Leonard Cole wants to wake the world to what Israel has suffered — and learned — from terror attacks.

"It's all one piece," said Cole, a bioterrorism expert from Ridgewood, in a wide-ranging interview. Terror attacks have killed and wounded thousands of Israelis, and Israelis have created an entirely new branch of response mechanisms — terror medicine.

An adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, an adviser to government agencies, and a frequent commentator in print and on television, Cole said he "was stunned to see how many books about suicide bombers have appeared in the last few years. Some of them are empathetic, some critical, but the number of those about the true victims is quite sparse."

With his latest book, Terror: How Israel Has Coped and What America Can Learn (Indiana University Press), Cole said, he wants to "reach the hearts of those who cry only for the misery of the Palestinians…. I want people to cry, not just for the Palestinians — genuine as their suffering may be — but no less for the anguish they've caused to the Israelis."

To that end — evoking empathy and comprehension, not always the same thing — he tells of suicide attacks from the perspective of parents, waiting at home, unable to reach their children, and the rushing into the night from hospital to hospital, desperate for news and terrified to get it.

How does a suicide bomb damage them and their country?

But here Cole has a surprise. Israelis mourn their dead like any other people, but they have developed ways, he says, to cope with terror and grief, ways we can emulate.

There is "a simple memorial" several feet from the entrance to the Dolphinarium, a Tel Aviv disco where 21 young people died and some 120 were wounded in June 2001, he writes. "A life-size iron silhouette depicts a boy and girl holding hands. Not far away are the names of the victims and a simple inscription: ‘We will not stop dancing.'"

Cole uses "dancing" almost like a code. How to keep on living without giving in to terror, how to keep "dancing," is fast becoming a universal quandary in these troubling times when "we are all Israelis now." Israel, he says, has become a master dancer, with lessons to teach the rest of the modern world.

Grieving families, for example, are not left alone to deal with their grief.

"The support system in Israel has evolved into a remarkable network for recovery," Cole writes. "With the help of family, friends, and counselors, many survivors have embraced new lives, some with gusto."

Terror medicine, a term coined by Dr. Shmuel Shapira, deputy director of the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, encompasses far more than moral and psychological support. Cole outlines its components, some of them standard medical procedure and some forged from bitter experience during the Intifada.

Preparedness is key, as are incident management and emergency response protocols, and Israel, unfortunately, has expertise to share.

Among other things, preparedness requires education and thoroughgoing drills involving "hundreds of simulated ‘casualties' from a variety of weapons."

In 2005, Cole was the principal coordinator, along with Shapira, of a weeklong series of meetings in Israel attended by 12 American health administrators and officials with their Israeli counterparts. The Americans included Dr. Clifton Lacy, president of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and former NJ commissioner of health.

"Every one of us," Cole said, "was struck by how much we gained."

Cole's analysis of how the United States and Israel differ vis-a-vis terror medicine and preparedness ranges from the country to the hospital to the society to the home.

First, Cole said, Israel has national mandates that require hospitals to adhere to protocols and conduct drills. In the United States, by contrast, "we have national advisories that are suggested" but not mandated. As a result, he said, "many locales are poorly prepared."

Changing this is not an issue of cost, he stressed. "You're planning and drilling anyway. What we need is for Congress to say that there must be not just guidelines but mandated protocols."

But he also noted "a paradox: The Israelis, despite national mandates, are quite tolerant of on-the-spot innovations that are not necessarily part of the protocols. In America, despite the local protocols, for the most part we're quite rigid, so local hospital personnel are not likely to violate those protocols, which sometimes are not well-informed."

Terror preparedness and medicine are particularly important, Cole said, because "we're in treacherous times and facing more treacherous times. I don't think many people understand the depth of the threat from Iran. It's a poison cocktail: a national leadership that wants to develop nuclear capability and is developing an intercontinental ballistic system to carry weapons more than 1,000 miles; the president of the country and others who have repeatedly announced they want to see Israel wiped out; a Shia-based value system that cherishes martyrdom and self-destruction."

And the threat, Cole warned, is directed not only at Israel but at other countries in the Middle East.