gaza and sderot

Sderot: the tiny town half a mile from the northeast corner of Gaza; the frequent target of Qassam rockets if crude unguided munitions can be said to have a target; the totem held up by Zionists when anyone protests the siege of Gaza.

I don't know what I expected from Sderot. I was mostly hoping to check it off as a place I've been and catch a glimpse of Gaza from over the wall. I didn't expect to be blown away by what I found there.

Sderot is a poor town. A third of the residents are on welfare. When Chen Abrahms of the Gvanim Association, which runs programs for at-risk youth, talks about settlements she get furious. "If they invested all the money they spent on settlements into Sderot, this would be a different place," she snaps. The population is a mix of Mizrahim (Middle Eastern Jews), Ethiopians, immigrants from the Caucauses who came after the USSR collapsed. Jobs are scarce. The schools are underfunded and even second-generation residents often have trouble learning Hebrew. Absurdly, Palestinian collaborators granted asylum in Israel are often resettled there as well. In short, it's all the unwanted of Israel.

Before coming to Sderot, I was quick to dismiss any comparison between the suffering in Gaza and Sderot as not only ludicrous but morally reprehensible. But listening to Nomika Zion of Other Voice, a group of Sderot residents who support ending the siege on Gaza, I am unexpectedly moved. Nomika describes clear signs of post-traumatic stress, being worn down by constant terror, teachers unable to deal with students who are acting out because they themselves are traumatized, thinking about having to choose which child to save first if the rocket sirens go off when you're driving the school van.

Certainly there is no comparison to be drawn in terms of the scale or the intensity of the violence that has been visited on the two places. The concrete bomb shelters Sderot residents have would be crushed to dust by anything Israel drops. But there are so many things that remind me of Gaza. Nomika and Chen matter-of-factly bring out a Qassam rocket that landed near the building in 2008, the metal of the explosive end bent back on itself like a banana peel. I instantly flash back to the table of spent munitions at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza.

Nomika talks about the ceasefire that lasted from June to November 2008 as the first time in her life she felt her government was protecting her. And she tells how her own government broke that ceasefire, on November 4, 2008, while the eyes of much of the world were focused on the US presidential election.

As part of her work with Other Voice, Nomika had made connections with Palestinians in Gaza. She kept in touch with them as Operation Cast Lead started. Every day, their tales of horror poured in. At night the bombs falling on Gaza shook the walls of her home. Nomika has proceeded through the whole story of her own life under bombardment with perfect calm, but when it comes to talking about the Palestinians, she chokes up. "Instead of thinking of when the next Qassam would land, I could think only of them," she said of her Palestinian friends. "They're supposed to be our enemies, but all you want to do is reach out. But what can you do? You're helpless."

Someone like Nomika is a challenge to all Israelis. She, of all people, might seem like the most likely candidate to hate and fear Gazans. But she is one of the few Israelis I've met on this trip who seemed to feel genuine empathy for the Palestinians, to want to end the conflict not just for Israelis, but for them. At the moment of greatest danger for her, her heart was in Gaza.

My takeaway at the end of the day was that Sderot is being used. The Israeli government, Zionists who scream the town's name to silence any criticism...I don't think they give a shit about Sderot. When I tell people I've been to Gaza, I sometimes get the aggressive response: "And have you been to Sderot?" The next time someone says that to me, I want to ask: "Have YOU been to Sderot? Because what you find there may not be what you expect."