Everyday response to terrorism

Naomi Wolf makes a good point in her post Threat as Tactic? Why Hillary's Warning is Right 08/27/07.

She may be overstating the case for Clinton's particular comment she's discussing.

But this is what especially struck me:

Let's also compare the way this White House talks about the terror threat with the way other societies that have decades-long experience with terrorist attacks do. And let's use our common sense. Anyone who has ever lived in Israel -- a country where, since its very birth, sophisticated terrorists have been targeting the civilian population day and night -- knows that you NEVER get the equivalent of broad-anxiety-inducing alerts in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem like the "red alert" or "orange alert" system here at home. At the most, in Israel, you get practical, low-key, usable information from the state -- for example, "avoid the Machaneh Yehudah marketplace this Friday afternoon" -- no matter who is in power. Israelis, consequently, experience, on the day-to-day level, the possibility of terror attacks as a specific, real danger -- but not as a state-produced existential condition, a matrix of helpless fear. (Indeed, avoiding national fear from terror attacks is a point of pride in Israel that transcends party lines).

Nor do Israelis get our regular-as-rain triumphalist narratives in the press about this or that terrorist's creepy bio, his sinister face, or this or that thwarted, grandiose attack on this or that cherished national monument. There is not a constant struggle between the Knesset and the party in power over the declassification of intelligence, comparable to our struggle here at home. Rather, when there is something the people need to know, Mossad lets the people's leaders -- whatever party is in power -- know it. Everyone in Israel understands that terror is too serious to mess with politically -- that intelligence about attacks is too important to disclose or to conceal for political purposes -- and that Mossad is always, very quietly, at work.

Anyone who has lived in the UK during the years of regular, bloody IRA bombings has experienced similar restraint. Nations that have long been primarily intent on tracking and thwarting terrorists -- rather than, perhaps, driving policy with fear -- just don't talk about terrorism in the same way (or nearly so much). Even now -- fighting the very same "bad guys" that we are fighting -- Gordon Brown has reminded his nation and ours that "terrorism is not a cause, it is a crime."

Tags: global war on terror, israel, naomi wolf, terrorism, war on terror