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.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (20)

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.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (1)

McCain in Sderot

On a quiet Wednesday afternoon, a helicopter landed in Sderot with two US senators on board. Republican presidential nominee, John McCain and US senator Joseph Lieberman, who toured Israel for two days, made time to stop by this rocket-battered town in the western Negev.

They were received with the typical small-town warmth. "We are happy that they have come. They were brave to come," said one Sderot mother of the American visitors. She stops to watch the security vehicles and black sedans race by as McCain and Leiberman, accompanied by Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak rush to visit the Amar family whose home was hit by a rocket three months before. 

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (6)

Small-town girl in Kassam City

I come from Maine, which is considered rather unusual among most American olim. I suppose it is even more unusual that I've chosen to live part-time in Sderot this year.

I arrived in Sderot four months ago to begin an internship in the Sderot Media Center. As a native English speaker, I translate, edit, write articles, and work as an international coordinator and correspondent.

The most abnormal part of this job is living with the daily red alerts and the Kassam rocket attacks. I already have a foray of images etched into my mind of the people in Sderot and their struggles to live through this Kassam rocket reality: an elderly woman trembling violently, a baby crying, a group of children huddling together for safety, as the police search for the Kassam rocket in the dark of night--these are moments that make you wonder how people learn to live with fear.