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    It's half an hour before candle-lighting on Friday in Jerusalem, as rushed travelers are doing their best to make it to their destinations before Shabbat. But for Gal, a Jerusalem Bomb Squad sapper, there is no clock, no imminent pre-Shabbat siren, just him, his equipment, and a lone, unclaimed black overnight bag. In Jerusalem, this means a bomb scare. He and his team have already cordoned off the main street at the entrance to Jerusalem by the Central Bus Station. As drivers, looking at their watches, tap nervously on their steering wheels, Gal runs back and forth between the suspicious bag and the familiar high-topped white van with the Bomb Squad insignia, first suiting up in his protective gear, then attaching a rope and special "device" to the package.

    The police push the crowd further back, and a loud blast rings through the air: not a bomb exploding, but Gal's own neutralizing blast. Then the impatient drivers see it: undershirts flying through the air, boxer shorts, socks, a few towels and some white shirts.

    "Great," mumbles one irritated driver as he zooms toward home, "a yeshiva bochur forgot his laundry."

A group photo of the squad at a lighter moment
A group photo of the squad at a lighter moment
    No one pays much attention to Gal and his buddies as they gather up their gear; everyone is racing away, some muttering unsavory phrases under their breath. Yet one elderly woman approaches Gal-he could be her grandson's age-and says quietly, "Kol Hakavod" (something like, "more glory to you"). "Thank you, Savta," Gal thinks to himself, "you made my Shabbat."

    Gal was only doing his job, a job that he and several dozen other sappers anonymously perform about a hundred times a week, sometimes as often as thirty times a day.

    In Jerusalem, bomb threats are as common as forgotten shopping bags and misplaced briefcases. Only a tiny fraction of them turn out to be real bombs, and only a small number of those ever detonate. But whatever the numbers, it's the Bomb Squad's mission to ensure that Jerusalem isn't paralyzed by bomb scares, its citizens not afraid to venture out. Driver and pedestrian traffic may be frustrated at times, but even in the face of disparaging remarks, the sappers know that theirs is the first line of defense in keeping Jerusalem safe.

    Twenty-two-year-old Gal, with the baby-faced preppy look of a college freshman, is the force's youngest recruit. He's still waiting for his "big break," when one of the hundreds of suspicious objects he's handled will actually turn out to be a real bomb, catapulting him into the coveted category of "seasoned" sapper. "Every sapper wants to diffuse a real bomb himself, regardless of the danger. It's like finally getting your diploma, " Gal admits.

    Yet he has seen his share of blood and gore. Following last year's suicide bombs on several Jerusalem buses, the Bomb Squad was the first on the scene, checking between bloody limbs and blown-up body parts for additional bombs. One common terrorist tactic is to rig several bombs to go off one after the other, as happened two years ago at a soldiers' bus stop at Beit Lid. A bomb went off, killing a dozen soldiers, and minutes later, as a crowd converged on the spot to try to help, another blast went off, killing a dozen more.

    A sapper's day begins at the Squad's headquarters at "Kishle," the police station in the Old City which once served as a Turkish prison, hidden behind the minarets and stone fortress walls of David's Tower. Upon entering the compound, the first thing to smack you is the overpowering smell of horses and stables. Not a throwback to Kishle's ancient roots, but in fact, the compound also headquarters Jerusalem's mounted police.

    The Bomb Squad sappers, all dressed in blue sweatshirts, green army pants and rubber-soled shoes, look like a bunch of gym teachers, until you notice the barettas or .45 automatics stuffed into the special holsters at the small of their backs. The squad is divided into three eight-hour shifts, to ensure 24-hour protection of the city.

    Rami, 28, just clocked in and is waiting for one of the vans to return so he and others on his shift can begin their day's training maneuvers. The sappers rarely have time to sit around. If they aren't on a field call, they are either in a classroom studying some new anti-terror material, out practicing maneuvers, or poking through garbage cans, searching empty buses or suspiciously parked cars looking for bombs. Or they might be assigned to the tedious but necessary work of checking a hotel suite or auditorium for explosives prior to the arrival of a government or foreign official.

    Rami has been with the Jerusalem force for three years, and for five years prior, was stationed in the Arab town of Ramallah outside Jerusalem, one of the intifada hotbeds. In his eight years as a sapper, he's had some close calls but has never sustained an injury.

    "I was pulled into the force because of the action," Rami says of a job that could kill you ten different ways ten times a day. "You don't think about the danger. Much of the work is pretty routine, but as soon as you're faced with a real event, a switch goes off in your head; you go into a different gear. You don't think about the danger. You think how you're going to diffuse the package."

    Once in Ramallah, Rami got a call about a suspicious black bag in the middle of the road outside the military compound. "I sent the robot out from the van to examine the package. Suddenly, there was an explosion and the robot was blown sky-high. It could have been me."

    All the Bomb Squad vans are equipped with a sophisticated robot that handles the package so the sapper, to reduce risk of injury, can have as little direct contact as possible. The robot can open a package with his "arms" or a small amount of explosives, it can X-ray a package to see its contents, it is equipped with front and side cameras, and has other analytical capabilities including a shotgun. Once the robot comes into contact with the suspected bomb, several methods or "devices" might be used to diffuse it. But Israelis already know not to ask too many questions about those familiar cables or other neutralizing devices they see being attached to suspicious objects.

    "If I told you the specifics of how we operated, tomorrow my enemies would read about it," says Avi Eto-el, Jerusalem Police Dept. Head of Anti-terrorism. The Jerusalem Bomb Squad is reputed to be the best in the world and trains anti-terror forces from many countries in its prized, sensitive methods.

    Has Rami, this super-cool Israeli with a crew-cut and perpetual macho smile ever felt his hands shake? "If you think about being injured, you can throw in the towel," says Rami. "All you can think of is how to do the work most efficiently and safely. Afterwards, you go over it in your head and then the shock of what you went through hits you. We know we can rely on G-d."

    Rami doesn't look like the type who prays much, but with the Bomb Squad buddies, you can never tell. A pair of tefillin, which gets frequent daily use, lies casually on a corner shelf in the squadroom. Many of the bare-headed sappers carry a mini-book of Tehillim in their pockets, a good-luck charm with Divine assistance.

    A book case filled with innocuous, ordinary objects tells its own story of Israel's war against terror. There is the saccharin bottle, for example, rigged with an explosive charge. A restaurant owner spotted a tiny lever sticking out from the side of a similar bottle as it stood on one of his cafe tables in the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall. The bomb exploded on a Bomb Squad sapper, blowing off his arm. Then there is carton of long-life milk rigged with a bomb inside. A terrorist thought to place such a carton next to a stall at the Machane Yehuda market, but it blew up on him before he could set the timer. A "work accident," in sapper parlance. When you make a bomb, the sappers note, you only get one mistake.

    A plastic house plant, a child's toy, a camera-all rigged with explosives- are just some of the items that have been spotted on Jerusalem streets by alert citizens and diffused in time. A flashlight, a bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste and a handful of pistachio nuts fill out the profile of these artifacts of terror: terrorists stuff the insides with plastic explosives for easy transportation over the border.

    Yisrael, 41, is the oldest and longest member of the squad, seeing it evolve from a handful to several dozen finely-skilled sappers. He shrugs off the image that sappers have nerves of steel. "Once maybe," he says." Now everything is much more mechanized. Today, sappers have many protective devices to ensure they don't get injured on the job."

"If I told you the specifics of
how we operated tomorrow
my enemies would read about it"

    Yisrael is matter-of-fact, nonchalant about his work, until he mentions his friend Steve Hilmes. Hilmes was one of two Jerusalem sappers killed in the line of duty. In the summer of 1978, Hilmes, an idealistic American immigrant, was killed as he was trying to diffuse a bomb planted on one of Jerusalem's busy streets.

    In his 22 years on the force, Yisrael has never himself sustained an injury, although he recalls some pretty close calls with death. "The first time is the worst," Yisrael says. "Then you look at it as a job. It's like a surgeon the first time he cuts into a patient. Afterwards it becomes routine." That "first time" was 20 years ago on the No. 12 bus in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood. Yisrael was notified of a suspicious pipe sticking out from a package under one of the seats. "As soon as I saw it, I knew it was real. A trigger goes off in your head, a sixth sense. I managed to diffuse it, and when I checked the clock, I saw it had under two minutes to detonation."

    Several months later, another bomb did explode on the No. 12 bus, which began its route in Arab East Jerusalem (the bus line no longer exists). Those passengers weren't so lucky. Several were killed, including two Beit Yaakov high school girls.


A saccarin bottle and milk container, both rigged with explosives
    Terrorist tactics have changed over the years. A decade ago, most bombs were attached to clocks which gave about 40 minutes from activation until detonation, enabling alert citizen notification and quick sapper response to neutralize the potential death traps. The lag time gave the terrorists time to get out of the city before the inevitable roundup of Arab suspects. Today, however, the rules have changed with the introduction of the crazed, unstoppable suicide bombers who instantly detonate themselves along with their bombs. Although the sappers today use highly-mechanized devices to reduce personal injury, they have to be more on top of preventive measures than ever, to get to the terrorists and their source of explosives before the bombs can ever detonate.

    That means, among other measures, constant spot-checks of blue license-plated cars from the territories at checkpoints before the entrance to Jerusalem. Within minutes, much to the anger of Arab travelers, the squad unscrews door panels, checks under the seats and in the trunk, examines carburetors and searches any personal parcels. The squad wants to make terrorists think twice before trying to smuggle a bomb into the city. Politics, say the sappers, have to be argued by someone else.

    Yet the Bomb Squad is careful not to make it personal with the Arabs, despite the fact that they spend their days looking for bombs planted by Arabs. Before being accepted to the force, applicants go through a battery of psychological as well as physical exams to weed out the guys with the death wishes as well as those who want to "get even." If you ask a Bomb Squad sapper about his politics, he will dutifully avoid the question.

    Yisrael goes on about his other close calls. He once received a call about a suspicious package by the gas station outside Har Nof. "I saw immediately that it was a bomb," Yisrael recalls. "They didn't even try to cover it up. All the wires and the clock were exposed. As I'm reporting to headquarters on the walkie-talkie, the thing suddenly explodes. I was totally covered in soot and smoke. The gas station attendant thought I was dead. Had the terrorist been a little more generous with his TNT, I would have been."

    Then there was the bomb at Havat HaNoar HaTzioni school. A suspected bomb was discovered in a classroom, and while the quick thinking administration managed to evacuate the students, Yisrael got stuck with a new driver who didn't know the shortcuts through Israeli traffic. By the time he got there (five minutes later than he should have) and began to put on his protective gear, he heard the bomb go off. The classroom was ruined, but no one was hurt, including the late-arriving Yisrael himself.

    And then there was a most bizarre case of a father and son, out shopping on Friday morning on the crowded Malchei Yisrael Street in Geula. They saw a package at a bus stop with a trig clock sticking out, put it in their shopping bag and took it home with them. When they put it on the table, they saw that the clock had wires and explosives attached to it. Yisrael arrived as the father and son were still staring at the thing. Meanwhile, the trigger went off in Yisrael's head. "This is going to explode any minute." He ushered the family out of the house, quickly strapped on his protective gear (33 seconds, top to bottom, timed for efficiency), and using the squad's classified methods, diffused the bomb, with seconds to go before detonation.

Yaakov was about to "neutralize"
the bag with an explosive charge,
when something went off in his head.
"I knew something wasn't right"
he said. "I had this feeling."

    How does Yisrael feel when he leaves his wife in the morning, not knowing what kind of danger the day will bring? "My wife is in it with me," he says. In fact, she's a policewoman herself, and they met when she used to work as a dispatcher, fielding phone calls from the police emergency number and sending off Yisrael and his friends to the sites of bomb scares.

    It's a busy Thursday afternoon, when Jaffa Road traffic is usually bumper- to-bumper. Now it's eerily quiet, as a lone bus sits in the middle of the street, pedestrian and vehicle traffic cordoned off by police. A shoe box was found under a seat on the bus. Soon word buzzes among the policemen holding back the crowd. "Wires and batteries," according to the robot's X-ray. The components of a bomb. The squad engages its secret methods, and the package is neutralized.

    "A fake," says Yaakov, a 10-year veteran. "A mitan srak (dummy bomb). The terrorists plant them to see how we react, what our methods are. The guy who planted this is probably watching us now from somewhere in the crowd.

    Fake or not, whether the "trigger" goes off in their heads or not, the sappers always stick to the "book," the protocol of proper bomb disposal. In this business, you don't take chances. A "chance" can kill you.

    Yet once, Yaakov said, he did take a chance. A large, unclaimed overnight bag was discovered at the Western Wall. Yaakov, the sapper in charge, cleared the area and was about to "neutralize" the bag with an explosive charge, when something went off in his head. "I knew something wasn't right," he said. "I had this feeling." So against the rules, he approached the bag and unzipped it with his bare hands. Inside was a week-old baby, abandoned by its mother.

    If Divine intervention is more intense in the Holy Land, then it is especially so with the Bomb Squad and their maneuvers. Gershon Klein, a frequent visitor to Israel, told of his misadventure at Ben Gurion Airport. Klein's plane arrived on Friday afternoon, and in the flurry of flagging down a cab to get him to his destination before Shabbat, he left his overnight bag, with tefillin and sefarim inside, on the curb. The diligent sappers disposed of the bag according to standard procedure-detonating it with an explosive charge. When Klein came to the police station after Shabbat to retrieve his belongings, he was shocked. The entire bag was blown to bits, while the tefillin, siddur, and Chumash didn't have a scratch.

Rachel Ginsberg is a frequent contributor. She lives in Israel.

After An Attack: The Men who clean up

    Despite the Bomb Squad's superb record of terror prevention, one of their most painful missions is in the aftermath of a "successful" terrorist attack, when the sappers, among the first on the gruesome scene, climb between debris and bodies searching for secondary explosives. And dispersed throughout the crowd of police sappers, rescue workers, army personnel and medics, who have the unenviable task of separating the living from the dead, are the now-familiar men in the black kippot and orange vests imprinted with the words "Chesed Shel Emet."

    These hundred-plus charedi volunteers, many with the traditional Mea-Shearim-style long peyot, knee-length frocks and flat hats, arrive at every terrorist scene, fulfilling the mitzvah of bringing the victims to proper Jewish burial. But who would imagine that, in the aftermath of a terrorist blast, this exalted mission entails climbing on balconies and rooftops, searching for limbs and other body parts, and scraping down the walls of buildings splattered with blood and flesh?

    Crowds at the scene already know that the Chesed Shel Emet volunteers will be working in the vicinity of the attack for hours, as cranes hoist them to the rooftops and upper-floor porches, and as police explosives experts instruct them in how far from the blast body fragments may have been strewn. Many have cellular phones or beepers, but in a country where within five minutes of a terrorist attack it's already national news, volunteers often arrive before their beepers go off. They come equipped with rubber gloves, cement scrapers, and the now-infamous plastic bags used to collect the remains of the victims.

    "It's something you can never prepare yourself for emotionally," says Rabbi Elazar Gelbstein, founder and head of Chesed Shel Emet. "When we arrive at the scene, we reprogram ourselves and work in a trance. If we stopped to think about what we were doing, we'd become paralyzed. Afterwards, we try to talk about it with our colleagues to release some of the tension. But at night in bed, everyone is alone with his own thoughts."

    Why a separate group to provide this service, when so many other rescue personnel are at the scene? Police are interested in making legal identification of corpses, and rescue workers are working against the clock saving what they can of the living. Kavod hames, the halachic concept of proper burial, needed its own advocate.

    Rabbi Gelbstein, a director of one of Jerusalem's burial societies and a volunteer "Hatzalah" ambulance driver for over 20 years, gathered his crew from other orthodox "Hatzalah" volunteers, newspaper ads, and word of mouth. Of the initial group of would-be trainees, however, many dropped out. Some couldn't take the training films, showing footage of bombings too shocking for the most vivid horror movies. Others left after participating in their first attack.

    "Not many people can do this kind of work," says Rabbi Gelbstein. "But for those who do take it on, G-d gives them the strength, for they are performing a vital mitzvah. It can be a terrorist attack or any fatal car accident. If one of our volunteers doesn't get there in time, the police, after gathering what they need for legal identification, will take a hose and wash everything else away."

    Gelbstein says his organization does more than bring the victims of an attack to proper burial, where burial of the flesh and the blood is also required. The Chesed Shel Emet volunteers also insure that there is proper halachic identification of the corpses. If not, there can be halachic problems of inheritance, and primarily that of agunot, women who are not halachically certain of their husband's death and are therefore forbidden to marry again.

    Moshe Holtzman, a Chesed Shel Emet volunteer, says it takes him a few days to return to himself after cleaning up the aftermath of an attack. "It's something you can never get used to if you're a feeling person with a heart. People think we're like surgeons, that after the first operation you get used to it. But how do you ever get used to seeing a 10-year-old boy blown to bits, his limbs scattered around the block?"

    After the last bus attack in Jerusalem, Holtzman, a chassid with the traditional garb who serves as the halachic supervisor of the mikvaot in communities in Judea and Samaria, found himself on the roof of the Interior Ministry building on the corner of Jaffa Road and Shlomzion Hamalka Street, where he found a head and other limbs.

    "I don't speak to my wife or my children about these things," Holtzman says. "I don't go around telling family members that I had a head in a plastic bag in my car."

    Perhaps the greatest test of the Chesed Shel Emet volunteers is going home to their families and trying to act normal, unphased.

    "After the first training course, my husband couldn't eat or sleep for days," says Esther Holtzman. "I'll tell you the truth, I'm proud of his strength, his mesirus nefesh, but I would prefer he didn't do it. I see what it does to him. I can't protest because it's such a great mitzvah, so I've made my peace, but I wish someone else would do the mitzvah instead."