Profile of Sderot

A town built on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about Sderot, a town that has become the centrepiece of Israeli propaganda. Israeli spokesmen, and Israel’s stooges in the media and among politicians in Britain, the European Union and the United States, repeat ad nauseum the mantra about Palestinian home-made rockets "raining down" on Sderot, although only 1 in 500 causes a fatality. It is a mantra that has been used to justify the countless thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, grenades and tank shells that are blasted into Gaza's tight-packed humanity. Bu what do we know about Sderot? Below, Paul J. Balles gives us an insight into the town's history.

Israeli land thieves built Sderot on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village called Najd.

Sderot was settled by Jews in 1951. According to Walid Khalidi in All That Remains, it along with the settlement of Or ha-Ner, founded in 1957, were established on the village lands of Najd, which means "elevated plain" in Arabic.

Najd's Palestinian villagers, approximately 620 in 1945, were expelled on 13 May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. According to UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, the villagers of Najd have a right to return home to their personal property and to their native village.

Najd is 14 kilometres from Gaza. Palestinian Arabs own 12,669 dunums in Najd, although Israel refuses to honour their rights to their personal property, and refuses them their inalienable right to return home. In 1945 Jews owned 495 dunums of land in Najd and public lands consisted of 412 dunums.

In short, Sderot is an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians.

Israeli Goebbels: Stop lying to the world about needing to defend what is not rightfully yours. You're worse than bank robbers saying they have a right to defend their loot! Source

The Reality In Gaza