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A Taste of Terror

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By Avi Frier - FJN Publisher

This past week, Jews in Israel and around the world spent Yom Hazikaron remembering Israel’s fallen soldiers. Unfortunately, in recent years, more and more Israelis have begun to use this day to mourn victims of Arab terror as well.


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As the afternoon Yom Hazikaron sirens blew in Israel Monday, dawn broke on the site of another tragic terror attack: Virginia Tech, where on that day, one week following the massacre of 32 students, classes resumed and students made their first attempts to get their lives ‘back to normal.’

After 9/11, many pointed out that Americans now had a taste of what it was like to live amidst the threat of Muslim fundamentalism. But today, nearly six years later, much of our fear has faded away, while in Israel, terrorism continues to be a day-to-day issue.

By the numbers, 9/11’s death toll of 2,973 made it the single most deadly terrorist attack in history. But our nation’s losses on that day pale in comparison to Israel’s losses overall; since 2000, 1,297 Israelis have perished in terror attacks, amounting to 1/50 of 1% of Israel’s total population. The United States lost 1/1000 of 1% of its population on 9/11. Strictly relying on the numbers, one might argue that Americans would have to experience 9/11 twenty times over to fully grasp the loss and grief that have gripped the Israeli people in recent years.

If this logic makes sense to you, it should also stand to reason that the students of Virginia Tech have now "fulfilled their requirement" and may rightfully take their place, shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, in fully understanding the depth of the tragedy of terrorism.

Because on Monday morning, April 16, Virginia Tech lost 1/10 of 1% of its student body, statistically five times Israel’s losses to terror since 2000.

Yes, I realize that Seung-Hoi Cho was not a Muslim fundamentalist, and that his motives were not the same as those of the homicide bombers that plague the Middle East. But the differences notwithstanding, the similarities are almost uncanny.



Seung-Hoi Cho was a ticking time bomb, not a loose cannon.



Cho spent weeks—perhaps months—planning his attack. He may have walked through it dozens of times (though no one knows for sure), plotting every move, preparing for every obstacle. Investigators have all agreed that Cho’s every action was well thought out, and meticulously planned.

Similarly, terrorists must plan their attacks very carefully in order to penetrate Israel’s rigorous counter-terrorism measures, and it is believed that many dry runs are carried out before an attack. The most deadly terror attacks in history, from 9/11 on down, were the most painstakingly planned.



Cho recorded and released a video manifesto.



By now, we’ve all seen and heard Cho’s manifesto ad-nauseum.

Personally, I thought it was irresponsible of NBC to release the video (and equally irresponsible of the many news agencies that played it over and over and over again).

Suicide experts agree that the more airtime afforded final messages like Cho’s, the greater the chance of copycats. In fact, there were at least two suspected copycat attempts prevented by authorities within 48 hours of the video’s release.

And as many who watched the video immediately grasped, the manifesto added very little to that which the authorities had already figured out.

Similarly, most homicide bombers leave behind a video manifesto explaining why they set out to kill so many. The difference here is that most news agencies in Israel and around the world are responsible enough that they don’t air these videos over and over again, glorifying the terrorists. The videos are primarily aired on Al Jazeera and similar networks (like CNN).



Cho was beyond reason.



One thing that grabbed me when I saw the video was how Cho kept saying that this could have been avoided, it could have been prevented.

After Columbine, I remember seeing kids on television bemoaning the fact that they weren’t nicer to the attackers, that they didn’t reach out to them before they felt pushed to their murderous rampage.

Whether or not that would have made a difference, it certainly was not the case with Cho. Many students, including his own roommates, reported that they had tried on more than one occasion to befriend him and that he had shut them out.

There was nothing Cho’s fellow students could have done to prevent his rampage. He was a homicidal maniac who wanted to kill as many people as possible; he wanted to go down in a blaze of glory, and no one was going to take that away from him.

Similarly, regardless of how much we give, the Arabs have no interest in compromise.

Like Cho, they tell us their attacks could have been avoided, but the truth be told, the only thing that could ever stop Arabs from killing Jews in Israel would be running out of Jews in Israel to kill.

My prayers are with the victims and survivors of the Virginia Tech terror attack.

While we may never understand why so many have had to die so senselessly, in Virginia, Israel, and elsewhere around the world, may we work together to see that they did not die in vain.



Posted by Avi Frier - FJN Publisher on 04/27 at 02:00 AM • Hits: 235



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