Storm of Terror

What would it be like to live with terrorism day in and day out? To bury loved ones week in and week out? What would it be like to be an ex-American, raising five children in Hebron, miles from the West Bank of Israel? Trying to keep herself sane in "a gyre of internal doubts and external turbulence," June Leavitt took to writing a diary, recording the appalling things that were happening around her. Storm of Terror begins with Rosh Hashanah in September 2000, the Jewish New Year, when Stage II of the Intifada broke out all over Israel. Ms. Leavitt writes firsthand of the tragic events of the ensuing eighteen months, when the Palestinians opened up the arsenals of weapons that had been given them as part of the American-sponsored peace process, and began to use them against Israelis. Hundreds of Israeli mothers, fathers, and children were gunned down on the roads of Israel. Israeli soldiers, waiting for rides, were blown up by suicide bombers; buses filled with civilians went up in rockets of fire, leaving chars and cinders of tragedy. Ms. Leavitt and her family knew many of the victims. Her daughter was drafted into the army as a combat soldier in Hebron just as the Arab uprising began. With a keen sense of the political blunders that, parading under the banner of "Peace Accords," caused the escalation of Arab terrorism and national trauma; with stirring references to biblical stories where the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict may lie, Ms. Leavitt has written a poignant and powerful narrative.