Category: In the Media

Haaretz: Israel to bar pro-Palestinian activists from entering country

By Amos Harel and Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondents and Agencies

Israel will from now on bar pro-Palestinian activists from entering the country and will try to expel at least some of the dozens of activists who are already here, according a new plan drafted by the Israel Defense Forces and the foreign and defense ministries.

Most of the activists, who come from Europe, Canada and the United States, belong to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Their goal is to act as “human shields” for Palestinian individuals and houses during IDF incursions into Palestinian towns, and they have often been involved in confrontations with IDF soldiers. They also try to help Palestinians pass through IDF roadblocks.

Some two months ago, an American ISM activist, Rachel Corrie, was run over and killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza. Her colleagues accused the bulldozer driver of having run her over deliberately. The IDF denies the accusation and decided not to indict the driver. In two other recent cases, international activists have been seriously injured by IDF gunfire during confrontations in the territories.

Israel Radio on Friday quoted British news agencies as saying that the two men involved in the suicide bombing at Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv late Tuesday night had entered Israel earlier in the day in a cab that passed through the Erez Crossing. The two had taken part in actions carried out by peace activists in the Gaza Strip. [Note: Read the ISM response to this issue in the FAQ.]

In the first sign of the new crackdown, a member of ISM was detained by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza refugee camp Rafah on Thursday.

Military sources said the woman activist was sleeping in a house suspected of concealing one of the tunnels used by militants to smuggle arms from nearby Egypt, and her case was being handled by the Foreign Ministry.

Foreign Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment and the ISM said it would release a statement later in the day on the new Israeli measures.

IDF accuses ‘riot inciters’

The IDF charges that many of the self-proclaimed peace activists are “provocateurs” and “riot inciters” who deliberately interfere with the IDF’s work, with the goal of blackening Israel’s image. Army sources noted that in one case, they discovered a wanted terrorist being hidden by ISM activists in Jenin. The sources said the activists received training overseas in how to deceive border control officials at Ben-Gurion International Airport in order to be allowed into the country.

Furthermore, both the army and the Foreign Ministry fear that additional foreign citizens might be killed or wounded by the IDF if the ISM’s activities are allowed to continue.

Wednesday’s bombing in Tel Aviv, which was committed by two men who entered Israel on British passports, added a new reason to the authorities’ desire to clamp down on the foreign activists – fear that other terrorists from overseas might enter the country under the guise of peace activists.

IDF and Foreign Ministry officials held another meeting on the subject this week and decided to instruct border control officials at Ben-Gurion and the land crossings with Egypt and Jordan to bar foreign activists from entering the country. In addition, IDF officers who encounter such activists in closed military areas will be ordered to arrest them, after which they will be deported.

On Thursday, the IDF arrested a foreign activist during its search for arms smuggling tunnels in the Gazan town of Rafah. Army sources said the woman was inside a house that was slated for demolition. The woman was later released and allowed to remain in the country, though she was barred from returning to Gaza.

Haaretz: ‘Dear IDF, Please meet us, allow an open dialogue’

By Joseph Algazy
Originally published by Haaretz

The family of an international peace activist, felled by an IDF bullet, hope they can help promote an end to the conflict

Tom Hurndall, a young Briton active in the International Solidarity movement, is lying unconscious at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva. Not long ago he was shot in the head by Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Rafah as he tried to get a 5-year-old girl out of the line of fire. The members of his family – his mother, Jocelyn, his father, Anthony, his sister Sophie and his brothers Billy and Freddy – are tending him at the hospital and hoping for a miracle. They are hurt and angry, but free of any hatred.

More than once they have returned to the place where he was injured. They visited the family of the Palestinian children whom Tom rescued from danger and took testimony from his friends and people who witnessed the incident. They are surprised to discover that the world media are evincing a great deal of interest in the affair, whereas in Israel it has hardly been mentioned. The IDF statement that was published after the incident is defined by the family as mendacious and they are demanding that an independent commission of inquiry uncover the truth of what happened. Thus far, the IDF authorities avoided speaking to them.

In Israel – this is their first visit to the region – the Hurndalls have been living in an apartment in Be’er Sheva put at their disposal by Israelis; in England they live in north London. The mother works in special needs education, the father is a solicitor. Tom, 21, is a student of photography at Metropolitan University. About a year and a half ago he visited Egypt and took a diving course. In February of this year he went to Baghdad. According to his father, Tom was interested in what is happening in the Middle East and wanted to document his experiences photographically while expressing opposition to the war in Iraq.

“Tom was in Iraq not as a pro-Iraqi, but as a human shield, like others who came from all over the world with the intention of stopping the war,” said Anthony Hurndall this week. “He is a young man with a great deal of intellectual curiosity who seeks the truth. He believed that there was no reason that the fate of a young Briton should be better than the fate of a young Iraqi living under the threat of war and wanted to share the risks with him in case of war. He is a thinking person. We are not members of any party or organization, but we are thinking people who take an interest in what is going on around us.”

Tom took many photographs during his stay in Iraq. According to his father, as the date of the attack on Iraq approached, the authorities asked the human shields to stay in eight or nine strategic locations, for example, water pumping stations and bus stations; for his part, Tom wanted to be in places where people might be exposed to danger, especially in hospitals. When he was not granted permission, he left Iraq and went to Jordan, but hoped to return to Iraq with an aid delegation. His wish was not fulfilled, and he stayed at a refugee camp on the Iraq-Jordan border, with people from various nations who had fled Iraq because of the war.

Seeking the truth

In Jordan, Tom found out about the International Solidarity movement and the activities of its members, who serve as a human barrier between the IDF and the Palestinians in the territories of the Palestinian Authority. He arrived in the West Bank accompanied by some of the people who had been in Baghdad with him and received training in non-violent resistance. On April 6, he went to Rafah. During his stay in Iraq, in Jordan and in Gaza, he kept in touch with his family and friends, and in letters to them from Rafah he described his experiences and sent photographs of protest demonstrations, masked armed men, funerals of people who had been killed – and mainly photographs of children playing.

He was shot on Friday, April 11. In the first reports that came out abroad it was said that he had been shot and killed, and only later on was it reported that he was very seriously injured. His father was outside of Britain when he received the news and within two days he came to Israel. The rest of the family followed him.

“Through the media and representatives of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, we declared from the very first moment that we wanted to meet with anyone who was involved in any way in what happened to Tom in order to find out the truth,” says Anthony. “The intention was to [speak to] witnesses to the incident and representatives of the IDF. So far we have met with most of the International Solidarity activists who were with him in Rafah and with Palestinians who witnessed the incident. We read a statement by a South African photographer who was on the scene and we met with a local cameraman who works for an international news agency who photographed Tom before he was shot. Through British Embassy people we asked to meet official representatives of the IDF, to hear their version of the incident, but they refused to meet us. We were told that the IDF had begun an investigation of the incident.” In reply, Haaretz has been told by the IDF Spokesperson’s office that the military authorities will meet with the Hurndall family and that “upon the completion of the investigations and the formulation of conclusions, we will present them to the relevant people.”

Two days after the incident, the Hurndalls were shocked to read the IDF Spokesperson’s version in The Jerusalem Post, which stated that at approximately 17:00 an IDF position on the Israeli-Egyptian border, in territory under Israeli military control, identified a man of about 20 in camouflage uniform holding a weapon. According to the IDF version, the armed man opened fire, under cover of the building from which he had come out, at the nearby IDF position. IDF personnel fired a single bullet toward the armed man, the statement went on, and identified a hit. It must be noted, said the IDF statement, that this was the only shooting incident known to the IDF in that area at that time.

Indiscriminate fire

From the scraps of information the family has gathered on the ground, it emerges that Tom was wounded while he and his colleagues were at Haret al Barahne (the neighborhood of the Barhum family) in the Yibna refugee camp in Rafah, where Israel has erected a high wall. They were wearing bright orange vests and trying to get to the street at the end of which, every evening, the IDF positions a tank that fires automatic weapons indiscriminately at the street and the adjacent houses. The Palestinians believe that the purpose of the shooting is to frighten the inhabitants and force them to evacuate the area, thus creating an empty space between the wall the army built and the refugee camp.

Two days before the incident, Rushdie Jabr, 15, was wounded in the neck at the same spot by IDF fire. The following day, Mustafa Jabr, 20, was shot in the leg by IDF soldiers. The Hurndalls heard about the circumstances of the injuries to the two from their parents and their testimony was filmed on video.

According to eyewitnesses who have spoken to the Hurndalls, Tom and his friends saw a group of about 10 children playing in the street at which the IDF soldiers fired from a tank and from the tower on top of the wall. Some of the children ran away, but the little ones froze to the spot. Tom, wearing the bright orange vest, ran toward them, grabbed one of them and took him to a safe place. When he returned to get another little girl, he was shot. According to eyewitnesses, he was shot once by a sniper from the tower on top of the wall.

Initially he was taken to the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, but as the means of treating him were not available he was then taken to the European hospital between Rafah and Khan Yunis. There too the medical staff could not treat him and finally, with the intervention of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, he was transferred to Gush Katif and from there to Soroka Medical Center, three hours after he was wounded.

He arrived at Soroka in critical condition, with no pulse. His family was informed that the entry hole of the bullet that hit the left front side of his head was smaller than its exit hole in the lower back part of his head. According to his father, the doctors told him that Tom’s days were numbered; in the meantime his condition has stabilized, but he is still in a coma and his situation is defined as critical.

“I am angry at what has happened to Tom,” says his sister Sophie. “There is no justification for it. He came to the region to see what is happening here and to document the truth, and it makes me sad that they are spreading all kinds of lies about him; for example, the IDF statement that ostensibly he was wearing camouflage clothing and holding a weapon, while in fact he was wearing a bright orange vest and was not armed.”

Unlike Sophie, who knew about Tom’s plans and had even tried to discourage him from carrying them out, his younger brother Freddy did not know much about what he was doing in the region. Today, he says, he is proud of Tom. At the beginning of the week he and his mother visited Salem, 5, whom Tom rescued from the line of fire and who had played ball with him. According to Tom’s mother, Jocelyn, the little boy has not recovered from the trauma.

“Tom wanted to help the people here, and we also want to contribute in some way to finding a solution that will put an end to this conflict that is causing a lot of suffering, both to the Palestinians and to the Israelis,” says his father. “Like Tom, we are disgusted by wrongs and injustice and we have great empathy for oppressed people and want to help them. We feel great admiration for the Jewish people in Israel, but over the years, the stronger Israel has become, it has acted unjustly toward the Palestinians; we are disappointed. In the past I thought a lot about what is happening here, but I never imagined that I would be involved in it in any way. From now on this is also our responsibility, just as it is the responsibility of the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Ever since she received word of her son’s serious injury, his mother has had a hard time falling asleep at night. “Again and again I go over in my head what happened. I’ve thought a lot about the conversation Tom related between him and a Palestinian named Mohammed a short while before his injury. Mohammed said that he had formed the impression that Tom was determined to stay in Rafah and help the Palestinian inhabitants. During the moments he tried to save the little children he acted with determination. Even when he was a boy of 9, his headmaster defined him as a thinking person who was determined to protect anyone who was vulnerable. Tom wanted to be a factor setting things moving by taking up a position on the front line and not being passive on the back bench.”

Quietly but clearly, she expresses her anger at those who injured her son. In her call to put an end to the lack of humanity and the oppression, Tom Hurndall’s mother notes that by using force, a great deal of force, Israel is removing itself from any framework of dialogue. “If I had to write a letter to the IDF, my letter would say: `Dear IDF, Please move on and let go of this negativity. Please meet us, allow an open dialogue, hear ordinary human anger, take responsibility where it is right that you do so, allow yourselves to be seen to be doing so. Allow this useless and perpetual dynamic of victimization to shrivel to nothing where it veritably belongs, so that your true qualities of intelligence, research in all areas can be appreciated, benefit the world and earn the international respect that will come your way. Please just put your head out of your faceless watchtowers and dark tanks and hear, feel, smell, breathe and taste the benefits of a more inclusive way of being.'”

Haaretz: ‘It’s a terrible thing, living with the knowledge that you crushed our daughter’

By Nathan Guttman
Originally published by Haaretz

WASHINGTON – Craig Corrie sent just one e-mail to his daughter during the seven weeks she spent in Rafah. She addressed most of her letters to her mother, Cindy, and Craig read them with concern. When he was a soldier serving in Vietnam, he would send his loved ones letters with few details and mostly laconic, knowing that too much of a detailed description of the war and the dangers would only increase the worry at home. At home in North Carolina when he read his daughter’s letters, he knew she too was concealing a lot of the dangers. “I knew she didn’t write long letters in order not to make it hard for us,” he says, “it was hard for me to write back.” Eventually, he sent her a brief letter a week before she was killed – “I find writing to you hard, but not thinking about you impossible,” he wrote in an e-mail to his daughter, “I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be. But I’m also proud of you – very proud.” Rachel wrote back the next day. It was the last e-mail she sent before she was struck and killed by a blow from an IDF bulldozer in Rafah on March 16.

Since the Corrie family’s worst fears came true, they have been busy – setting up foundations, launching projects in memory of their daughter, trying to advance the investigation of the incident and working in Congress to promote their interest. One of their immediate goals is to go to Rafah to see the place where Rachel was killed, meet her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Palestinians with whom she developed a connection during her stay there and also visit Israel. “We’re not looking for revenge,” they say; they just want to continue on the path their daughter took.

Young activist

Cindy and Craig Corrie remember very well the conversation when Rachel told them of her plans to go to Rafah to join an international delegation of activists that assists the Palestinians and fights against house demolitions. “She gave all kinds of hints and then she said: `I’m going’,” says Craig Corrie. “I thought to myself – why don’t you find yourself a soup kitchen here instead of going over there, but I didn’t say anything.” Cindy and Craig tried to talk about the dangers involved in facing down tanks and bulldozers on battlefields, but knew they wouldn’t be able to stop her from going. Rachel told her mother she didn’t believe anyone would hurt international activists, certainly not Americans, who are unarmed and nonviolent. She also made sure to point out that in the two years that the ISM has been active in the territories, none of its activists has been killed. Since the then, the ISM has endured one death and two serious injuries.

“I know that in her heart, the most difficult thing for her was to know we will have to face this terrible loss,” says Cindy Corrie tearfully, “but she had to do it – it was a natural result of her activism.” A film friends showed to the Corries last week reminded them of the roots of Rachel’s activism. The short film shows a project run by Rachel’s school in Olympia, Washington whose topic was world hunger. Young Rachel Corrie appears in the film standing on the stage saying that humanity must strive for a solution to the problem of hunger by 2000. “People from other countries also have dreams and we have to think of them,” the young girl says in the film.

In high school, Rachel Corrie participated in a youth exchange program. She hosted a Russian student in her home and afterward was hosted by him for six weeks in his home on Sakhalin Island. “I feel that after that her life had changed,” says Cindy Corrie. “She was shocked to see people that have so little. She became skeptical about all we have and of how little we know about the Russians.”

‘Opening our eyes’

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, she decided to join a group of activists in Olympia. She contacted all the organizations but decided to focus on one that deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to a large extent as a result of conversations with Simona Sharoni, a former Israeli who taught Corrie at Evergreen College and told her about what was going on in the territories. From there she came to the International Solidarity Movement and got the idea of coming to the territories. At the beginning of last year she moved in with her sister, Sara, in order to save up some money for the trip, and continued studying the subject by reading a lot about it and speaking with other activists.

Rachel’s family believe the main reason why a young student from the state of Washington chooses to devote her time, energy and life to the distress of the Palestinians in the territories was her sense that the American public and the surroundings where she grew up do not know enough about and do not sufficiently understand what is going on in the Middle East. For her parents, she prepared a reading list so that they would know more and once she was already in Rafah she was happy to hear they were reading the material and discussing the subject with their friends. “She wanted to open our eyes to this side of the conflict, that Americans, in general, do not understand. She felt that this is an unbalanced conflict between a powerful military force that has the support of the U.S. and people who have no power,” says Cindy Corrie. “She was for all humanity, against the suffering of the Israelis and against the suicide attacks. But she felt the Palestinian side is invisible and that’s why she chose to be there,” she continues. She now says she feels uncomfortable that her whole life she has heard about the conflict, but has never done anything – “our country and our family’s sympathy was always to Israel,” says Cindy Corrie.

All the reading, the chats with Rachel and the e-mails they received from her during her stay in Rafah changed the Corrie family’s position. In one phone conversation, Cindy asked Rachel about the Palestinian violence and wondered why they did not use nonviolent forms of protest. Rachel responded in a long e-mail in which she wrote in detail about what the Palestinians in Rafah she meets must go through and said: “I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could – I think I would.”

“Rachel felt that we don’t understand the ongoing violence toward the Palestinians, says Cindy. She herself said she empathizes with all the sides. “I know there are families in Israel that lost more than one family member in suicide attacks and I know now that their pain is double,” she says. But on the day Rachel would have celebrated her 24th birthday, Cindy’s anger won out. A day earlier, Tom Horndal, British ISM activist, had been critically injured and she phoned the Israeli consul in San Francisco and told him that despite her great empathy for the Jewish people, the fact that the army had already injured three unarmed peace activists was not giving her any peace. “Even worse is that that same week 17 Palestinians were killed, including five children and that didn’t make any waves here,” says Cindy Corrie.

Since Rachel Corrie was killed, around 10,000 letters have reached the e-mail boxes of the Corrie family; many of them were sent by Israelis and Jews wishing to express their sorrow. One of them is a reserve officer and a father of two who was in contact with Rachel during the course of her stay in the territories. He was the one who suggested that she try to appeal to the humane side of soldiers and he also is the one who taught her a few key Hebrew phrases so she say them to the soldiers. “What would your mother think about what you’re doing,” was one phrase; another was “you’re operating under a black flag.” After her death, the reserve officer wrote to her family and told them how sorry he was that he told Rachel that soldiers also have a conscience.

No comment from the IDF

Rachel Corrie’s parents make an effort to show they are not angry with Israelis, but they do not hide their opinion about who is responsible for the death of their daughter. As terrible as Rachel’s loss is for his family, Craig Corrie thinks it is also terrible for the nation when it agrees to accept such actions or agrees that its army should act this way. He cannot understand why the bulldozer driver hit his daughter while she stood in front of him – “this is a girl who weighed 125 lbs. He could have picked her up and put her under arrest.” He himself was in charge of a bulldozer force while serving as a soldier in the engineering corps in Vietnam.

The Israeli establishment has not made a real effort to contact the Corrie family. Around two days after Rachel was killed, the Israeli consul called the family home and spoke with her brother Chris. The consul expressed his condolences and said he appreciated Rachel’s dedication even if he did not agree with her politics. Chris got angry and said Rachel’s only politics was to support all humanity. The family says it never received a report from the Israeli army about the circumstances of the incident nor has it ever heard directly from any military official. The only information reaching them comes from ISM members or from the U.S. State Department.

Seeking justice

Last Thursday, the Corrie family went again to Capitol Hill in Washington. They are trying to convince members of both houses of Congress to support a draft bill that would require the U.S. to investigate the circumstances of their daughter’s death. Craig and Cindy do not conceal their frustration – mobilizing Congress members goes very slowly, political considerations interfere and suddenly, they find themselves facing a countermove, that mentions all the Americans killed in suicide attacks in Israel. Craig and Cindy say they will be happy to support this proposal, but not instead of a demand for an investigation. In the meantime, they ignore the U.S. State Department’s advice to sit and wait for the results of the judge advocate general in Israel, while also insisting that the U.S. government launch its own investigation. Left-wing Jewish organizations voiced their support, but on the list of supporters, the names of the large organizations do not appear.

What kind of justice do they expect? Cindy Corrie says they continue to demand an investigation because they believe Israel and the world must pay attention to the issue and show responsibility, but “we are not perusing it with malice,” she stresses. Sara, Rachel’s sister, believes if the driver had stepped out and talked with Rachel for a minute, “he would have met a beautiful soul, that came to talk and convince,” while Craig Corrie says, “If the bulldozer operator will be able to understand what he did, then I hope he has a long life. It’s a terrible thing, living with the knowledge that you crushed someone like our daughter.”

The Corrie family does not think the death of their daughter and the injuring of two other ISM activists present proof that this kind of activity is too dangerous or provocative. They believe the presence of international peace activists can prevent more violent actions on the part of the Palestinians. They stress that their daughter not only faced down tanks and bulldozers – she worked to rebuild wells that had been destroyed in Rafah, tried to organize an exchange of letters between children there and in the U.S. and also tried to realize her dream – a twin-city agreement between Olympia and Rafah.

The family’s life now revolves around Rachel. Craig, the father, 56, took leave from his job as an actuarial adviser and is trying to promote the issues of the legislation and the memorials. The same is true of Rachel’s mother, Cindy, 55, who in normal times did volunteer work with children. Rachel’s older siblings, Sara – who lives in the family’s former home in Olympia and Chris, who lives in the suburbs of Washington DC – are trying to run the memorial foundation that perpetuates their sister.

Cindy feels the main message in memorializing Rachel should be the interpersonal connection – ties between Israelis and Palestinians, between peace activists on both sides, between Americans who want to act to further Rachel’s causes.

Last weekend, the parents traveled to Washington State to attend the annual ceremony marking Earth Day, when it is customary to dress up as animals and connect with nature. A few years ago, Rachel organized a group of white doves. This time there were more doves than ever at the event, including Craig and Cindy.

Rachel Corrie’s letters home

February 7, 2003

Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, “Go! Go!” because a tank was coming. And then waving and “What’s your name?” Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously – occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving – many forced to be here, many just aggressive – shooting into the houses as we wander away.

February 20, 2003

I still feel like I’m relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest.

Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking me about you. She doesn’t speak a bit of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently – wants to make sure I’m calling you.

February 27, 2003

I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again – a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here

Just want to write to my mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore.

March 12, 2003

I am trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I leave here, and when I’m going to leave. Right now I think I could stay until June, financially. I really don’t want to move back to Olympia, but do need to go back there to clean my stuff out of the garage and talk about my experiences here. On the other hand, now that I’ve crossed the ocean I’m feeling a strong desire to try to stay across the ocean for some time. Considering trying to get English teaching jobs – would like to really buckle down and learn Arabic. Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back, which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too. Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life.

L.A. Times: In West Bank, a risky quest for peace

Ruth Morris | Los Angeles Times

Activists’ use of human shields is questioned after two members are killed by Israeli forces.

TULKARM, West Bank – Wearing sandals and amber-colored earrings in a region where soldiers don bulletproof vests, Radhika Sainath stepped up to the driver’s side of an Israeli military jeep on the dilapidated outskirts of the West Bank and demanded an explanation for the armored personnel carriers roaring past.

“Why aren’t you in Israel?” asked the disbelieving soldier at the wheel. “You’re like a superman. You come to fix all of the world.”

“I’m hoping if I’m standing in front of Palestinians, you won’t shoot,” Sainath countered.

Halfway around the globe from the boat slips and glossy swells of her native Newport Beach, 24-year-old Sainath has signed on as a human shield with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement – one of the most controversial and ill-fated activist groups patrolling the battle lines of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Dubbed terrorist sympathizers by some, martyrs by others, ISM has seen three of its volunteers killed or seriously wounded by Israeli security forces in just over a month. That turn of events has focused a harsh light on the group’s high-stakes brand of activism and raised some tough questions for organizers: When does gutsy activism cross the line into unwarranted risk? How can activists stay above the fray in communities where dangerous militants mingle with smiling civilians? In a world of heavy armor, how far is too far?

“I don’t know what too far is. I think we could all go a little further, frankly,” said Fred Schlomka of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a group that works alongside ISM to block armored Israeli bulldozers from razing Palestinian homes.

Besides kneeling before hulking bulldozers, ISM volunteers ride along with Palestinian ambulance drivers to negotiate quick passage through Israeli checkpoints. They bust military curfews and try to be present when Palestinian youths are hurling stones at tanks. When they hear firefights at night, they go outside to bear witness.

To Palestinians, who see the Israeli army as abusive and trigger-happy, ISM’s losses have brought a degree of credibility and clout to the organization. To the Israeli security forces, pitched into a public relations quagmire, the group’s members are meddlesome and naive.

Schlomka’s group was particularly saddened by the death of ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash. Corrie became the group’s first international “martyr” in late March when she tried to obstruct a mammoth D-9 bulldozer, used by Israel to clear anti-tank mines and demolish Palestinian homes along the Egyptian border.

Israeli security forces say that the bulldozer’s driver couldn’t see Corrie from his perch and that ISM acts provocatively by protecting structures used by terrorists to dig gunrunning tunnels. Witnesses charge that the driver purposefully buried her under a mound of gravel.

Kneeling before an armored Israeli bulldozer “is either foolhardy or extremely courageous,” Schlomka said. “I prefer to think of it as extremely courageous.”

A few weeks after Corrie died, ISM volunteer Brian Avery, 24, of Albuquerque, suffered a gunshot wound to the face while investigating a gun battle in the West Bank city of Jenin. ISM said an armored personnel carrier fired toward Avery and another member of the group while they stood in plain view, in reflective vests, hands above their heads.

Military sources said Israeli troops in the area that evening didn’t report the incident, although they did fire to disperse four youngsters who appeared to be building primitive bombs.

In the most recent violence to befall the group, British ISM activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the back of the head while shepherding a group of children to safety under sporadic fire from an Israeli observation tower. Israeli security forces are investigating the shooting; Hurndall remains on full life support in an Israeli hospital.

Throughout the bloodshed, Israeli critics have cast ISM’s foreign activists as a nuisance.

“They come into a war zone without experience. They don’t know how to behave, and they think that because they’re holding an international passport, nothing will happen to them,” said Sharon Feingold, spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces.

The Israeli army says its incursions into the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip are meant to root out terrorists before they reach Israeli streets. In the nearly 31 months since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began, hundreds of Israelis have died in suicide bombings and armed attacks.

“The split second a soldier hesitates to make sure he’s not shooting the wrong guy, he puts himself in danger,” Feingold added.

ISM’s defenders say the group’s run of misfortune is a reflection of hardhearted Israeli military tactics, not reckless activism. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, “soldiers have had a license to do more and more severe things,” said David Nir, an Israeli activist with the group Taayush, which targets Israeli activities it considers discriminatory against Palestinians. “Once they’re used to one level of brutality, they can go on to the next.”

At ISM headquarters in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur, a poster of Rachel Corrie – blond hair tucked beneath a head scarf – adorns an outer wall lined with tattered and rain-stained posters, mostly of civilians killed during Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories.

The group is “about being open to radical change and higher levels of danger,” said Ghassan Andoni, one of its founders. Small-framed and intense, Andoni said 40% of ISM’s foreign members register over the Internet, while others are referred by support groups working abroad.

ISM has 40 to 100 foreign volunteers rotating through at any given time, who are accompanied by Palestinian members, Andoni said.The group lightly screens foreign volunteers, and everybody undergoes a day and a half of training after arriving in the region.

“International participation was necessary to provide a level of protection. We’re talking about a scenario where pulling the trigger is easier than drinking water,” Andoni said.

Volunteers vary from pony-tailed bohemians to politically minded professionals to deeply religious conscience-raisers. Most come on three-month tourist visas, and all pay their own airfare. Accommodations are provided – usually a rollout mattress on a hard floor – and the group recommends bringing $200 to $300 a month to pay for pita sandwiches and phone cards. Alcohol is strictly forbidden.

Sainath, the Newport Beach volunteer, has sometimes stayed with olive farmers in villages outside Tulkarm.

“It’s not very comfortable,” she said. “But with what I’ve seen these people go through, I can’t complain.”

One recent training session for a batch of new volunteers was led by a veteran activist known as Starhawk, a frizzy-haired writer on feminist politics and pagan spirituality.

“Ground a little more. Put those roots down,” Starhawk told the recruits as she went from one to another pushing her fists into their chests and shoving them backward. Between plastic cups of dark, sugary tea, she also showed them how to protect a shoulder socket while being dragged across the floor and how to use their peripheral vision while maneuvering through volatile crowds.

Andoni admits the training is limited and says some volunteers have lost their composure during heated confrontations. But after a “painful” review of recent events, he concluded that ISM was not at fault in the shootings and standoffs that killed and injured the three members.

ISM first made headlines last spring, when its activists slipped past Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Ramallah and entered the headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat as it was pounded by Israeli shells. Other volunteers entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and stayed through the end of a five-week standoff with Israeli troops.

The group’s most recent move that infuriated Israeli security forces occurred several weeks ago, when members stationed in Jenin took in a wanted Palestinian fleeing from Israeli troops. The two ISM volunteers accused of harboring the suspect later said that he had come into their office from the roof, frightened and dripping wet, and that they didn’t know he was being chased.

“I’m a mainstream American. I’m not an activist,” said Jennifer, who is one of the ISM volunteers accused of protecting the wanted man and who asked that only her first name be used.

Around the corner from where she spoke, Palestinian militants in black hoods discharged automatic rifles into the sky and waved Palestinian flags to commemorate the first anniversary of a deadly Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp.

“There was a curfew. There was gunfire. Knowing that it’s dangerous for anyone to be in the street during curfew, we indicated he could stay,” said Jennifer. “Harboring a terrorist? It’s not even something I thought about.”

As far as ISM’s future is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate threat. Despite the controversy, risk and living conditions, new recruits are signing up at a record pace, Andoni said.

CNN: Israeli bulldozer kills American protester

RAFAH, Gaza (CNN) — An Israeli bulldozer killed an American woman Sunday who had been protesting its use to destroy Palestinian houses in Rafah.

The woman, Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Washington, was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries. She was a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia but was not enrolled this quarter, the school said.

Since January, she had been working with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to protest Israeli actions in the occupied territories, said Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the group.

Corrie had recently appeared in a televised mock trial in Gaza in which President Bush was accused of war crimes for his alleged support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“This morning, when she was killed, she was attempting to prevent the Israeli military from destroying Palestinian civilian homes,” Arraf said.

“She was raising her hands and yelling at the bulldozer driver to stop,” Arraf said. “The bulldozer driver paid no attention. … He buried Rachel with dirt, which ended up, obviously, knocking her down. Then he ran over her, and then reversed and ran over her again.”

Other witnesses, however, reported that Corrie had scaled a pile of dirt but then lost her footing and fell backward behind it, out of sight of the bulldozer operator. The bulldozer continued moving forward, covering Corrie with dirt and then crushing her.

It was not clear whether the bulldozer operator could hear protesters’ yells over the sound of the machine.

A member of the solidarity group, who identified herself as Alice from London, said she and Corrie had sat for about three hours in front of houses belonging to their friends. The driver of the bulldozer must have seen them, she said, but drove over Corrie anyway.

She emerged from under the bulldozer saying, “My back is broken, my back is broken,” Alice told CNN.

Tom Dale, who said he was about 10 yards from Corrie, said she was in plain view and was wearing an orange jacket. As the bulldozer lifted a pile of earth, it moved forward and caught Corrie under its blade, he said.

Israel: ‘Very regrettable incident’

“This is a very regrettable incident,” an Israeli military source said. “This is a group of protesters who are acting very irresponsibly. They are putting everyone in danger, the Palestinians, themselves, our forces, by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone. We are checking the details of the incident and believe it to be a very regrettable incident.”

Arraf said the activists use only nonviolent tactics. “We definitely don’t believe that this was an accident,” she said.

Corrie’s parents, who live in Charlotte, North Carolina, said their daughter felt an obligation to help others.

“I’ve raised my children to be independent and to make their own choices, and I knew that I couldn’t tell her not to go,” said her mother, Cindy Corrie.

“We were very proud of her,” said Craig Corrie, her father. “We’re very proud of her courage and what she stood for, and we’re very proud of Rachel. She’s 23 years old, and while that seems young to me, it’s old enough for her to make up her own mind about what she wants to do. There’s no holding her back.”

The U.S. State Department said it was in contact with Corrie’s family.

“The United States deeply regrets this tragic death of an American citizen,” spokesman Lou Fintor said. “We offer our sincere condolences to Ms. Corrie’s family.”

Fintor said the United States urged Israel and the Israel Defense Forces to conduct “an immediate and full investigation into the circumstances of this death.”

The United States also repeated its call for the IDF to take all possible measures to avoid harming civilians, Fintor said.