Sderot Sunday Encounters

The week started off with a telephone call to the organizers of a trip run by The Elders that is chauffeuring the co-founder of Google around Israel to “show both sides of the conflict.”

Three weeks ago, the “Elders” organizer contacted the Sderot Media Center to bring a Sderot resident to Jerusalem to talk to the influential group, which includes the co-founder of Google, about living under the rocket fire.

The Elders did not agree to the request: It would seem that if they wanted to “show both sides of the conflict” they wouldn’t only visit the worst Arab parts of the West Bank and the worst parts of the Gaza Strip, they would also visit Sderot, before going to the Gaza Strip, to meet with a some of the 500 families whose homes were hit by Gaza rockets.

We explained that it would not take that much time for them to visit Sderot, reminding them that it takes only 15 seconds away for any qassam rocket to hit Sderot from Gaza.

The Elders organizer insisted that the trip is structured to “show both sides of the conflict” and that is why they requested we bring a Sderot resident to speak in Jerusalem even though they did not have time to visit Sderot.

In a telephone conversation the “Elders” organizer on Sunday morning, she reiterated that the organizers of the trip refused to visit Sderot and even refused to cover the costs of bringing a Sderot resident to meet them in Jerusalem.

Soon after getting off the phone with the organizers of the The Elders’s who wanted to show “both sides of the conflict” trip, a scheduled group of European students from a very prominent worldwide Jewish organization came to Sderot to see the human side of the conflict.

After screening a video of kindergarten children running for their lives in the midst of an oncoming rocket attack, several students scoffed that the video saying it was “corny and stupid.”

The message for change in the way people look at the situation and the current acceptance of the reality of terrorists targeting innocent civilians was lost.

The group criticized the film for not supporting the suffering in the Gaza Strip by not opening a media center in the Gaza Strip.

When the group’s organizer was contacted and heard how the group related to Sderot, she was also stunned.

This was clearly a reflection on the environment in which these Jewish students interact, whom the group’s organizer described as as “intensive and militant”. It would seem that even the cream of the crop of European Jewish youth have been won over by the tentacles of Arab propaganda.