Moshe Feiglin is head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud and can be reached via the Jewish Leadership web site or via email: manhigut@manhigut.org
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"There's a terrorist there shooting in all directions," I think to myself as I forcefully pull my equipment bag. It's quite clear why this is the first scenario that runs through my mind. Three weeks ago I happened to be on Yaffo Street in Jerusalem when suddenly I heard bursts of automatic gunfire from the rifle of a terrorist who stood a short distance behind me.

I grab my rifle and the emergency equipment bag of the local on-call squad. I fly; literally fly, to the shopping center at the entrance to town. At the main intersection there's a huge traffic jam, I don't even try to go through it - the terrorist is shooting and he has to be stopped - I drive in the left lane while constantly honking the horn and get to the edge of the shopping center.

I park the car on the sidewalk so as not to block the street and run in -- trying, along the way, to get answers from the shocked people who are congregating in the area.

Suddenly, I see medics bending forward on the ground; various medical personnel got there before me and have already begun giving first aid. I'm still trying to see where the gunfire will open up from, where to aim -- my mind is still fixed on the scenario I anticipated, but it's not a terrorist shooting, it was an explosion. The reality trickles into my consciousness more slowly than the pace of the actual events.

It seems that I'm walking on glass, I see the blood smeared everywhere, the injured are groaning and surrounding each one are dedicated medics and doctors. There's not much for me to do -- "I need a bandage!" someone yells. I run over and give him my own emergency bandage.

There's a young boy sitting opposite me - the one who prays across from me in the synagogue. He's holding the hand of a dead boy. He knows he's dead -- but doesn't release his hand.

They begin to bring the stretchers. I help lift one of the injured. His sweater is soaked with blood. Hours later - after we've finished all the patrols around the houses (for fear of another attack), after we've gathered in one of the houses to draw initial conclusions, after our nerves calmed down a little - I manage to look at my hand - and it's covered with congealed blood, other people's blood.

What's happening to me? I didn't think that I would react like this when encountering just such a situation. I didn't cry, I wasn't shocked, I didn't vomit. Am I a human being? Apparently not so much.

They've managed to peel off our humanity. I've seen all these sights already televised at earlier attacks, I've heard all the sounds and voices on the radio reports, I've read these situation descriptions tens of times in the morning newspapers. I was now simply at a live performance of the same events. Everything was just exactly the same.

"Tomorrow morning everyone will just forget about it." My oldest daughter, Na'ama, tells me at 2 A.M. when she finally agreed to sit down and talk to her parents. Eilat, my second daughter, went to sleep at a friend's house who was afraid to sleep alone. Eilat's classmate, Tzipi Bloomberg, was seriously injured a few months ago, and now her friend, Karen Shatsky, may G-d avenge her blood, was killed -- and she wanted to help and give support.

The little ones, Aryeh and David, look at me curiously as I burst into the house in the middle of a patrol while wearing a military flak jacket. "Take this!" I tell Tzipi, and give her my pistol -- I have a M-16. You use this if you need it. Don't open up for anyone unless you absolutely know who it is. There are warnings of attempts to break into the community. My house is on the outer periphery.

My boys look in astonishment how Dad gives Mom the pistol and runs outside. All of the defenses that we attempted to build over the years, all the attempts to give the children a feeling of confidence now lose all their importance.

Avraham, the youngest, already went to sleep before the attack, Will Aryeh and David be able to fall asleep? Parental guilt feelings. When I was a child things were so clear, so simple, so secure - why can't I give that feeling to my children?

At 2:30 in the morning it's all over. Sitting in the kitchen, I feel a type of pressure in the chest - it's hard to talk, just constantly moaning. What hurts the most is that nothing really hurts anymore.

Hillel Trattner- who just got married a few months ago -- was seriously injured in the head -- lost an eye and is full of shrapnel. His wife was lightly injured.

More and more names of friends and neighbors. Is this the psychological process that the Jews of Europe went through? Is this how they adjusted too? Is this the Auschwitz syndrome? Na'ama is right -- tomorrow they'll all forget about it. There will already be another catastrophe for everyone to deal with.

I know what to do, I have a solution -- I have a way -- with a clear goal -- a beginning, a middle and an end - and I'm going on that path and managing to convince some people here and some people there. But too little and too slowly.

Is this how Jabotinsky felt when he wandered around Europe and told people to run away to Israel before the calamity? Petty dealers argue with me -- standing next to the precipice they continue to debate -- they find excuses and excuses upon excuses why not to face the truth.

They have no answers -- they have no alternatives -- just questions. "But such and such will happen", "You'll fail because of such and such", "And if you succeed, so what will happen if such and such?" They have no way out of hell- but they'll do anything to avoid my solution - because my way insists on preserving the truth and not on introducing a new lie. They would rather die than face the truth.

G-d! I don't want to be Jeremiah the prophet. I don't want to be Jabotinsky. I don't want to be remembered as the one who foresaw the destruction.

Make them begin to listen now, and not when it's too late.

- Give them enthusiasm - like when we blocked the roads.

- Please, the blood on the street there was your children's.

- Little scum are spilling it everywhere and bathing in it.

- Your name is being profaned.

- They're your sons and you know they won't listen.

- Please G-d. Do for your sake if not for ours.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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