“Let's go out to dinner tonight," my husband suggested yesterday, Tuesday, August 19, 2003. “Great,” I said, after being stuck in the house all day working on my book.

I wanted to go someplace new, so I went to a website listing Jerusalem's kosher restaurants and found a little French place in the center of town I'd never been to before. I called to find out if they had a security guard, and, while on the phone, I asked if I needed a reservation. I did.

"We've only got one table available, out on the patio," he told me. "Otherwise, we are booked for the whole evening."

I thought, wow, after all the restaurants in town center have been going out of business after two years of intifadah, this place must be something special.

Even before we parked our car, I noticed how downtown Jerusalem was packed with people. Families out for a stroll. Vacationers on tours. People going to the downtown food festivals. The open-air flea markets reopened, full of buyers.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Just a year ago, Jerusalem was a ghost town. A feeling of rebirth, people throwing off their fears, beginning to live again.

We sat down to eat at eight. The food was great. The service wonderful.

Lovely antipasti, a meat dish with pears served on a little table out in a vine-covered courtyard. It was so quiet. I thought how fortunate it was that this little place had weathered the lonely days when no one came to Jerusalem.

We finished at nine and decided to join the milling crowds enjoying the summer evening. As we walked down Rechov Rivlin and reached Jaffa Road, I didn't suspect anything as I saw boys running down the street. Youngsters letting off steam, I thought. Then I saw the police cars, and overheard someone say: "Pigua!" Terrorist attack.

Sirens. Crowds gathered on corners, listening to car radios. Someone said "Shmuel HaNavi Street" in the heart of Jerusalem's ultra Orthodox neighborhood.

The lively street scene turned surrealistic. People were still sitting in outdoor cafes, smiling and laughing, while children lay burnt and dying a block away. If you didn't pay attention, you could keep on telling yourself that this was a lovely summer evening in Jerusalem.

We headed back to the car, and put on the radio. A double bus, standing room only, packed with families returning from the Western Wall, blown to bits. It had just happened.

We headed home to see the news. As I opened the door, I called out my son's name. But he didn't answer. He hadn't said he was going out. I walked up the steps. His room was empty. My stomach lurched. My G-d, where was my son!

But soon I heard his voice from another part of the house. And I thought of all the families going through the same thing with different results.

I watched the news, the bloodied faces of crying children. The grandmother led from the carnage. Bodies in the streets. A tiny little girl on her back as medics worked over her....

I thought of the people still sitting in cafés and restaurants in Israel and all over the world, still pretending that we are at peace, in a peace process, or that the people in power among Palestinians want to reach a peaceful compromise.

I thought of all the months our government gave in to American pressure to abandon its war on terror, to release prisoners, hand over security control in the West Bank and Gaza, allow terrorist organizations to bring in more and better weapons, train more bombers in a process of self-delusion that looked at every concession as a step towards a positive goal.

All that led inevitably to that tiny girl lying bloodied in the street fighting for her life.

I thought of myself, as a citizen in a democracy, and how tired I was of fighting her enemies and her own government, and most of her own press, and the country of her birth, the greatest democracy and lover of freedom, the United States. They have been totally wrong every step of the way in facing a threat to mankind that can only be solved by force of arms with useless words, and self-destructive appeasement.

I thought, I'm to blame for that little girl.

I shouldn't have been going out to dinner. I should have been standing with picket signs outside the home of my Prime Minister, my government, the American Embassy, telling them that Jewish lives are not a bargaining chip. And that that little girl's life, her blood, is on all our heads. I should have been screaming: anyone who doesn't fight terror 100% of the time, is a collaborator of terror.

That same day, I watched television footage of the terrorist bomb that blew up the head of the UN delegation in Baghdad. I heard UN spokesmen say, finally, after two years of blowing up Bar Mitzvahs, discos and Seder nights: "Terrorists know no boundaries."

We must learn from our enemies, if we wish get rid of terror. Our opposition to terrorism, to leaders of the free world that accommodate it, to an indifferent public that has learned to tolerate the deaths of others, should know no boundaries.

We cannot get tired, take time off. We must be as relentless and uncompromising, single-minded, unmerciful and determined as are the Hamas and Jihad.

We need to fight for our lives now, so that our children will not have to fight for theirs in the middle of the street beneath the ministering medics as their blood washes the road.