Today we had the heaviest siyur/field trip yet. We went to Sderot, which is a small city outside of the Gaza Strip. Yep, the Gaza Strip - that place we all hear about in the news. All the time. For not such good reasons. The WUJS staff wasn't kidding when they said the siyurim during the 2nd half of the program was a little more political, a little deeper, and much more intense, than the fun and exciting trips we took in the beginning.
We arrived in Sderot at 10am to meet our tour guides from the Sderot Media Center. They took us to a few different places around the city - some in walking distance from each other, and some too far to walk so we took our bus. The first location we went to was the Sderot Police Station which has a Qassam Gallery.
They gather the qassam rockets that have been fired into Israel over the last few years, date them, and identify by color, which group was responsible for an individual rocket. Qassam rockets are basically hollowed out metal tubes (such as water pipes) that are filled with explosives, but also all kinds of shrapnel including nails and other small bits of metal. Qassam rockets are not really meant to kill people (although about 30 people have died in the last 10 years due to the rockets falling); they are meant to cause damage by the shrapnel - to people and buildings, and emotional/psychological damage in people. Certainly, the damage caused by shrapnel and emotional trauma is really unmeasurable. Many children in Sderot and in surrounding communities suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and it's no wonder, when on any given day, a rocket could land in your schoolyard, or in the street, or in some cases in a vacant lot or field, hopefully not incurring any damage. In Sderot, and in some surrounding cities, a siren goes off to notify residents a rocket is coming, and they need to find a safe shelter somewhere. In Sderot, it is 15 seconds; in Ashkelon, 30 seconds. It's not very much time to find shelter, but because of the history of rockets landing, Sderot (and I assume other cities as well) has built bomb shelters in or near almost every building, and there are bomb shelters in most bus stops in Sderot as well. This is normal? This is life?
That morning, at around 8am, a rocket landed on a kibbutz not far from Sderot and the Gaza Strip (and was taken to the Qassam gallery at the police station).
A 14 year old girl was injured by it, but fortunately no casualties and no other major damage. By 10am when we were at the station, the rocket was already there on site. I saw it with my own two eyes. It's such a shame, and so unfair. I'm oftentimes, and even most times, very torn about Israeli politics and right and left and giving up land or demanding that Israel keep it, and religious versus secular and should the government be religious or secular - but when it comes to terrorists in the Gaza Strip putting these rockets up in the air, and then landing anywhere, there really is no left or right side. There is no discussion. Terrorists intending to incite harm and danger to others - whether physically or emotionally - is just not acceptable. How the rest of the world doesn't respond to Hamas (a terrorist organization) who continues to maintain a presence in the Gaza Strip and launch these rockets, is beyond me. Israel is often cited in the media as the "bad guy" for responding to these rockets, even though most of the time Israel has its hands tied because the location of the launches of these rockets comes from hospitals or schools which means civilians are nearby and Israel won't fire back. Media paints pictures of whatever it wants. The bottom line is - hate and destruction aren't productive or helpful for anyone or anything involved here. People can't just talk to each other anymore? I simply don't get it.
All of this is rushing through my head as we continue the tour around Sderot, which includes a viewpoint into the Gaza Strip, and an outdoor playground with a bomb shelter built into it. A huge cement tunnel was built on site at this playground for children to have a safe place to go when the siren goes off, and it's painted in bright colors like a caterpillar so it looks fun and childlike, instead of cold and static like it really is - a bomb shelter.
Our tour concludes and we have a few minutes to get some lunch. About 10 of us sit down at a nice little restaurant serving felafel and salads and all kinds of vegetables, and the owners are so nice and accommodating. They kept giving us more salads and more fries! "Bli kesef" they told us - without money (aka on the house). They were the typical Jewish parents just trying to feed hungry youth! It was adorable.
We got back on the bus and drove about 30 minutes away to Kibbutz Netzari, where many families who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip in 2005 now live. We met Anita Tucker, who was one person of about 8,600 (1700 families) who were forced to leave their homes from Gush Katif on August 15, 2005, after the Israeli government decided to unilaterally disengage from Gaza. This means all Israeli/Jewish settlements/communities had to leave by this time. To make the biggest understatement of the century, this issue was a bit complicated.
Anita told us her story. She grew up in Brooklyn, met and married her husband, and in 1969 they decided to make aliyah (move to Israel). At that time, the area around Be'er Sheva (a fairly major and now growing city in the south of Israel) was just up and coming, and the Israeli government was helping to support new immigrants in this area. A few years (and children) later, the Tuckers decide to move to Gush Katif - not really knowing how they would earn a living (supposedly by agriculture but all that was there was sand dunes!) and not really knowing anything about their Arab neighbors. Somehow, the first few (or many) years were pretty good! They figured out how to work the land, produce crops, and make a profit. And many Jewish families got along very well with the Arabs who lived there as well. At least, this is what her story says. In some ways, I think she was a little kookoo and really excited about the prospect of the rebuilding of The Temple and Messiah coming (which many people believe in, fine, great, wonderful) and kept mentioning it. If that's what keeps her going, then I'm all for it. I'm just a bit skeptical you could say, taking everything she said with a grain of salt.
In any case, she described her own family's struggle in the evacuation of Gaza. After reading about it in newspaper, seeing it on TV, watching it in films (one in particular called "Unsettled" which we screened at Hillel a few times), hearing this one person's story made the whole saga much more personal. The film I saw highlighted 6 young people - either settlers/residents or soldiers who were involved in the evacuation - so in that way it really did make it personal. It wasn't just faceless people on the nightly news. Even more so, Anita's story was so much more personal. I'm not saying I agree with everything she said in describing her plight to want to stay in her home, but it was just nice to hear a personal story. It was a sad story, yes, because I wouldn't want to be uprooted from my home and forced to leave with my family to go elsewhere. Especially not after the Israeli government encouraged them to move here, helped them agriculturally and succeed. I also wouldn't want to live near so many terrorists whose aim in life is the destruction of the Jews. Hello lady you get yourself the hell outta there! You don't fight to stay - are you nuts? Well I think she was a little nuts.
After listening to Anita's captivating speech for over an hour, our group of 17 participants split up into 4 groups and met very briefly with some other families or representatives of families, to see what their experiences were also like. The home I went to was of a mother of 6, Oshrat, whose husband (a rabbi) was killed in a terrible accident years before. The only child that was there, I understood was her brother's daughter, who appeared to be less than a year old - what a cutie. Oshrat spoke only in Hebrew to us, so I didn't get the full story, but Dina and Denise engaged her in most of our conversation. I wished we could have had a conversation with her in English (which she probably could have, we think) but we had such limited time there, that we would not have been able to engage in anything too serious anyway.
All in all, I am convinced this siyur has been the heaviest of topics so far, and I will continue to process it all over the next few days and weeks. It's what I'm here to do, isn't it?
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