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BOSTON — His gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, a 52-year-old pacifist clutched an anti-war sign in a city square this week, again mobilized to decry an American war. 

But this time, it was different: Americans are scared as never before. 

“As for convincing people, you may have to go a little bit further, because there has been an attack on this country,” said the protester, Bill Leary, a Vietnam veteran converted to the peace movement 30 years ago. 

Around the country, peace activists are again scrawling slogans and taking to the streets, this time to protest the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan. But they are striking a gentler, less confrontational tone than in the past, searching for tactics better adapted to the political terrain transformed by the Sept. 11 attacks on the American homeland. They have been avoiding civil disobedience and other confrontation. 

“It’s a different situation, and it creates a special challenge for the peace movement,” said Howard Zinn, the American historian and anti-war activist. “The peace movement finds itself with a message of peace in a situation where people’s emotions have been aroused ... in a way they have never been aroused before.” 

Shaped by Vietnam and last mobilized en masse in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, the modern peace movement has never confronted such an atmosphere of intense patriotism steeped in fears for safety at home. Even at the height of the nuclear arms race with the Soviets, the domestic threat – however frightening – was still only potential. 

“We have a tough sell this time,” said Ofer Levy, a 35-year-old doctor wearing a peace symbol on his jacket during the Boston demonstration. “People who disagree with us say, ‘We just had 6,000 casualties on our own soil. What do you mean, peace?”’ 

Anti-war protesters, who have been gearing up since the first U.S. threats of retaliation, have mounted demonstrations in Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere this week. Within hours of the first attacks in Afghanistan, more than 1,000 protesters converged on a New York City park less than two miles from the World Trade Center. 

On Tuesday, at the Boston protest, organizers had hoped for up to 1,000. Instead, barely 100 came. They somberly lit candles, hoisted anti-war signs, listened to an Arabic prayer chant and some words of inspiration, and left. 

Most rush-hour pedestrians breezed by, declining protest leaflets. But a jogger, clearly upset by talk of peace, waved his arm, uttered an obscenity, shouted “Death to them all!” and sprinted away. 

Nearby, Patrick Faherty, a 15-year-old Boston student, watched with two friends at a distance. “They want peace? They don’t want to go to war? I hate that. Thousands of people are killed. I would actually want to go to war,” he said. “I get too mad to talk about it,” he said. He too stomped away. 

Kevin Martin, director of Washington-based Peace Action, said some activists have been subjected to hate mail and even death threats. 

“It’s understandable that out of people’s fear and anger of the Sept. 11 attacks that they would support a war,” he said. “I do think we need to be sensitive to people’s ... questions about personal security, which they really haven’t had since World War II.” 

Even some lifelong protest veterans feel torn. Charles Deemer, a writer who teaches at Portland State University, in Oregon, quit the movement. 

“When a nation is under attack, the first decision must be whether to surrender or to fight,” he wrote in an open letter to a local newspaper. “I believe there is no middle ground here: you either fight or you don’t fight, and doing nothing amounts to surrender.” 

Wishing his old comrades well, he advised them to work out new strategies. For starters, he suggested marchers carry American flags to make their cultural allegiance clear. 

Many activists are putting aside old anti-war mantras like “give peace a chance,” which risks sounding naive or irrelevant in a country that feels itself under attack. Their new rallying cry is “No More Victims!” In the post-Sept. 11 world, they hope to find heightened compassion for civilian bystanders anywhere. 

“If the killing of the people in the World Trade Center was wrong, then why kill more people?” asked Michael Borkson, a Boston protester with a guitar slung over his shoulder. 

Activists are for the first time coordinating a mass mobilization on the Internet. A unified message is emerging: The attacks of Sept. 11 were criminal acts of mass murder, and the attackers should be pursued by diplomatic and legal means. War will make domestic terrorism more likely, destabilize countries like Pakistan, and make the world more dangerous in the end. 

The peace movement is also declaring a common cause with Islamic and Arab rights advocates. Peace activists are demanding stronger protection for civil liberties, defending the rights of Arab-Americans, and even teaching followers the rudiments of Islam. 

They hope to turn up anti-war pressure in coming days, especially if the fighting drags on or turns bloodier. But Joseph Gerson, an activist at the American Friends Service Committee, said, “If we suffer another serious attack right here in the United States, that’s going to come as a blow” to the anti-war movement, too.