Contributed by CAMERA intern Chaiel Schaffel.
Though sometimes we can barely stand it, time is our most precious commodity. We are so rich in it that it has mostly lost its meaning. We waste time, chew time, burn time, even kill time. But there are those less fortunate. It takes fifteen seconds to reach down and tie your shoelaces, yet at times the residents of Sderot can’t even afford this simple luxury of time. They have to spend those fifteen seconds running to the closest bomb shelter, with fear giving chase all the way until they slam the eight inch blast proof door shut.
Being a Sderot resident, Noam Bedein, who presented at SUNY Buffalo on March 11th, is acutely aware of the difficulties in Sderot life. Presenting to a room of Buffalo students, Bedein detailed the daily life of Sderot residents, and delved into his own decision to move to the border town. The event, hosted by the University of Buffalo for Israel group, went off without a hitch. There were no counter-demonstrations, and there was a marked lack of opposition to the presentation in Talbert 115. A number of participants reported enjoying the presentation. The CAMERA Fellow at SUNY Buffalo, Logan Woodward, said the goal of the event was to “…spread awareness of what it is like to live under the constant barrage of rockets from Gaza.”
And Bedein did just that. Noam, the director of the Sderot Media Center, shared pictures of Israeli children fleeing a rocket assault from across the border, along with photographs of the aftermath. Woodward felt that this display was effective, as it moved many of his classmates, and that it “…provided a human face to the Israeli side of the conflict and raised awareness for the town of Sderot.”
According to Woodward, the group got the word out about the presentation effectively and through mixed media. “We hung up flyers, utilized our text alert system, sent out emails, published the event on Facebook and Instagram, reached out to club leaders through Facebook and emails, and made regular announcements at other events and general body meetings,” he said. CAMERA on Campus commends UB for Israel and the SUNY Buffalo community as a whole for hosting another successful presentation by Noam Bedein.