Leonard Cole wants to wake the world to what Israel has suffered — and learned — from terror attacks.

"It’s all one piece," said Cole, a bioterrorism expert from Ridgewood, in a wide-ranging interview just before leaving for his more-than-50th trip to Israel. Terror attacks have killed and wounded thousands of Israelis, and Israelis have created an entirely new branch of medicine — terror medicine — in response.
An adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, an adviser to government agencies, and a frequent commentator in print and on television, Cole said he "was stunned to see how many books about suicide bombers have appeared in the last few years. Some of them are empathetic, some critical, but the number of those about the true victims is quite sparse."

The author of "The Eleventh Plague: The Politics Of Biological And Chemical Warfare" (W.H Freeman and Co., 1998), which dealt, in part, with Israel’s Scud siege during the first Persian Gulf War, Cole wanted "to help fill the gap. There’s a fascination in reading about and understanding the rationale of suicide bombers, but much less attention is paid to the consequences of their actions on the victims, the families, emergency responders, and ultimately the whole country."

Through his latest book, said Cole, a past chair of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and a past president of the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey, "I wanted to reach the hearts of those who cry only for the misery of the Palestinians…. I want people to cry, not just for the Palestinians, genuine as their suffering may be, but no less for the anguish they’ve caused to the Israelis."

To that end — evoking empathy and comprehension, not always the same thing — he wrote a book that is often hard to read, because your eyes fill with tears.

He tells, among other horrific accounts, of the devastating loss, in June of 2001, of young and vibrant life at Tel Aviv’s Dolphi Disco, popularly called the Dolphinarium.

A suicide bomber there killed 21 people and wounded some 120, mostly immigrant teens from the former Soviet Union, but the story of 16-year-old Yuli and 18-year-old Yelena Nelimov — and their mother, Ella, waiting at home for them to return from the disco — is particularly poignant.

Cole, who interviewed Ella Nelimov at length, outlines the girls’ day — how it began, as well as how it ended. "Both sisters loved to dance," he writes, "and going to the Dolphi at the end of a school week had become a joyful routine. In fact, that day their fun had begun at home, when they posed for photographs in their mother’s dresses."

But, Cole adds, earlier in the day that "Yuli and Yelena were draping themselves in their mother’s attire, Sa’id Hutari was preparing to wrap himself in something less seemly….

"Under the guidance of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, that June evening in 2001, Sa’id Hutari donned a garment variously described as a harness or belt. It was packed with explosives and inch-long nails, screws, washers, and ball bearings. Hamas and other terrorist groups," Cole writes, "including Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were prompting young people like Sa’id toward actions incompatible with civilized society."

What Hutari then did was certainly "incompatible with civilized society."

"Scarcely older than the Israeli teenagers gathered near the [disco’s] entrance," Cole notes, "he wedged his way among them. His bulky jacket drew no particular attention as he moved within feet of Yuli and Yelena….

"In an instant, bodies were thrown into the air. Limbs were sundered, and pieces of arms, legs, and hands flew in every direction. A burgeoning fireball engulfed an area 50 feet across as strips of human membrane were catapulted far beyond the edge of the fire."

Cole’s description of how the "suicide bomb" does its deadly work may be the best ever written — and is almost viscerally painful to read: "The metal pieces that had been packed with the explosives sprayed outward as fast as bullets. In less than a second, a nail could puncture a victim as cleanly as a hypodermic needle. Drilling farther inward, it could slice through an artery and end up lodged in the heart. A screw might take a different trajectory. Turned into a propeller, its rotary force could tear open a wad of skin and grind into the underlying muscle and nerve tissue, converting them into a mushy mass. A second screw might spin through the spinal cord, severing the motor connections between brain and limbs and leaving the victim permanently paralyzed."

What of the parents like Ella Nelimov, waiting at home, unable to reach their children, rushing into the night from hospital to hospital, desperate for news and terrified to get it? How does a suicide bomb damage them, and their country?

But here Cole has a surprise for us. Israelis mourn their dead like anyone else, but they have developed ways, he says, to cope with terror and grief, ways that can be models.

There is "a simple memorial several feet from the entrance to the former dancehall," Cole writes. "A life-size iron silhouette depicts a boy and girl holding hands. Not far away are the names of the victims and a simple inscription: ‘We will not stop dancing.’"

Just three months later, Cole notes, "on September 11, 2001, dancing … in the New York area came to a halt. In the following days the slogan, ‘We are all Israelis now,’ became a commonplace for many, at least for a while."

Cole uses "dancing" almost like a code. How to keep on living without giving in to terror, how to keep "dancing," is fast becoming a universal quandary in these troubling times when "we are all Israelis now." Israel, he says, which has become a master dancer, has lessons for the rest of the modern world.

Ella Nelimov, for example, is not left alone to deal with her grief as best she can. Her society has devised ways to help her — and others who are, unfortunately, in a similar situation. In her case, she told Cole, volunteers from Selah, an organization that provides counseling and retreats for immigrants whose bodies and lives have been shattered by terror attacks, "understood. They would hold my hand, and just by doing that, sometimes without words, they helped me to feel better."

"The support system in Israel has evolved into a remarkable network for recovery," Cole writes. "With the help of family, friends, and counselors, many survivors have embraced new lives, some with gusto. But even those who have successfully dealt with their trauma," he acknowledges, "may never feel fully repaired. The memory of physical wholeness and life experiences in their pre-terror years cannot be erased. Still," he adds, in a passage that a weary world may find hard to credit, "with personal determination and support from others, many have not only come to terms with their condition, but have gained a greater appreciation for life."

source:www.jstandard.com