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CNN Live At Daybreak

Classes Resume at Hebrew University

Aired August 01, 2002 - 06:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour in the Middle East, where Israel is responding to the latest bombing, seven dead, including four Americans in that attack inside Hebrew University.

We're going to be joined right now live from Jerusalem by CNN's Jerrold Kessel.

Jerrold -- what's the latest?

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Anderson.

Here at Hebrew University the classes have resumed at the international school. The students from around the world here taking Jewish studies and other Middle Eastern studies, the classes resuming here despite that attack yesterday, which killed seven people, and very much reflecting the nature of the student body that is on campus here at the moment, very much a cosmopolitan international flavor.

And there were seven people killed, two of them Israelis, four of them Americans, five, indeed, with one of American-French dual nationality.

The Americans identified this morning. Three of them as: Benjamin Blustein, 25, of Pennsylvania, Marla Bennett, 24, of California, Janis Ruth Coulter, 36, of New York, who was an administrative official of the Hebrew University program based in New York, and the fourth American-French national, David Gritz, 24. The identity of the fifth American-Israeli double citizenship holder has not yet been released pending notification of family.

And we caught up with some of those people studying in this international program this morning, and understandably, the mood, very, very somber.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Emotions, raw, at the scene of Wednesday's cafeteria bombing, and questions -- questions about security. Why was the bomb, concealed in a bag, not detected? But if not in a university, where else does one find bags?

And other questions, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a very bad feeling for me and for all of the students and the staff at this university. You know, I never expected that something would happen inside this university. I have been working here for more than 30 years already.

KESSEL: Omar Othman (ph) is an Israeli-Arab. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) an Arabic class in the international student's program is about to take its final exam. But first, they tried to get their heads around what happened yesterday.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was in New York when September 11 happened. I was in college there. I mean, I woke up in the morning, and it's just the entire city, it was just in shock. So I have seen it also in America. I have seen it happen there, so it's not like this is going to make me run back there. I feel like -- I feel like safety has to begin wherever you are. This isn't something that like Israel has a natural volcano or a natural disaster. We're not living in a disaster area. This is happening, because bad people are targeting innocent people.

KESSEL: Yale Cohen (ph), an Israeli-Jew, has been teaching the group classical Arabic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just blind killing. That's what bad about it. So if there is not something behind it, well, we don't know where it will lead to. What is it? It's nothing political anymore.

KESSEL: But outside in the cafeteria square, a clump of other Israelis say this is about a conflict, a political conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a continuation of the madness that's gripping this country. You have a -- you have a terrorist attack, you have a military response, you have another terrorist attack, another military response. It's all part of the same horrible cycle, and maybe it's a cliche, but it's a horrible cycle of violence. But I just -- every time something like this happens, I say, why can't we save lives? Why can't we just do the right thing?

KESSEL: The Arabic exam finally gets under way, but as the students sit down to take the test, Mikhail (ph) rushes out. The first sentence for translation in the exam paper had read, "I went to visit my friend." Several of Mikhail's friends in the summer studies program were among those wounded in Wednesday's attack.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And the Israeli police are saying that the bomb was detonated by a mobile cellular telephone left in that bag, getting a call through, and that's what set off the explosives. And as Israel continues to investigate the nature of this explosion, also consideration of how they can continue a policy to try to curb the bombers completely.

You reported as rightly that this morning, Israeli forces blew up a house of a suicide bomber in an Arab town of Beit Jala just outside Jerusalem, and there are reports of Israel's planning to deport family members of other suicide bombers from their homes in the West Bank down to Gaza. But the battles continue to go on, even as the emotions continue to be played out very, very somberly here on the Hebrew University campus -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jerrold, as you have mentioned, it is a very international campus. Obviously, some Americans were killed in the attack. Is there any sense that Hamas purposely wanted to hit Americans?

KESSEL: Difficult to answer that. There were some of the -- some of the students we spoke to today said they were absolutely sure that they were -- that whoever carried out the bombing -- and Hamas has claimed responsibility -- was deliberately doing that, because they knew it was clear that all of the members of this international student body took their lunch there in that cafeteria every day. And that anybody who has done any reconnoitering of the area would have known that.

That may be so. There may have been a pointed direction to strike at Americans, to strike at foreign students to warn them off, to scare them off from coming to Israel to be part of what's happening in Israel now.

But it could be not that. It could have been a random attack, because Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have carried out attacks in all sectors of Israeli life. It could be just this was a target that they managed to get through.

Difficult question really to answer, but clearly, this has had an impact on those people studying here from all around the world -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Jerrold Kessel live in Jerusalem -- thanks very much.

CNN can now confirm that five Americans were killed in that bombing.

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