When planes hit the World Trade Center, my first thought, to my everlasting shame, was about America finally understanding, perhaps only a little, what we in Israel were experiencing almost daily. When the second plane hit and the Pentagon was set afire, I silently begged Americans to forgive me. I never wanted them to learn the lesson like that.



This time, unlike 9/11, I didn't have even a second to think that now, perhaps, England would be more sympathetic to Israel. The world is indeed a different place today than it was on September 10, 2001. The pictures are horrific, and even worse is the knowledge that what is to come in the next few days is worse than what we yet know. The numbers will climb, and the impact of today will be felt by those who were injured for weeks, months, years and perhaps the rest of their lives. This, I know from what we have experienced here, and yet this is not something that England is ready to hear.



The numbers are agonizingly slow in coming and yet already much higher numbers are being released on Israeli television. This, too, is something that I know. Our media is ever cautious in publicizing the numbers, because each number represents a life, a family, a town in mourning. Often, the foreign media, which has no qualms about the pain such numbers cause, will be quick to announce a high death count, while all Israeli stations slowly approach the same number. For this one time, Israeli media is free to release numbers, knowing that it is very unlikely than anyone in England is listening to the broadcasts.



It is almost as if the media was trying to gradually break the bad news to its listeners, prepare them slowly for the worst and beyond. This is what is happening in London now and what happens here after each attack. No one could believe that only two people were killed in four combined attacks on three train stations and a bus, and yet, English television remained with this number for hours, only moving gradually up into the tens, twenties and thirties as the day wore on.



The lesson, as we well know it, is that in a moment of utter horror, lives change and we'll never have a satisfactory answer as to why, what could possibly be gained by destroying the lives of innocent people on commuter trains and buses. This is the reality we have lived with, the truth the Americans and Europeans have learned.



Soon will come the coincidences, a friend that was visiting London yesterday, someone just missing the bus, another deciding to spend the day at home or whatever. There will be the accusations of who did this, why they did it and more.



Sky television is talking about the terrorist attacks. BBC has reported, "London rocked by terror attacks." And inside of me, as I listen to the news and watch the pictures, I am filled with emotions. To the left of the anguish I feel for the families, a tad to the right of the anger I feel at what I am sure will prove, once again, to have been the act of Islamic extremists, is this tiny seed of anger at the Europeans themselves, or at least at the European media.



Confirming what I already knew, when buses blow up in London, they are terrorist attacks, which, one would assume, were perpetrated by terrorists. By definition, if it is a terrorist attack, then that means terrorists attacked, no? And yet, when a bus goes off in Jerusalem, these are attacks by militants. Terrorists kill Americans and Europeans, militants kill Israelis, it seems. BBC refuses to call them terrorists if they attack in Jerusalem, but terror it is and terrorists they are if their victims are Britons in London.



To the BBC's way of thinking, calling them terrorists is making a judgment, something they as journalists do not want to do - unless the victims are their own people, apparently. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is their mantra when the victims are Jews and Israelis, and yet, today, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that terrorists attacked London.



I try to tell myself that I have no right to this anger that I feel when people are suffering there, and yet, it is a slow burning pain, deep down and aimed at the media, who serves the interests of the terrorists by dismissing what they do as legitimate acts of desperation or "war".



I was recently told by a former BBC correspondent that she is able to maintain an air of separation when a bus full of Israelis blows up. She didn't mean it to sound quite that way, but that was the underlying message. As a trained journalist, she cannot feel solidarity with one side, refuses to understand the pain of the Israelis in a conflict to which she assigns more blame to those who are blown up in buses than to those who inflict this horror.



As I look at the pictures and I hear the panic in London, I feel so much pain and sorrow. I do not think the English police are handling it well and I know that I am not being fair. Israel has become too good at handling it. I've said that for a long time. Within minutes after an attack, emergency numbers are posted. Four hours into the tragedy, England still had not released these numbers.



Within hours, the streets in Israel are cleared and the traffic flowing. The bus is moved and cleaned elsewhere, out of sight; move on with your lives. Hours later, London is still paralyzed, still in shock, openly wounded and vulnerable. This is as it should be. When terrorists rip your heart out, when they attack at the height of rush hour, intending to murder and maim, it is wrong to clean up so fast, to move on too quickly.



Most important, I can imagine the terror and the pain of the people there so clearly. I see their shocked faces and I don't believe their religion or nationality makes a difference, because there is a brotherhood among victims, an understanding that this can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone.



And I think there is an answer in there somewhere, in that brotherhood, in that understanding and in that sad acceptance. When the whole world rocks with agony, when we all cry because a bus blew up somewhere - and when it doesn't matter where or who was on board - we might find a way to stop this. We are closer today, in the post 9/11 world we live in, but we aren't there yet.



I offer my deepest, most heartfelt condolences to the people of England, to the families of those who lost loved ones (and worse, don't even know it yet), to those who were injured and their families, and to all of us - because we live in a world where someone can climb on a bus or board a train and do such horror.