It's hard to imagine that the town of Sderot, bordering the northeast tip of Gaza, is only an hour's drive south of cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, forty-five minutes if you avoid rush hour and liberally interpret speed limits. It's like driving from Manhattan to Atlantic Beach, Miami to Hallandale, Malibu to Pasadena. For the past seven years, the people of Sderot, and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have lived under the shadow of Kassam rocket attacks. I imagine that if rockets fell on any of these places, the entire population within a two hundred mile radius would be in an uproar. Six years of Kassams in Sderot has not seemed to spark much in Tel Aviv.
Last Monday, I made the trip from Zichron Yaakov, officially the "north" of the country, in a little under two hours. Towards the end of the drive, right before turning east on route 34, I saw the zeppelin-shaped reconnaissance balloon hovering over the southern edge of the city of Ashkelon. The balloon carries a sophisticated array of cameras and sensory equipment. Looking at it swaying in the wind, it seemed simultaneously ominous and flimsy, a ridiculous-looking, blow-up sentry that is an integral part of what protects us.
I arrived shortly after one in the afternoon. Few cars were in transit on the town's streets. I needed directions to get to the office of Noam Bedein, who runs the Sderot Media Center, which provides foreign journalists with background information and news about the continuous assault on Sderot. After spending ten minutes mentally reviewing the internet-sourced road directions, I parked and walked up the street looking for a local to guide me. After a few moments, I flagged a passing car. Before answering my requsst for directions, the driver briefed me on what to do if and when a "Tzeva Adom," a "red alert," sounded. I asked when the last one had sounded and he looked at me incredulously. Ten minutes earlier, just as I had entered the town limits. I made a mental note to keep the car stereo turned low or off. The announcement of a tzeva adom signals an imminent Kassam explosion, within 20 seconds. I later learned that most Kassams are launched in the morning hours between six and nine, and then at twilight, between seven and ten in the evening. This is done to coincide with Israel's broadcast television news cycle.
Kassam rockets are unpredictable, lethal projectiles capable of travelling up to 10km, around 6 miles. They can carry up to 10kg (22 lb.) of explosive payload. A major portion of this payload is devastating anti-personnel shrapnel: nails, bolts, and other packed bits of sharp metal intended to pierce skin, muscle, bone, and vital organs. These are not weapons intended to damage property or infrastructure; they are meant to injure, kill, and maim civilians. Kassams are meant to terrorize and after seven years of almost daily bombardment, many people in Sderot are indeed terrorized. Children are afraid to go to school and adults fear going outside to go to work.
Israeli defense officials categorize Kassams as "more a psychological rather than physical threat." Though Kassams alone will not physically harm the great majority of citizens in Sderot, their capacity for physical devastation and death is not subject to debate. At least eleven Israelis have lost their lives to Kassam rockets.
What is debatable is whether Israel's artificially-proportionally elected government is performing its mandate of responsibility for safeguarding Israel's citizens. The government of Ehud Olmert has promised a firm response to the Kassams, however even after the latest deaths most talk is of reinforcing structures in Sderot. Mayor Eli Moyal is quick to point out that injuries and deaths from Kassams occur outside. Moyal and his constituents want their national government to eliminate the threat of Kassams period. This means stopping the terrorists who launch the rockets. Unfortunately, there is no way of stopping the terrorists without insulting the politically correct sensibilities of Ehud Olmert's coalition partners, without contradicting the government's commitment to "disengagement."
I arrived at the Sderot Media Center, located at 12 Rakefet Street, nestled in a Dutch style subdivision of private houses. The enterprise was established eight months ago by Noam Bedein, a 24 year-old Ben-Gurion University student who hasn't been to classes much lately, thanks to his work in Sderot and the university student union strike. After serving in the IDF on the Lebanese border, Noam spent a year backpacking Asia. A budding photographer, Noam's prints of bamboo Thai countryside, snowcapped Tibetan peaks, Buddhist monks walking with tigers, and Sderot adorn his living room. If there is a thread that connects them, perhaps it's the beauty and savagery that exist in the real world, beyond the margins of our collective attention. In the near future, he will exhibit photographs and drawings on a more immediate subject, the terror and fear etched in the faces of the citizens of Sderot. Noam and his coworkers try to keep attention riveted on Sderot and provide essential details to help describe what, almost anywhere else, would be an unthinkable situation. An otherwise peaceful town absorbs daily rocket attacks from a clearly identified neighboring territory. The attacks are sanctioned by the neighboring local government, while the sovereign government of this peaceful town refrains from decisive response.
Noam updated me on the two red alerts in Sderot and the nine other Kassams, launched from residential areas in Gaza, that landed elsewhere in Israel's Western Negev that morning. Then Noam guided me on a Kassam-centered tour of Sderot. Our first stop was a home that took a direct hit last Saturday night. A rocket punched a hole in a wall at ground level and peppered shrapnel across a second floor bedroom wall, destroying the room's window. This is typical of Kassams, which usually diperse shrapnel in a reverse umbrella pattern. Fortunately, the twelve year old who normally sleeps in the room was elsewhere in the house at the time of impact.
Shula and David, whose front door walkway was covered in shattered glass, bits of masonry, and other debris, warmly welcomed Noam and me into their home. On our heels, a busload of foreign journalists were shepherded inside by Aryeh Green, director of MediaCentral, a journalist liaison service business in Jerusalem. Shula displayed shrapnel and bits of the rocket tube that remained after the police and army personnel removed most of the rocket's mass. Shula mentioned that neighbors up the street were hit earlier in the month. According to Noam, just about every neighborhood has been hit, sometimes causing property damage and sometimes ripping up the street. Structural repairs are made almost immediately.
After about twenty minutes, a car arrived to take Shula, David, and their sons to a hotel until the structural damage is repaired. Shula and David did not want to leave Sderot, unlike the 65% of Sderot residents who, according to Noam Bedein, have accepted offers at one time or another to leave the town for a short respite. At this point, some estimate that roughtly 20% of Sderot's residents are staying elsewhere.
Noam took me to the center of the commercial area, where a Kassam killed a woman on a street ten days ago. A meter wide crater and a small bouquet of flowers mark the spot; shrapnel gouges can be seen on the buildings on both sides of the street. Many of the businesses are shuttered. We bought felafel from a man named "Prosper," who stated that some looting had taken place. He also remarked how Kassam payloads have become more explosive and damaging over time. His block has suffered several Kassam hits over the years. Noam shows me a row of stores that have been rebuilt. In between the shops are walls that extend a bit into the sidewalk, making the stores look like large cubicles. The compartmentalized design is intended to minimize the shrapnel spread at the point of impact.
Noam guided me past several schools. According to his investigations, none of the schools are completely fortified against rocket attacks. There are however some very peculiar measures taken to at least partially protect the schoolchildren. One school has part of its gabled roof covered in an additional layer of latticed steel. Another has the entire building shaded by a sloping cover whose design reminded me of the some post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies.
We drove past a house where a Kassam had slammed into a third story corner balcony and torn a gaping hole in a side wall. A crack ran from the newly ventilated adjoining bedroom to the opposite side of the house. Noam informed me that a commanding officer of the nearby United Nations peacekeeping force likens Kassams to "firecrackers."
Next, we visited Sderot's police station, where the mangled remains of Kassams are stored in the rear parking lot. Over the past two weeks, 250 deployed missiles have found their way to the scrap heap. You can tell some of the older Kassams by the rust coating the fuselage. All are marked with phosphorescent chalk indicating the date and neighborhood of impact. Some have messages written in Hebrew from their manufacturers. "Al-Quds," Arabic for Jerusalem, is written on one. The fuselage tubes are fashioned from the poles of street signs. The Palestinian Authority apparently views the manufacture of anti-personnel weaponry as a function of civil infrastructure. Before we left, Noam and I tried to find the remains of the rocket that had killed Oshri Oz the day before.
Throughout the afternoon, as we drove through neighborhood after neighborhood, I saw teenagers walking in pairs. Some of the girls dressed in long skirts and sleeves, some in jeans and tank tops. Some of the boys wore kippot, some did not. All were carrying annotated street maps. These were the volunteers of "Lev Echad," Hebrew for "One Heart," a group that has tried to ease the humanitarian fallout of various recent tribulations in Israel. They helped the residents of Kiryat Shmona during rocket barrages last spring and summer. They helped the evicted residents of Gush Katif two years ago. After I finished looking at the spent Kassams at the police station, I visited the offices of Lev Echad. Some volunteers allowed me to take their pictures. Most did not, on instructions from the organizers, who say that they do not yet want to make publicity an issue for the volunteers to deal with.
Lev Echad volunteers were checking homes throughout Sderot for people who needed special help; mothers with young children, families handicapped dependents, elderly or handicapped persons who needed someone to shop for food, otherwise healthy people who succumbed to hysteria and the unrelenting emotional trauma of sirens and explosions. Every evening, Lev Echad stages a parade with flagbearers marching through Sderot, proud, optimistic, defiant of the savagery emanating from the border four kilometers southwest.
In the office courtyard, I noticed a group of volunteers old enough to be the parents of the teenagers and post-army twenty-somethings who made up the vast majority of Lev Echad. These were members of a community service organization from Beit She'an called, "Bonei Kehilah," Hebrew for "Community Builders."
I decided to put off my return trip north for a couple of hours to help with Lev Echad's efforts to follow up on individuals and families who had requested help. I was paired with twenty year-old Gilad, who was spending two days, out of his weeklong army furlough from army service, volunteering in Sderot. Meeting Gilad reminded me that it is individuals, not committees, who move the earth. We visited families, who were happy to have Lev Echad volunteers ask about them.
Gilad dropped me off at my car shortly after seven in the evening and I left Sderot shortly before Lev Echad's parade. Two Kassams landed in or near Sderot an hour or so after I left. Not far north of Sderot, I passed the hastily constructed housing project for evicted ex-Gush Katif residents in Nitzanim. I thought of the insult of added to the injury of these families. These Israeli patriots had lived for decades, much of the time in peace with their Arab neighbors, cultivating the land with citrus and vegetable crops of the highest quality. They were forcibly uprooted in order to let the Palestinians prove that they could govern Gaza peacefully. Now, they live within earshot of the missiles falling so close by. They know that Hamas and Al-Aqsa brigades are using the land in and around Gush Katif, their former homes, to stage deadly rocket attacks.
Why did I go down to Sderot and what does it have to do with Direct Representation? I needed to see what was real. The same bubble of self-delusion that lets many of us believe that Israel's democracy is sound also lulls us into thinking that Sderot is someone else's problem. If we do not act, speak out, or even bear witness as individuals, then we, as a society, will achieve and fix nothing. Direct Representation for Israel proposes the selection of our leaders and representatives as individuals; individuals chosen by the public because they are of the public and will work for the public. Individuals whose sense of moral clarity would not allow Sderot to suffer under Kassams for one month, let alone seven years. I found hope and moral clarity in some very special individuals in Sderot. People like Gilad and the other Lev Echad volunteers, who won't let citizens in Sderot suffer neglect. People like Noam Bedein, who won't let the world ignore Sderot. I spoke one-to-one to some about the need to assert individual responsibility as a political foundation, to institutionalize this in the way we choose our representatives and leader. For the most part, I found a receptive audience.
You can contact Lev Echad at 054-7587462/3.
