Living with Danger

When I am at home in the United States, people often ask me if I am scared when I am in Israel.  I was thinking about that the other night when I was hanging out in Tel Aviv with my brother and some friends.  We were swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and looking out at the bright, bustling city. Off to our right we could see a play area that was swarming with laughing, screeching children.  To our left, a group of girls were clapping and singing “Happy Birthday” in Hebrew.  Blaring Israeli pop music from a bar across the street was punctuated by the constant honking of cars pushing their way through the jammed street.  Everywhere you looked, there were guys playing soccer-volleyball; couples strolling along the soft, white beach; families playing in the pathetic little waves; and people out enjoying the evening.  It was hard to even imagine being scared, because everything was really normal.  There were so many people out having a good time, and nobody was acting the slightest bit scared.   

Everyday life here in Jerusalem looks a little bit different than life in Tel Aviv, but people don’t act scared here either.  Young siblings walk to the market without their parents to buy food for dinner.  Families clad in their fancy black and white clothing stream into the old city to pray at the Western Wall on Friday nights.  When the sun goes down on Shabbat, the stores all open back up, and people start coming out of the woodwork.  The streets are filled with the music of enthusiastic (though not always particularly talented) street musicians.  During the week, the buses are packed with commuters, the malls are packed with shoppers, and the parks are packed with families.  People don’t act scared.  They just go about their lives as normal.    

I think the main reason why people aren’t scared is because Jerusalem is not actually very dangerous right now.  There have not been any suicide bombings in Jerusalem since 2005 when the second Intifada (the Palestinian uprising) came to an end.  The last two wars were confined to the north and the area surrounding Gaza.  Jerusalem itself has remained unscathed.  I admit that five years is not a super long time, but the residents of Jerusalem have recovered quickly.  I met a man whose wife was killed in a terrorist attack in 2001.  I am sure that was a horrible experience, and I am sure that he still feels his loss.  He has been able to move on with his life, though.  He remarried, and he lives in a nice apartment in the middle of Jerusalem.  Now that the danger is no longer a daily reality, he has gone back to his normal life.  That seems to be true for most people around here.        

My impression, however, is that Israelis are particularly resistant to terror even during dangerous times.  If they got scared and ran away every time they were attacked, they would lose their country, and they wouldn’t have anywhere to run anyway.  I met a woman who moved here from America during the second Intifada, when Israel was experiencing regular terrorist attacks.  She was concerned about her two young boys, because their school was not in a safe neighborhood.  One day her son said to her, “Mom, if we kids took things as seriously as you do, we would never be able to grow up here in Israel.”  That attitude seems to be pretty common among the people who have grown up here.

 There are plenty of things in Jerusalem that remind you there are still potential problems.  Soldiers carry their M-16s everywhere they go.  You have to go through security to enter a shopping mall, a post office, and sometimes even a café.  To get onto my campus, I have to show my ID, have my backpack searched, and go through a metal detector.  Last week, I was out shopping, and someone left his backpack behind at a bus stop.  The bomb squad wasted no time.  They cleared the area, blocked off the street, and blew up the backpack.  Ten minutes later, everything was back to normal.  I know that all sounds pretty crazy, but it is amazing how quickly you get used to it.  You learn to travel light and keep track of your belongings.   It just becomes part of your everyday life, and before long, you hardly even think about it.

For me, living with the threat of wars and terrorist attacks feels a lot like living with the possibility of getting in a car accident. I always know in the back of my mind that I could get in a horrible accident.  I put on my seatbelt every time I get in the car, just in case.  I am not really scared, though, every time I drive somewhere.  The chances are very good that I will not get in an accident today, and I would go crazy if I lived my life with that much fear.  I just get in the car and drive to the grocery store.  If God does bring a catastrophe into my life one day, I will cross that bridge when I get to it and trust God to help me through.