Two years after Goldstone, Geneva comes to Sderot

Noam Bedein
Sderot Media Center
10 March '11

On Wednesday March 9th, 2011, an unprecedented video conference was convened at the Sderot City Hall. Municipality representatives and residents from Sderot and Asheklon were on one side of the screen, while, on the other side, were the 'new' judges in Geneva from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Among the 'new' OHCHR judges was a leading US Judge, Mary Davis, who is in charge of investigating thousands of law suits against Israel's December 2008 to January 2009 military response to the rocket attacks from Gaza. Two years after Operation Cast Lead, this Commission is still examining the results of the IDF military operation in Gaza, while hardly anyone is examining the results of Gaza aerial attacks on Sderot and the Western Negev.

Two years ago, the OHCHR asked Sderot Media Center www.sderotmedia.org.il to bring Israeli victims of Gaza attacks to Geneva. For Wednesday's video conference, SMC was again asked to assist the Commission. OHCHR wanted to hear the human side of the story on the ground in Sderot, something that no UN body has done at any time in the past 10 years of Gaza attacks on this city. As a reminder, Sderot is the only city in the Western world whose civilian population has been under sustained aerial attacks from a radical Islamic-controlled entity.

On Wednesday, the Sderot municipality hosted representatives of the International Jewish Association of Lawyers. Several people participated in the video conference: Sderot Mayor David Boskila; the head of the Sderot Parents Association, Mrs. Hava Gad; a representative of the Ashkelon Municipality, Anat Barkovitz; and Ashkelon's Barzilai hospital spokesperson, Lea Malol.

Each panelist had only a few minutes to tell their side of the story, beginning with Mrs. Malol. She described working at the hospital, which was not protected against the Iranian-manufactured Grad missiles. She explained what it was like to treat over 500 Israeli and Palestinian patients from Gaza: "What other hospital in the world would allow itself to function under 10 years of rocket threat - with no vacations, doctors and nurses worrying about their own children, thousands of children with PTSD symptoms, not including the deaths and over 1,000 injuries which resulted from rocket attacks over the past few years".

(Read full "Two years after Goldstone, Geneva comes to Sderot")

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