c. 1996 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM (RNS)-The youths huddled together on the curb of the busy roadside, singing sad folk songs, reading Psalms and lighting candles in memory of the 25 victims of Sunday’s suicide attacks on two Israeli buses by the Islamic group Hamas.

Only a few hours before, the road had been blocked with the burning hulk of a bus, bloodied victims and gruesome shreds of metal and body parts-scenes that have become all too familiar to Israelis, who have lost about 100 victims in similar terror incidents over the past two years.

Yet this time, something in the public response was different. The cries of”death to the Arabs,”the angry protests and denunciations of government figures that have marked Israeli reaction to past bombings were largely absent-even as the public struggled to come to grips with what was probably the worst terror attack in the state’s 48-year history.

The muted tone of the protest was evidence of a new-and uncharacteristic-mood of public restraint, according to Israeli psychologists, religious leaders and political thinkers.”I think there is a dramatic change between what you have seen in the last days and what one would have seen before when terrorist incidents took place,”said Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on Israeli extremist groups at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

He and other observers credit the changed Israeli mood to the brutal lesson Israelis learned in the November assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish religious extremist.

In the aftermath of the murder, many Israelis blamed the extremist rhetoric of religious national leaders and right-wing politicians for creating an atmosphere in which political assassination could occur.”The leaders finally understood that lighting up the street is a dangerous thing to do,”said Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun, a prominent rabbi in the West Bank settlement movement.

Opposition politicians and right-wing religious leaders, who in the past were among the key organizers of angry anti-government protests in the wake of any terror attack, stayed home this week.

Protesters who did gather, for the most part, came together in quiet assemblies of song, meditation and candle-lighting, much like those that followed in the wake of the Rabin assassination.”I feel that the assassination of Rabin symbolized for people what extremism can do, and people learned a lesson,”said Hebrew University psychologist Amia Lieblich.”This time, people have reacted with more maturity. People didn’t go out immediately and start beating up Arabs, and they didn’t go out and curse Prime Minister Shimon Peres.” The greater restraint doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that Israelis are uncritical of the present Labor-left government led by Peres, or are willing to accept Hamas attacks as an inevitable fact of life, stresses Bin Nun.

He notes that opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has reaped big political gains in the wake of the bus bombings. Netanyahu’s refusal to lead big street demonstrations, which in the past often got out of control, only helped to bolster his public image as a responsible leader, Bin Nun suggests.”I think Netanyahu, in his restraint, enhanced his status greatly,”said Bin Nun.

The swing to the right was reflected in public opinion polls taken immediately after the attacks, which showed Netanyahu closing the gap in the looming May election contest against the incumbent Peres. Prior to the attacks Peres had led Netanyahu by 15 points or more, but in the immediate aftermath, Peres was leading his opponent by a mere 46 percent to 43 percent.

Still, unlike previous terror incidents, the public dialogue surrounding the attacks was more personal than political.

And whereas previous attacks have spurred bitter confrontation between religious Israelis, who tend to be right-wing, and their secular counterparts, this week’s attacks seemed to bring together secular and religious Israelis in a show of solidarity.

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A popular Israeli talk show,”Popolitika,”which was aired the evening of the attack, reflected the national temperature. Bin Nun, an orthodox rabbi in his mid-40s, appeared on the same stage with a teen-age leader of the”Peace Now”movement, a poet, and a hip young television moderator, Yair Lapid.”Rabbi Bin Nun, I’m not a religious man,”said Lapid.”I have no rabbi. But if I were to come to you today and say, `Rabbi, what do I do with everything I feel inside of me?,’ what would you say?” Responded Bin Nun,”The time before the burial (of the victims) is a time of terrible pain and sorrow; that is the feeling of most of the nation, and it’s the appropriate response, religiously.”(END OPTIONAL TRIM)”There is a lot of religious feeling in the secular public,”observed Bin Nun in an interview.”By showing restraint, we can forge a broad consensus among Israelis-that we won’t let them (Hamas) divide us.”The only thing that could really topple the State of Israel is internal divisions among the Jewish people. That is the way it has been throughout Jewish history,”he added.

Likewise, in the political dispute between right- and left-wing Israelis, one could sense a certain closing of ranks in the aftermath of the bus bombing attacks.

Bin Nun, who has long opposed a Palestinian state on both political and religious grounds, remarked that he could live with Palestinian sovereignty if all Palestinians, including the Islamic Hamas, genuinely accepted the State of Israel and put down their arms.

Bin Nun also suggested that Israeli religious leaders should open a dialogue with religious leaders in Hamas, who until now have preached a philosophy of violent holy war against Israel.”We have to find ways to speak to their religious people in a religious way. The people who are responsible for these murders are the Muslim religious leaders, who teach a certain religious line,”said Bin Nun.”I am sorry that there weren’t any attempts (at dialogue) before the attack because then maybe it would have been possible to prevent it.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, dovish Israelis, both religious and secular, were sounding more hawkish than they had in the past. Prominent leftists said that further progress in the peace process must be linked directly to a cessation of extremist violence.”People like me, who are willing to live with a Palestinian state, must demand that the (Israeli-PLO peace) agreement be upheld to its last letter,”said the noted Israeli author Amos Oz, an ardent dove, speaking on”Popolitika.””Eighty-five percent of Palestinians are now living under Palestinian rule. We aren’t dominating them. But they are killing us. They aren’t upholding the Oslo (Israeli-PLO peace) agreement.” Added Moshe Halbertal, a leader in the tiny movement of religious doves,”The Palestinians are in a place where they have no one else to blame. If they don’t change their treatment of the Hamas, then they will lose not only the (Israeli) right, they’ll lose the left.”

MJP END FLETCHER