Even as we mourn the horror of the Sbarro bombing, despite all these tragedies, all these worlds that have been shattered, we have also known many miracles. Thank God Israel has been able to stop many attacks, sometimes catching suicide bombers en route to bombings, sometimes capturing or killing master bomb makers as they prepare attacks.
Sometimes the bomb makers are amateurs or using poor quality explosives and the bombs fail to go off or blows up its makers. Had we not been so lucky today's attack would only have been one of many, rather than the terrible exception, the bomber who got through.
A diary of the major incidents during the last few weeks looks like this:
Friday July 27: A vigilant bus driver found a bomb hidden inside a watermelon on his bus near Jerusalem's Malha shopping mall.
Sunday July 29: This afternoon a car bomb went off in the parking garage of an eight story apartment building in the north Jerusalem suburb of Pisgat Zeev, though fortunately the mechanism malfunctioned and not all of the explosives detonated so the building is still standing.
Monday July 30: A small bomb disguised in a beer can exploded in a supermarket in central Jerusalem. Later an Israeli was stabbed and critically wounded near the Damascus Gate in the Old City. The same day 6 terrorists from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement blew themselves up in a West Bank village when a bomb they were making exploded prematurely. (They blamed Israel for the explosion.) That afternoon three Israeli border guards were shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting north-east of Netanya. The Palestinian gunmen fled over the border to the nearby Palestinian Authority.
Tuesday July 31: That night five Israeli civilians were wounded in another Palestinian drive by shooting near the Israeli village of Na'aleh, a few kilometres north of Modi'in.
Wednesday August 1: A gardener in a municipal Jerusalem park found a pipe lying in the grass, opened it, saw some powder and tossed it aside - thus unwittingly defusing a bomb.
Thursday August 2: A wary bus driver noticed that an Arab teenager trying to board his bus was carrying a large bag with a wire sticking out of it. When the boy refused to say what was in the bag the driver rushed him, pushing him off the bus and preventing the Palestinian from detonating what turned out to be a huge bomb - even more powerful than the device that killed 21 Israelis in June's Tel Aviv disco bombing. The bus was filled with young Israelis en route to the annual Tzemah "Love and Music" festival by the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.
Friday August 3: An alert security guard caught a Palestinian woman carrying a large bomb hidden in a packed of detergent who was attempting to enter Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station, the largest in the world. In total this week over fifty mortar shells have been fired at Israeli villages in the Gaza region, wounding three Israeli civilians, including two children, and damaging several homes.
Sunday August 5: Ten Israelis were wounded when a Palestinian gunman opened fire on a busy street outside the Israeli defence ministry in Tel Aviv and across the road from the bustling Azrieli shopping mall. Later that evening Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Israeli civilian vehicles near the Jewish village of Tzufim, east of Kfar Saba, killing a pregnant Israeli woman and seriously wounding her husband and 14-year-old daughter. His parents are friends of my family.
Monday August 6: Israeli security forces caught a Palestinian suicide bomber near Tulkarm, east of Netanya.
Tuesday August 7: An Israeli was murdered near Tzufim, site of Sunday night's shooting. The same day the body of an Israeli businessman was found in Amman, Jordan. A Palestinian terror organisation claimed responsibility. Later that night another Israeli was murdered in a drive-by shooting near the Palestinian controlled city of Nablus/Shekhem
Wednesday August 8: A car laden with explosives en route to an attack in central Israel was stopped by soldiers at a roadblock in the Jordan Valley. Seeing he had been caught the Palestinian terrorist detonated the vehicle, injuring one soldier. Later that day two more Israeli soldiers were wounded when Palestinians detonated a roadside bomb near their jeep close to Nablus/Shekhem.
This is the context for today's bombing. Sometimes it feels like we're living in a computer game where there is always an unexpected threat around the corner and everything you try just leads to another dead end.
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