ditor’s Note: The following is a special three-part series by Sacramento Union columnist Karen Russo examining the plight of Sderot, a city in the South District of Israel. The city has been a frequent target of Kassam rocket attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip.

The Saga of Sderot – Part I (Published Dec. 28, 2007 in The Sacramento Union)

Before moving to Israel, the closest I’d come to exploding bombs was the Battle of Roseville. Remember? Over two days, April 28-29, 1973, in the Roseville railroad yard, 18 boxcars loaded with 6,000 bombs exploded. No one was killed, but 350 people were injured and millions of dollars in property damage resulted. Even today, no one knows what caused the explosions, but National Guard reservists dubbed the event “The Battle of Roseville.”

In 1973, I was living in Sierra Oaks, about 18 miles from Roseville. Today I live in Beersheba, Israel, which is about 18 miles from the Negev village of Sderot, a much more popular bombing site. Since 2000, when the Al-Aqsa Intifada began, the village of Sderot – 27,000 people at its prime – has endured a daily blitz, a barrage of about 8,000 “Kassams,” Arab-made rockets. Since 2005, when Israel idiotically “disengaged” from Gaza, the bombing has greatly intensified. And now, since the rockets are being fired from a closer range, they’re far more deadly. So far, in 2007 alone, over 2,000 Kassams have hit. In all, 15 people – men, women and children – have been killed, hundreds wounded, and everyone terrorized. Property damage? There is no official calculation, mostly because the Saga of Sderot is the story neither the U.S. nor Israel wants told. We’ll talk about that, later.

I first went to Sderot last May, because I’d heard that one young man, Avichai Amutzi, all on his own, had started a finger-in-the-dike food distribution center to help feed his shell-shocked neighbors. The entire village was desperate. Because of the constant rocket fire, few people dared go out unprotected into the streets. Businesses closed—no one could do business or shop, and without work, no one had money to pay for anything, anyway. Schools closed, while whole families spent months – 24/7 – staying within 15 seconds of their “miklat,” a minimally reinforced room, assuming their home had such a thing. At best, a “miklat” would withstand shrapnel, but not a direct hit.

Arriving at Amutzi’s “Mercaz Hesed” – Kindness Center – I was offered a tour of Sderot, to see where some of the rockets had landed. We drove around, saw houses without roofs, synagogues blasted wide open, school playgrounds scarred by burning metal. We’d just gotten out of the car on a residential street to see the “andarta” (monument) to two children – ages two and four – who’d been killed while playing in their yard. There was an unholy screech, and then we heard the Kassam-alert warning: “Tzeva adom! Tzeva adom”

It’s a woman’s voice, blasted at top volume from numerous outdoor loudspeakers. A dirigible, anchored just above, contains electronic sensing devices to detect a rocket launch, and then automatically broadcasts the words, “Tzeva Adom!” Literally, it means “color red”—theoretically, you have 15 seconds to find shelter.

Merav, my young guide, and I ran for shelter—the only covered area nearby was an open carport. Hunkered down between a parked Peugeot and a concrete-block wall, Merav shouted, “Cover your head!” She dropped to the ground and threw up her arms. I looked up. Above us was nothing more than a green plastic garden cover. It might keep out falling leaves, but rockets? Putting my arms over my head seemed pointless.

The rocket hit, the ground shook. A minute later, Merav’s radio contact informed us it had exploded in a nearby industrial area. We’d been spared, and the inclination to giggle took over, that kind of mindless relief that follows any narrow escape. We stood up, brushed off and started to leave the carport, but got no further than a few steps before the warning sounded again—"Tzeva Adom!” Back to the carport. This time we stayed put for ten minutes as the shrill voice continued. Either the broadcast machine was stuck, or else more rockets were on the way. When it finally ended, so did the tour. It was too dangerous to be out on the street.

This has been going on in Sderot for seven years. How on earth can the people live like this?

Answer: Most don’t have any choice. What would you do? Could you abandon your home? Do you have a mortgage? A business, a job, other family who can’t leave? Could you just walk away?

The inhumanity of the Kassam attacks boggles the mind. In the early days, the verbal warning was different: it formerly said, “Shachar Adom,” meaning “red dawn.” Why “dawn?” Because Arabs prefer to fire the rockets in the early morning—the goal is to hit Jewish children, who are at their most vulnerable while walking to school or waiting for the bus. But a year ago, the warning words were changed. A seven-year-old girl named “Dawn” explained how painful it was, to hear her name being used as a terror alert. Now it’s “color red” instead.

U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ), second right, and Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, second right, examine rockets that landed in recent years in southern Israel, at the police station in Sderot, southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2008. Touring the war-battered town of Sderot, McCain said Wednesday he understands Israel’s tough response to Palestinian rocket fire, adding that there is no point in negotiating with the Gaza Strip’s Islamic Hamas regime. (AP Photo/Uriel Sinai, Pool)

That first day I was in Sderot, a total of nine rockets were fired. One of them killed 36-year-old Oshri Oz, a computer technician from Hod HaSharon who was serving customers in the area. Oz was driving his car when a Kassam exploded nearby. He struggled out of the vehicle, took a few steps, and died on the roadway, leaving his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter.

The Saga of Sderot – Part II (Published Jan. 4, 2008 in The Sacramento Union)

Avichai Amutzi has a chicken problem—a frozen chicken problem, to be precise.
Sitting in the tiny kitchen of his fledging “Mercaz Hesed” – Kindness Center – in beleaguered Sderot, Amutzi is working his cell phone, trying to find a donor he hasn’t tapped too often. Up to now, Amutzi has provided a frozen chicken a week to hundreds of hungry Sderot families who have become dependent on the food boxes Mercaz Hesed distributes each Thursday. Each box contains fresh fruit and vegetables, donated by wholesalers or farmers who have more than they can market, plus a donated frozen chicken. But after a recent “sharav” – heat wave – in the Negev, the Center’s ancient freezer simply quit.

Without the freezer, the chickens will thaw, and because of food safety laws, thawed chickens cannot be distributed. So unless Amutzi has a working freezer, there will be no chickens in the Thursday boxes, and 500-700 hundred Sderot families won’t have a chicken for Shabbat—probably the only meat they have all week.

A repairman came to revive the old freezer, but recommended buying a new one instead. He says a replacement motor costs NIS 25,000 (New Israeli sheqel cost, or about $6,500 in U.S. dollars). A brand new freezer – with a warranty! – costs NIS 35,000 (about $9,000). At the moment, the question is theoretical, since the center’s cash balance hovers at about a hundred shekels. Amutzi shakes his head and shrugs.

“Something will happen,” he says. “It always does.”

In the meantime, he tells volunteers to give the few remaining chickens to anyone who asks for food.

“If they thaw, we’ll have to throw them away.”

It’s not very different from the early days of Sacramento’s Loaves and Fishes, when my friends Chris and Dan Delaney struggled to feed Sacramento’s homeless and hungry. All in all, Sacramento had far more hungry mouths to feed—but Sacramento, unlike Sderot, had one big advantage: it wasn’t being bombed.

Since 2000, Sderot has been under assault. Tens of thousands of “Kassam” rockets have rained down on this small community, killing 15 and ending normal life as anyone knew it. The business district is a ghost town—both shoppers and workers fear going unprotected on the streets. No one has money to shop anyway.

That’s where it began for Amutzi, seven years ago, when he saw his neighbors going hungry.

“I started picking up excess fruit and vegetables from nearby farms, and giving it to people who needed it most,” he says. “Then it grew. Farmers heard what we were doing, and more and more donations poured in. But the need grew, too. About ten times faster than the donations.”

At one time, Mercaz Hesed served a meal, too, just like Loaves and Fishes. But that ended when it became too dangerous for people to come out to eat, too dangerous for volunteers to come and serve. Now a few brave volunteers box and deliver packages of food instead. They bring potatoes, carrots, onions and Israel’s huge, brightly colored peppers, plus flour, oil, and maybe cereal, if that’s been donated. And always, a chicken for Shabbat.
“We’re actually helping only about half the people who need it,” Amutzi says. “But bombing takes a toll on volunteers, too. School groups used to come to help pack, but now that’s not permitted. Our building – an abandoned warehouse – wasn’t protected, so school kids couldn’t come anymore. Each week, we distribute whatever food we have. Everyone who asks gets something – although sometimes, it’s just an ear to listen. The stress level around here is unreal. But we do our best.”

That’s more than can be said of the government of Israel. For reasons we’ll discuss in the next column, the government regards Sderot as an embarrassment, a problem best ignored, not solved. Israel’s left-leaning media agrees—which is why hardly anyone in the rest of the world, except for readers of The Sacramento Union, have even heard of Sderot, let alone what’s happening here. After all, if Israel doesn’t care, why should you?

On the other hand, it’s partly American tax money that paid for the Kassams. The rockets are made of water pipes, donated by the U.S. and Israel, intended to help the Arabs rebuild their infrastructure. But rather than use the pipes to improve the lives of their own citizens, the Hamas terror leaders prefer to cut them up, fill them with explosives, and fire them at Israel. Sderot – located just a mile from Gaza – gets the brunt of it. Several attacks a day.

The U.S. intended the water pipes as a “humanitarian gesture”—a very popular concept, in these parts. Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert added more: he announced he’d continue to supply Gaza’s residents with food, water and electricity, and then released a half-billion dollars in tax revenues to help Gaza. The European Union chimed in, and in 2006, they gave $815 million (U.S. dollars) to the PLO. In 2007, their total is $2.5 billion. Recently, the 90-member “Donors Conference for the Palestinian Authority” met in Paris and pledged $7.4 billion more.

Unfortunately, none of these “humanitarian gestures” helped Mercaz Hesed. Avichai Amutzi needed $6500 to repair his freezer – to put a chicken on the table for Shabbat – but for him, no help was forthcoming.
How strange: In this topsy-turvy world, “humanitarian gestures” flow only toward those who fire the rockets, not to those they hit.

The Saga of Sderot – Part III (Published Jan. 18, 2008 in The Sacramento Union)

When my kids were little, they’d wait all year for Sierra Oaks School’s annual carnival. Parents raised money by setting up a few traditional “carney: games, and the kids had fun winning trinkets. One year, my son Peter won a key chain with “three little monkeys.” It was the “See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” monkey figurine. He’d never seen one before, so I found myself in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain why, if evil exists, it’s a virtue not to see it, or to warn others about it.

I didn’t get it then, I don’t get it now. If evil exists – and you and I know it does – why is it virtuous to ignore it?

Evil is taking place in Sderot. A formerly peaceable village of 27,000, since the Intifada began in 2000, thousands of “Kassams,” Palestinian-made rockets, have been fired into the area from Gaza, over a highway, less than a mile away. Fifteen people have been killed, many more seriously injured, and no tally has ever been made of either property damage or psychological damaged resulting from living in a war zone. Since the
November “peace conference” in Annapolis, rocket-firing has dramatically increased—clearly the there is some sense of Israel’s weakness. With the world’s nations now standing ready to help the Palestinians in any way they can – with no apparent requirement that they end the terror – the Palestinians are pouring it on. At the recent post-Annapolis “Donors Conference,” PLO Chairman Mahmaud Abbas won pledges for $7.4 billion in aid. It’s no wonder they might believe this is the time to eliminate the “Zionist Entity” once and for all.

That’s bad news for Israel, but for Sderot, it’s evil. Forcing civilians to endure a military assault, without protecting them or allowing them to protect themselves, is like shooting fish in a barrel. The massacre of civilians was evil in the Turkish genocide of Armenia; it was evil in the Holocaust; it’s evil in Darfur, and it’s evil in Sderot. Yet it continues, and the world imitates the three little monkeys. Why?

Several reasons, starting with the fact that Israel itself ignores Sderot. Ehud Olmert, our feckless Prime Minister, is clearly sick and tired of the issue. When questioned about it at a recent conference, Olmert snarled, “A country cannot protect itself ad infinitum because there would be no end to it.” Ignoring the Yogi Berra-like syntax, Olmert is fed up with the “whiney” citizens of Sderot. He then went on to masterfully misconstrue Sderot’s plea for “protection.” Sderot residents never expected the government to cover the roofs of all buildings with lead, thick enough to withstand the Palestinian barrage. What they do want – what they believe they deserve – is for the Army to defend them against this eight-year long military attack perpetrated by a sworn enemy of the state. Sderot citizens do not believe they should spend their lives playing Kassam roulette.

Several days later, Olmert issued another curious statement: the buildings in Sderot are already protected, he claimed—a statement roughly comparable to Marie Antoinette’s, if she’d said that the peasants had already eaten their fill of cake.
Olmert ignores the evil in Sderot because keeping his job depends on placating the left
wing media. But why do the media turn their back on Sderot?

Because Sderot is an embarrassment, that’s why. Back in 2005, the media, in lock-step unity, peddled the fairy tale that once Israel turned Gaza over to the terrorists, peace would flow like a river. That didn’t happen—no rational person believed it would. But admitting such a monumental error isn’t easy.

Kassams falling in Sderot also poke holes in the media’s Egyptian fantasy. Under the 1979 Camp David Accords, Israel turned the Sinai over to Egypt. Today, that agreement is cited as proof that giving away hunks of Israel will buy peace. The problem is, it didn’t. Egypt heavily supports terrorism. They help terrorists bring weapons into Gaza. They allow local wannabes to travel to Iran to attend terrorist school, then return not only as trained killers but also with suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars to fund more attacks.

To admit to trouble in Sderot is to implicate Egypt in terror, too, and that simply can’t happen. The left needs Egypt to show that “land for peace” works.
But why should you care? Sderot lies 7,412 miles from Sacramento. While it’s unfortunate that bombs are falling here, it’s hardly the only trouble spot in the world. What’s special about Sderot?

Because Islamic terrorism is all linked, that’s why. Sderot is just one end of the chain.

Reduce Sderot to ashes, then move on nearby Ashkelon—since Annapolis, Palestinians in Gaza have fired Katyushka rockets made in Iran into Ashkelon, where they’ve never hit before. Jerusalem is 45 miles from Ashkelon. How long before the rockets hit Jerusalem?

If they succeed in eliminating the “Zionist entity,” do you think for a moment it will end there?

The battle against Islamic jihad, in all its terrorist manifestations, is world-wide. Today Sderot stands as your first line of defense. Today we fight in Sderot. If we lose, tomorrow the battle will rage just that much closer to Sacramento.

It’s time to toss the three little monkeys into the circular file. In today’s world, no one can afford to “see no evil.”

Karen Russo practiced law in Sacramento for 35 years before moving to Be’er Sheba, Israel in 2002. You may contact her at KRusso@SacUnion.com.