In the aftermath of a double bomb attack that tore through a Jerusalem market, claiming 15 lives, life in Israel appears to return to normal with startling swiftness. The debris is cleared from the market's narrow lanes, and the throngs of shoppers return. The dead are buried. Life goes on.
But the very familiarity of such tragedies takes a heavy toll."On the surface, people get back to normal very fast," psychologist Miki Rachmani Yerushalmy said Friday. "But inside, everybody feels the hurt and anger. More and more, you can't stand it anymore."
After a dozen suicide attacks in recent years - and long experience with terrorism in its five decades of existence - Israel copes with the aftermath of such tragedies with heart-wrenching routine.
Rescue workers are on the scene in minutes, quickly followed by Orthodox Jews collecting scraps of flesh and blood for burial. Within hours, the wreckage of the blast is hauled away, leaving only a few char marks and memorial candles lit by survivors.
Radio stations play tapes of sad music on hand specifically for such occasions, and television stations replace comedies with special talk shows and lists of the dead and wounded.
Twenty-four hours after an attack, funerals for most victims are already over, in keeping with Jewish custom requiring immediate burial.
Such routine is necessary when tragedy strikes so often, Yerushalmy said. "You just see that your family is OK, and you go on. You have to show that you can lead normal lives."
But at the same time, she said, there is a deep inner exhaustion that comes from dealing with the repeated attacks.
"I've felt it in myself - just looking at the pictures and wanting to cry," she said. "Once you stop for a minute - the tears come back."
The past is always alive in Jerusalem, where Roman embattlements and Crusader churches vie for space with monuments to Israel's half-dozen wars. Recent history has added its share of living memorials - the pedestrian walk where two gunmen opened fire, the intersection where a bus exploded, the marketplace where 15 people died.
"There are more and more loaded places," Yerushalmy said.
The need to keep such feelings inside, to get on with daily life in the face of overwhelming tragedy, contributes to a constant, underlying tension in Israel, Yerushalmy said. She attributes to it the immediacy with which protests form after an attack, with angry demonstrators shouting "Death to Arabs" and anti-government slogans.
"In some people, despair can turn into hostility and rage and aggression," she said.
"There is this Israeli myth that we have to be strong, never cry, never weep. You must live with some denial, but you can't deny everything all the time. I can't stop going on buses, so when I do, I have to deny that I'm in danger. But you also have to let things out - have somebody to talk to, cry to."
To help cope with the trauma of last week's bombings, Israeli psychologists - in the middle of a long-running strike - volunteered their services at area hospitals and set up two telephone hot lines, one for adults and one for children traumatized by the graphic pictures on television. When the phone numbers were published, dozens of calls poured in.
One 12-year-old called from outside Jerusalem, upset after seeing pictures of a girl badly burned in the attack. Psychologists arranged for her to speak to the hospitalized girl by telephone.
Many of the callers were not victims of the latest bombing, but of previous attacks, their trauma only surfacing now, Yerushalmy said.
"They are flooded with pictures and feelings - everything they didn't want to see."
At the Mahane Yehuda market, site of Wednesday's attack, many shoppers were back the next morning.
"I come here every week and I certainly am not going to stop now," said Channa Beiderman, 23, who said five people were killed in a terror attack near her house several years ago.
"There is no really safe place. One place is not better than another."
Ziona Levy, 61, agreed: "We are not scared. Attacks like this could happen anywhere. I could go to the supermarket and be blown up there."