Millions now in range

PAT JOHNSON

A year after Operation Cast Lead, the stage is being set for a new conflagration, one certain to reach far beyond Gaza and southern Israel, warns an Israeli expert.

The Iranian missiles Hamas sends from Gaza into Israel are expanding their reach and, now, at least a million Israelis are under the same kind of threat that the western Negev city of Sderot has faced for years. This is a frontline assessment from the director of the Sderot Media Centre, a nonprofit agency that tells the world about everyday life a mile from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Noam Bedein, who is to speak in Vancouver next week, warns that new Iranian missiles being used by Hamas can reach far beyond the desert region.

“Today we don’t even have the accurate number of how many millions of Israelis are under threat by Iranian missiles from Gaza,” Bedein told the Independent in a telephone interview. “A month and a half ago, Hamas did tests on Iranian missiles. They fired these missiles toward the Mediterranean Sea, reaching a distance of 60 kilometres. Sixty kilometres from Gaza is putting Tel Aviv in the range of missile threat. It’s just a matter of time before this entire region is going to come under constant rocket fire, putting in range over one million Israelis.”

This year has been one of the quietest in the past decade, in terms of attacks like those that spurred Operation Cast Lead, Bedein acknowledged. “But people here understand that the more quiet it gets the more dangerous it is going to get in the near future,” he said. “Six hundred of the 700 mosques in Gaza right now are controlled by Hamas, [who are] turning them into warehouses of weapons and equipment, as launching pads for rockets and missiles.”

The Sderot Media Centre attempts to counter the images seen worldwide of Palestinian devastation by depicting life in Sderot, and Bedein challenges the illusion that this conflict is the David-and-Goliath story the international media sometimes depicts.

“We really have Iran in Sderot’s backyard,” he said. “For almost any other Western democracy, fighting against terrorism means fighting on the other side of the world. We are fighting on our own borders.”

Depicting everyday life in Sderot is to tell a story of daily close-calls.

“Children in a kindergarten run for their lives once they hear a siren going off and once they hear the siren going off they start counting down – 15, 14, 13 – and once they reach zero, they start singing out loud so they won’t hear the explosion exploding nearby,” Bedein said. “Why do we have to wait until a kindergarten classroom will get hit by a direct hit in order for us, Israel, to have international support to do what is right to protect our own citizens.”

The use by Hamas of human shields and civilian infrastructure as terrorist bases results in precisely the sort of carnage Hamas wants splayed across international TV screens, Bedein said.

“What we’ve seen and learned from Operation Cast Lead and afterward, the impact, the media coverage coming from this region is going to impact the entire world,” he said, adding that the world does not seem to accept that this conflict is not about borders or settlements or refugees. Sderot is within Israel’s internationally recognized borders, Bedein said, yet global opinion seems content to view missile attacks on its citizens as some sort of legitimate response to occupation.

“This is Israel’s sovereignty under rocket threat and fire,” he said. “The question is, why is the western Negev and the southern part of Israel under rocket fire and threat after Israel disengaged from the territory? We have to understand what the other side sees Sderot as. The Hamas brigade in Gaza says ‘we’re not going to stop firing on the Zionist settlement Sderot until the last citizen of Sderot leaves.’ The other side sees Sderot as a settlement and that gets to the root of the understanding here.”

While his hometown is under missile fire, Bedein expressed concern for Diaspora Jews, who watched massive anti-Israel demonstrations during last year’s war.

“We have not seen anything like this in decades,” he said. “Personally, being in different Jewish communities around the world during and after the operation, it’s pretty scary hearing firsthand how this was the first time in decades where Jewish populations felt threatened and under pressure.”

When the tinderbox of increasingly sophisticated stockpiled Gazan weaponry and explosives goes off, Bedein warned, another battle will begin: the global propaganda attack on Israel’s morality and legitimacy. “We are on the frontline of this entire media information war,” he said.

Bedein speaks on Monday, Jan. 18, noon, at UBC, in Angus 426 (2053 Main Mall), and at Simon Fraser University, 3 p.m., at Hillel House, #118, Cornerstone Bldg., 8960 University High St. Admission is by donation.

Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of programs for Hillel in British Columbia. He is on the Sderot Media Centre’s advisory board.

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