Different Means This Time for Same Deadly End

Two differences distinguished the Hamas bombing at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University this week: The explosive was left in a bag and detonated by remote control instead of by a suicide bomber, and most of the victims were foreigners.

A Hamas leader said Thursday that the organization was sorry that “non-Zionists” were among the dead and wounded. Five of the seven people killed were Americans. Had Hamas, a radical Islamic organization that favors the destruction of Israel, deliberately targeted American and non-Israeli victims, that would have represented a departure from the group’s stated policies.

It seems more likely that Hebrew University was a target of opportunity for Hamas: It was relatively easy to hit--students had long complained of lax security--and it had extraordinarily painful consequences for the Israeli psyche.

Killing so many foreign nationals was, for Hamas, a byproduct. Even though it risks the further wrath of major powers such as the U.S., it deepens Israel’s sense of isolation by casting the Jewish state as an unsafe place.

“The goal is to maintain jihad against Israel on all fronts, including its international relations, on the cultural front, the economic front, political, armed struggle, even the electronic front,” said Yoni Fighel, a retired army colonel who studies Hamas for the Israeli International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Hamas probably did not know that foreign students had just started summer school at Hebrew University, Fighel and others said. But the bombing instilled fear among those who would visit or move to Israel, and further jeopardized programs of international cooperation.

At Hebrew University, for example, enrollment in once-popular study programs by foreign students is already way down this year, as are tourism, cultural exchanges, even the ability of Israeli teams to participate in international sports tournaments. Some foreign teams refuse to play in Israel because of security concerns.

“We are sorry for the non-Zionist victims,” Hamas leader Abdulaziz Rantisi said in an interview. “But they were in a place where they should not have been. Everybody knows there is a war going on here and they should not be in a war zone.”

Rantisi said the Palestinian who planted the bomb, which was hidden in a backpack left in the middle of a crowded cafeteria at lunchtime, “did not check people’s passports.” And because he fled and apparently detonated the device by remote control, he might not have known who was in the vicinity, only that there would be a crowd. However, anyone with much knowledge of the university would almost certainly have known that foreign students frequented the Frank Sinatra Student Center.

“He [the bomber] targeted a Zionist place and one symbol of the aggression against our people, because this university is established on Palestinian land,” Rantisi said.

Hamas has said the attack was the first in a campaign to avenge Israel’s killing last week of the group’s top military commander along with 14 others, most of them children. In a separate statement Thursday, the group threatened to kill 100 Israelis for every Hamas leader who is assassinated by Israeli forces.

Rantisi downplayed the significance of the means used Wednesday--a planted bomb instead of a suicide attack. He said Hamas has used a variety of methods.

Israelis have been hit by more than 70 suicide bombings since September 2000, many of them the work of Hamas.

It’s possible that it was easier to smuggle onto campus a bomb concealed in a bag rather than strapped to the bomber’s waist.

The bomber’s escape provides an added advantage, from Hamas’ perspective. It makes it more difficult for Israel to identify the assailant, at a time when it has decided to punish the families of suicide bombers.

Ziad abu Amr, a Gazan academic who specializes in Islamic extremism, said Hamas’ military wing was eager to avenge Israel’s slaying of Salah Shehada last week in the Gaza Strip and may have chosen its target precipitously.

“They were pressed to do some form of retaliation, and that made the target less calculated,” he said. “It was an easy target, even if it involves the risks of killing others--Arabs and non-Israelis.”

It also was a target of supreme symbolic importance. Israel’s oldest institution of higher learning, Hebrew University is for Jews a crowning jewel in Zionist history that until Wednesday had remained relatively unscathed by the bloodshed of the last 22 months.