Saddam Hussein had threatened on numerous occasions that he would destroy half of Israel with his arsenal of chemical weapons, and worse.

Faoud said he wasn't worried. Not at all.

But one thing my interviews and observations during the trip did reveal is that Israelis were very concerned about his threats.

Fear of Gas Attack

One morning, the Jerusalem Post, ran an suprising logo above its masthead: a gas mask. "Gasmask information, Page 2," read the words around a graphic of what looked like a vintage World War I gas mask.

The graphic underscored a fact of Israeli life to me: in Israel the shocking and unthinkable are the possible and commonplace. This graphic was positioned in the newspaper and presented in a way a local weekly paper in America heralds little league baseball information. In America, we have drawings of baseball bats and gloves. In Israel, they have pictures of gas masks.

That day I walked around Old Jerusalem and asked people--Israelis--what they thought about the troubles with Iraq.

One man, a seller of religious objects in a shop off of the Cardo, the heart of Jerusalem, told me he was very worried.

"There is more tension now than at any time since before the '67 war," he said, his face weary with worry. Just the night before Saddam Hussein had charged that Israel was repainting its fighter planes with American colors. Saddam Hussein had said Israel was planning to launch a preemptive airstrike similar to the bombing raid on his country in the early '80s. If this continued, he warned, Iraq would attack Israel.

Others shared the shopkeeper's concerns. There was a pair of Jerusalem grandmothers who told me they worried for their grandchildren, and their country. There was the young woman with sparkly earrings who said she felt the end of the world was coming. And even a hard-line city council member of a West Bank settlement said he was frightened.

Yet, I found two cultural responses amongst the Israelis that I really had not anticipated. Although they were worried, the Israelis dealt with pressure very stoically. Like Saxon warriors of the Dark Ages, Israelis behave fatalistically: since there is always the threat of war, they figure it is best not to dwell on it.

And there was another response linked to this, I believe; an absolute faith in the military and the military's ability to deal with any circumstance that arises.

The same people who told me they were frightened about Saddam Hussein--from the Jerusalem grandmothers to a 16-year-old worker at a frozen yogurt store--said they were confident that the army would protect them.

The politicians underscored this message in their speeches. In their responses to Saddam Hussein's threats, they sternly warned that Israel was more than capable of defending itself, and retaliating, against Iraqi attack.

But there was more to this faith in the military than simply a psychological longing for security. In Israel at least half the Jewish population practices Judaism in a secular way. These people find no need to assert their Jewishness because they live in Israel. Yet, for them, something has replaced religion--the state itself.