[Peace-discuss] Another ISM activist shot by IDF

[John Fettig]

This has been a very bad month to be a member of the ISM in Palestine. 
It sounds like the latest victim, a 21 year old Briton, is not going to
recover from his injuries (he was pronounced brain dead from a bullet to
the head).  This all occurred just a block or so away from where Rachel
Corrie was murdered.  Very, very sad.

John

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=283221&contrassID=1&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

British peace activist shot by IDF troops in Gaza Strip [image]
[image]By Tsahar Rotem, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
[image][image]

Israel Defense Forces troops firing from a tank critically wounded a
British man Friday as he and other activists in a pro-Palestinian group
approached an army position on the edge of a Gaza refugee camp,
witnesses said. 

The Briton, Thomas Hurndall, 21, from Manchester, suffered a head injury
that left him comatose and hooked up to a respirator, said doctors. 

He was the second foreigner to be harmed in a week. A third member of
the group, the International Solidarity Movement, was killed while
trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer a month ago, near where
Hurndall was shot Friday. 

The IDF had no comment about Friday's shooting. 

Israel has said Palestinian gunmen often use civilians as human shields
and thus endanger them. 

Friday's incident began when about a dozen members of the International
Solidarity Movement, including foreigners and Palestinians, walked
toward Israeli tanks on the outskirts of the Rafah refugee camp, near
the border with Egypt, said Khalil Hamra, a photographer on assignment
for The Associated Press. 

The tanks patrol a road used by the army for incursions into the camp.
The activists wanted to set up a protest tent on the road, in an attempt
to block incursions, said Hamra and Khalil Abdullah, a Palestinian who
works with the group but who is not a member. 

Along the way, the protesters were joined by several children, the
witnesses said. When the group was about 200 yards away from three
tanks, soldiers opened fire from a tank-mounted machine gun, the
witnesses said. 

Hurndall and another foreign activist tried to get two children out of
the line of fire, Hamra and Abdullah said. "Thomas grabbed one of their
hands and as soon as he did that a tank fired at him, hitting him in the
head," Hamra said. 

The photographer said the children were not throwing rocks at the troops
and that he saw nothing that would have provoked the troops. 

Hurndall was declared brain dead after arriving at Rafah Hospital, said
Dr. Ali Musa. He was later transferred to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er
Sheva. 

Rafah has been a flashpoint of clashes between Israeli troops and
Palestinians. Troops have repeatedly raided the camp, demolishing scores
of houses the army said were used by Palestinian gunmen as firing
positions. 

A few blocks from where Friday's shooting occurred, American activist
Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16 while trying to stop an
Israeli army bulldozer. 

Witnesses said the bulldozer ran her over and then backed up. The army
said the driver did not see her and that her death was an accident.
Corrie, a student in Olympia, Washington, was the first member of the
group to be killed in 30 months of fighting between Israelis and
Palestinians. 

Last week, Bryan Avery, 24, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in
the face while walking with a fellow activist in the West Bank town of
Jenin. Witnesses said he was wounded by army fire. The army said it was
firing at gunmen in the area and was not aware it hit Avery. 


-- 
John Fettig <jfettig at uiuc.edu>