JERUSALEM -- Last Thursday night, I was watching a silly movie on television, starting to drive away the week's troubles and preparing for a pleasant, lazy weekend.
In Israel, however, things are not so simple. At a certain point, I thought I heard the crack of gunfire. Was this gunfire indeed, or fireworks? Last week was the beginning of the Hebrew month of Adar, and there is a Jewish tradition saying ''When Adar enters, we have to increase our joy.'' Kids, then, take advantage and play with fireworks and other noisy gadgets.
I quickly learned that it was no fireworks. Jerusalemites have a way to tell. In no time, the sirens of ambulances carried the bad news, and the film was pushed away from the screen by the breaking news: A terrorist broke into the nearby Jewish theological college (Yeshiva, in Hebrew) Merkaz Harav and opened fire on the students, who had been studying Torah. After a painful night of waiting, the horrible death toll was revealed: Eight pupils dead and several more wounded.
Merkaz Harav is named after its founder, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, and has gained fame for its high level of learning. After the Six Day War Rabbi Kook's son and successor, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, inspired his students and followers to settle in the areas of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza. Ali Dhaim, the Palestinian terrorist who committed the heinous crime and the people who had sent him, picked their target carefully: They were not just killing Jews; they were targeting the symbol of Jewish settlements.
Controversial settlements
Years ago I used to live next to Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, in Kiryat Moshe neighborhood. I never liked the settlement ideology that sprang out of it. Although I believed -- much like the teachers and students there -- that Hebron and Nablus were the cradle of the Jewish people, I nevertheless thought that Israelis shouldn't settle in areas that had been ours long ago but were now heavily populated by Palestinians. Settling there might eventually turn the area into a binational state, where Arabs would eventually become the majority. Is this our dream for a Jewish and democratic state?
However, I couldn't stop myself from admiring these young people for their motivation and for the fact that they had put their money where their mouths were. Like the early Zionist pioneers, they settled on God-forsaken hilltops, lived puritan lives and often risked their lives for their beliefs. I thought that they were fundamentally mistaken, but I had great respect for their conviction. When Ali Dhaim opened fire, his bullets hit not only his helpless victims: He hit my heart and the heart of every Israeli, regardless of ideology or political inclination.
This is a sad event, not only because of the terrible waste of life. It is depressing, because it can drive peace-loving people to despair. It is the messages that Palestinians and Israelis send to each other that keep the hope. When in 1994 the Jewish doctor Baruch Goldstein opened fire during a prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 innocent Palestinians, there was a wave of shock and protest all over Israel and among the Jewish People.
A few days later, as the spokesman of the government, I accompanied then-President Ezer Weitzman on a visit to Hebron. Weitzman, a former fighter pilot, ignored the pleas of his bodyguards, jumped out of his car and spoke for every decent Israeli when he told the agitated Palestinian crowd that he was sorry, that he was ashamed that a Jew should commit such a crime.
How different from the reaction of Palestinians last week. When the news about the massacre in Merkaz Harav Yeshiva broke out, an outburst of joy erupted in Gaza. People honked car horns triumphantly and gave candies to streetwalkers.
One has to work hard not to become a pessimist these days. A massacre like this might invoke Jewish revenge. On the Palestinian side, it might embolden the radicals.
I hope that reasonable people on both sides will see the tragic event of last week as a warning sign, telling us all to stop, sit down and work for a peaceful settlement, before we drift into the abyss.
Uri Dromi is an analyst based in Jerusalem.
