Good old school eyewitness journalism isn’t exactly everywhere these days. So allow me to plug a superb piece by my good friend and AJC colleague, Kenneth Bandler, on the situation in the Israeli town of Sderot.

Ken ends the piece with some important historical detail about Sderot:

Sderot was established in the 1950s, near the border with Egyptian-occupied Gaza, mainly by Jews from Morocco, Mayor [Eli] Moyal’s family among them. In the ’90s, they were joined by more Jews from the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. All came with a common purpose - to live securely in the democratic Jewish state.

“We are not running away from here,” says Moyal. “We are staying here because this time we are right. Sderot is not a settlement. Sderot is in the Green Line. The international community, the UN, recognized in 1948 that this is our place.”

Time certain media outlets recognized that too.

Update: Read Stuart Applebaum of the Jewish Labor Committee in The Forward on how American labor can show solidarity. Many thanks to our good friend Arieh Lebowitz for the tip.