are still hospitalized from injuries sustained in suicide attacks years ago; many more require repeated hospital visits and multiple operations. Many are unable to work. Thousands of families have been forced to alter their lives to care for a wounded family member. Eran Mizrahi was celebrating his sixteenth birthday at a restaurant in Jerusalem when a suicide bomber blew himself up. A nail went through Eran’s skull, leaving him paralyzed and in a catatonic state.
Dr. Michael L. Messing’s remarkable report “Radiology of Suicide Bombing Terrorism” permits us to understand how the perfect weapon of the Palestinian “martyr” has literally and figuratively destroyed thousands of lives. He gives the example of Sharone K., who went to Ben Yehuda Street to meet a friend, Sharone M., for his birthday celebration. They stood fifteen feet away from one of the suicide bombers and were knocked unconscious by the blast. Sharone K.’s entire body, from head to toe, was imbedded with metal fragments measuring from millimeters to centimeters. Sharone M. was similarly wounded, but with one critical exception: a nail penetrated his skull and lodged in his brain. “From the X-ray images I saw, I estimated that Sharone K. had approximately 300 individual fragments, including many still recognizable as nails,” Messing writes. “Several of the fragments penetrated his vital organs. He sustained a punctured colon, a collapsed lung and a lacerated liver and kidney. I could actually feel the nails under his skin where they had burrowed and lodged.”
Earlier generations of bombs were packed with small ball bearings; during the Second Intifada, terrorists used heavier, deadlier metal. From screws and nails, to scrap metal found at construction sites, to rat poison, the additives boost the devastating impact of each explosion. The poison works as a blood thinner, causing victims to bleed profusely and die quickly. Shock waves from the explosion, especially in enclosed places like buses or restaurants, reverberate violently through the human body, collapsing lungs, breaking small bones, and destroying internal organs. Nuts and ball bearings are packed into the explosive vests to inflict unbearable pain and suffering on Jewish bodies.
Victoria Ogurenko was severely wounded in the Dolphinarium bombing that claimed the lives of twenty-one teenagers, including two of her close friends. They were standing outside the nightclub in Tel Aviv when a suicide bomber detonated his deadly explosives. A bone jutted out of Victoria’s left arm. Her body was peppered with nails, screws, and ball bearings. A nail had pierced the bone near her heart. A screw penetrated a bone in her left leg, and ball bearings punctured the length of her left arm and leg.
Unlike people in a conventional war zone, the victims are often riding to work or eating a meal. Nahum Barnea, the premier Israeli newspaper columnist, gave this description of the scene of a suicide bombing. “Everything is fast, so businesslike, so well executed, that it seems for a moment that it was all a show prepared in advance. A few dozen yards away life went on supposedly as usual. People sat in cafes. Bought books. Sat in their offices. That is an optical illusion. Concealed beneath this energetic routine lies deep despair.” The randomness of the attacks, the bombers’ ability to strike anywhere at any time, has created among Israelis a sense of living a kind of collective Russian roulette. Many avoid taking buses or going to movies, shopping malls, any crowded place. The terrorists’ aim is to force Israelis to place armed guards at kindergartens, to search bags at the entrance to movie theaters, to be afraid of sitting in their favorite cafes or restaurants. Crowded pedestrian malls, bar mitzvah celebrations, pool halls, foreign workers, public transport—these have been very popular terror targets. Islamic terrorism has tried to demolish Israel’s right to exist in its ordinary activities.
Aharon Barak, as chief justice, made this point in the summer of 2005 when he opened his judgment on a petition brought by Palestinians who were appealing the legality of the separation fence: “Most of the terrorist attacks were directed toward civilians. They struck at men and at women; at the elderly and at infants. Entire families lost their loved ones. The attacks were designed to take human life. They were designed to sow fear and panic. They were meant to obstruct the daily life of the citizens of Israel. Terrorism has turned into a strategic threat. Terrorist attacks are committed inside of Israel and in the area [Judea, Samaria, and Gaza]. They occur everywhere, including public transportation, shopping centers and markets, coffee houses, and inside of houses and communities.”
Every bomb is followed by a flurry of cell phone calls: “Are you all right?” Emergency workers are often traumatized and need counseling. Some unconscious children have been listed as “anonymous” because they didn’t have identification cards and the doctors were searching for their parents. For all those killed, there are many, many more left alive but burned, scarred, blinded, hearing-impaired, or missing limbs. Many sustain fractures, vascular injuries, paralysis, or brain damage. Magen David Adom, the Red Star of David, has been putting aside extra blood. Hospitals have purchased walkie-talkies, ventilators, outdoor showers, and all sorts of antibiotics.
During the Second Intifada, Israeli hospitals continued to provide medical care to Palestinian patients without interruption, although in the first year of terrorism, seventy-one Israeli ambulances that arrived to treat the injured in areas of confrontation were attacked and damaged by terrorists. The number of Gaza Palestinians being treated for medical conditions of all sorts in Israel’s hospitals has increased significantly, despite the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip and the barrage of rocket attacks. In 2007, according to an Israeli report published on January 13, 2008, more than seven thousand Palestinians were able to travel to hospitals in Israel and in the West Bank—an increase of 50 percent over the figure for 2006. Close to eight thousand more Palestinians were allowed to accompany them. Israeli officials commented that Israel took great risks in encouraging such visits, which on numerous occasions had been abused by Palestinians to attempt terrorist attacks on Israeli hospitals or other targets. Israeli medical cooperation with the Palestinians has resulted in the total eradication of tetanus and measles from the Palestinian population, a dramatically reduced death rate among Palestinian infants, training projects for Palestinian doctors in cardiac and brain surgery, and assistance in opening intensive care units.
Dr. Mario Goldin, who had immigrated from Argentina, treated dozens of terror victims and helped them get back to their lives again. His objective in life was to reduce “the pain of those who suffer.” He was considered a pioneer in pain management and “every patient’s best friend,” according to his coworkers. A bomb killed Dr. Goldin while he was waiting for the bus, planning to visit a few shut-ins. He had treated many Arabs and Palestinians at the Beit Levinstein Rehabilitation Hospital, some of them seriously injured in terror attacks. “He treated everybody equally,” said Ya’akov Hart, the director of Beit Levinstein. “A patient recently sent me a letter saying that Dr. Goldin had treated his pain, which was so bad that he couldn’t walk for six months. He went to Dr. Goldin for treatment and he was up on his feet again. He asked me to thank Mario, who he said had called him every three days to see how he was feeling. He was very caring and humane, charming, and dedicated. His death is a terrible loss.” Dr. Goldin was one of many doctors killed by terrorist bombs.
The terrorist attacks in Israel have produced images that never go away. When the smoke cleared from the explosion on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, Jacob Heyn saw a heart, still beating, lying on the sidewalk amid the shattered glass. “There was no body, just a heart beating. I didn’t think such a thing could happen. But I saw it and others saw it,” said Heyn, eighty-seven years old. He had been standing with his son in front of a bookstore that his family owns, filled with displays of children’s books. It was a normal day on a busy street. Bret Stephens, then editor of the Jerusalem Post, called it “the amazing and horrifying quiet—that was the quiet of ten murdered souls.”
Seconds after a suicide bomber killed a woman and her granddaughter, Danit Margolinski, standing with her five-year-old son at a video arcade next door, sprinted to offer help. Bleeding and broken bodies lay everywhere, as screaming women protected shrieking babies. Margolinski scooped up one baby from a mother sprawled on the floor and swaddled her in her shirt. Margolinski remained frozen on the spot, as if she were in a coma. “Slowly, I will become myself again, but the problem is: How will I forget the babies crying, and the women
