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[Previous entry: "Arrest of Naser Orić"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "The Can of Worms I"] 13 April 2003: "Yet another ISM casualty"
It's happened again; on Friday, 11-Apr-2003, between 1630 and 1700 LT, ISM activist Thomas Hurndall (21, from Tufnell Park, London, but living in Manchester, UK) was wounded in the head by gunfire. The shooting took place in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, less than a kilometre from where Rachel Corrie was killed by an IDF bulldozer slightly less than a month ago. Hurndall has been hospitalised in Be'ersheba; he is alive, though he reportedly shows no brain activity. As in the case of the shooting of Brian Avery, reports are confused, and contradictory.
Friday's incident began when about a dozen members of the International Solidarity Movement, including foreigners and Palestinians, walked toward IDF 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.The BBC article states: Tom Wallace, of the ISM, said the incident happened in a residential area where local children had come to watch the activists' protest, as they often did. He said shots were being fired over the protesters' heads from one of two Israeli watch-towers nearby.According to the ISM page: According to Laura, the plan had been to put up a tent where a tank parks itself every night in front of a Mosque. The soldiers in the tank shoot down the street, terrorizing people who come to pray. The group had discovered earlier that the tank was already in place and had begun firing into the air. The Palestinian organizers felt the plan had become unworkeable [sic], and the action was abandoned.The more I read about ISM actions, the more I get the impression that their modus operandi is to ignore any warning actions the IDF carries out (firing warning shots in the air, etc.), and provoke the IDF into "shooting to scare." Consistently, the point is emphasised that the ISM activists were wearing distinctive clothing—reflective or brightly-coloured jackets—as if this somehow changes the fact that they were behaving in a way almost calculated to draw IDF fire. This is, of course, nonsense. If I were to stroll over to Interstate 5 and dance across the lanes of traffic, nobody with any grip on reality will blame the driver of a car that might hit me; even if I were wearing a reflective jacket, that wouldn't alter the fact that I was dancing in the middle of a four-lane highway! If anything, the common reaction would be relief that my stupid antics hadn't caused a multiple-car pile-up (assuming that they hadn't). Moreover, a reflective jacket is not some equivalent of the "distinctive emblems" of the red cross, red crescent and red (Persian) lion and sun (I don't know whether that last one is even used anymore). It should be noted that Protocol (I) defines abuse of the distinctive emblems by armed forces as a war crime (Art. 38), while Art. 13 states: 1. The protection to which civilian medical units are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian function, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after a warning has been given setting, whenever appropriate, a reasonable time-limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.Emphasis in bold mine. This means troops are allowed under certain circumstances to fire on civilian ambulances, if such are being, or have been used for puposes detrimental to those troops (probably something the UN Member States who voted in favour of Resolution A/RES/54/77 overlooked). Given the normally protected status of the red cross, it follows that a reflective jacket carries no status of protection at all, and certainly not when those wearing it seek to hinder IDF operations. In this light, the mention of the Palestinian children in this latest incident is a smokescreen at best; I suspect that the children in question would not have been in danger in the first place, were it not for the ISM action, and if the ISM were so concerned about their safety, maybe they should have stopped to consider that their action might put the children in danger before they tried to carry it out. "How dare they shoot at children?" is the outraged implication. "What the fuck were you thinking, allowing kids to hang about when you had good reason to expect you'd draw fire?" is my response. What rather irks me about this continuing business is that I'm increasingly sounding like an apologist for the IDF; I'd prefer to think I'm not. IDF policy does appear to have some major flaws, over-reliance on AFVs and live ammunition being the foremost; the IDF might do well to revert to riot-control munitions and dismounted operations. The problem is, as I noted in my commentary regarding on Civax' observation, that it is entirely possible Rafah, which has a heavy Hamas and Islamic Jihad presence, is judged by the IDF to be just too damn dangerous for operations on foot. To compare, when the IDF attempted to move into the refugee camp in Jenin—which is in the West Bank, not the Gaza Strip, but also has a heavy Hamas and Islamic Jihad presence—on 08-Apr-2002, they initially used dismounted infantry; over the next three days, the IDF suffered 23 men killed, 13 of whom were killed in a single ambush (involving a booby-trapped house, a suicide bomber and a large number of armed militants) on 09-Apr-2002. It was only after taking these, by Israeli standards, horrendous casualties than the IDF resorted to the use of artillery, AFVs and bulldozers. It says something about the IDF's professionalism that the subsequent assault took the lives of only 52 Palestinians, of whom at least half were combatants (according to the Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10; human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch do not dispute the casualty figures). I say "only" because the figure of at most 26 non-combatant dead stands in rather rather shrill contrast to the number of over 500 massacred which was initially, and incorrectly, claimed. Be that as it may, the present policies of the IDF lend themselves to exploitation in the way ISM is doing. I'm not trying to apologise for the IDF, but I am highly critical of ISM. In their statements, ISM consistently overstates the case. The IDF's fire is always "unprovoked"; the statements downplay or obfuscate the activists' activities that drew the fire. The IDF's fire is always made out to be deliberate; no matter how many rounds are expended on warning shots, the bullet that strikes an activist is always, it is insinuated, deliberately intended to kill, even when it's a single round from a burst of fifteen, even when the activist is one among several others, none of whom was hurt in any way. ISM claims to support non-violent resistance to the IDF; yet, simultaneously, it "recognize[s] the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle." This translates to "we think it's okay for the Palestinians to kill Israelis, but not for the Israelis to kill Palestinians." If an IDF soldier dismounted from his APC to restrain and remove an ISM activist, and was shot by a Hamas sniper, would ISM condemn the sniper? I see no reason to believe so; they'd call it "legitimate armed struggle." Thus, by hampering operations of the Israeli security forces only, every ISM activist in effect becomes a foot soldier for the Palestinian militants. Very likely an unwitting one, and one who carries a reflective jacket instead of a weapon, but a foot soldier all the same. I'm open to the possibility that the increasing casualty rate among ISM members indicates a hardening of the IDF's attitude, but I'm equally willing to accept the possibility that the ISM leadership is instigating a more provocative course of action; the death of Rachel Corrie got them really noticed, and a few more casualties may be just what they feel they need to keep that attention. How much the ISM leadership cares about its volunteers can be divined from the fact that their website initially misspelled Corrie as "Corey," and now refers to Hurndall as "Hardall" in one photo caption, and his age is given as 21 and 22 on a single page. This impression is not alleviated by comments like this one: "It's possible they [the protesters] were not as disciplined as we would have liked," Thom Saffold, a founder and organizer of the International Solidarity Movement, said in a telephone interview from the group's base in Ann Arbor, Mich. "But we're like a peace army. Generals send young men and women off to operations, and some die."(Source: "American Is Killed By Israeli Bulldozer", Washington Post, 17-Mar-2003) You know, where I come from, a comment like that would be construed as acknowledgement of "command and control" responsibility. But that would be too much to expect; note how the ISM statement studiously avoids identifying "Laura" by anything but her first name. I'd call her "Captain Laura LNU" myself, since she appears to have been in charge of the action: "Laura and two Palestinians decided to go assess the situation. [...]" Since she appears to have been in charge, that makes her responsible in my book. Probably someone at ISM thought so too, which is why she is only identified by her first name (from this page it appears Laura is American, and approximately 20 years old) and appears to have avoided talking to the media. One last observation in closing; the ISM statement comments: Six months ago in Jenin [...] UN official Ian Hook was murdered.The Daily Telegraph reports: UNRWA said he was "caught in the crossfire" between the Israeli army and local militants but could not say where the shot came from.The Guardian reported: Mr Hook was sitting in his office in a small UN compound in the camp - consisting of several mobile homes - when the fighting erupted, said Sami Mshasha, a UN spokesman.Let's get a number of facts straight: First, Mr. Hook was not actually a UN official; he was seconded to UNRWA by the UK government's Development Agency. Second, Mr. Hook was shot on 22-Nov-2002, less than five months ago; not six. Third, assuming that Dr. Mohammed is not a ballistics expert, he means that Mr. Hook was hit by two 5.56x45mm bullets, which may have been fired from an M16; the M16 is not the only weapon to use that round. However, the M16 and its many variants (including the M4 carbine and the Colt Commando "submachinegun") are the most common weapons in the West Bank which use this round (since the IDF seems to have stopped using the Galil for security duties). The IDF uses this weapon, and so does the Palestinian Authority. The easiest way to identify the origin of the round would be to examine the cartridge case; an Israeli-made round would most likely be stamped "IMI" (Israel Military Industries Ltd.). However, one may reasonably assume Dr. Mohammed did not have the cases; moreover, the PA was supplied with ammunition by the Israeli government prior to the Second Intifada, so even if the bullets were identified as being of Israeli manufacture, that still wouldn't prove who fired it. In short, there is no way to tell whether the bullets that killed Mr. Hook even came from an IDF rifle, let alone that, if they did, they were intended to kill him. But I've sort of given up on expecting ISM not to lie. No, sorry, one more observation. Now that two other ISM members, one from Arizona and one from England, have managed to get themselves severely wounded, can the American right-wing stop blaming The Evergeen State College now? |
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