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Cafe Moment -- One year later
By Wolf Blitzer
Jerusalem (CNN) -- It was March 9, 2002, when a Palestinian suicide bomber walked into the packed Jerusalem nightspot and detonated the explosive belt he was wearing -- killing 11 people and injuring 54 others. The crowded cafe -- especially popular with young Israelis -- was destroyed. I visited Cafe Moment in June 2002 -- only three months after the blast. Reconstruction then was already well on the way. A year later, the cafe has been rebuilt and is clearly back in business -- though by no means the same. "To rebuild doesn't mean to just rebuild foundations. It is to rebuild foundations of humans," says Yoram Cohen, the owner. He was inside during the bombing. "The second of the blast, I flew over the bar from the impact of the bomb," he recalls. "And somehow, I got up." He's been getting up every day since, he says. If you just arrived in Jerusalem, you'd never know just how real the terror threat is. That's because the people who live here are determined not to let the terrorists win. They go on with their lives as normally as they can. That's a determination all of them seem to possess. Rafi Fridj was at the Cafe Moment the night of the bombing but had left only five minutes earlier. He makes a point of still coming back. "You have to continue with your life," he insists. "You can't let the terror win and change your normal life." Indeed, strolling or driving around Jerusalem and other Israeli cities underscores that determination to live ordinary lives during extraordinary times. Despite the numerous bus bombings, most recently on June 11, people still climb aboard -- in part, they say, because they can't afford more expensive forms of transportation. And they still go to Cafe Moment. Says David Yakin, another Cafe patron, "In the first few months of the bombing, it really was a little bit scary. I think twice of going to a place like this but you get used to everything and then you don't let nothing get you down." And they still yearn for the ordinary -- even as they keep a weary eye for anything out of the ordinary.
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