19 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
As we creep up to Christmas and are seeing more and more trees appear in houses and high street windows, while we debate when to put up our own, if at all this year, I ask you all to give consideration to a much more special tree (in my opinion): the Palestinian olive trees.
International volunteers assisted in planting the olive trees
This year has been a rough one for farmers in Palestine. In one village alone, Burin (Nablus) over 4000 olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli settlers. Qusra bid its martyr farewell, Essam Aoudhi who was murdered by Israeli soldiers while trying to defend his olive trees and land. Attacks leading up to the olive harvest were coming thick and fast, with the Israeli settlers ensuring the most amount of damage before the harvest, causing unbelievable loss to farmers’ revenue.
In January volunteers in Palestine will join the farmers to show solidarity in projects such as land repair, ploughing for the new season and replanting olive trees. It is the latter project that we ask for help with.
Olive trees are the Palestinian Christmas tree. We ask from the most sincere of places for you to make a donation of whatever you may be able to afford. We are looking to raise as much as possible to buy olive trees and donate them to the villages.
Olive trees cost about $3 at the moment plus inexpensive transport. Buy an olive tree along with your Christmas tree this year, or if your Jewish why not buy eight for the eight evenings of Hanukkah.
Please feel free to donate through our PayPal account using the email zatoun.nablus@gmail.com, where you can also contact us if you have anu additional questions. For more information please visit our Facebook Event.
Thank you so much!
11 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Over two thousand people attended the funeral of Mustafa Tamimi in Nabi Saleh today. Tamimi was killed during a protest in Nabi Saleh on Friday after he was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired at close range by the Israeli military. He was 28 years old.
Mustafa Tamimi (left) a moment before his injury. Circled in red are the barrel of the gun and the projectile that hit him. Picture credit: Haim Scwarczenberg
At least six people were arrested and several people were injured as the Israeli military reacted violently to protests following the funeral. Despite the nature of Tamimi’s death, the Israeli military continued the practice of firing tear gas canisters directly at protesters. Although it is permissible to fire tear gas canisters in an arc to disperse demonstrations, it is forbidden to use them as weapons by firing them directly at protesters.
At least seven people were treated by the Red Crescent paramedics and one protester was taken to hospital after suffering from severe tear gas inhalation and respiratory problems. One protester sustained a wound to the head, which paramedics suggested came from being struck by a tear gas canister.
Over 100 people gathered at the hospital in Ramallah this morning from 9am. Just before 10am, Tamimi’s body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, was carried from the hospital through central Ramallah. The crowd chanted slogans and waved Palestinian flags as they carried his body – some held up posters showing a photograph of Tamimi’s bloodied face; his orbital lobe was smashed where the tear gas canister hit his right eye. Tamimi’s body was then taken in an ambulance to Nabi Saleh, the village 20km north of Ramallah where he lived. A long procession of cars and taxis followed as people joined from Ramallah for the ceremony.
Upon reaching Nabi Saleh, mourners gathered and walked up the main road leading to the mosque in the village. The approach was strewn with spent tear gas canisters from previous demonstrations. Tamimi’s body was taken to the family’s house and then to the village’s mosque at around 11:30. The village’s mosque was packed and people performed the noon prayer, followed by the Janazah prayer, customary after a death. Tamimi was then carried to the village’s cemetery where he was buried as mourners chanted and made speeches. Bouquets of flowers and tributes were laid over his grave. As the funeral drew to a close, hundreds of demonstrators headed out of the village to protest against the killing, where they were met by several military vehicles and dozens of Israeli soldiers.
The military fired tear gas canisters and deployed a foul-smelling water cannon at protesters, some of whom threw stones in response. The military fired tear gas canisters directly into houses and gardens lining the road at the entrance to the village.
The mourning of Mustafa Tamimi - Click here for more images
Several protesters headed out of the village down the slopes towards the Ein al-Qaws spring, which is the focus of the weekly protests in the village. The spring and surrounding area was taken over by residents of Halamish, a nearby illegal Israeli settlement, in 2009. Hundreds of protesters have been injured in Nabi Saleh but Tamimi was the first fatality during the demonstrations in the village. Tamimi was the twentieth person to be killed at similarWest Bankdemonstrations over the past eight years, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
The protesters confronted Israeli military personnel on the road, demanding to know “who killed Mustafa?”. The military responded to the peaceful demonstration by violently shoving, choking and kicking Palestinian and international protesters. Soldiers dragged one protester across the road by his neck and crushed another’s head into the ground with his arm. One soldier grabbed a poster of Tamimi and tore it up. They detonated sound bombs in the middle of crowds of protesters, the explosions causing ringing in the ears. They also fired tear gas canisters directly into crowds of protesters. At least two international protesters were arrested, including a member of ISM, and four Israeli peace activists were arrested. They are currently being held at Abu Dis station, near Ramallah. No Palestinians were arrested. The Israeli military violently shoved a number of press photographers who were attempting to cover the protest.
Ibrahim Bornat, 28, was with Tamimi when he died; “We were alone, with the rest of the protest quite far behind. We were chasing the jeep, telling it to leave the village.” Bornat says that one jeep waited for them, opened the door and fired two tear gas canisters directly at them, from a distance of around three meters. When the first tear gas canister was fired, Bornat claims that “Mustafa pushed me so it went over my head, the second one hit him but I didn’t realize…I thought maybe he had passed out from the gas. I went to him and turned him over and took the cloth off his face. It’s worse than any words I can say…the side of his face was blown off, the eye was hanging out and I pushed it back but I could see the inside of his head.”
Bornat says that, although Tamimi’s heart may have been revived later temporarily, he knew he was dead – “When I was holding him, I’m sure that he died in my arms. He let out a gasp and his soul left.”
According to Bornat, there were no ambulances around, so they put Tamimi in a service [communal taxi] but the Israeli military stopped it and tried to arrest Tamimi, until they realized how seriously injured he was. Bornat says that Tamimi lay on the ground for half an hour, receiving treatment by the Israelis, until someone fetched his ID card; “They were doing something but he needed to be taken to hospital right away.”
Bornat was not surprised at the actions of the Israeli military – “The occupation maintains itself through killing” he said.
Alistair George is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
So far, there were three people who had suffocated from the tear gas, and three people injured by rubber bullets. I saw gas, and so assumed that it was another case of suffocation. But the cries got louder, urgent, desperate — quite unlike the previous calls. Along with those around me, we began running to where the injured person lay, 50 meters away.
Screams. “Mustafa! Mustafa!”
I ran faster. I stopped. The youth I was so used to, the same ones who were always teasing and joking and smoking, were crying. One turned to me and groaned, “His head. His head is split into two!”
My stomach plummeted and I forgot to breathe. Exaggeration, I thought. Impossible. Not here. More screams of “Mustafa!”
I saw the man lying on the ground. I saw the medic with one knee on the ground, his face a mask of shock. I saw his bloodied gloved hands.
Mustafa’s sister was screaming his name. I saw Mustafa. I saw the blood, the big pool of dark red blood. I saw the blood dripping from his head to the ground as they carried him and put him in a taxi, since the ambulance was nowhere to be found. I saw other the tear-streaked faces of other activists, and all I felt was numbness.
Mustafa’s sister Ola was still screaming, so I put my arms around her as she buried her head in my chest. I was babbling, “It’s ok, he’s gonna be fine, it’s ok” but she kept on screaming. Her screams and the disturbing reactions of those around me made my legs numb. Ola then left to go to the watchtower where the taxi with her brother was, and my state of shock crumbled as I gasped out my tears in the arms of my friend.
The first protester death in Nabi Saleh
Friday, 9 December marked the second year since the tiny village began its weekly demonstrations protesting the expropriation of their land for the neighboring illegal settlement of Halamish, and the confiscation of the village’s main water supply, the Kaws Spring. It also marked the 24th anniversary of the first intifada. Fittingly, it seemed only natural the Israeli army would react with more violence than usual. But never did we expect someone to be killed. It’s too awful to think about. Nabi Saleh has a population of around 500 people. Everyone knows everyone in this tight-knit community, so when one gets killed, a big part of us dies also.
Mustafa, 28 years old, was critically injured after Israeli soldiers fired a tear gas canister at his face, and died at a hospital after his treatment was delayed by the occupation forces who had invaded the village to repress the weekly demonstration.
One difference that distinguishes Nabi Saleh from other villages with popular resistance committees, like Nilin, Bilin, Biddu and Budrus is that no one has been killed, or martyred in the protests. Beaten up, yes. Arrested, ditto. But never a death. Until yesterday.
My humanity is only human
Just before Mustafa went into the operating room, some good news came through. He had not suffered any cognitive damages to his brain, although he suffered a brain hemorrhage. There was a chance his eye might be saved. Relief washed over us. We tweeted, “please #Pray4Mustafa.”
I had pictured myself going to Nabi Saleh the next day, not the following Friday. I had imagined sitting in a room with weeping women, after passing by the somber men sitting outside. I had envisioned a funeral and an inconsolable Ola with her mother. Thank God there was a reassuring chance he would be ok. We’d make fun of his bandaged face, just like we did to Abu Hussam when a rubber bullet hit him under the eye a few weeks ago.
Then I got the call that Mustafa had succumbed to his wounds.
My humanity is only human. I hate my enemy. A deep vigorous hatred that courses through my veins whenever I come into contact with them or any form of their system. My humanity is limited. I cannot write a book titled I Shall Not Hate especially if my three daughters and one niece were murdered by my enemy. My humanity is faulty. I dream of my enemy choking on tear gas fired through the windows of their houses, of having their fathers arrested on trumped-up charges, of them wounded by rubber-coated steel bullets, of them being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged away for interrogations that are spliced with bouts of torture.
The soldiers laughed. They smiled. They took pictures of us, zooming in on each of our faces, and they smirked. I screamed at them: “Nazis, terrorists, vermin, programmed killing machines.”
They laughed at us as we screamed at them to let us through to where he was, unconscious in a taxi near the watchtower. They threatened us if we didn’t go back. We waved the flag with his blood on it in front of them. One of them had the audacity to bat it away. We shouted, “His blood is on your hands!” They replied, “So?”
I thought of Mustafa’s younger brother, imprisoned all these eight months. I thought of that brother’s broken jaw and his subsequent stay in the prison hospital. I thought of Juju (Jihad Tamimi), he of the elfin face who arrested a few days ago with no rights to see a lawyer after being wanted by the army for more than a year. I shuddered to think of the reactions of these imprisoned men from the village — Uday, Bassem, Naji, Jihad, Saeed – once they received the news.
I got the call just after 11pm Friday night. I was sworn to secrecy, since his family didn’t want to make it public yet. Anger, bitterness and sorrow overwhelmed me. I cried at my kitchen table.
The author (left) with Ola Tamimi (center) after Mustafa Tamimi was shot at close range by the Israeli military in Nabi Saleh village (Photo: Anne Paq / ActiveStills )
I hate my enemy. I can’t go to sleep. The images are tattooed forever inside my eyelids. They yells, the wailing, the groans, the sobbing all fill my ears like water gushing inside a submarine, dragging me further into a cold dark abyss.
I sought out religion as a source of comfort, yet it didn’t alleviate the anguish. His life was written in al-Lawh al-Mahfooz (The Preserved Tablet) since before he was born. His destiny was to become a martyr. How sweet that will be in the afterlife! But here on this earth, his sister is beside herself. His mother is hurting enormously. Her firstborn gone, no longer to drink the tea she makes or to make her laugh with his jokes.
The images are tattooed forever inside my eyelids. A bloody pulp on one side of his face. The pool of blood rapidly increasing. (Mama, there was so much blood.) His mouth slightly open, lying supine on the cold road. His sister screaming, her face twisted in grief. The young men weeping, looking like little boys again.
I hate them for making us suffer
I loathe my enemy. I will never forgive, I will never forget. People who say such hatred transforms a person into a bitter cruel shell know nothing of the Israeli army. This hatred will not cripple me. What does that mean anyway? Do I not continue to write? Do I not continue to protest? Do I not continue to resist? Hating them sustains me, as opposed to normalizing with them. Their hatred of me makes reinforces the truth of their being murderous machines. My hatred of them makes me human.
I can’t sleep. The shock flows in and then dissipates, before flooding back in again. I see no justification is implementing such violence on a civilian population, no sense in the point-blank murder of a man whose rights are compromised, and whose land is colonized and occupied.
Sure as hell, you will not be forgotten. You will become an icon, a symbol, and the added impetus for persisting and continuing your village’s struggle which reflects the plight of the average Palestinian for its basic rights, equality, and justice.
I hate them for making us suffer. Hating them will give me more strength to shatter their barbaric supremacist ideology, and to bring them under the heavy heel of justice. We’ve suffered so much. I hate them for not giving credit to our sumoud (steadfastness), and so continue to kill and dispossess and imprison and humiliate us.
They killed you, Mustafa. My insides crumple. You, in front of me. My tears are drawn from the depth of my wounded soul. You were engaged to be married. You were wanted by the army because of who you are: a Palestinian who resists the occupation he directly suffers from. I think of your father being denied a permit to be with you, of your mother who had to be granted permission by them to see you in the hospital. I think of your quiet, sardonic expression.
Your screaming sister. Your blood. Your murderers’ smiles.
Linah Alsaafin is a recent graduate of Birzeit University in the West Bank. She was born in Cardiff, Wales and was raised in England, the United States and Palestine. Her website is http://lifeonbirzeitcampus.blogspot.com/.
Midhad El Zalaan in his home after Israel’s bombing (Photo: Radhika Sainath, Notes from Behind the Blockade) – Click here for more images
Update: Midgdad’s 12-year-old cousin died yesterday.
“This is the occupation,” a neighbor mumbled as we stepped into what remained of twenty-year-old Migdad El Zalaan’s cement-block home in the north of Gaza City this afternoon. The Israeli Air Force dropped the first of three bombs near Zalaan’s home at approximately 2 a.m. this morning killing his uncle, wounding El Zalaan and the rest of his twelve family members, and destroying his home.
In one corner of the living room a baby doll lay on a mattress buried under shards of tin roof. Cement blocks squashed plastic party hats and red stuffed bears, and El Zalaan family’s modest possessions lay buried under layers of dust and rubble. El Zalaan was on his computer right before Israel attacked.
“After the Israelis dropped the first bomb, I took my family and left my home,” explained El Zalaan, periodically looking up at the sky, where the ceiling once was. “Then the second bomb dropped and I went to my uncle’s home to find out if they were okay. My uncle’s wife [Saada El Zalaan] called me from under the rubble. She was holding her baby, I took the baby and then Israel dropped the third bomb.” El Zalaan then helped his aunt out of her house despite her pleas to get her son out and leave her.
“I kept digging, looking for my uncle, then I found him, buried, but still breathing. He told me ‘take care of my family, take care of my wife and my children’ and then he died in my arms.” Bahjat El Zalaan was 33-years-old and the father of 5 when he died.
El Zalaan described how during the bombing he was screaming and pulling his hair out, and how he was trying to protect his mother, father, grandmother and siblings from the shrapnel by holding them in his arms. “I got rubble in my leg and back,” he explained, wincing in pain throughout the interview.
He took his family to Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Two of his siblings, ages 8 and 10, remain in critical condition. Israel had destroyed the roof of his home before, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. On the outside of the home, a small plaque hung near the broken window, “This shelter was repaired by UNRWA through a generous fund from the Federal Republic of Germany.”
Before leaving, El Zalaan asked if he could take a photograph with us and his cousin, who snapped a photo on his cell phone. As we left I asked him if he worked, and he said no, “we stay at home because there’s no work.”
“If he had been a Palestinian, he would have gone to the Ramallah hospital and died,” Gabby Silverman said firmly.
Silverman was close enough to Tristan Anderson that she didn’t even have to shout for him to hear her when he was shot in the head by the Israeli border police.
Anderson was 37 years old when he was shot in the right corner of his forehead by a high velocity tear gas canister that broke his skull, penetrated his right eye and devastated his frontal lobe. It was 13 March 2009, and the weekly nonviolent demonstration against Israel’s wall in the West Bank village of Nilin was coming to a close.
But Anderson did not die. He was taken to a hospital in Tel Aviv where he would be treated for the next 15 months. Silverman stayed with him, keeping close watch.
Anderson and his family have filed a civil suit against the Israeli military for the injury he sustained. Evidentiary hearings for the suit were to begin in Jerusalem in late November; however, the trial was postponed due to a last-minute revelation of material evidence.
New video evidence could lead to indictment
Lea Tsemel, an Israeli human rights lawyer who is representing Anderson in his civil suit, told The Electronic Intifada that mere days before the hearing was to begin, new video evidence emerged. “The footage, found only now, shows the army in the village the day Tristan was shot,” she said. “All of us [the state and lawyers] were surprised by the new evidence and wanted to investigate it before we go forward,” said Tsemel.
Now, before proceeding with the civil case against the army, lawyers representing Anderson in the criminal court will submit the newly discovered footage to the State Attorney’s office.
“We believe that the evidence supports the immediate re-opening of the investigation, and we hope that investigation will yield enough evidence to lead to the filing of an indictment before a criminal court,” said Emily Schaeffer, a lawyer with Michael Sfard’s Law Office, who represented Anderson and his family in the separate criminal case.
For Silverman and Anderson, the trial is not about weeding out a few bad apples, but challenging a regime that has never been held accountable.
“Palestinians die at protests all the time — no one will even talk about it. But people will talk a little about Tristan,” Silverman noted.
Long-term social justice protesters
In 2000, 17-year-old Gabby Silverman had long, thick wavy hair died bright red and wore unlaced combat boots. She was in the midst of the “A16” demonstration against theInternational Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC when Tristan Anderson first saw her.
“I walked by you and I noticed your shoes. Shoes tell you a lot about a person,” Anderson recalled in September 2011, as sat in his wheelchair in the house he shares with Silverman in Oakland, California. We were joined by their friend Ayr. Anderson’s right hand fingered the almonds in a bowl on a table. Every so often, he brought one to his mouth and ate it.
Today, Anderson is hemiplegic, almost entirely paralyzed on his left and dominant side, and blind in his right eye.
“Everyone was wearing black, but you had bright red hair and I thought, wow, look at her,” he added. Then the crowd pushed Silverman and Anderson away in different directions.
Eight years later, Anderson would meet Silverman again — this time at the top of an old oak tree at the University of California at Berkeley in the winter of 2007. They were both involved in a long-term protest of the university’s decision to cut down a grove of ninety ancient oaks to make room for a new gym.
The tree-sit lasted until September 2008 but Anderson and Silverman remained together as a couple. In March 2009, Silverman decided to travel to Palestine. She explained that as a person of Jewish background, she has been told her entire life that the country was personally relevant to her.
“I came with the intention to get a better understanding of what was going on in Israel and Palestine; I felt like I had a responsibility,” she said.
Anderson followed Silverman to the Middle East. Anderson had spent his adult life travelling Europe and the Americas, photographing what he saw and engaging with various types of international solidarity work.
Explaining his past work, Tristan told The Electronic Intifada: “Sometimes it’s solidarity, sometimes it’s like we’ve all got to fight against something. I did everything there is to do: bicycle activism, gardening activism, anti-globalization activism, [US political prisoner] Mumia [abu Jamal] activism, tree-sitting.”
Taking his lead from Silverman, Anderson decided he, too, wanted to learn more about what was happening in Palestine. He was in Palestine for six weeks before he was injured.
Anderson’s injury
Anderson’s injury initially wiped out his short-term memory. For many months, he had no recollection of events that had occurred within a year of the incident. However, with daily, arduous rehabilitation exercises he has regained some of the lost memories.
Anderson told The Electronic Intifada with certainty that he does not remember the day he was shot.
“It’s weird to think about things you have no memory of; I’m used to going through life with memories,” he said.
But glimpses of his time in Palestine have surfaced. Anderson remembers the iconic Stars and Bucks Cafe in downtown Ramallah, Silverman’s relatives in Israel and the first day he arrived in the West Bank.
“Israel tries to make [the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip] unbearable and they’ve done that quite well,” says Tristan.
Silverman and Anderson were based in Susya in the south Hebron hills in the occupied West Bank, but would travel to Nilin every weekend to attend the demonstrations there.
Nilin is a small city near Ramallah that borders the green line, the internationally-recognized armistice line between Israel and the occupied West Bank. In 1995, after the signing of theOslo II Interim Agreement, Nilin was included in Area C, making it part of the nearly 60 percent of the West Bank which is under full civil and military control of the Israeli army. When one-third of its land was slated to be confiscated with the construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank in 2008, the village began weekly protests.
Newly discovered video footage shows the Israeli army in Nilin village the day US activist Tristan Anderson was shot. (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills )
“I watched him fall”
Alone, Silverman spoke directly with The Electronic Intifada as she sat at her kitchen table in Oakland, cutting vegetables for a pot of soup. Anderson and their friend Ayr were in another room. Her hair is still long but now is a mix of natural golden and dark brown, and a few strands of grey.
Silverman recalled, “The demonstration was winding down at the end of the day — most of the people had left — but some were still walking around. But Tristan and I walked away from the crowd to get some air from the lingering tear gas.”
This was Silverman’s fifth and Anderson’s sixth demonstration in Nilin, but she recalled still feeling like an outsider there. “People didn’t really know us,” she explained.
They recognized a fellow international activist standing with three Palestinians in the shade and joined them.
Silverman stopped chopping to walk me through the next few moments. “Tristan had wandered off with his camera. I was looking at him. And out of nowhere, they opened fire on us. The first shot they fired, they got Tristan.
“I watched him get shot, watched him fall.”
Silverman left the kitchen for a moment and returned with two empty tear gas canisters. One is about a half-a-foot-long cylinder, metallic and hollow. The other is a black, dense sphere and felt like a small bowling ball in my hand. Anderson was shot with the latter, a new high-velocity tear gas projectile that had become known as the “bad gas.”
The canister that hit Anderson is called “extended range tear gas” and is made by the United States-based company Combined Systems, Inc, which makes “non-lethal” and “less-lethal” weapons. The company’s website recommends using the type of tear gas that hit Anderson to break barriers.
What makes this weapon particularly dangerous is that it has an internal mechanism that propels it forward, significantly increasing its impact. “It’s like firing a small missile,” Michaeli explained.
One month after Tristan was shot, the very same device would kill Bassem Abu Rahmeduring a demonstration in the nearby village Bilin.
According to eyewitness testimony collected by B’Tselem, the canister was shot directly at Anderson from a hilltop around 60 meters away. The tear gas projectile has a range of 250 meters.
Michaeli told The Electronic Intifada that the investigation conducted by Israeli police in the West Bank revealed that there were three groups of border police deployed throughout Nilin on 13 March, the day Anderson was shot. The investigation confirmed eyewitness statements given to B’Tselem — that there was indeed a group stationed on a hill approximately 60 meters away from where Anderson was standing.
However, that team of border police was never investigated.
“It was a careless investigation. It cannot be described as thorough, professional or complete,” said Schaeffer, in a statement mailed to The Electronic Intifada.
“Unfortunately the authorities’ treatment of Tristan’s case is not the exception — in my office alone we have seen literally hundreds of cases of Palestinians injured by the security forces whose investigations have also been negligent and have therefore failed to hold anyone accountable,” Schaeffer added.
According to statistics gathered by Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq, 57 Palestinians have been killed at demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the second intifada began in September 2000.
In June 2009, Akil Srour, 36, who was with Anderson at the time he was shot, was killed in Nilin when soldiers shot live-ammunition into the crowd. Srour was the fifth Palestinian to be killed in Nilin during an 18-month period.
Anderson’s recovery
For the three months after his injury, Silverman slept in the same room as Anderson as he moved from the intensive care unit to rehabilitation in a Tel Aviv hospital. Shortly after he was shot, Anderson’s parents arrived in Tel Aviv to be with their son.
Throughout the next 15 months, Anderson’s health was precarious and fluctuated wildly. The various viruses, diseases and infections Anderson picked up rolled off Silverman’s tongue like a grocery list during our interview.
“The doctors would tell me that he’s in a ‘dynamic’ state — meaning at any point he could die,” Silverman said bluntly.
She explained that initially Anderson was all but comatose. Doctors told her that they eventually hoped “for some kind of meaningful communication,” which Silverman translated to mean that he would be able to answer yes or no questions.
As Anderson gained lucidity while in the Tel Aviv hospital, the extent of the injury to his brain emerged. Typical of frontal lobe injuries, he had initially lost his short-term memory, and had a hard time learning new things. “He had to relearn how to swallow, he had developed dysphasia [impairment of the ability to communicate]. We worked for hours every day. But now he can eat anything he wants,” Silverman said.
To this day, his impulse control is compromised. Silverman said that Anderson is easily distracted by shiny cars or big advertisements, and cannot be trusted around streets.
He also does not believe that he is blind in his right eye.
“It’s very difficult to interact with someone who doesn’t respond to reason,” Silverman added.
With some caution, she said, “Luckily for us, Tristan is still continuing to improve.”
While he has recovered well beyond the hope of the initial prognosis, he requires constant assistance. These days, Anderson stays with his parents in Grass Valley, a small town in northern California, and comes down to Oakland to be with Silverman and other friends on the weekends.
“Akil was killed, Bassem is dead. The Tristan that I knew — who was my partner — who we all knew — he doesn’t exist anymore.”
Silverman added, “They [Palestinians] won’t get a big trial. That is why we have a responsibility to go through with this.”
With the new evidence, the State Attorney’s office will now decide whether to re-open the investigation, thereby opening the possibility for Anderson and his family to pursue criminal charges against the Israeli military.
Charlotte Silver is a journalist based in the West Bank. She can be reached at charlottesilver A T gmail D O T com.
