ISRAEL: A Nation Sorely Besieged

Bet She'an (House of Rest) is a dusty little village in the Jordan Valley inhabited mostly by Sephardic Jews, who immigrated to Israel from North Africa. According to the Book of Samuel, the community is the place where the victorious Philistines hung the bodies of King Saul and his son Jonathan on the city gates as trophies of war. Last week there were other human trophies of war in Bet She'an, as the townsfolk surrendered to a paroxysm of anger that symbolized the black and explosive mood of embattled, besieged Israel today.

Before dawn last Tuesday, three Arab terrorists belonging to the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine crossed the border from Jordan. They invaded an apartment building in Bet She'an, killing four of its inhabitants and wounding 19 more (including eight children). The guerrillas themselves were killed by counterattacking paratroopers a short time later in a pitched battle in which the terrorists tried to use a children's toy box as a makeshift barricade.

Kill Them Again! At Qiryat Shemona, Ma'alot and Kibbutz Shamir —other border communities that had been shocked by fedayeen attacks earlier this year—the primary response was anguish and grief, as well as anger. Bet She'an was somehow different. An enraged mob hurled the bodies of the dead guerrillas from a second-story apartment window, kicked them, spat on them, stabbed them with sticks, then doused them with kerosene and set them afire. "Kill them again! Kill them again!" some shouted. Throwing back Israeli policemen who tried to smother the flames with blankets, the crowd chanted, "Burn Arafat! Burn Arafat!" —referring to the hated leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Accumulated Rage. In the town's savage mood, some journalists also found themselves the objects of anger. Dan Drooz, reporting for TIME, was harassed for 20 minutes by one man, who shook him and shouted over and over, "Tell [Yasser] Arafat we got his message! Now look at that dead shit over there and ask him if he got ours!" Later, Drooz found the man weeping on a lawn opposite the house where the four citizens of Bet She'an—like 59 other Israelis in 25 earlier raids this year—had been killed.

The anger of Bet She'an, and of all Israel, was mingled with shame and horror, particularly following the discovery that one of the four bodies burned was that of an Israeli victim of the raid, a Moroccan Jew who had immigrated to Israel a decade ago. At the graveside ceremony, Israel's chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, declared with suppressed emotion that the desecration of bodies, even those of Israel's enemies, was prohibited by religious laws. Some clearly agree with Truck Driver Zada David Cohen, who said sadly, "Now everybody will think Israel is barbarian."