I came back home in the pre-dawn hours of the morning, having covered the deadly terror attack in the Ilka Bar in Tel Aviv last Thursday night. It's never easy to take part in coverage of atrocities like this one - the gruesome images, the grief, the loss - it doesn't get easier as the years go by. But this time, it hit close to home, and made everything a bit more personal.
When I arrived at the scene, the roads were still filled with security forces hunting down the armed terrorist who had fled the scene.
It was a relief to know that my kids were sleeping in their warm beds while the event was taking place where three innocent people were shot dead - not far from our home. It was a relief to know they have no idea of the frantic searches that were ensuing in our building and in their schoolyards in attempts to catch the murderer on the lose.
It was a relief to know that they'll awaken in a few hours to a normal morning - for them, nothing would have changed. At that moment all I wanted is for them is to see our wounded neighborhood through their innocent eyes even the morning after the tragedy.
But for me, I can't let go of the heavy feeling of knowing they're growing up in an unsafe environment. This, in my eyes, is one of the toughest consequences of terrorism.
We're constantly quantifying the devastating toll of terrorism. We count terror attacks, the murdered and the wounded. We speak of the destruction on a tangible level, but we rarely speak of the aftermath terror has on the day-to-day lives of those who were not hurt physically.
We, as a society, make peace with the damage done to our subconscious during every security escalation, each time losing a bit more of our sense of security.
Maybe it's because I'm a parent, maybe I've matured, maybe it's accumulation of scars I've collected over the years. Still, no matter how much we try to illustrate it as some kind of distorted routine, nothing prepares you for the moment you walk your kids to school through the very streets that only yesterday were a murder scene.
I'm not naïve. My childhood is permeated with memories of horror from the first and second intifadas. I grew up in the days of exploding buses. But there is really no way to get used to or try to normalize the feeling of insecurity in our day-to-day spaces, even if we grew up with them constantly in the background.
Life must go on, they say, and despite it being a cliché, it's probably true. Less than 24 hours ago the deadly attack on Dizengoff Street, the area was already crowded with people.
The restaurants and bars were filled with Israelis who refuse to surrender to the fear, with subtle hints of routine crawling back, until one day, everything will be back to normal.
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People come to light candles at the scene of the terror attack in Dizengoff
(Photo: Reuters)
Yes, we're used to it, and its sad to admit. The feeling of insecurity is rooted deep inside most of the people living here. It'll always be present. They say we made it through harder times in the past. It is true, but we can't present that as some kind of achievement.
We're not getting weaker from terror wave to terror wave, we're also not getting stronger, and we're certainly not becoming more immune. The opposite is true.
Every event like this piles onto the stack of personal and national traumas each one of us carries, and takes another bite out of our feeling of safety in the public space. This is one of the hardest prices we have to pay as a society that lives alongside terrorism.