S. President Barack Obama just arrive in Tel Aviv?
No, one of the Israeli bystanders told me. It was a “hefetz chashud” — Hebrew for “a suspicious object.” In other words, the bomb squad had arrived after someone reported a bag without an owner. They quarantined off one of Tel Aviv’s most popular streets and then, a few seconds later, a loud boom lightly shook the ground beneath us, ruffled the leaves of nearby trees, and echoed throughout Dizengoff Street in both directions.
The bomb squad had just used a robot to blow up this “suspicious object.” Within seconds, the black and yellow caution tape was removed and everyone went on their way as if none of this had transpired in the first place.
Welcome to Israel.
I soon learned that this “suspicious object” incident was a routine occurrence in Israel. It happens every week, sometimes multiple times a week, throughout the country. In America, where I was born, most people would just ignore a bag left alone. But in Israel, the social contract has it that you must report any inkling of “a suspicious object” just to be on the safe side.
This disturbing trend dates back to at least the 1971, when a bomb exploded in the popular Patra restaurant, located in downtown Jerusalem. The bombing, executed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, killed three people and injured more than 20 others. The restaurant was a symbolic target due to its popularity among civilians, emphasizing the Palestinians’ use of bombings to sow fear in public spaces.
Four years later, a bomb was placed in a refrigerator in the crowded Zion Square in downtown Jerusalem, a central location frequented by civilians. The explosion killed 15 people and wounded 77 others. The attack, carried out again by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marked an escalation of terrorist bombings in urban Israeli areas, aiming to maximize civilian casualties.
In 1978, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a bus traveling along the Coastal Road in Israel and engaged in a shooting spree before detonating bombs inside the bus. The attack resulted in the deaths of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, and wounded 71 others. The operation was planned by Dalal Mughrabi of the Palestine Liberation Organization and was one of the deadliest attacks on Israeli civilians at that time.
In 1994, a Hamas suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives on Jaffa Street, one of the busiest areas of downtown Jerusalem. The explosion killed six civilians and wounded dozens of others. This bombing targeted a densely populated civilian area, a hallmark of Hamas’ strategy in the 1990s. That same year, another Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in central Tel Aviv, killing 22 civilians and wounding 50 others.
In 1996, two suicide bombings took place on the same bus line in Jerusalem less than a week apart. The first killed 26 people, and the second killed 19 more. Both attacks injured over 100 people. These bombings were part of Hamas’ broader strategy to derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
One year later, a bomb exploded in the central Hebron market, killing four Israeli civilians. This Palestinian Islamic Jihad attack came in the wake of renewed tensions across the city, where both Israelis and Palestinians lived under fragile arrangements. The use of a market as the target was intended to disrupt civilian life and spread terror in a mixed community.
Six months thereafter, two Hamas suicide bombers detonated explosives in the busy Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, killing 16 people and injuring 178. The market, a central shopping location, was packed with civilians when the bombers struck. This attack was one of the deadliest of the 1990s, designed to disrupt normal civilian life.
Then ensued the notorious Second Intifada, which immediately followed the Camp David Summit in 2000 mediated by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton. It was there that Israel, led by leftist Prime Minister Ehud Barak, made significant proposals as part of a peace deal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good, including:
Israeli withdrawal from 91 to 95 percent of the West Bank
The entire Gaza Strip under Palestinian control
Palestinian sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem (including most Arab neighborhoods)
Palestinian administrative control over the Arab areas of Jerusalem’s Old City (with the possibility of sovereignty over parts of the Temple Mount, or shared governance)
The creation of an international fund to compensate Palestinian refugees
In exchange for these concessions, Israel sought a clear, comprehensive agreement that would end all claims and hostilities, signaling the end of the conflict. This included mutual recognition of each state’s right to exist and the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Yasser Arafat, then the leader of the Palestinians, ultimately spurned this offer, believing it did not meet Palestinian demands. But instead of renegotiating the various aspects, he outright rejected the proposal and went on to sanction the Second Intifada — resulting in more than 1,000 Israeli deaths (mostly civilians) via waves of Palestinian suicide bombings in nightclubs, buses, restaurants, and other public places.
Then came the rocket attacks emanating out of Gaza. A 49-year-old grandfather and 3-year-old boy were the first deaths produced from rockets fired at Israel by Palestinian terrorists in the Strip. Their deaths prompted Israel’s Ministry of Defense to undertake a project that would result in an innovative missile defense system known today as the “Iron Dome.”
Still, other measures had to be taken to protect Israeli civilians from rampant, barbaric Palestinian terrorism on their borders. Beginning in the mid-1970s, buildings in Israel were built with secure rooms in each apartment and home, but usually only in communities near the borders. After 1991, all new apartments and homes were mandated to have secure rooms.
Whereas many young families in Western countries think about what their children’s “bonus room” or “play room” will look like, young Israeli families have to decide which of their children’s rooms will double as the safe room.
Speaking of children, young Israelis practice incoming rocket drills in schools (similar to fire, earthquake, and hurricane drills in other parts of the world) — in the event that Palestinians indiscriminately launch rockets at Israel on any given day, at any given hour, like they have now for years.
For the especially young schoolchildren, Israeli teachers invented sing-along jingles to keep the kids calm as they are escorted to the bomb shelter. In some Israeli cities, entire classrooms of children only have 15 seconds to go from classroom to bomb shelter, at any moment’s notice.
Once the IDF detects an incoming rocket or missile attack, they activate sirens in designated areas. The problem is that these sirens are eerily similar to everyday sounds like an ambulance, police car, motorcycle, and even those electric scooters. After a few days of hearing these sirens, Israelis develop a PTSD response which prompts them to jump at any of these everyday sounds. And this response lasts for months on end, long after the sirens stop wailing.
Another law that passed in Israel some time ago: Hitchhiking is perfectly legal — except for Israeli soldiers, out of fear that they will be kidnapped. Along with bombing, kidnapping is a favorite pastime of Palestinian terrorists. There was the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, when members of Black September (a militant faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization) stormed the Israeli athletes’ quarters, taking 11 of them hostage.
Two years later, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona, where they took hostages in an apartment building, killing 18 people, including eight children. That same year, Palestinian terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated Israel from Lebanon and took more than 115 hostages, most of them schoolchildren, in a school building in the town of Ma’alot.
In 1975, eight Palestinian terrorists from Fatah infiltrated Israel by boat from Lebanon and seized the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, taking dozens of hostages, mostly hotel staff and guests. Then, one year later, Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France plane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, diverting it to Entebbe, Uganda, with more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers held hostage.
In 1985, four Palestinian terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, taking more than 400 passengers and crew members hostage. Four years later, a Hamas terrorist hijacked an Israeli passenger bus on its route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and deliberately drove it off a steep ravine, resulting in the deaths of 16 passengers and injuring 27 others.
Throughout the early 2000s, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza utilized underground tunnels to infiltrate Israel and kidnap Israelis. The most famous and successful example of this was the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006. Hamas operatives tunneled into Israel and attacked a military post near the Kerem Shalom crossing, killing two soldiers and capturing Shalit, who was held captive in Gaza for more than five years.
His capture was used as leverage for negotiations, and in 2011, Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were convicted terrorists with mass murder on their hands (including Yahya Sinwar, who became Hamas’ longtime leader in Gaza until he was killed by the IDF just a few weeks ago).
In 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Hamas operatives while hitchhiking near Gush Etzion in the West Bank. The abduction triggered a large-scale Israeli military operation known as “Operation Brother's Keeper,” aimed at rescuing the teenagers and dismantling Hamas’ infrastructure in the West Bank. Tragically, the teenagers’ dead bodies were found shortly after they were abducted.
And we all know what happened on October 7th.
But here’s the catch: Whereas people in bigger countries get startled by terrorist attacks that happen somewhere “over there” (i.e. across the country), there is no such thing as “over there” in Israel. Every inch of this tiny land is intimately connected. When terror strikes, it hits close to home — always.
A few weeks before October 7th, I went on a date with a young woman who was murdered (along with her sister) at the now-infamous Nova Music Festival. And the famed American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin — I met for coffee with his father in Tel Aviv a few months before October 7th to discuss possible business collaborations.
In Israel, the front line is everywhere, and the concept of a safe, distant “elsewhere” is a luxury that simply does not exist. Such are the horrific realities for Israelis that outsiders will never understand.
Hence why, on the world stage, very little sympathy gets thrown our way.
This is a good record of the violence directed against Israeli civilians. I don’t think the average person has any real notion of just how small Israel is (or that Jews are just 0.2% of the world population) and certainly not of the historical facts and realities of this tiny and relatively young country. How this record of violence primarily against Israeli Jews explains why Israel does not get much world sympathy is not directly stated here though.
The reason there is “no” sympathy—and I do believe many people actually do have unvoiced sympathy for Israelis—is because for the past six decades, the world has been fed a false narrative of Israeli aggression and wrong-doing. In the minds of many, Israel/Jews have it coming because all they’ve heard their whole lives is that Jews stole Muslim/Arab land and oppressed Muslims/Arabs—both outright blood libels, but embraced and believed by many. This is merely an extension, an off-shoot, of already well established, centuries-old, irrational Jew hatred. It’s a continuation of the story of the Jewish people—hated for being a people who stayed true to its origins and have refused to die out. The Muslims/Arabs, in general, and hard-core Jew haters hate us all the more because we dared to not only survive as a nation, but we had the audacity to reclaim our birthright and declare Jewish sovereignty in the cradle of Jewish civilization. In order to feel sympathy toward another, one has to genuinely care. “The World,” with notable exceptions, does not care about Jews.
Israelis in Amsterdam were attacked yesterday with ‘possibly three missing.’ Bibi is sending a plane to recover. European, British and American rising Jew hatred and actions may wake us up to Israel’s nightmare.