It's been a stunning recovery. Following October 7, 2023, there were fears that the Sapir Academic College, located less than two miles from the Gaza border, would never regain its footing.
But Sapir is undergoing a nearly transformative renewal and growth.
Five months after being appointed president of the college, Prof. Nir Kedar was hiking with his family in Canada when he got the call about the attacks. Thousands of Hamas-led terrorists had invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, and kidnapping 251 from communities near the Gaza border.
The terrorists drove their trucks past the Sapir campus, which was closed for Sukkot. They entered the nearby city of Sderot and rampaged through its streets, gunning down 53 residents and storming the local police station. Ten police officers were killed during a 26-hour standoff, when the police headquarters was eventually retaken by Israeli special forces and bulldozed with the terrorists inside.
Residents of 47 communities located close to the Gaza Strip, including almost the entire population of Sderot, were ordered to evacuate. Dozens of Sapir students and staff members had been murdered, taken hostage, or injured; nearly 1,000 students were called up for reserve military duty, and some 1,500 people had to be relocated.
Chaotic weeks
“Only recently did I look back and realize this was the hardest time of my life,” Kedar told The Jerusalem Report. “For three days, I had to do everything from Montreal before I could get back to Israel. There were horrible stories. We had to evacuate so many people. Most of the staff live nearby; there were students in the dorms in Sderot, students who were not residents of the area. I had to relocate the entire college to the North.”
In the absence of government aid in the early chaotic weeks of the Israel-Gaza War, volunteer organizations, like Brothers in Arms, helped in the organization.
Lying just south of the major western Negev border city of Sderot, Sapir, with more than 7,000 students, is Israel’s largest public college; it is one of 53 colleges in Israel recognized by the Council for Higher Education.
The college has long been famous for its School of Audio and Visual Arts – the largest film school in Israel; a top-performing law school (the only one in the South); and its leading School of Social Work – all offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees. As the largest employer in the area, it also serves as a social and cultural hub for the region.
For months after the war began, the campus was a closed military zone, with tanks and other army vehicles parked on the grounds and classrooms filled with soldiers.
“The first days were horrible. We had to take care of the entire college community, visiting people from Eilat to the north, the Dead Sea, to see how they were. They’d left with nothing; we had to raise money, deal with legal issues,” Kedar related.
As the war dragged on, with widespread displacement, the college’s closure affected the entire region, not only Sapir’s students and faculty. There was a fear that the college could never recover.
“All the universities asked us if we needed help,” he recalled. “I said that not only will we reopen, but we’ll be the real growth engine of the area.”
Rebuilding the campus
That may have been a boast at the time, but the administration managed to enable an abbreviated academic year, running remote classes, then in a hybrid format as area residents began to return to their homes in March 2024. The campus fully reopened in November 2024.
Sapir has a diverse student body: about 65% come from Israel’s southern periphery and the Negev region. Many are the first in their families to pursue a higher education. Around 15% of the students come from the Bedouin community.
How was the college, and the entire region, able to rebuild?
“There were so many initiatives, most somehow connected to Sapir. I met with hundreds of people, and heads of banks,” Kedar related.
Through private donors and the government’s Tkuma (“Rebirth”) administration, established to rehabilitate and promote the growth of the region affected by the war, sizable grants have enabled the college to expand, while also bolstering new departments and faculties. These include Sapir’s new Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Faculty of Technology with the goal of positioning Sapir at the heart of the technological transformation taking place in the western Negev.
“We’re changing the region from rehabilitation to growth, with the growth of technology,” observed Gail Gilboa-Freedman, founding dean of the Faculty of Technology. “The western Negev is a living laboratory for technology; we’re not the genius of the ‘start-up nation’ that everyone’s proud of. We’re the ‘deployment nation,’ elevating the region through technology.
“What’s engaging me is not only technology,” Gilboa-Freedman added. “We’re part of the western Negev, after suffering years of attacks and crises. We must erase the stigma of the periphery. We’re only 50 minutes from the center. We have a living laboratory, providing the incentive to come here.”
Regional recovery
Sapir Academic College has been heavily involved in the general rejuvenation of the Gaza border region and is closely associated with the city of Sderot.
Before the current war, Sderot had some 37,000 residents and was under Hamas rocket attack, off and on, for more than 20 years. Now, it is undergoing a dramatic rehabilitation.
“We’ve been rebuilding after the worst crisis in the history of the state,” noted Dorel Abramovitz, director of development at the Sderot Foundation, the city’s fundraising arm.
The city, he relates, had to find ways to help 90% of the population, which had been evacuated to 120 hotels in the country, with 4,000 people in Eilat alone. City businesses had shut down.
“We opened schools in hotels, opened resilience centers, issued food vouchers, and organized transportation,” Abramovitz recalled. The question for many months was when to tell people to return.
“Mayor Alon Davidi said he didn’t want Sderot to become a ghost town, like the abandoned northern city of Kiryat Shmona. This was a crucial decision.”
To date, most of the residents have returned, and in the past two years the city’s population has been increasing at a whirlwind pace, with an active campaign to attract young families, with new apartment buildings and schools being built.
“It’s cheaper here than in Ashkelon. We have high-level services, subsidized summer camps, performances every week, and community centers. This is a live, friendly city,” Abramovitz declared. Sderot’s vision is to double its population to 80,000 by 2040.
From crisis to growth
With the help of private donors and Tkuma, several new projects and centers have been launched in Sderot. These include a “tech community” neighborhood alongside an R&D center, and a new branch of the country’s famous Rimon School of Music.
Few places in the world have more firsthand knowledge of trauma and recovery than Sderot. An ambitious cluster of entities in the city dealing with mental health and resilience methods – including the International Resilience Institute of Sderot and the new Rise-Up Hub, in partnership with Sheba Medical Center, developing mental health and resilience technologies – has attracted international interest.
In a joint Sderot and Sapir College project, a three-building innovation center, which will house a technology incubator for startups in hi-tech, defense, and environmental fields, is being built next to the Sderot train station, a 10-minute walk to the campus.
Sapir’s Kedar pointed out that as a result of the country’s many community colleges, Israel is now one of the top five most educated countries in the world.
“But Sapir was always different from the other academic institutions, because as part of this region, we have a social mission in addition to our academic mission, and after October 7 it is, of course, part of rebuilding the area. I really see Sapir as a social engine,” he said. “There’s no other institution in the area that will attract people to come, live, and maybe stay in the area.
“I’m an old-fashioned Zionist. For me, it was clear that we are going to be the mini-growth engine for the area.” ■