Shakespeare said: «There is a method in their madness.» The method of our mad neighbors is the explosion and the echo that follows it. Without the colorful, multifaceted, noisy aftermath, the explosion itself loses its meaning.
All the energy of anger and rightful retribution must be «let off as steam.» And it is — in the involuntary unity of our «peacemakers» with the terrorists.
«We probably still haven't learned how to respond properly to all this horror,» says Sasha Elshtein. «We react to terrorist attacks as if they were just another piece of news meant to entertain us. As if violent death were some inevitable natural disaster. As if it only happens so journalists have material for their news broadcasts.»
Sasha Elshtein created a quiet, almost inaudible echo of the explosion: a website. People «come» to this electronic address as they would to a cemetery, to the graves of the victims of evil. This kind of echo seems to him the only possible one — not the loud, speculative reaction to every attack by Israeli and global media.
It sometimes feels as if the killers, together with journalists and numerous TV channels, are producing a multi-episode show for us. Soon we may become so accustomed to this spectacle that we won't be able to live without it.
We won't be able to live without the replication of death. That is the main goal of terror, imbued with a philosophy of death. Its weapon is not only explosives, but also modern media, armed with the latest technology.
We all feel pain differently. Sasha Elshtein feels it as if the explosion at the Dolphinarium had happened only yesterday. At the time, he thought that grief would unite everyone connected to that tragedy — make them wiser, kinder, more supportive of one another. That is what he thought.
Elshtein says that the young people injured in that attack still have not recovered physically or psychologically. Many of them have been abandoned and seek escape in drugs.
The loud echo of terror fades as quickly as it arises. Time passes. Wealthy people who initially shed a tear and wrote checks consider their duty fulfilled. Even relatives of the victims remember their loss less and less often.
There is nothing wrong with people not being able to live long in the memory of death. Life itself resists it.
In Zoltán Fábri's film «The Boys of Paul Street», the boys leave the house of a friend who has just died, walking away from the camera — and suddenly one of them begins to dance, and the others follow, as if hearing cheerful music.
Life despises death. Life hates death. Life resists death.
Only the mad seek destruction, decay, and darkness. People with a normal psyche flee from the horror of nonexistence.
But not all deaths are the same. Recall the deeply human words of an old song: a girl sees her beloved off to war — «And I also wish you, my friend: if death, then instant; if wounds, then slight.»
She says «also» because first and foremost she hopes to see him alive and victorious. But if not… what simple and wise words — she wishes him an instant death, because it is a death without suffering.
I don't remember who wrote those lyrics. Perhaps the poet was Jewish. In those years, much of Russian song culture came from the descendants of Abraham. Judaism does not only flee from death — it places cruelty outside the law.
What is being done on the land of Israel is a challenge to that law, because each crime brings suffering to the victims and torment to their loved ones.
And we, with the loud echo of terror, only prolong that suffering. A quiet echo, on the other hand, relieves pain and preserves true memory. Only such memory can become protection against new losses.
«Never again!» — Meir Kahane urged the Jews. Someone said grimly: «In just the last two years of the intifada, Jews have lost more lives than in all the pogroms of Tsarist Russia.» Islamic fanatics have launched terror that has turned into a form of genocide of the Jewish people — worldwide.
Islamofascism is driving us into ghettos across the globe. There was an explosion in Kenya that killed Jewish children. There will be the usual loud echo — chaotic and panicked.
Israel lost the ideological war primarily because it refused to understand the scale of the campaign initiated by Islamic fanatics. It was afraid to understand. It failed to convince the world that at the root of this conflict lies not a simple territorial dispute, but religious hatred — an attempt at a new genocide of the Jewish people, which will eventually threaten others as well.
The world was horrified when it discovered the ovens of Auschwitz and mass graves. Today, it simply turns on the television when hearing about another attack. At best, it sighs sympathetically — and to appease the killers, even awards them Nobel Prizes.
The world's media cannot find the right words and has forgotten how to think with dignity. Genuine thoughts and feelings rarely visit professional propagandists. Writers, poets, filmmakers — once independent thinkers — now remain silent.
Once again, the voice of conscience and wisdom comes from enthusiasts, selfless people, those who live among those who risk becoming victims every day.
Mikhail Polskoy, head of the children's art studio «Korczak,» writes: «There is no force in the world that can convince us that the MURDER OF CHILDREN comes from God. The murder of children is the result of the very spiritual and intellectual corruption that the killers try to impose on us.
We love life. We believe it was not given to us by chance — that we must glorify the Creator through worthy deeds, who sent our souls into these difficult times, into this troubled but beautiful city, where each of us is hunted every minute, where death breathes down our necks, WITHOUT DISTINCTION, forcing us to live every moment as if it were the last.»
Polskoy's studio — a small children's group surviving somehow — raised 470 shekels at a charity concert and gave it to the mother of a girl severely injured in the attack.
The Israeli media did not report this. There were no officials, politicians, or journalists at the event. A hundred dollars is not news. It is not a spectacle. And a children's performance is not a parade.
Quiet echoes are not valued by the media. Yet it is precisely they that truly resist the horror imposed by terror.
Immediately after the Dolphinarium attack, Sasha Elshtein found a piece of paper on the blood-stained pavement. On it were verses. They have never been published. The author did not sign them.