Amazing amazing day in Sderot today– I am moved to tears.

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Since the upsetting incidents that happened here on February 10, I feel that I am now “Sderoti” and have been looking at Israel through that lens. I have seen a great deal of complete apathy, classism, racism, or just the simple feeling that Sderot is someone else’s problem. I have been living here, have felt the anger, frustration, feelings of abandonment… Over the last several weeks I have been seriously worried about the future of this country. If there is no solidarity, if we don’t support each other and come together to solve what really is a problem for the country as a whole, how can we survive?

It’s amazing how your entire perspective can change in one moment.

This morning my cameraman and I went to the entrance of Sderot and filmed a convoy of thousands of cars — an estimated 10,000 people — driving into Sderot. With Israeli flags flying, signs reading “SDEROT WE ARE WITH YOU” and red ribbons attached to their car antennas, they honked and clapped as they approached. They sported big smiles and waved their hands out the car windows, and then they hit the streets to do all of their Shabbat shopping.

I stood in the middle of the highway and cried.

I later found out that this was the initiative of a few individual citizens from Modi’in, who felt that the government wasn’t doing enough for the people of Sderot. They simply woke up one day, and decided that it was up to them to act– to help repair the economic crisis, and to simply bring a message of solidarity. They started the convoys several months ago, and though there had been several before this one, today was the biggest yet.

I met people from all over Israel, from all walks of life: young, old, religious Jews, hippies, a team of cyclists, a parade of motorbikes, a singing group. The citizens of Sderot were incredibly moved — I saw so many happy faces on the streets. When you have a camera, people feel they can just come up to you and start talking, and we filmed some amazing reactions.

What happened today felt like a miracle. It made me so proud to be a Jew and to be living here. It made me think that maybe there is a reason that we as a people keep surviving — despite governments, politics, and all the scary things that happen in the world, throughout the generations we seem to continually come to rescue one another. Today I saw the meaning of “Am Yisrael Chai.” I am full of joy and gratitude, and I know that all of Sderot shares my feelings.
Shabbat Shalom.

some of my friends here are so mad– they want to shoot qassams at Tel Aviv– they almost never complain about the palestinians…only about the government. Its like being in New Orleans– nobody gives a shit about the people here. And if all of the people in this town got up and left, the state of Israel would be at the real beginning of its demise. Yesterday a kid lost his leg…. and my friend saw it. Everybody in town was furious-. I convinced my friend to drive out of here for a few hours because he was so upset. But when we went to get out of town, the main highway out of town was blocked because there was a riot– people were burning tires and stopping the roads…. it is so upsetting I can’t even explain. And yesterday was so sad that I couldn’t even film it. I am hiring my cinematographer to come here because he will get the shot no matter what. I just can’t do it… I just can’t stick a camera in someone’s face when they are so distressed. Somehow it feels okay if I am paying for someone else to do it… I just can’t.

Shabbat was insane. Friday morning we ran to the bomb shelter 8 times… then after shabbat dinner it was like five times again.. the people living here are heroes. And the rest of israel doesn’t care.

It was May 2007. I woke up one morning to read emails from friends in Israel about the humanitarian crisis that was happening in Sderot. Qassams (homemade rockets) had been fired over the border from Gaza for the last seven years at this small town in the Western Negev. Now their frequency was increasing and the resident of Sderot were subjected to fifty rockets on some days. Five thousand people (one fourth of the population) had left, and many who stayed had no where to go. It was a crisis, covered by the Israeli media all day and night for days. Sitting in my Los Angeles apartment reading the stories, I wondered how much of this news made it to the news pages in the US. I opened the LA Times. Nothing. New York times, nothing. MSNBC, nothing there either. CNN, nope. I waited for a week — that week in May– continuing to hear stories from Israeli news, eyewitness account of the crisis. At the end of the week, an article appeared in the NY Times. Its headline: IDF KILLS FIVE IN GAZA. I read through the whole article, to read about the IDF’s actions. Only the very last sentence mentioned that rockets are being fired from this area into a town called Sderot. No context. No mention of a humanitarian crisis. I was furious! The perception was that the IDF’s “incursions” were one-sided, or not all that necessary. There was nothing in the American media about the war that was being imposed on Israel from the other side.

As a documentary filmmaker I realized suddenly that I didn’t need to wait for the New York TImes. I had just spent five years documenting and creating an epic film about the heroes who led the thirty-year human rights movement to free Soviet Jews. People on both sides of the iron curtain who came together and literally changed the world. Inspired by their determination to DO SOMETHING, and not just sit on the sidelines, I realized what I needed to do. I needed to go to Sderot and tell the story of what is happening there. Not from a news perspective, but a human story about real people and what they are going through.

I found an amazing angle for my film. Sderot, it turns out, is a city famous for its music. Over the last twenty years it has produced some of the biggest Israeli bands and rock stars. A music club for teenagers, called Sderock, is run out of an underground bomb shelter in the town’s center. (Sderock was there before the Qassams, but now its location has turned out to be vital.)

So I moved to Sderot, and I am living here documenting the lives of young musicians whose music reflects the situation. When I first arrived here, I felt like I found buried treasure. I found a small town filled with warm and wonderful people. A rich mix of cultures of Jews from all over the Arab world– Morocco, Tunisia, Kurdistan, as well as immigrants from Ethiopia, and the Former Soviet Union. I found musicians and artists that are incredibly talented and interesting people. Now they are my friends, and I am experiencing the Qassams along with them. The music is amazing, and its really powerful to listen to what comes out of this situation.

Thirteen people have died from the ongoing attacks over the last seven (almost eight) years, and its impossible to count the number that have been injured. A huge problem is the terror and fear that the Qassams create. An Israeli warning system, the “Red Dawn Alert System” detects when a rocket was fired and residents of Sderot hear the air raid, “Color Red. Color Red. Color Red…..” You have fifteen seconds to get to a bomb shelter, and there you wait to hear the boom.

One of the most heart-wrenching interviews I have conducted is with Doctor Adriana Katz, the chief psychiatrist here. Over three thousand people are being treated for serious psychological disorders caused by the qassams. And the saddest thing is to see children who don’t know that life can be any other way.

The fear is different than the fear that you have of suicide bombings. Because its not about going out to a market or cafe or being on a bus. Its the fact that rockets are literally falling out of the sky, and no where is safe.