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When I used to live in Israel I used to go to the bars in Tel-Aviv all the time. My favorite was this place right on the beach called the Dolphin Club. Normally my friends and I would go there every Friday night, but one weekend I decided to stay home. The next morning the first thing I saw on the news was that the Dolphin Club was the latest target of a suicide bombing attack. 17 people were killed and over 90 were badly injured. For some reason it didn’t bother me too much, but I guess from living there for a few years I became desensitized to the violence, but the sad fact is that Israelis put up with this on almost a weekly basis.
737 Israeli civilians, men, woman, and children died of terrorist attacks since the conflict started in September of 2000. Now 737 might not sound like a huge amount, especially compared to the 3,000 or so that died on 9/11, but when you look at the fact that Israel has a population of 5 million, versus the US’s population of 280 million, a 56 to 1 ratio, the 737 would translate to over 40,000 deaths if Israel were the size of the US. Now that is a very frightening number.
Aside from the brief news clips that CNN covers once in a while, most people are unaware of how bad the situation really is in Israel. So from my own experiences and conducting my own research, I will explain just how badly terrorism affects Israelis on a daily basis. I’ll be covering how and where terrorist activity occurs, the reasoning behind a terrorist, and finally what steps can be taken to prevent terrorism.
As horrible as the suicide bombing attacks are, what’s even worse is how frequent they happen. Think back to how you felt when you first heard news of the 9/11 attack, now picture what it must be like to see that sort of thing on the news nearly every weekend. The scariest thing about the terrorism problem in Israel is the fact that it happens so often. Although once in a while you’ll hear a report of a car bomb, or something along the lines of that, the majority of attacks are suicide bombings. The typical suicide bomber is a male in his early twenties strapped with a vest of explosives. To create even more casualties, the bomber’s vest is filled with bags of nails that shoot off in every direction when the bomb goes off. So if you aren’t caught in the actual explosion, most likely you would be badly injured by the nails and other debris flying towards you. The areas that seem to be attacked the most range from family restaurants, to nightclubs, to regular commuter busses. These locations are chosen because they will insure the maximum amount of civilian casualties [next page]