Monday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv's Carmel Market hit close to home. I live nearby and I do my food shopping there regularly.
Just one day before Yediot Aharonot reported a poll showing that 1 in 5 Jewish Israelis lost a friend or relative in the current intifada.
(I don't really like to use the word "intifada," because what's happening now is no popular uprising, but is "conflict" any better? War? Violent dispute? Battle between good and evil?)
Relizing that I am not part of this 20 percent meant that everyone I know was now in imminent danger.
I don't consider myself lucky for not being at the market yesterday, but I would have been very unlucky to have been there at that particular time.
So I received the requiste phone calls from friends and my mom in the U.S. checking to be sure I was ok. A close friend was hysterical because she was unable to reach her grandmother, who often goes to the market. It later turned out that the grandmother was fine.
As I walked home from work in the evening, I considered taking a slight detour to the site of the attack in the market, but decided against it. A few years ago, I would have gone, but this time I felt little need to see the reality of the "news items" I've grown accustomed to writing about in the sanctuary of my workplace.
