No longer the innocents abroad

Last spring, my parents spent a lot of time worrying. I was studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, the rape capital of the world and hotbed of many other violent crimes. My brother, having just finished high school, was traveling in Israel for four months. Two-thirds of my parents' offspring were living in areas with some level of U.S. State Department safety warning.

Before leaving for Cape Town, I struggled with the decision to go, and the primary source of my hesitation was concern about my personal safety. The statistics and stories I had heard made me fearful, and I was unsure I wanted to spend a semester afraid for my security. How meaningful would the experience be if I spent every moment in fear?

While in Cape Town, however, I found it easy to be safe. Taking certain small precautions can avert the threats to safety there; I discovered there was no need for paranoia.

The situation for my brother was different. Since independence, Israel has never been entirely certain of its security. While the years after the 1993 Oslo Accords brought unprecedented peace to daily life in the region, the current Palestinian uprising that began last fall quickly laid to rest hopes of sustained calm in the near future. By the time my brother landed in Tel Aviv, the death toll had long surpassed the capacity of the New York Times graphics department to clearly tabulate. As time passed, suicide bombings became increasingly frequent and costly in lives. The throwing of stones at soldiers became explosions at discos and restaurants, killing dozens of civilians and injuring many more.

One day in June, during my weekly trans-hemispheric phone call home, my parents informed me that my brother was leaving Israel on the next available flight. You would think an 18-year old's leaving what is effectively a war zone would not be alarming. But all along, our parents had encouraged us not to let fear stop us from enjoying our trips. Why were they now letting the unrest take control?

The week before, my brother had been in Jerusalem's Russian Compound, a section of the new city known for its clubs and pubs. On a carefree Saturday night, my brother and his friends witnessed an explosion. A car bomb went off 100 feet from where they stood.

Suddenly, the reality of terrorism touched me personally and emotionally. I grieved for what could have happened, feared future incidents, empathized with victims and mourners and felt angry that such incidents happened at all.

This feeling returned the morning of Sept. 11, when early reports emerged of a crash near Pittsburgh, where my brother now goes to college. At that point, there was little information, and although I was pretty certain my brother was safe, I was affected for a moment by the possibility that my brother, in the presumed security of college in suburban Pittsburgh, could have been touched.

Terrorist acts have hit increasingly close to home during the past several weeks. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon directly affected some members of the Princeton community but indirectly touched many others of us, if only by our proximity to New York. Reports that anthrax-filled envelopes originated in Trenton bring the terror even closer. And Monday's suspected anthrax encounter in Frist sent the University into a frenzied state.

After learning of my brother's encounter with terrorist violence, I asked an Israeli friend how he lives in that world. I couldn't fathom regularly suffering such an emotional onslaught. He told me that growing up in Israel — where everyone serves in the army, and everyone knows someone who has died in war or a terrorist attack — forces you to think differently about each incident. While you never stop feeling the anger and fear toward the general terrorist presence, he said, you do not react with emotional intensity to each incident. To do so would leave you paralyzed. Continue to understand and act politically against the force behind the acts, but do not break down emotionally with each attack or fear the next.

Since Sept. 11, I have heard Israelis — private citizens and public figures alike — express empathy for Americans who now know something of how they have felt for years. But we have yet to learn from the Israelis how to continue living under the threat of terrorism that cannot be avoided by simple precautions. We must heed the advice my friend gave me: Never should we forget or minimize the feelings we have toward the source of the recent terrorism. But we shouldn't become so paralyzed by paranoia that a few sugar crystals give us cause to fear for our safety. Julie Straus is a Wilson School major from Potomac, Md. She can be reached at straus@princeton.edu.