Sderot is a western Negevcity and former development town in the Southern District of Israel. In 2019 it had a population of 27,635. Sderot is located less than a mile from Gaza (the closest point is 840 m), and is notable for having been a major target of Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. Between 2001 and 2008, rocket attacks on the city killed 13 people, wounded dozens, caused millions of dollars in damage and profoundly disrupted daily life. Although rocket fire subsided after the Gaza War, the city has come under rocket attack on occasion since that time.
Sderot was originally founded in 1951 as a transit camp called Gabim Dorot for Israeli immigrants, primarily from Kurdistan and Iran, who numbered 80 families. The development was located on the land of the Palestininan village of Najd which was depopulated during 1948 Arab-Israeli War and served as part of a chain of settlements designed to block infiltration from Gaza. Permanent housing was completed three years after the transit camp’s establishment in 1954. The town was renamed Sderot after the Eucalyptus boulevard planted along the length of the town, whose planting provided employment to the residents of the settlement. From the mid-1950s Moroccan Jews increasingly settled in the township. Romanian Jewish and Kurdish Jewish immigrants also began settling in Sderot. In 1956, Sderot was recognized as a local council. In the 1961 census, the percentage of North African immigrants, mostly from Morocco, was 87% in the town; another 11% of the residents were immigrants from Kurdistan. Sderot received a symbolic name, after the numerous avenues and standalone rows of trees planted in the Negev, especially between Beersheba and Gaza, to combat desertification and beautify the arid landscape. Like many other localities in the Negev, Sderot’s name has a green motif that symbolizes the motto “making the desert bloom”, a central part of Zionist ideology. Sderot absorbed another large wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s Post-Soviet aliyah, and also took in immigrants from Ethiopia during this time. Its population doubled as a result. In 1996, it was declared a city.
An unusually high ratio of singers, instrumentalists, composers and poets have come from Sderot. Several popular bands have been formed by musicians who practiced in Sderot’s bomb shelters as teenagers. As an immigrant town with high unemployment experiencing a dramatic musical success, as bands blend international sounds with the music of their Moroccan immigrant parents, it has been compared to Liverpool in the 1960s. Among the notable bands are TeapacksKnesiyat Hasekhel and Sfatayim. Well-known musicians from Sderot include Shlomo Bar, Kobi Oz, Haïm Ulliel and Smadar Levi. The winner of the Israeli version of “American Idol” 2011 was Hagit Yaso, a local Sderot singer of Ethiopian origin. Israeli poet Shimon Adaf was born in Sderot, as well as the actor and entertainer Maor Cohen. Adaf dedicated a poem to the city in his 1997 book Icarus’ Monologue. In 2007, Jewish-American documentary filmmaker Laura Bialis immigrated to Israel, and decided to settle in Sderot “to find out what it means to live in a never-ending war, and to document the lives and music of musicians under fire”. Her film Sderot: Rock in the Red Zone focuses on young musicians living under the daily threat of Qassams. Politically, the town leans heavily to the right. The Israeli musician Dror Kessler, who lives in Sderot, has published Intifada Solitaire, a music album recorded during “Operation Protective Edge”, in which he expressed a unique and local opinion, one that may be considered to be leaning to the left.
Sderot cinema is a name given to gatherings at a hill in Sderot, where over 50 locals would come to watch the fighting in the Gaza strip during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, cheering when bombs would strike. The name was coined by a Danish journalist who snapped a photo of it and posted it on Twitter. Similar events happened in Operation Cast Lead in 2009, after which some critics decided to refer to the hill as “Hill of Shame”. Sderot residents have complained about the media portrayal. Marc Goldberg noted in The Times of Israel that “it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after suffering a huge amount of shelling over the course of several years, they are cheering the IDF attacking the weapons that have been turned on them.”
