A letter from Gordon Bennett, Ellie Clayton and Aimee McGovern — currently under house arrest in Tel Aviv.
Published 27 September 2012Posted in: News
As
many of you may already know, we are currently volunteering in the
occupied Palestinian Territories with the International Solidarity
Movement (ISM) – a non-violent Palestinian-led solidarity organization.
Much of the work that we do is documenting human rights abuses, taking
pictures and videos, writing reports and carrying out direct action,
such as attending demonstrations. Hence our presence in the village of
Kufr Qaddoum on Friday the 21st of September.As Friday’s demonstration progressed, it became clear that the army were targeting international observers for arrest – a tactic regularly used by the Israeli authorities to prevent human rights abuses being reported in international media. The three of us were eventually beaten and arrested after taking pictures of the demonstration.
What followed was a 48 hour ordeal of detention – being split up, strip-searched, shackled hand and foot, denied access to prescription medication and imprisoned in cockroach-infested cells with no idea of what was going on.
We were eventually brought to court, where we were charged with fabricated offences – throwing stones at soldiers and knowingly being in a ‘closed military zone’. No evidence was brought against us, because there was none. After 48 hours, we were released to 24/7 house arrest in this flat in Tel Aviv, where we await a decision as to whether we’re to be deported at the end of the week. We’ve been told by the British consulate in Jerusalem that this is not a punishment they have heard of being used before for British nationals, so for this reason we are unsure of our status.
Thankfully for us, during this ordeal ISM and Israeli activists from Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) have provided us with legal assistance, a translator, transport, accommodation and support in Tel Aviv. They’ve also acted as guarantor for our conditions of house arrest – if we were to take even one step outside of this building, our friend would be charged 3500 pounds. Without their help, we would likely have been held for seven days in prison and then deported immediately.
Both ISM and AATW are working on tiny budgets and regularly have to face these kind of crippling financial costs to maintain their work against the occupation in Palestine. Donations are desperately needed to allow both organisations to continue. The three of us would like to appeal to our friends and families to make a donation to support their ongoing work.
As international citizens, we are provided with some legal protection under Israeli law. Palestinians, on the other hand, are not. Two Palestinian men were arrested at the same time as us, facing the same charges. They are still awaiting trial, but there’s no way they’re going to get the chance of moving to house arrest after just two days inside – Israel’s ‘administrative detention’ regime for Palestinians can mean being held indefinitely without charge for months or years. It’s a regime that has been criticized time and again by human rights organisations.
Please write to the Israeli government: the Minister of Public Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, at sar@mops.gov.il, and the Military Advocate General, Brigadier General Danny Efroni at avimn@idf.gov.il, calling for:
- The immediate release of Majd Obeid (23) and Abdelateef Obeid (25), or for them to be promptly tried in a hearing which meets internationally recognized fair trial standards;
- An end to the policy of administrative detention for Palestinians;
- An end to the arrest and trial of Palestinian minors as adults;
- An end to ill-treatment of Palestinians in detention;
- An end to the harassment and arrest of international and local human rights defenders.
Also, please share this letter as widely as you can!
Shukran! (Thank you!)
Gordon, Ellie and Aimee.
http://www.ism-london.org.uk/2792/
The Photographs and Journal Entries of Tom Hurndall Released
Published 14 February 2012Posted in: Featured, News
‘The
Only House Left Standing – The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall’
has been released on Trolley Books. Robert Fisk wrote the following review in the Independent newspaper.I don’t know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of ‘human shields’ who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because – looking back over the history of that terrible war – Hurndall’s journals show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. “I may not be a human shield,” he wrote on 17 March from his Amman hotel. “And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers’ lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes.”
Hurndall got it about right, didn’t he? It wasn’t so simple as war/no
war, black and white, he wrote. “Things I’ve heard and seen over the
past few weeks prove what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor
the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but… the
air war that’s proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn’t discriminate
between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe
hundreds of thousands, just to save thousands of American soldiers
having to fight honestly, hand to hand. It is wrong.” Oh, how many of my
professional colleagues wrote like this on the eve of war? Not many.
We pooh-poohed the Hurndalls and their friends as groupies, even when they did briefly enter the South Baghdad electricity station and met one engineer, Attiah Bakir, who had been horrifyingly wounded 11 years earlier when an American bomb blew a fragment of metal into his brain. “You can see now where it struck,” Hurndall wrote, “caving in the central third of his forehead and removing the bone totally. Above the bridge of his broken nose, there is only a cavity with scarred skin covering the prominent gap…”
Hurndall’s picture of Attiah Bakir shows him as a distinguished, brave man who refused to leave his place of work as the next war approached. He was silenced only when one of Hurndall’s friends made the mistake of asking what he thought of Saddam’s government. I cringed for the poor man. ‘Minders’ were everywhere in those early days. Talking to any civilian was almost criminally foolish. Iraqis were forbidden from talking to foreigners. Hence all those bloody minders (many of whom, of course, ended up working for Baghdad journalists after Saddam’s overthrow).
Hurndall had a dispassionate eye. “Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many stars as now in the western deserts of Iraq,” he wrote on 22 February. “How can somewhere so beautiful be so wrought with terror and war as it is soon to be?” In answer to the questions asked of them by the BBC, ITV, WBO, CNN, Al Jazeera and others, Hurndall had no single reply. “I don’t think there could be one, two or 100 responses,” he wrote. “To each of us our own, but not one of us wants to die.” Prophetic words for Tom to have written.
You can see him smiling selflessly in several of his snapshots. He went to cover the refugee complex at Al-Rweished and moved inexorably towards Gaza where he was confronted by the massive tragedy of the Palestinians. “I woke up at about eight in my bed in Jerusalem and lay in until 9.30,” he wrote. “We left at 10… Since then, I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris…”
Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. “While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle… It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, ‘We are international volunteers. Don’t shoot!’. That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can’t be sure where from…”
Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 when – in his mother’s words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act.
“Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper.” He was a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most of us have dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.
A gallery of images from the book can be viewed here
To pick up your copy, and for further information please visit the Trolley Books website.
We pooh-poohed the Hurndalls and their friends as groupies, even when they did briefly enter the South Baghdad electricity station and met one engineer, Attiah Bakir, who had been horrifyingly wounded 11 years earlier when an American bomb blew a fragment of metal into his brain. “You can see now where it struck,” Hurndall wrote, “caving in the central third of his forehead and removing the bone totally. Above the bridge of his broken nose, there is only a cavity with scarred skin covering the prominent gap…”
Hurndall’s picture of Attiah Bakir shows him as a distinguished, brave man who refused to leave his place of work as the next war approached. He was silenced only when one of Hurndall’s friends made the mistake of asking what he thought of Saddam’s government. I cringed for the poor man. ‘Minders’ were everywhere in those early days. Talking to any civilian was almost criminally foolish. Iraqis were forbidden from talking to foreigners. Hence all those bloody minders (many of whom, of course, ended up working for Baghdad journalists after Saddam’s overthrow).
Hurndall had a dispassionate eye. “Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many stars as now in the western deserts of Iraq,” he wrote on 22 February. “How can somewhere so beautiful be so wrought with terror and war as it is soon to be?” In answer to the questions asked of them by the BBC, ITV, WBO, CNN, Al Jazeera and others, Hurndall had no single reply. “I don’t think there could be one, two or 100 responses,” he wrote. “To each of us our own, but not one of us wants to die.” Prophetic words for Tom to have written.
You can see him smiling selflessly in several of his snapshots. He went to cover the refugee complex at Al-Rweished and moved inexorably towards Gaza where he was confronted by the massive tragedy of the Palestinians. “I woke up at about eight in my bed in Jerusalem and lay in until 9.30,” he wrote. “We left at 10… Since then, I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris…”
Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. “While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle… It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, ‘We are international volunteers. Don’t shoot!’. That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can’t be sure where from…”
Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 when – in his mother’s words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act.
“Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper.” He was a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most of us have dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.
A gallery of images from the book can be viewed here
To pick up your copy, and for further information please visit the Trolley Books website.
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