Yeshiva students' protected sleeping quarters
Yeshiva students' protected sleeping quarterswww.Sderot.org

Rocket Update

Two Kassam rockets were fired at Israel on Tuesday - one that landed south of Ashkelon, and one that fell near Kibbutz Gevim, just south of Sderot.  No one was hurt and no damage was reported.  No rockets or mortar shells were fired at Israel on Wednesday morning.

The two Tuito family brothers, Rami, 19, and Osher, 8, are undergoing operations again on their legs in Sheba Hospital at Tel HaShomer.  The two were seriously wounded on Saturday night when a Kassam rocket slammed into the ground just two meters away from them as they were headed home; they began running when they heard the Color Red rocket warning alarm, but could not outrun the rocket.  Osher has already lost a leg, below the knee, and doctors are working to save his other one.  Rami underwent an operation Wednesday, and Osher is expected to undergo another one as well.  Both are listed in stable condition; Osher is still being kept unconscious and on a respirator.

UN Hears Sderot's Plight

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman, told the Security Council about the two boys, and said, "We are the only democracy in the world in which children need an armed escort."  The Council was holding a special session entitled, "Children in Armed Conflicts."

Gillerman discussed the intolerable situation of the residents in Sderot, and also read aloud parts of letters sent to Osher by Tehilla and Yisrael Cohen - siblings whose legs were amputated as a result of a mortar shell attack in Kfar Darom in 2000.

How to Cover Sderot: Only From Within

Evgeniya Karavchik, the winner of this year's Media Criticism Prize awarded by Israel Media Watch, says that reporters covering the Sderot story must be on the scene.  Speaking with Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine on Tuesday, she said, "Whoever was not in the shoes of a person living 24 hours a day with terrible fright does not understand [what is going on there]."  She said it reminded her of the situation in the north during the war with Hizbullah in 2006: "I felt the ground shake under my feet when the Katyushas hit, I saw the scared people, and the shelters, and the fear all around.  But when I returned home to Bat Yam, I found people sitting in restaurants on the sea as if they had been there since the day before."

"It's not only Sderot," Karavchik emphasized, "but 40 communities in which people live and breathe.   I was in one of the kibbutzim where the houses are not at all protected, and the little children are too scared to go out and play. It's surrealistic... but the media only mentions that five protestors were arrested at the protest - five people from what seems to be 'the other country' of Sderot.  What are they supposed to do, these people whose lives have been destroyed?"

Karavchik feels that the Russian media in Israel is more skeptical and therefore more accurate, "perhaps because the writers had different lives under the Russian regime and learned not to trust government propaganda.  When I heard of rock-throwing attacks in Judea and Samaria, and of terrorists planning more murderous attacks, I compare this to the reports I hear about the 'peace' they want to make with the state of Ramallah - now that peace with the state of Gaza is no longer an option - and I know how to relate to those reports."

Pupils Join Protest

Meanwhile, the Parents Committee of Sderot has decided to join the recent protest activities organized by city residents.  Beginning Wednesday, four classes from schools all over the city will go to Jerusalem and hold their studies at the Sderot protest tent that has been erected outside the Knesset.  "The children of Sderot are also part of the struggle," Committee representatives stated, in anticipation of possible criticism, "and the people of Israel have to know this." 

The protest is being run by the Sderot Task Force, headed by Alon Davidi, with the back-handed support of the Sderot Municipality and Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal.  Though there has been some criticism of the road-blockings of this week and of the political leanings of some of the organizers, Moyal has made sure to emphasize that everyone is united in the basic goal of ensuring the right of Sderot citizens to live in safety and security. 

The Knesset Finance Committee voted on Tuesday to extend until the end of 2008 the categorization of Sderot and nearby communities as "border towns."  This will enable them to continue to receive special state compensation for rocket-related damages.