Noam Bedein is 24. After a year of seminary study, three years of Israel Army service on the Lebanese border and a year's trek around Asia, moved to Sderot to study at the business school at the Sapir College Branch of Ben Gurion University and has started work at the new Sderot Media Information Center for the Western Negev region of Israel.
40 years after Jerusalem's liberation, when will Sderot be free?
By Noam Bedein
May 16, 2007 Bookmark to del.icio.us
Today, the 28th of Iyar, May 16, 2007 on the civil calendar, educational institutions in Israel are celebrating 40 years for the liberation of Jerusalem.
Not in Sderot. There is no school today in Sderot, because a Sderot school was hit by a Gaza rocket last night, among the 20 or so rockets that hit the region.
It is as if Sderot is not part of Israel.
At the Sderot 'Smadar' kindergarten, five year old children recently had the chance to jot down what they wish for, by putting notes in their little 'Kotel', a small wall that was built in the kindergarten, a little bit like the famous one in Jerusalem.
What does a 5 year child ask for in Israel? For a bike, a doll, a game?
In Sderot the shared dream that these five year olds have is this one: 'Stop having the sirens and stop the rockets from falling.'
Experiencing 20 rockets falling last night in Sderot, running from one place to anther, witnessing the sirens of the ambulances and police cars, seeing the direct hits on the Sderot homes, watching the serious injuries of a mother and her son, seeing people evacuated in a state of shock, seeing the commotion, the people huddled together, the cries of the children, the screaming mother looking for her two daughters, the frustration of the people wanting to go and burn tires, and the residents screaming at Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal who arrived on the scene: "Until when?!"
"There's anther rocket on the way, everyone get close to a wall!" And everyone starts running.... Seeing uniformed men, with their rifles, bending down next to the wall.... People feel hopeless, like sitting ducks in a shooting range.
A few more seconds and another explosion, running again from the falling rocket, the same routine repeats itself -- children again crying, a mother looking for her sons, people fainting again. And again.
You think that there is enough blood for an Israeli military response? Wrong.
Visiting the Emergency Center at 12:30AM. Dr. Adrianna Katz, head of Sderot Mental health services, was there alone. Last January, the UJC, the United Jewish Communities in the US, sent out a letter promising $997,000 to add 30 workers to her staff. However, the UJC allocation never came. So she is there alone, with more than 3600 residents of Sderot who suffer from stress, anxiety and trauma that has resulted from the effects of the continuing attacks from Gaza.
She had treated more than 30 anxiety victims that night and every time there was the 'color red' siren she needed to leave the emergency center because it is not protected.
Dr. Katz related that many of the victims who arrived at the emergency center last night asked if the center was protected. After hearing the negative answer, some collapsed on the spot.
So far, more than 300 rockets have been fired from Gaza towards Sderot and the Western Negev since the 'Cease Fire' declared on November 26, 2006.
Yet the government of Israel insists on maintaining that cease fire.
Think: Jerusalem is a one hour from Sderot.
And Jerusalem was liberated because Israel believed in the idea that that 'The best Defense is a good offense.' Indeed, the Six Day War was the only war in Israel's History when Israel took the initiative and struck the enemy before the enemy struck Israel.
With no allies in the world, with such pride and honor, Israel defeated its enemy in 1967.
In Israel. 2007, Israel does not fight to resolve this Russian roulette reality in Sderot and the Western Negev.
On Monday afternoon, while accompanying a visiting guest to an observation point where we could look out at all of Northern Gaza, the guest watched and filmed a missile fired at Sderot from the roof of a home in the Gaza village of Beit Hanoun.
Unmanned Israeli drones overhead filmed the missile as it was fired. That morning, the spokeswoman for the office of the Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz, himself a Sderot resident, assured our news agency that the Israeli army would fire at the source of any and all rocket launchers from Gaza.
Yet the IDF did not fire back at the missile launcher on the roof of the home in Beit Hanoun.
Instead, after 20 missiles fell in Sderot last night, the IDF fired at ... open fields south of Sderot. We were "sending a message."
Israel worries about Arab civilian casualties. However, even the human rights group Bitselem defines the use of civilian shields as a war crime. And if an Arab family welcomes a launcher on the roof of his home, perhaps it is time to invite the family to meet Allah as soon as possible. It is a question of their dead civilians or ours.
Where is Israeli pride today? Israel's army, police, and security officers kneeling and counting the seconds for the next salvo of rockets to land in Sderot?
'Jerusalem I shall not forget' ... Has Sderot been forgotten?
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