Tom

(Previous post on Tom Hurndall)

His words:
'What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done. '

Tom Hurndall's sister, Sophie, talks to the Times

Tom Hurndall: his death was like a bomb going off in the middle of the family
As a TV drama examines the killing of Tom Hurndall by Israeli forces in Gaza; his sister talks for the first time about his death; the devastating impact that it had on the family and their campaign for the Palestinians
October 7, 2008, Penny Wark

In April, 2003, Tom Hurndall, a 21-year-old photojournalism student, was shot in the head by an Israeli Defence Forces sniper
Sophie Hurndall and her mother have found catharsis by working for charities involved in the Middle East

When a young person dies, the instinctive reaction of those who love him is to dwell on his qualities, often to a point where the lost one becomes a hero. He was extraordinary, courageous, determined to make a difference, they say. All those words have been used about Tom Hurndall and, as his sister Sophie likes to point out with amusement and affection, they are a considerable part of the truth, but not all of it.

“Tom is like every brother, he winds you up at times and seems like the most amazing person in the world at other times,” she says. “There's that constant balance of loving someone so much and not wanting to leave those irritating parts out.

“I say bad things about him because it makes me feel closer to him. You know, the pizza boxes covered in mould on his bedroom floor. For me these are the things that make him who he was. He was human and normal and sometimes very annoying and that's what made him real. The amazing things he did made him who he was as well. I need to see both to keep hold of him. I think if you put him on a pedestal you'd lose him. It wouldn't be him any more.”

In April, 2003, Tom Hurndall, a 21-year-old photojournalism student, was shot in the head by an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) sniper as he tried to protect a group of Palestinian children in the Gaza strip. He died the following January without regaining consciousness. During those months and beyond the Hurndall family - dad Anthony, a solicitor, mum Jocelyn, a teacher, and Sophie, just out of university, (there are also two younger brothers, Billie and Freddie) - suspended their lives as they sought to discover how and why Tom had died, and in doing so they took on the IDF. Eventually the family's tenacious refusal to accept a cover-up forced the IDF to investigate and to acknowledge that Tom had been wearing the fluorescent jacket of a non-combatant and had not been caught in Palestinian crossfire. In 2004 Taysir Hayb, an IDF soldier, was convicted of Tom's manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison. Next week the Hurndalls' story will be the subject of a powerful Channel 4 drama-documentary, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. It has been made with the co-operation of his family and for Sophie, two years older than Tom, it is a way not only of pursuing his humanitarian agenda, but of feeling close to him.

We meet at her mother's home and sit in the patio garden Jocelyn created after Tom's death as a sanctuary for her family. Sophie is 29 now, outwardly cheerful and poised. As children she and Tom hurtled around together, climbing trees, exploring, exchanging the banter she regards as the sibling's way of being close without being cheesy. Tom would leave her lunchbox at the top of the highest tree (whether by design or absent-mindedness, she isn't sure) and claim that her toys were his, but at the North London family home he was her closest ally. Their parents' divorce six years before Tom was shot made them feel jointly protective of Freddie, who is 11 years Sophie's junior. She felt protective of Tom too, especially when, in 2003, he told her that he planned to go Baghdad to photograph the “human shields”. “I was angry, frustrated and afraid for him. I didn't want to come across as the typical big sister and say you can't go. It was hard. I tried to ask him a few questions to establish whether he knew what he was doing. I wanted to sow some doubt. It was things like, ‘Do you know what you would do if there were bombings around you? Do you know what you're getting yourself into?' He tried to laugh it off. It was bravado to make himself and me feel more at ease. There was some part of him that needed to put on a tough face for himself as well as for me to get through it.”

Sophie recognised that Tom was someone who wrote his own rulebook and that he was an idealist motivated by seeking truth. He had always intervened when he saw injustice, protecting bullied children at school, confronting a man mugging a child near his mother's home. He went to Iraq and later to the Palestinian terrortories, she believes, because he had become aware that abuse of civilians was being misreported. “I think that took a huge amount of courage. You almost delude yourself to get through and he was conscious he was doing that and writes in his diary about having to pretend things are OK just to do what you believe in.”

There were divisions in the family about whether to read his diaries; some have read bits, others haven't. “Through his diaries we know how he was making his decisions,” Sophie says. “In some ways his decision-making fills me with terror, but there's pride and admiration too. Also anger because I get pissed off with him sometimes.” She laughs. “Why the hell did you put us through this? But it wouldn't have been Tom to have done anything else.”

His death has changed her, of course. Initially she was angry about the IDF's dismissive response and threw herself into the family's campaign to seek accountability. “We did a lot of running around and trying to make a difference and being worthy in a crazy and intense way. It was like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the family. We rowed over things that didn't matter.

“It's taken a long time to get back to a point where we can be around each other and not be thinking ‘but Tom should be here too' - for that to be so painful that you don't want to look at your brothers because they remind you of him, or have a conversation with your mum who's going to talk about how much she misses him until you want to scream. I feel like after five years we're coming back together.”

Both Sophie and her mother have found catharsis by working for charities involved in the Middle East - Sophie, who once planned to be a psychotherapist, now works for Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map). Discovering that her brother is one of thousands of civilians killed by the Israelis in the occupied territories was shocking and salutary, she explains, and gives her job an emotional force she finds irresistible.

“That was almost more shocking than what happened to Tom and the loss and the grief and the pain and watching him dying and not being able to turn his life support machines off and fighting with the doctors over whether they could or couldn't. You can't use morphine, it has to be by the withdrawal of food and water, a hugely traumatic process. I can't put into words how awful that was. Not quite as bad was the number of Palestinian families that were coming to us saying this [Tom's shooting] is exactly what happened to my brother or my sister. That opened my eyes and I needed to do something to help to support Palestinian civilians who don't have any recourse to justice. What I find shocking is the consistency with which the IDF proactively covers up this kind of case.”

She cites the 13-year-old Palestinian girl shot on her way home from school, the woman refused help at a checkpoint as she was in labour (her baby died). She has often thought about how she would feel if she saw Taysir Hayb, whose actions have made her feel full-blown fury, she says. Almost as emotionally difficult is the prospect of visiting Gaza for her job - for the first time since Tom's death - next year. “I very much want to go and I'm terrified of going. Just to get through the checkpoint without shouting, punching, screaming is going to be very hard, knowing what Palestinians have to go through every day. I don't know how much strength it must take to get through that and not fight back.

“Tom has come to define my life. I still wear his ring. I'm terrified of losing it because I feel if I do I'll be losing the last thing of Tom. I've had several near misses. But I think working for Map and the film helps me to feel a bit like Tom's still alive.” She raises her voice in a question mark.

“I don't know that there's a feeling of obligation, but there is part of me that feels closer to Tom by following the path that he left for us. Once your eyes have been opened I don't think you can turn and go back.”

The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, Channel 4, October 13, 9pm

Medical Aid for Palestinians: 020-7226 4114, http://www.map-uk.org/