Knesset lobby group for Sderot?
On Monday morning, July 28th, a delegation of Sderot residents traveled to the Israeli Knesset to raise their concerns over the blatant misconduct of the Israel Tax Authority (ITA) in handling compensation files for property damages filed by Sderot residents.
The Israeli government has delegated the ITA to handle, in accordance with Israeli law, issues of compensation for damage in times of war. Sderot residents whose property has been damaged by rocket attacks from Gaza must file their case with the ITA in order to receive compensation from the Israeli government.
Sderot Media Center facilitated the delegation's trip to the Knesset, after publishing an investigative report six months earlier on Israel's leading investigative news site, www.nfc.co.il , that revealed the ITA dealt harshly and arbitrarily with cases of property damage in Sderot caused by Kassam rocket attacks by terrorists in Gaza.
Comments (1)Who is fooling who?
The other day in Sderot, I made an astonishing observation. I was walking from the office after a long day at work to catch some sleep when I noticed I was not walking alone. Usually the city is deadly quiet once the sun sets, as parents refuse to let children play outside in the dark. Families prefer to remain at home together after a long day of siren alerts and rocket explosions.
High school kids don't ride around as much with the music blasting and teenagers don't walk around listening to their Ipods in case the 'tzeva adom', red color alert sounds. There's not much to do at night except maybe watch a movie and hope that Hamas rocket launchers decide to go to sleep, so that those us living in Sderot can relax just a little bit.
Presenting Sderot to England
This is my first trip to London, England to talk about the rocket situation in Sderot and the western Negev. Through my media presentations and talks, English audiences for the first time are seeing video footage of rocket attacks and life under fire in Sderot.
Many times after a lecture, people have come up to me and stated that they had no idea how terrible the rocket situation in Sderot and the western Negev was in reality. "They call these homemade rockets on the news," told me one lady after I spoke at her synagogue in St. John's Wood. "What the media doesn't show is that these 'homemade rockets' can cause so much destruction."
Differentiating between those killed
Shalom from Sderot!
I haven't written for a long time since not much has changed. . . well at least in the government's policy of "let them suffer, we are involved in other important things. . ."
Three people have been killed in the past month:
Al Jazeera and Sderot
On Thursday evening, May 29, 2008 a group of Israeli and Arab college students were aired live on Al Jazeera from Haifa where they participated in a special two-hour program. The college students, studying at Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion, Haifa, and Bar Ilan universities, were asked questions about the future of the state of Israel and about the history and present situation of its citizens.
As one of three students from Bar Ilan University invited to a special Al Jazeera program about Israel, I found myself on an usually warm night debating the future state of Israel with Fayid, Ranin, and several other Arab students studying at Israeli universities.
The whole evening was a bit surreal. Here I was, in Haifa, taking about the future of the state of Israel with people who clearly had a very different idea of the Jewish state. All this on the last TV station I would ever imagine appearing on to talk about Sderot--Al Jazeera!
Netivot: The next Sderot?
This past Saturday, May 24, two red alert sirens activated throughout the western Negev city of Netivot. Two grad Katyusha rockets, fired at the city's population of 30,000, fell in open fields.
Founded in 1956 as development town, Netivot is home to a large number of Sephardi Jews from Morocco and was established three years after the formation of Sderot. Although Netivot has not experienced rocket fire as intensely as Sderot, Hamass more frequent use of grad Katyushas is making Netivot a target for Palestinian rocket fire.
Netivot is about 11 kilometers away from Gaza, slightly further away from the Gazan border than Ashkelon. The first grad Katyusha struck Netivot back in October 2007, landing several hundred meters away from a residential area in Netivot.
Craters, glass and shrapnel
Throughout Saturday afternoon, I heard a number of alarms followed by a number of loud explosions as several rockets hit Sderot. I did not know where they had hit and I decided to go looking for them when the sun went down and the Sabbath ended.
A constant problem here is that we hear the loud KABOOM! when the rocket lands, but we often have no way of knowing exactly where the explosion occurred - unless, of course, the rocket went through the roof of someone's house. We too are dependent on the news media to learn exactly what has happened, but the TV and radio do not mention the address where the rocket fell, because most of their audience does not live in Sderot.
Breaking the calm during Passover
It seemed that Sderot residents were going to experience a rare day of quiet on Tuesday, April 22. Around eveningtime at 19:30 pm, however, two Kassams fired from northern Gaza, broke the calm. One rocket hit a Sderot home, damaging the building and sending several people into shock.
The owners of the home, Michael and Evgenia Zaretskay, who immigrated from Belarus 17 years ago, were downstairs when the rocket hit.
"I was upstairs when the second siren of the evening went off," says Evgenia. "My husband told me to come down immediately. I went down and seconds later we heard the awful explosion. I knew our home had been hit."
Welcome to the real world of Sderot, Jimmy Carter
A few eyebrows went up when Jimmy Carter visited Sderot yesterday on Tuesday April 15.
Sderot residents were relatively bewildered with Carter's visit to the rocket-shelled city, in light of his planned visit with the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas and its exiled leader Khaled Mashaal in Syria, later in the week.
"Today Carter comes to visit the city that Hamas terrorizes with rockets and later he will speak to the Hamas leaders who advocate this rocket fire," said one Sderot onlooker as Carter arrived with his security personnel into the city. "His visit to Sderot doesn't make any sense."
In fact, many of the residents in Sderot felt that the entire Carter visit was a joke on the residents.
Church Group visits Sderot
Members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a program of the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva , visited Sderot this past Sunday, March 30.
"This is our first visit to Sderot," said Valentina Maggiulli, the Jerusalem local program coordinator for EAPPI. "We know the situation in the West Bank and Gaza very well. We felt it was important to see the situation in Sderot as well."
EAPPI has church personnel stationed in Hebron , Yanoun, Tulkarem, Jerusalem , Jayyous and Bethlehem . Personnel come from countries all over Europe to help negotiate resolutions and facilitate peace activities in strategic locations.
About this blog Living with Rockets
A glimpse into life under fire as told by inhabitants of Sderot, young people who devote their time to volunteer in the city and by writers from the Sderot Media Center.
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