As the news of three suicide attacks in Israel reached campus yesterday, members of the Penn community were once again compelled to come together to mourn.
"I personally am deeply saddened by this weekend's events," Hillel President and Engineering senior David Kagan said. "It's tragic, and it's horrible."
Yesterday afternoon, at least 15 people were killed, and 35 more injured when a suicide bomber detonated a device on board a bus in Haifa.
And late Saturday night in Jerusalem, two bombs were set off by terrorists, killing at least 10 people including the two suicide bombers and injuring about 180 others. A third explosion, timed to go off as rescue workers reached the scene, came from a nearby car bomb.
There have also been confirmed reports of Israeli soldiers shooting and killing two Palestinians in the West Bank, including an 11-year-old boy.
Students from all religions gathered at various locations across campus yesterday afternoon and evening to pray for the victims and their families. For some, the bombings struck a deeply personal note.
Reform Jewish Community chairwoman and College junior Jen Bolson -- who spent a semester in Israel four years ago -- dedicated a portion of yesterday evening to wading through e-mails from friends still in the Middle East, reassuring her of their safety.
"When I was in Israel I hung out every night in Ben Yehuda [the site of the Jerusalem bombing], and it is hard to imagine that they bombed the place where I used to sit," Bolson said.
Others expressed anger and disbelief over the bombings.
"It is not acceptable in any form or for any reason for innocent teenagers to be killed for doing nothing else than going out at night," College senior Ross Fieldston said. "How would you feel if people blew themselves up in front of Billy Bob's? That's how it must feel."
Muslim students on campus maintain that the terrorist bombings in Israel, as well as the attacks of Sept. 11, are reprehensible and go against fundamental teachings of the Koran.
"Islam itself does not condone such actions," President of the Muslim Students Association Wan Sayuti Wan Hussin said. "What those people did and what Islam has to say are two very different things. The Koran specifically mentions that you cannot use violence in any situation except when you are threatened by your enemies."
Engineering senior Noah Chinitz simply "can't stand it anymore." He said he hopes, as many other students do, that some good will come from this tragedy by shifting the world focus onto the Middle Eastern struggle.
"I'm hoping that maybe the world will now have a better understanding now that a bombing of this magnitude is in the media," Chinitz said.
As for repercussions in the peace process, some students said they were discouraged by the continuing attacks and are losing faith that a favorable resolution will soon emerge.
"It's more of the same," Bolson said. "I don't think it will really change anything because it happened before and will keep happening over and over again."
Fieldston believes that the hopelessness and helplessness that these terrorist attacks cause needs to end and that the means to do so, diplomatic or otherwise, must be extreme.
But others find hope in both the Palestinian and Israeli governments' reactions to the attacks.
"I was thankful in a way that both parties were able to acknowledge that this kind of act does not help the cause for peace and the unnecessary loss of human life is not the approach to reaching a peace agreement in the Middle East," Kagan said.
