The evening started almost as any other Friday night.
My wife and I were preparing to take my daughter Rotem (14) and two girl friends to a show in Ramat Hasharon near Tel Aviv.
It is a monthly midnight show (the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" fan club's monthly gathering, of all things).
I say almost a normal Friday night, because none of our days lately is what you can call "normal".
For some reason, though my senses are always very sharp, especially regarding security issues, after many years of military service and "Israeli civil life training", I did not Veto the plan of the girls. I know why. They love it, they go every month, they are such good girls, but mostly, how much can you sit at home and be "incarcerated" because of the security concerns of this mad situation in which the whole country is in? What about some normal life? Don't they and we deserve it? Last Friday it was a bomb half a mile from our house, in Hadera (the second one in the last six months, as you well know).
The week before it was Netanya, Raanana, Azur, Jerusalem, etc.
How much longer do we have to be fully awake, think ahead of the game, be careful? How can we watch over our kids and keep them safe? Can we continuously wrap them in cotton to keep them from being hurt? So we did not Veto, and volunteered to drive them and wait from them while going to a midnight movie, then bring them back by four AM.
We did this a couple times in the past.
In itself it is a bit surrealistic already, but wait for the rest. Half way between Hadera and Ramat Sharon the terrible news stopped the pleasant music on the only Blues and Jazz station we have. A bomb, they say, at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv.
Several wounded. Do not come close to the area, they say.
I take a right to Raanana, and on the main street I see hundreds of youngsters everywhere.
Some just hanging around with friends, others cruising the streets with no specific aim.
A special bus is loading youngsters about to go to one of the night clubs in Tel Aviv.
Still a "normal" Friday night.
Almost midnight, the night is still young.
And the kids on the streets of Raanana are not listening to news, of course.
They are headed to a party, to "let go", as we say (Lehitparek, in Hebrew, also literally meaning "to be taken apart".
Cynically, very cynically said, some of them are already taken apart, in fact blown to pieces at that time, only we do not know it yet).
We call our oldest daughter Gili (17 �) and warn her to change plans and not to go to Tel Aviv as she and friends intended to.
They are then headed to a pub in Pardes Hanna, not far from home. I tell Ofra that I am sure that there must be many wounded, since the place is packed at this time with the parties only beginning.
We come closer to our target, and the streets of Ramat Ha Sharon are packed with kids, on the side walks, on benches, in the Pizza places, in the street, and near the theatre that our girls are headed to, too.
By now this picture is surrealistic already.
The news are pouring out of the radios, and by now I guess that the joyful crowds near the theatre and in the streets heard the news, and there is already more information.
They say that there are at least twenty wounded.
We know well that if this is the first number, the final one will be much more than double.
Boy, are we right! And though the news reached the youngsters, they know and heard already, what can and should they do? They go on.
They just wanted to have a nice Friday night with friends.
What's wrong with that? What else can they do? Stay home? Our cell phone rings and family members ask if we heard.
Yes we did, and I am asking myself, why not just turn around and take the girls home.
This is insane already as it is. Yet we continue, and I do not want to spoil the evening that the kids were expecting for the last couple of weeks.
And not that I am such a hero. With hesitations, Ofra and I exchange looks, thinking about the same thing, praying that all will end OK on this side of the evening.
We brief the girls one last time, exchange cell phone numbers, advise them about conduct, and off we go.
Police cars are rushing from all the area to Tel Aviv, and we clear the way for them to pass by. We go to a beautiful midnight Chinese movie, and we are the only ones in the theatre.
The young lady at the popcorn stand, and the attendant, both 17 year olds discuss the situation and receive cell phone calls from friends, while in the background the theatre manager listens to the never ending news on the radio.
They are both twelve graders, as are many in my school, soon to be joining the Israeli Army.
And then what? And the numbers grow.
People come out of an earlier show and have no idea what has happened. They earned a couple hours without these unwanted news. Good for them.
Before the lights go out the radio already speaks about more than fifty wounded, some in bad shape. Gili calls and announces that she is back home.
"One in bed", I sigh to myself. "One more to go". The movie is beautiful, but our minds are elsewhere.
Two fifty AM we are out.
The streets are more empty but youth are still cruising around back and fourth.
We still have a good half an hour to kill.
We head to Herzliya, after we failed to find an open place in Ramat Hasharon.
All the places we went by are slowly closing.
In the streets there are already police barricades and check points.
The radio announces the bad number we were waiting for: 124 wounded, 16 dead, including the suicide terrorist.
Most 17-18 year olds, many Russian immigrants. By 10 AM one more will die from his wounds.
Unfortunately some might come afterwards. Severely wounded does not end well at times.
We know. Then the human stories will start, as the one about the two sisters that were killed together in the crowd.
About this we will hear in the morning. In Herzliya many places are open, people are out in the streets, many police cars in the street corners, waiting for a possible other event.
One can not and should not close down the country, after all.
So people go on with their lives. And at this point the surrealism is striking.
It is a grotesque and chaotic, a picture full of impossible contradictions. Blood and dance, life and sirens, laughter and death, all side by side.
All in a surrealistic and bad tasted mixture. By now the full effect of the terrorist attack is clear.
It is bad blow in the very heart of Israel. You can not get any more into the center than that.
I could go on and on, but have to stop somewhere. We get the expected phone call, pick up the tired girls.
They ask about the dead and wounded. We tell them. They listen carefully. Three 14 year old girls after a joyful party. They congest the information for a few minutes, and as I head home, in a few minutes they fall asleep on the way to the relative safety of our home. Too tired and excited to cope with all this at once. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that finally the pictures on the CNN, Sky News and the world media are showing a more accurate and non-biased picture of who is attacked and who is the target to terror. This picture ain't worth, believe me. No useless sacrifice of young lives is worth. And in the midst of all that we try to raise our kids and let them party.