Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Presents
Impact of Terror
Aired September 19, 2004 - 20:00 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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a routine day, a lunch break.
ANAT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM: He said to me, "Mom, let's go into Sbarro Pizza."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But one moment changed their lives forever.
The frantic victims.
MIRIAM SHUSHAN, BOMBING VICTIM: I can't move. I can't see. I can't breathe.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A family's fear.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: All along, I knew something had happened to her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the lingering aftermath.
ANAT AMAR: The 9th of August is the day that stopped my life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Beyond the headlines, beyond the politics, this is the "Impact of Terror."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AARON BROWN, HOST: The images are chilling -- a bus shattered, a restaurant in ruins. Everywhere lie victims and survivors in the aftermath of a bombing.
Welcome to CNN PRESENTS. I'm Aaron Brown.
In the war-torn Middle East, suicide bombings are frequent, even familiar. But for those involved, each one presents a unique and personal horror.
Tonight's program is not a story about blame or claims of responsibility. This is a personal look at the people who have survived a life-changing event.
It is about the moments, the months and the years after a terror attack. It is about loss, recovery, health and the struggle for happiness.
Tonight, CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID SHACHAM, EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: The uniqueness for me was the guitar. Nobody was thinking that inside there is a bomb.
He put inside the guitar something like four or five kilogram of explosives, four kilogram or five kilogram of nuts and nails.
That's enough. That's enough to kill tens of people.
NARRATOR: On the morning of August 9, 2001, Israeli intelligence learned that a Palestinian suicide bomber was somewhere in the heart of Jerusalem.
Around 1:30 p.m., unbeknownst to their parents, best friends Malki Roth and Michal Raziel decided to stop for a pizza en route to a youth meeting.
Moments later, Dutch-Israeli Mordechai Schijveschuurder decided to treat his wife and five of his children to a family outing at Sbarro Pizzeria.
Five minutes later, 15-year-old Miriam Shushan, her two sisters and her mother entered the restaurant.
MIRIAM SHUSHAN, BOMBING VICTIM: It was really, really crowded, lots of people and long lines. Lots of girls and, I don't know, teenagers screaming and laughing and the noise of life.
NARRATOR: Just before 2:00 p.m., Jerusalem firefighter Michel Amar learned that a suicide bomber was loose somewhere on the streets of Jerusalem. He immediately called his wife, who was shopping downtown.
ANAT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): I was a little apprehensive when he said that there's a terrorist in our city.
Of course, I told him that everything is going to be fine. And I promised him that I would call as soon as I got home.
Around 2:00 p.m., Eliad, my oldest son, said he was very hungry and that all the children wanted to eat. He said to me, "Mom, let's go into Sbarro Pizza."
NARRATOR: As Anat Amar and her four children entered the restaurant, Miriam Shushan and her 10-year-old sister Yocheved made it to the head of the line.
SHUSHAN: I remember I hugged her and I told her like, well, I love you so much. And she told me also, yes, I love you so much. And she told me, where would I be without you?
I'm like, don't worry. We're together always. What's wrong?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A Palestinian bomber detonated explosives in a crowded Jerusalem restaurant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lunch hour massacre, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber. At least 15 people were killed, almost 90 others wounded.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A bomb went off in a packed pizza restaurant, one of the busiest areas of the city. You may find some images disturbing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was standing at the traffic light, and I suddenly see all of Sbarro exploding right in front me. Fire, smoke, people flying out.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): From the corner of my eye, I see Gafnit, who is only two years and 10 months old, flying with the window out into the street.
ELIAD AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): The moment of the bombing, I knew where I was. I knew that I was in the restaurant.
All of a sudden, I saw that I was outside of the restaurant. And then I saw my little sister lying on the ground with the table and chair burning on top of her.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): Everything was standing still and there was quiet all around. Quiet. Quiet like a ghost town.
SHUSHAN: I was looking around me and like, where am I? What happened to me? And then, like, everybody screaming, "It's a bomb!"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ran inside and I saw terrible things -- bodies that were still burning, and there was smoke coming out of them. And I couldn't even touch them.
I took table cloths and used them to put out fires on people who were burning.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): The phone was left hanging from my hand, and I immediately dialed this number.
MICHEL AMAR, FATHER OF BOMBING VICTIMS (through translator): My wife screamed on the phone, "We got hurt in a bombing! We got hurt in a bombing!" And then the call was disconnected.
I didn't understand exactly whether they were alive or no longer among the living.
I said to myself, "Michel, stand up and run to the vehicle."
ANAT AMAR (through translator): It started to get really messy. Yelling from every direction. The sound of ambulance sirens, police, people running.
NARRATOR: Canadian volunteer Orley Pinchuk was one of the first paramedics on the scene. ORLEY PINCHUK, CANADIAN VOLUNTEER PARAMEDIC: I opened the door to the ambulance and stepped out. The first thing that I saw were many strollers, maybe four or five, on their sides -- no babies in them.
It was my first real mass casualty incident. I thought I would be able to prepare for something like this. And there was no way.
There was overturned tables and chairs. And I'm not even talking about inside the restaurant. I'm talking about in the intersection.
NARRATOR: Another person who arrived quickly on the scene was photojournalist Nati Shohat.
NATI SHOHAT, PHOTOJOURNALIST (through translator): I can still remember running to the place. There was smoke in the street. People lying all over the place.
I shoot a few frames, I run on.
The picture that's etched in my mind from Sbarro happened when I got to that place. I stood about a meter away from the shattered window. And there was a woman lying there, and a man is lying on top of her. He was already dead.
And on top of him there's another woman. And over her there's a doctor who came from a nearby hospital, from an operating room. And he's trying to save her, and he realizes that he actually can't save her and he yells for help.
Simply terrifying. A dreadful scene.
The most awful thing I experienced at Sbarro was the children. I saw little children there, children about my daughter's age.
You see a child with a face full of blood, whose face can no longer be recognized. And you, as a father, as someone who lives in this country, you look and you see your own family, your children, your friends' children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: Twenty minutes after the bombing, firefighter Michel Amar arrived at the scene in search of his family.
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): I reached the restaurant. I looked down and I saw my daughter's stroller. It was all burnt, and I went into shock.
Although I've seen many, many things in the past, I couldn't go inside.
I thought, "That's it. I have no children."
I saw children scattered there. I saw hands, heads of children. I saw things I'm used to seeing, but I was never involved like that. Never.
SHUSHAN: I wanted to believe that it was a dream. Everything changed. I can't move. I can't see. I can't breathe almost.
And I'm looking for somebody to help me. I want to scream. I want to get up to help myself.
PINCHUK: There were two girls in an ambulance. And the older girl, she was screaming in pain.
NARRATOR: Paramedic Orley Pinchuk was standing in front of 15- year-old Miriam Shushan.
Lying unconscious beside Miriam was her 10-year-old sister, Yocheved.
PINCHUK: The older one of the two was sitting upright, completely burnt, her body black. Her skin was peeled off. Her legs, both of them, broken.
SHUSHAN: I remember it, like, she was talking to me. And I just wanted to close my eyes and forget everything.
PINCHUK: She could lose her life within seconds.
In the ambulance, I asked her her name. She told me her name -- Miriam.
I asked her again, when it looked like she was kind of fading out, I asked her again to remember my name. And she did. And she said, "It's Orley."
And I said, "OK, good. Good."
SHUSHAN: Something in me, within me, told me, do -- do what she said. And really, I think this kept me conscious.
NARRATOR: Chaim Foxman was not only an eye witness to the attack, he is a ZAKA volunteer.
ZAKAs have the grizzly responsibility of collecting body parts and tending to the dead.
CHAIM FOXMAN, ZAKA VOLUNTEER AND EYEWITNESS (through translator): When we finish evacuating the wounded, we proceed to evacuate the slain.
Also, after we finish removing the bodies, we clean the blood, tissues and other things that remain around.
It's important, because according to Jewish custom, every piece of flesh, every bit of flesh, every tissue, every drop of blood has to make it to a proper burial.
NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to Arnold Roth, his daughter Malki was in the restaurant when the blast occurred. Desperate attempts to reach her cell phone were unsuccessful.
ARNOLD ROTH, FATHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: No one could track her. No one knew where she was.
And then, we got a call from the people whose meeting she was supposed to be at, saying she hadn't turned up. By this time we were really beside ourselves.
NARRATOR: In the restaurant with Malki Roth was her 16-year-old best friend, Michal Raziel.
When Michal's mother learned of the attack, she also tried to contact her daughter. Her repeated calls went unanswered.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: You have to understand something about Michal and her cell phone. She was connected to that cell phone like my ear is connected to me. And if by then she didn't answer, then something was wrong.
NARRATOR: Michal Raziel's aunt was on duty as a trauma nurse at a Jerusalem hospital when the critically injured began arriving.
SHLOMITH FISHER-HARRIS, TRAUMA NURSE, HADASSAH HOSPITAL: The nurse who was in charge that day comes running into the room and screeches, there's been a terrorist attack.
It's very tense, because beyond the preparations, everybody's already starting thinking. Where was it? Who's there? Will I know anybody? Where's my family? Can I get to a phone to call everybody to see where they are?
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): I had a very bad feeling, but I still had some hope that perhaps they were only injured. Perhaps they were outside the restaurant.
I walked from ambulance to ambulance. I didn't see anything.
And one of the policeman came up to me and said, you won't find anything here. Run to the hospital, and there you'll get some answers.
PINCHUK: We got to the hospital, and the doctors and the orderlies opened the back doors. And I told them, this one on the bench is much more severe.
DR. ARIEH ELDAD, MIRIAM SHUSHAN'S SURGEON: Miriam was moments away from death. Maybe if she would be delayed two or three minutes, she wouldn't be alive today, because she had penetrating, severe penetrating injuries in her lungs, due to all the bolts and screws and nails that were added to the explosives in this bomb.
Some of the wound were deep enough that I could put my hand into it down to my wrist. And there were tens of them.
NARRATOR: As Miriam struggled to stay alive, medical staff, including Michal Raziel's aunt, rushed 14-year-old Dutch-Israeli Ria Schijveschuurder into surgery.
FISHER-HARRIS: To all accounts she was dead already. That she had a pulse of about 40, 39, was just because she was a young girl. She was strong, and her blood vessels were still working.
And after about half an hour, she didn't have a pulse anymore.
All through this time, I had called Avivah's house to see where the girls were. And I knew where three of them were. I didn't know where Michal was.
I tried to get on her cell phone, and I got the -- her message all the time.
I left the room, and somebody shoved into my hand blood packs -- I don't know how many there were -- and said, take them to room five.
There were tons of people there. They didn't need me. I just gave the blood packs to whoever was in the room and left.
NARRATOR: Nurse Harris had no idea that beyond the wall of surgeons, in room five, lay her 16-year-old niece, Michal Raziel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: Unable to locate her daughter Michal, Avivah Raziel arrived at her sister's hospital, hoping for answers.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: By then it was about 6:15. And I remember saying to the social worker, you know what, it's 6:15 now. If you haven't heard anything from her till now, it's not very good, is it.
And she just went like this.
FISHER-HARRIS: We were talking to people. I'm looking for my niece, and she wasn't on any list. She wasn't anywhere.
And Avivah said she has to go somewhere for a moment. And I said to myself, I'm going down to the morgue to see if she's there.
All along, I knew something had happened to her.
I think, doing work, I didn't even think about the person in room, in operating room five.
I said, I'm looking for my niece. And I know you've got one girl and another person who hasn't been identified. I want to know who she is.
And he opened the first drawer, and I looked inside and I said, no, that's the girl I looked after. She's from the Dutch family. That's not her.
So they opened the other drawer, and -- and I looked at her. And I said, "It's her." And I had taken -- she had a sheet over her face. So, I put it back over her face, and I took it off her face and put it back over her face.
And it was just as though, in the moment you put it back on her, you've -- that's it. She's not there anymore. She's gone. So I left it off.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: And the most difficult point of my life was leaving her.
It was just, as I was -- you know, while I was still sitting by her, holding her, I still had her. If I left her, then I didn't have her anymore. It was -- that was very difficult.
NARRATOR: Firefighter Michel Amar finally discovered the fate of his four children.
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): And then I saw my wife. All her hair was burnt. I saw my daughter with burnt hair.
It was difficult for me to see her that way. She was full of people's hair and blood. She had blood on her, and she wouldn't let any of the staff touch her.
When she saw me, she broke into tears. There's no knowing whose blood that was, and there were chunks of flesh on her.
I remember, I bathed her for an hour-and-a-half. And I started to wash off what was left of the pieces of people's flesh that were stuck in her hair.
And I removed one piece at a time and scrubbed the blood off her.
She wouldn't stop crying. She kept saying, "Daddy, why weren't you with me? Why weren't you with us?"
NARRATOR: For Arnold Roth, the search for his daughter Malki was becoming desperate. More than 10 hours after the deadly explosion, local hospitals had no information on Malki's whereabouts.
ARNOLD ROTH, FATHER OF MALKI ROTH: One of the social workers there took me aside and said, you know, you're really wasting your time here. At this hour, you should be at the morgue. I'll arrange it.
Linny (ph) and I couldn't do it, but my two oldest boys took a taxi. And at two in the morning, we got a call from the boys saying that, unfortunately, our worst fears were true, and they found Malki there.
SHUSHAN: When I woke up, it was like Friday afternoon, like 24 hours later.
I asked like what was going on with Yocheved? And they told me -- they told me, the situation is going to be fine. And then I asked the second question. I asked, like, what's going on with my legs?
NARRATOR: Ten days after the bombing and several operations later, Miriam's condition was still grave.
Fearing she may not survive the shock, Miriam's family and doctors withheld the truth about her sister Yocheved.
Two weeks after the bombing, Miriam's father finally broke the news.
SHUSHAN: And they looked me in my eyes, and he told me, yes. She's not with us.
And I felt like -- now I felt like I really want to die, and that's it.
Why? Why did I survive all this? Why -- why am I getting stronger? Why? What about her?
I thought everything is OK.
She was so special. And she's -- I'm missing her so much.
And I don't know when it's going to be, but I hope I'm going to see her again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Lin at the CNN Center and here are some stories making news right now.
Family members of three Western men being held hostage in Iraq are waiting to hear any news about them. Insurgents have threatened to kill them if female prisoners in Iraq are not released. Now, the U.S. military says it isn't holding any women prisoners. I'm going to speak to the brother of one of the American hostages coming up at 10 p.m. Eastern.
And John Edwards is slamming a suggestion by a top Republican that terrorists want John Kerry to win the presidency. Edwards says House Speaker Dennis Hastert has joined the choir of fear-mongers. Tomorrow John Kerry is going to make what he calls a major address on Iraq.
And President Bush is promising to speed up federal aid to states hit by Hurricane Ivan. Today he surveyed damage in Alabama and Florida. Mr. Bush told residents, quote, "We are praying for you."
Coming up at 10 o'clock Eastern on CNN SUNDAY NIGHT, we're going to have our rap sheet. Plus, you remember him as the soup guy on "Seinfeld." Well, I'm going to tell you what he's cooking up now. But right now, back to "Impact of Terror."
ANNOUNCER: We now return to CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror." NARRATOR: Best friends Malki Roth and Michal Raziel are buried in the same Jerusalem cemetery, one beside the other. Exactly two years to the day after the Sbarro bombing, friends and family struggle to cope with their loss.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: When you think of Michal, first you see her smile. She was such a sweet little girl and she was always smiling, always happy. Michal was a little sixteen year old, she wanted to get married, she wanted to have children, and it was my dream, as well, that she could get married and have children and I would be at her wedding. It wasn't to be. How do I cope with the loss? I just pick myself up and carry on living. But it was very difficult for me to get back into life. It took me ages to go back to work.
NARRATOR: One year after the tragedy that claimed her daughter's life, Avivah Raziel returned to work as a nurse caring for premature babies at Hadassah Hospital.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: Sometimes I think it would be very easy for me just, you know, to lay in bed and not to get up and face the world today. What would happen? But that's not the way I do things.
ARNOLD ROTH, MALKI'S FATHER: The striking thing about Malki to everyone who knew her was that she was full of love and giving. That had a very practical side to it because our youngest child is profoundly disabled. She's blind and she has no communication with the world at all and Malki was totally given over to the needs of her own sister. So what can you say about a child like that? She's obviously a special soul.
NARRATOR: Only one possession of Malki Roth's was recovered from the bomb site and returned to her father. It was the very cell phone that he repeatedly called that day.
ROTH: As I took it out of the bag, nails fell all over the table. Ugly little black nails. And here you can see the words (HEBREW) in her handwriting. Just a kind of a constant reminder, don't get carried away with your chatty conversations with your friends because talking ill of people can cause great little pains, so she was sensitive to that, she was very careful about this and this is Malki. Little pictures of beetles and happy things. She was a very happy girl. There are beetles all over this. Ladybirds. So what do you say to somebody who can blow up a child who is holding onto one of these things? Not much.
NARRATOR: When the explosion occurred, firefighter Michel Amar's children were only meters from the bomber. At the table beside them, five members of Dutch-Israeli family the Schijveschuurders were killed. Somehow, the Amars escaped with only burns and cuts. But the impact of the bombing reverberates to this day.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): The 9th of August is the day that closed, that stopped my life. I left my studies, I left work, everything I loved. I cut off. Today the relationship between Michel and I is strange, I would say. I stopped sharing with him. There is no more 50/50 at home. He does a lot more than me. You do the groceries, you go to the parent-teacher meetings. You'll do many other things that before I used to take off your hands. The first few months after the bombing my son Eliad acted as the father of the house when Michel was working. He helped in every way.
In the beginning I thought, "Oh, how nice. What a clean and tidy room." Every mother wants her child to clean and tidy his room, but then I saw that it was starting to become extreme, meaning he cleans his clothes all the time. He cleans his suit with his brush. If there is a tiny seam on his clothes, he puts them in the laundry right away.
ELIAD AMAR (through translator): From the bombing I had a lot of bits of flesh on my shirt from bodies, so I had to clean myself up. Now it's also in my room. I have to clean my room, my clothes, and all of that. But if I don't clean up, then I start to get all stressed in the head and worried. I get a headache.
ANAT AMAR: Gradually I started to learn from him that the kids as school don't really accept it. He doesn't play soccer with them anymore because he doesn't want to get dirty. He doesn't sit on the floor and play with his friends because he doesn't want to get dirty. So gradually he started to lose friends. That's something that hurts me very, very much.
Today I not only regret this, but if I could give everything-- everything in order to turn back time, I would do it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: In a country where security is paramount and metal detectors are a part of everyday life, 17 year old Sbarro bombing survivor Miriam Shushan faces a daily irony. Every time she walks through a metal detector, she sets it off. Miriam still has over half a kilo of bomb shrapnel inside her body. Today she has traveled to Hadassah Hospital to visit Dr. Arieh Eldad, the surgeon responsible for saving her life.
Miriam is on a courageous personal mission. She is determined to see for the first time Dr. Eldad's photos of the terrible injuries she sustained that day almost two years ago.
ELDAD: That's the first picture. This is how you looked at...
SHUSHAN: Oh my Lord.
ELDAD: ...when you first arrived this is how I first remember you.
This is how we took you to the operating room on Thursday. You see your hands are already covered with dressings because they had burned.
SHUSHAN: I didn't see myself for like two months in a mirror.
ELDAD: You had superficial burns on your face, that's why you are very beautiful now. They weren't deep burns. You see, this is the nail that we put in-the orthopedic surgeon, just to repair the fracture that is here. And these are all the bolts and fragments that the suicide bomber just left in. I must admit, ours are much nicer.
Miriam was a great fighter. Miriam was very optimistic. She could smile and she could even laugh very, very early in her course of healing. And when we saw this, we knew that she would be OK eventually.
SHUSHAN: My hopes. Everyone, like, wants to get married and build a family and to get somebody you love as you are. And I don't know, to have a normal life that I could live like everybody else.
NARRATOR: That day that you went to the restaurant, Sbarro, do you remember?
What do you remember?
GAFNIT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): I remember that I flew through the window. And also that my brother was burned. And also that my brother Eliad picked me up from the window.
MICHEL AMAR: Usually when you think of children you think of joyfulness. Gafnit at the age of three matured and became like a woman. I mean she doesn't care about children. She doesn't care about much. It's hard to stimulate her, to bring her back to the stage of childhood. At the kindergarten she's having a lot of difficulties. When she's alone she plays, but when she's with the kids in the kindergarten she disconnects, she's afraid of everything.
NARRATOR: Does it scare you or not to go play outside?
GAFNIT AMAR: Yes, because there are also terror attacks.
NARRATOR: What is scary about terror attacks?
GAFNIT AMAR: That people get killed.
NARRATOR: And if your mom and dad are with you, do you like to go to the city?
GAFNIT AMAR: No, I'm scared.
NARRATOR: Mom and Dad can't protect you?
GAFNIT AMAR: They can but I'm scared anyway.
NARRATOR: Why?
GAFNIT AMAR: Because I'm always (ph), I'm at home and there's bombings all the time.
MICHEL AMAR: We live in the city center and we can here every terrorist attack. During a terrorist attack we hear the noise of a powerful explosion and I can give you dozens of examples of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. We hear every single terrorist attack and every terrorist attack triggers the anxiety all over again.
ANAT AMAR: Basically, I don't go outside because I am scared to. It's got to a point where Michel even hid my passport because he was very scared that I would do something very drastic. If it was up to me and I could, I would simply pick up and leave. Not only would I leave this house, but I would also leave Jerusalem. I wouldn't even give it a second thought.
MICHEL AMAR: I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not a person who's scared. But I am afraid for my family, for my children. Yes, my wife wants to leave this city and the children want to leave and I guess what's stopping them is me. For me it's difficult to leave this city. I love this city. I have always loved Jerusalem. I was born here. I can't leave. I've had many offers. I've even had job offers in the U.S. with whatever I wanted and I didn't leave.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: We now return to CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror."
NARRATOR: After the horror of that summer day, Canadian volunteer paramedic Orley Pinchuk is returning to Israel. Two years after helping keep Miriam Shushan conscious on that desperate journey to the hospital, Orley and Miriam will be meeting for the first time.
PINCHUK: For the past two years I've really-I've thought about her so much and just I really wonder where she is today, what she's doing and...
SHUSHAN: It would be nice to see her in good times, because she saw me only half-dead, so it would be nice.
PINCHUK: Hi.
I'm so happy to see you walking. I had no idea, honestly. I had no idea if you'd ever be able to walk and I had no idea...
SHUSHAN: I owe you so much.
RAZIEL: I try not to think of where I live as a battlefield, but if you think about it, then going to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread is going out to the battlefield.
ROTH: It's hard for me to think about us in a different environment. We've been raising our children here for 15 years. I have to say it makes you go prematurely gray and you worry a lot, but you deal with it. You deal with the reality that you're given.
RAZIEL: When you walk around Israel, you walk around restaurants, you walk around shopping malls, you walk in the center of town, you see security guys everywhere. You can't go into a restaurant without being checked. You can't go into a shopping mall without being checked. You walk downtown, you go to the marketplace, you see security guys all over the place. And I go downtown only if I really have to. If I go to a restaurant I'll go not into the center of town but somewhere in the periphery and always make sure that there's a guard there and never sit close to the guard, always sit further inside.
ROTH: Our younger kids, who still go to school, are given pretty strict instructions. First of all, no public buses. Never. They do travel on school buses but those are buses that only carry school kids. My wife and I spend a lot of time ferrying our children around the town because we'd much rather do that than have them go on the bus. You never take your mind off the security issue. I know when I'm on a bus, and I'm on a bus most days, I scan around, I look at the floor to see if there are any packages lying there. However, at a certain point you switch off and you say, "OK, I've done my bit. It's not in my control. You hope for the best.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A suicide bomber in Jerusalem killed at least 20 people. The bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with people going home to an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The attack here tonight was on a soft target. The bus was full of civilians. The youngest were not spared. Many of those maimed and killed here tonight are children.
After the relative quiet of recent times, people here had been feeling a bit safer, a bit more relaxed. But that's over now.
ROTH: We're part of a circle which now consists of several thousand families who have lost a child or a parent or a spouse to an act of murder. Up until the tragedy of my daughter's murder, I was really like, I think, most people outside of Israel. These were events that were framed by a television screen. These were things that occurred and then were overtaken by normal life. Now I've learned that for the people who are touched by an act of terror in a personal way, it isn't an event which you then work your way past and, as the expression goes, life goes on. It actually keeps happening every minute and every day. Life is never going to be the same.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired September 19, 2004 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a routine day, a lunch break.
ANAT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM: He said to me, "Mom, let's go into Sbarro Pizza."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But one moment changed their lives forever.
The frantic victims.
MIRIAM SHUSHAN, BOMBING VICTIM: I can't move. I can't see. I can't breathe.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A family's fear.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: All along, I knew something had happened to her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the lingering aftermath.
ANAT AMAR: The 9th of August is the day that stopped my life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Beyond the headlines, beyond the politics, this is the "Impact of Terror."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AARON BROWN, HOST: The images are chilling -- a bus shattered, a restaurant in ruins. Everywhere lie victims and survivors in the aftermath of a bombing.
Welcome to CNN PRESENTS. I'm Aaron Brown.
In the war-torn Middle East, suicide bombings are frequent, even familiar. But for those involved, each one presents a unique and personal horror.
Tonight's program is not a story about blame or claims of responsibility. This is a personal look at the people who have survived a life-changing event.
It is about the moments, the months and the years after a terror attack. It is about loss, recovery, health and the struggle for happiness.
Tonight, CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID SHACHAM, EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: The uniqueness for me was the guitar. Nobody was thinking that inside there is a bomb.
He put inside the guitar something like four or five kilogram of explosives, four kilogram or five kilogram of nuts and nails.
That's enough. That's enough to kill tens of people.
NARRATOR: On the morning of August 9, 2001, Israeli intelligence learned that a Palestinian suicide bomber was somewhere in the heart of Jerusalem.
Around 1:30 p.m., unbeknownst to their parents, best friends Malki Roth and Michal Raziel decided to stop for a pizza en route to a youth meeting.
Moments later, Dutch-Israeli Mordechai Schijveschuurder decided to treat his wife and five of his children to a family outing at Sbarro Pizzeria.
Five minutes later, 15-year-old Miriam Shushan, her two sisters and her mother entered the restaurant.
MIRIAM SHUSHAN, BOMBING VICTIM: It was really, really crowded, lots of people and long lines. Lots of girls and, I don't know, teenagers screaming and laughing and the noise of life.
NARRATOR: Just before 2:00 p.m., Jerusalem firefighter Michel Amar learned that a suicide bomber was loose somewhere on the streets of Jerusalem. He immediately called his wife, who was shopping downtown.
ANAT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): I was a little apprehensive when he said that there's a terrorist in our city.
Of course, I told him that everything is going to be fine. And I promised him that I would call as soon as I got home.
Around 2:00 p.m., Eliad, my oldest son, said he was very hungry and that all the children wanted to eat. He said to me, "Mom, let's go into Sbarro Pizza."
NARRATOR: As Anat Amar and her four children entered the restaurant, Miriam Shushan and her 10-year-old sister Yocheved made it to the head of the line.
SHUSHAN: I remember I hugged her and I told her like, well, I love you so much. And she told me also, yes, I love you so much. And she told me, where would I be without you?
I'm like, don't worry. We're together always. What's wrong?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A Palestinian bomber detonated explosives in a crowded Jerusalem restaurant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lunch hour massacre, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber. At least 15 people were killed, almost 90 others wounded.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A bomb went off in a packed pizza restaurant, one of the busiest areas of the city. You may find some images disturbing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was standing at the traffic light, and I suddenly see all of Sbarro exploding right in front me. Fire, smoke, people flying out.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): From the corner of my eye, I see Gafnit, who is only two years and 10 months old, flying with the window out into the street.
ELIAD AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): The moment of the bombing, I knew where I was. I knew that I was in the restaurant.
All of a sudden, I saw that I was outside of the restaurant. And then I saw my little sister lying on the ground with the table and chair burning on top of her.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): Everything was standing still and there was quiet all around. Quiet. Quiet like a ghost town.
SHUSHAN: I was looking around me and like, where am I? What happened to me? And then, like, everybody screaming, "It's a bomb!"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ran inside and I saw terrible things -- bodies that were still burning, and there was smoke coming out of them. And I couldn't even touch them.
I took table cloths and used them to put out fires on people who were burning.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): The phone was left hanging from my hand, and I immediately dialed this number.
MICHEL AMAR, FATHER OF BOMBING VICTIMS (through translator): My wife screamed on the phone, "We got hurt in a bombing! We got hurt in a bombing!" And then the call was disconnected.
I didn't understand exactly whether they were alive or no longer among the living.
I said to myself, "Michel, stand up and run to the vehicle."
ANAT AMAR (through translator): It started to get really messy. Yelling from every direction. The sound of ambulance sirens, police, people running.
NARRATOR: Canadian volunteer Orley Pinchuk was one of the first paramedics on the scene. ORLEY PINCHUK, CANADIAN VOLUNTEER PARAMEDIC: I opened the door to the ambulance and stepped out. The first thing that I saw were many strollers, maybe four or five, on their sides -- no babies in them.
It was my first real mass casualty incident. I thought I would be able to prepare for something like this. And there was no way.
There was overturned tables and chairs. And I'm not even talking about inside the restaurant. I'm talking about in the intersection.
NARRATOR: Another person who arrived quickly on the scene was photojournalist Nati Shohat.
NATI SHOHAT, PHOTOJOURNALIST (through translator): I can still remember running to the place. There was smoke in the street. People lying all over the place.
I shoot a few frames, I run on.
The picture that's etched in my mind from Sbarro happened when I got to that place. I stood about a meter away from the shattered window. And there was a woman lying there, and a man is lying on top of her. He was already dead.
And on top of him there's another woman. And over her there's a doctor who came from a nearby hospital, from an operating room. And he's trying to save her, and he realizes that he actually can't save her and he yells for help.
Simply terrifying. A dreadful scene.
The most awful thing I experienced at Sbarro was the children. I saw little children there, children about my daughter's age.
You see a child with a face full of blood, whose face can no longer be recognized. And you, as a father, as someone who lives in this country, you look and you see your own family, your children, your friends' children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: Twenty minutes after the bombing, firefighter Michel Amar arrived at the scene in search of his family.
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): I reached the restaurant. I looked down and I saw my daughter's stroller. It was all burnt, and I went into shock.
Although I've seen many, many things in the past, I couldn't go inside.
I thought, "That's it. I have no children."
I saw children scattered there. I saw hands, heads of children. I saw things I'm used to seeing, but I was never involved like that. Never.
SHUSHAN: I wanted to believe that it was a dream. Everything changed. I can't move. I can't see. I can't breathe almost.
And I'm looking for somebody to help me. I want to scream. I want to get up to help myself.
PINCHUK: There were two girls in an ambulance. And the older girl, she was screaming in pain.
NARRATOR: Paramedic Orley Pinchuk was standing in front of 15- year-old Miriam Shushan.
Lying unconscious beside Miriam was her 10-year-old sister, Yocheved.
PINCHUK: The older one of the two was sitting upright, completely burnt, her body black. Her skin was peeled off. Her legs, both of them, broken.
SHUSHAN: I remember it, like, she was talking to me. And I just wanted to close my eyes and forget everything.
PINCHUK: She could lose her life within seconds.
In the ambulance, I asked her her name. She told me her name -- Miriam.
I asked her again, when it looked like she was kind of fading out, I asked her again to remember my name. And she did. And she said, "It's Orley."
And I said, "OK, good. Good."
SHUSHAN: Something in me, within me, told me, do -- do what she said. And really, I think this kept me conscious.
NARRATOR: Chaim Foxman was not only an eye witness to the attack, he is a ZAKA volunteer.
ZAKAs have the grizzly responsibility of collecting body parts and tending to the dead.
CHAIM FOXMAN, ZAKA VOLUNTEER AND EYEWITNESS (through translator): When we finish evacuating the wounded, we proceed to evacuate the slain.
Also, after we finish removing the bodies, we clean the blood, tissues and other things that remain around.
It's important, because according to Jewish custom, every piece of flesh, every bit of flesh, every tissue, every drop of blood has to make it to a proper burial.
NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to Arnold Roth, his daughter Malki was in the restaurant when the blast occurred. Desperate attempts to reach her cell phone were unsuccessful.
ARNOLD ROTH, FATHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: No one could track her. No one knew where she was.
And then, we got a call from the people whose meeting she was supposed to be at, saying she hadn't turned up. By this time we were really beside ourselves.
NARRATOR: In the restaurant with Malki Roth was her 16-year-old best friend, Michal Raziel.
When Michal's mother learned of the attack, she also tried to contact her daughter. Her repeated calls went unanswered.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: You have to understand something about Michal and her cell phone. She was connected to that cell phone like my ear is connected to me. And if by then she didn't answer, then something was wrong.
NARRATOR: Michal Raziel's aunt was on duty as a trauma nurse at a Jerusalem hospital when the critically injured began arriving.
SHLOMITH FISHER-HARRIS, TRAUMA NURSE, HADASSAH HOSPITAL: The nurse who was in charge that day comes running into the room and screeches, there's been a terrorist attack.
It's very tense, because beyond the preparations, everybody's already starting thinking. Where was it? Who's there? Will I know anybody? Where's my family? Can I get to a phone to call everybody to see where they are?
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): I had a very bad feeling, but I still had some hope that perhaps they were only injured. Perhaps they were outside the restaurant.
I walked from ambulance to ambulance. I didn't see anything.
And one of the policeman came up to me and said, you won't find anything here. Run to the hospital, and there you'll get some answers.
PINCHUK: We got to the hospital, and the doctors and the orderlies opened the back doors. And I told them, this one on the bench is much more severe.
DR. ARIEH ELDAD, MIRIAM SHUSHAN'S SURGEON: Miriam was moments away from death. Maybe if she would be delayed two or three minutes, she wouldn't be alive today, because she had penetrating, severe penetrating injuries in her lungs, due to all the bolts and screws and nails that were added to the explosives in this bomb.
Some of the wound were deep enough that I could put my hand into it down to my wrist. And there were tens of them.
NARRATOR: As Miriam struggled to stay alive, medical staff, including Michal Raziel's aunt, rushed 14-year-old Dutch-Israeli Ria Schijveschuurder into surgery.
FISHER-HARRIS: To all accounts she was dead already. That she had a pulse of about 40, 39, was just because she was a young girl. She was strong, and her blood vessels were still working.
And after about half an hour, she didn't have a pulse anymore.
All through this time, I had called Avivah's house to see where the girls were. And I knew where three of them were. I didn't know where Michal was.
I tried to get on her cell phone, and I got the -- her message all the time.
I left the room, and somebody shoved into my hand blood packs -- I don't know how many there were -- and said, take them to room five.
There were tons of people there. They didn't need me. I just gave the blood packs to whoever was in the room and left.
NARRATOR: Nurse Harris had no idea that beyond the wall of surgeons, in room five, lay her 16-year-old niece, Michal Raziel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: Unable to locate her daughter Michal, Avivah Raziel arrived at her sister's hospital, hoping for answers.
AVIVAH RAZIEL, MOTHER OF BOMBING VICTIM: By then it was about 6:15. And I remember saying to the social worker, you know what, it's 6:15 now. If you haven't heard anything from her till now, it's not very good, is it.
And she just went like this.
FISHER-HARRIS: We were talking to people. I'm looking for my niece, and she wasn't on any list. She wasn't anywhere.
And Avivah said she has to go somewhere for a moment. And I said to myself, I'm going down to the morgue to see if she's there.
All along, I knew something had happened to her.
I think, doing work, I didn't even think about the person in room, in operating room five.
I said, I'm looking for my niece. And I know you've got one girl and another person who hasn't been identified. I want to know who she is.
And he opened the first drawer, and I looked inside and I said, no, that's the girl I looked after. She's from the Dutch family. That's not her.
So they opened the other drawer, and -- and I looked at her. And I said, "It's her." And I had taken -- she had a sheet over her face. So, I put it back over her face, and I took it off her face and put it back over her face.
And it was just as though, in the moment you put it back on her, you've -- that's it. She's not there anymore. She's gone. So I left it off.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: And the most difficult point of my life was leaving her.
It was just, as I was -- you know, while I was still sitting by her, holding her, I still had her. If I left her, then I didn't have her anymore. It was -- that was very difficult.
NARRATOR: Firefighter Michel Amar finally discovered the fate of his four children.
MICHEL AMAR (through translator): And then I saw my wife. All her hair was burnt. I saw my daughter with burnt hair.
It was difficult for me to see her that way. She was full of people's hair and blood. She had blood on her, and she wouldn't let any of the staff touch her.
When she saw me, she broke into tears. There's no knowing whose blood that was, and there were chunks of flesh on her.
I remember, I bathed her for an hour-and-a-half. And I started to wash off what was left of the pieces of people's flesh that were stuck in her hair.
And I removed one piece at a time and scrubbed the blood off her.
She wouldn't stop crying. She kept saying, "Daddy, why weren't you with me? Why weren't you with us?"
NARRATOR: For Arnold Roth, the search for his daughter Malki was becoming desperate. More than 10 hours after the deadly explosion, local hospitals had no information on Malki's whereabouts.
ARNOLD ROTH, FATHER OF MALKI ROTH: One of the social workers there took me aside and said, you know, you're really wasting your time here. At this hour, you should be at the morgue. I'll arrange it.
Linny (ph) and I couldn't do it, but my two oldest boys took a taxi. And at two in the morning, we got a call from the boys saying that, unfortunately, our worst fears were true, and they found Malki there.
SHUSHAN: When I woke up, it was like Friday afternoon, like 24 hours later.
I asked like what was going on with Yocheved? And they told me -- they told me, the situation is going to be fine. And then I asked the second question. I asked, like, what's going on with my legs?
NARRATOR: Ten days after the bombing and several operations later, Miriam's condition was still grave.
Fearing she may not survive the shock, Miriam's family and doctors withheld the truth about her sister Yocheved.
Two weeks after the bombing, Miriam's father finally broke the news.
SHUSHAN: And they looked me in my eyes, and he told me, yes. She's not with us.
And I felt like -- now I felt like I really want to die, and that's it.
Why? Why did I survive all this? Why -- why am I getting stronger? Why? What about her?
I thought everything is OK.
She was so special. And she's -- I'm missing her so much.
And I don't know when it's going to be, but I hope I'm going to see her again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Lin at the CNN Center and here are some stories making news right now.
Family members of three Western men being held hostage in Iraq are waiting to hear any news about them. Insurgents have threatened to kill them if female prisoners in Iraq are not released. Now, the U.S. military says it isn't holding any women prisoners. I'm going to speak to the brother of one of the American hostages coming up at 10 p.m. Eastern.
And John Edwards is slamming a suggestion by a top Republican that terrorists want John Kerry to win the presidency. Edwards says House Speaker Dennis Hastert has joined the choir of fear-mongers. Tomorrow John Kerry is going to make what he calls a major address on Iraq.
And President Bush is promising to speed up federal aid to states hit by Hurricane Ivan. Today he surveyed damage in Alabama and Florida. Mr. Bush told residents, quote, "We are praying for you."
Coming up at 10 o'clock Eastern on CNN SUNDAY NIGHT, we're going to have our rap sheet. Plus, you remember him as the soup guy on "Seinfeld." Well, I'm going to tell you what he's cooking up now. But right now, back to "Impact of Terror."
ANNOUNCER: We now return to CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror." NARRATOR: Best friends Malki Roth and Michal Raziel are buried in the same Jerusalem cemetery, one beside the other. Exactly two years to the day after the Sbarro bombing, friends and family struggle to cope with their loss.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: When you think of Michal, first you see her smile. She was such a sweet little girl and she was always smiling, always happy. Michal was a little sixteen year old, she wanted to get married, she wanted to have children, and it was my dream, as well, that she could get married and have children and I would be at her wedding. It wasn't to be. How do I cope with the loss? I just pick myself up and carry on living. But it was very difficult for me to get back into life. It took me ages to go back to work.
NARRATOR: One year after the tragedy that claimed her daughter's life, Avivah Raziel returned to work as a nurse caring for premature babies at Hadassah Hospital.
AVIVAH RAZIEL: Sometimes I think it would be very easy for me just, you know, to lay in bed and not to get up and face the world today. What would happen? But that's not the way I do things.
ARNOLD ROTH, MALKI'S FATHER: The striking thing about Malki to everyone who knew her was that she was full of love and giving. That had a very practical side to it because our youngest child is profoundly disabled. She's blind and she has no communication with the world at all and Malki was totally given over to the needs of her own sister. So what can you say about a child like that? She's obviously a special soul.
NARRATOR: Only one possession of Malki Roth's was recovered from the bomb site and returned to her father. It was the very cell phone that he repeatedly called that day.
ROTH: As I took it out of the bag, nails fell all over the table. Ugly little black nails. And here you can see the words (HEBREW) in her handwriting. Just a kind of a constant reminder, don't get carried away with your chatty conversations with your friends because talking ill of people can cause great little pains, so she was sensitive to that, she was very careful about this and this is Malki. Little pictures of beetles and happy things. She was a very happy girl. There are beetles all over this. Ladybirds. So what do you say to somebody who can blow up a child who is holding onto one of these things? Not much.
NARRATOR: When the explosion occurred, firefighter Michel Amar's children were only meters from the bomber. At the table beside them, five members of Dutch-Israeli family the Schijveschuurders were killed. Somehow, the Amars escaped with only burns and cuts. But the impact of the bombing reverberates to this day.
ANAT AMAR (through translator): The 9th of August is the day that closed, that stopped my life. I left my studies, I left work, everything I loved. I cut off. Today the relationship between Michel and I is strange, I would say. I stopped sharing with him. There is no more 50/50 at home. He does a lot more than me. You do the groceries, you go to the parent-teacher meetings. You'll do many other things that before I used to take off your hands. The first few months after the bombing my son Eliad acted as the father of the house when Michel was working. He helped in every way.
In the beginning I thought, "Oh, how nice. What a clean and tidy room." Every mother wants her child to clean and tidy his room, but then I saw that it was starting to become extreme, meaning he cleans his clothes all the time. He cleans his suit with his brush. If there is a tiny seam on his clothes, he puts them in the laundry right away.
ELIAD AMAR (through translator): From the bombing I had a lot of bits of flesh on my shirt from bodies, so I had to clean myself up. Now it's also in my room. I have to clean my room, my clothes, and all of that. But if I don't clean up, then I start to get all stressed in the head and worried. I get a headache.
ANAT AMAR: Gradually I started to learn from him that the kids as school don't really accept it. He doesn't play soccer with them anymore because he doesn't want to get dirty. He doesn't sit on the floor and play with his friends because he doesn't want to get dirty. So gradually he started to lose friends. That's something that hurts me very, very much.
Today I not only regret this, but if I could give everything-- everything in order to turn back time, I would do it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NARRATOR: In a country where security is paramount and metal detectors are a part of everyday life, 17 year old Sbarro bombing survivor Miriam Shushan faces a daily irony. Every time she walks through a metal detector, she sets it off. Miriam still has over half a kilo of bomb shrapnel inside her body. Today she has traveled to Hadassah Hospital to visit Dr. Arieh Eldad, the surgeon responsible for saving her life.
Miriam is on a courageous personal mission. She is determined to see for the first time Dr. Eldad's photos of the terrible injuries she sustained that day almost two years ago.
ELDAD: That's the first picture. This is how you looked at...
SHUSHAN: Oh my Lord.
ELDAD: ...when you first arrived this is how I first remember you.
This is how we took you to the operating room on Thursday. You see your hands are already covered with dressings because they had burned.
SHUSHAN: I didn't see myself for like two months in a mirror.
ELDAD: You had superficial burns on your face, that's why you are very beautiful now. They weren't deep burns. You see, this is the nail that we put in-the orthopedic surgeon, just to repair the fracture that is here. And these are all the bolts and fragments that the suicide bomber just left in. I must admit, ours are much nicer.
Miriam was a great fighter. Miriam was very optimistic. She could smile and she could even laugh very, very early in her course of healing. And when we saw this, we knew that she would be OK eventually.
SHUSHAN: My hopes. Everyone, like, wants to get married and build a family and to get somebody you love as you are. And I don't know, to have a normal life that I could live like everybody else.
NARRATOR: That day that you went to the restaurant, Sbarro, do you remember?
What do you remember?
GAFNIT AMAR, BOMBING VICTIM (through translator): I remember that I flew through the window. And also that my brother was burned. And also that my brother Eliad picked me up from the window.
MICHEL AMAR: Usually when you think of children you think of joyfulness. Gafnit at the age of three matured and became like a woman. I mean she doesn't care about children. She doesn't care about much. It's hard to stimulate her, to bring her back to the stage of childhood. At the kindergarten she's having a lot of difficulties. When she's alone she plays, but when she's with the kids in the kindergarten she disconnects, she's afraid of everything.
NARRATOR: Does it scare you or not to go play outside?
GAFNIT AMAR: Yes, because there are also terror attacks.
NARRATOR: What is scary about terror attacks?
GAFNIT AMAR: That people get killed.
NARRATOR: And if your mom and dad are with you, do you like to go to the city?
GAFNIT AMAR: No, I'm scared.
NARRATOR: Mom and Dad can't protect you?
GAFNIT AMAR: They can but I'm scared anyway.
NARRATOR: Why?
GAFNIT AMAR: Because I'm always (ph), I'm at home and there's bombings all the time.
MICHEL AMAR: We live in the city center and we can here every terrorist attack. During a terrorist attack we hear the noise of a powerful explosion and I can give you dozens of examples of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. We hear every single terrorist attack and every terrorist attack triggers the anxiety all over again.
ANAT AMAR: Basically, I don't go outside because I am scared to. It's got to a point where Michel even hid my passport because he was very scared that I would do something very drastic. If it was up to me and I could, I would simply pick up and leave. Not only would I leave this house, but I would also leave Jerusalem. I wouldn't even give it a second thought.
MICHEL AMAR: I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not a person who's scared. But I am afraid for my family, for my children. Yes, my wife wants to leave this city and the children want to leave and I guess what's stopping them is me. For me it's difficult to leave this city. I love this city. I have always loved Jerusalem. I was born here. I can't leave. I've had many offers. I've even had job offers in the U.S. with whatever I wanted and I didn't leave.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: We now return to CNN PRESENTS "Impact of Terror."
NARRATOR: After the horror of that summer day, Canadian volunteer paramedic Orley Pinchuk is returning to Israel. Two years after helping keep Miriam Shushan conscious on that desperate journey to the hospital, Orley and Miriam will be meeting for the first time.
PINCHUK: For the past two years I've really-I've thought about her so much and just I really wonder where she is today, what she's doing and...
SHUSHAN: It would be nice to see her in good times, because she saw me only half-dead, so it would be nice.
PINCHUK: Hi.
I'm so happy to see you walking. I had no idea, honestly. I had no idea if you'd ever be able to walk and I had no idea...
SHUSHAN: I owe you so much.
RAZIEL: I try not to think of where I live as a battlefield, but if you think about it, then going to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread is going out to the battlefield.
ROTH: It's hard for me to think about us in a different environment. We've been raising our children here for 15 years. I have to say it makes you go prematurely gray and you worry a lot, but you deal with it. You deal with the reality that you're given.
RAZIEL: When you walk around Israel, you walk around restaurants, you walk around shopping malls, you walk in the center of town, you see security guys everywhere. You can't go into a restaurant without being checked. You can't go into a shopping mall without being checked. You walk downtown, you go to the marketplace, you see security guys all over the place. And I go downtown only if I really have to. If I go to a restaurant I'll go not into the center of town but somewhere in the periphery and always make sure that there's a guard there and never sit close to the guard, always sit further inside.
ROTH: Our younger kids, who still go to school, are given pretty strict instructions. First of all, no public buses. Never. They do travel on school buses but those are buses that only carry school kids. My wife and I spend a lot of time ferrying our children around the town because we'd much rather do that than have them go on the bus. You never take your mind off the security issue. I know when I'm on a bus, and I'm on a bus most days, I scan around, I look at the floor to see if there are any packages lying there. However, at a certain point you switch off and you say, "OK, I've done my bit. It's not in my control. You hope for the best.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A suicide bomber in Jerusalem killed at least 20 people. The bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with people going home to an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The attack here tonight was on a soft target. The bus was full of civilians. The youngest were not spared. Many of those maimed and killed here tonight are children.
After the relative quiet of recent times, people here had been feeling a bit safer, a bit more relaxed. But that's over now.
ROTH: We're part of a circle which now consists of several thousand families who have lost a child or a parent or a spouse to an act of murder. Up until the tragedy of my daughter's murder, I was really like, I think, most people outside of Israel. These were events that were framed by a television screen. These were things that occurred and then were overtaken by normal life. Now I've learned that for the people who are touched by an act of terror in a personal way, it isn't an event which you then work your way past and, as the expression goes, life goes on. It actually keeps happening every minute and every day. Life is never going to be the same.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
