Tag: Ni’lin

Funds needed for Tristan Anderson’s medical expenses

Justice for Tristan

Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson

Tristan Anderson, an American citizen, was critically injured during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. Anderson was shot in the head with a tear gas projectile from around 60 meters by Israeli forces on 13 March 2009.

Tristan (38), is currently in Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv. To date, he has undergone 3 brain surgeries.  During the first operation, part of Tristan’s right frontal lobe had to be removed, as it was penetrated by bone fragments. A brain fluid leakage was sealed using a tendon from his thigh, and his right eye suffered extensive damage. The long-term scope of Tristan’s injuries is yet unknown.

Tristan has been a social justice activist for many years. He grew up in Oakland, California, where he was introduced to activism at a young age. Over the past years, Tristan has been involved in numerous projects, including Food Not Bombs, a group that cooks for the homeless, and an operation committed to stopping the destruction of tree groves in Berkley California through sit-in demonstrations. He recently traveled to the West Bank to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As Tristan has been in intensive care for three weeks, it is certain that his recovery process is accompanied by mounting medical expenses. We ask that supporters around the world donate what they can to help pay for Tristan’s care. He is without medical insurance in the United States and will need substantial financial assistance to continue the long-term treatment that his injuries will require.

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Congresswoman Lee makes statement regarding Tristan Anderson

Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee makes a statement regarding the American citizen, Tristan Anderson, who was shot in the head with a tear-gas projectile on 13 March 2009 by Israeli forces.

Anderson, currently in critical condition at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, was shot during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni’lin.

Israeli forces escalate suppression of Ni’lin resistance

27 March 2009

Residents of Ni’lin, along with international and Israeli solidarity activists, gathered to demonstrate against the construction of the Apartheid Wall on Friday, 27 March 2009. Shortly after protesters began marching on the main road in town, they were attacked with tear gas by Israeli forces. The army maintained a presence in the village, occupying several Palestinian homes and shooting gas and 0.22 live calibre bullets at demonstrators. One demonstrator was shot with live ammunition in his leg, another was hit by a tear gas canister and many suffered from tear gas inhalation.

After a prayer near the village clinic, around 250 protesters marched along the main road, chanting their opposition to the Israeli occupation. Israeli forces fired upon demonstrators before they were able to head to their olive fields. A barrage of tear gas was shot into the village, dispersing the united march.

After the initial attack, military jeeps entered the village, occupying homes to shoot at demonstrators. Several jeeps drove through the streets, periodically stopping to shoot at residents. Israeli forces positioned on the roofs of Palestinian homes also shot into the streets. The military incursion on Ni’lin lasted until 4pm and caused the injury of one demonstrator hit by a tear gas canister and another shot with live ammunition in the leg.

Responding to the Occupation, the theft of their lands and increased suppression of the village’s resistance, several demonstrators threw stones at the armed Israeli forces.

The struggle has intensified as Israeli forces have begun conducting military incursions in the village at the start of the weekly Friday demonstration for the past month. Protesters are being denied not only access to their olive fields, but their freedom of expression against the Occupation within the town. Despite public criticisms in response to the recent, critical injury of Tristan Anderson, the army continues the dangerous tactic of shooting tear-gas canister at demonstrators, utilizing the canisters as weapons rather than the gas as crowd dispersal.

Israeli occupation forces have already murdered four Ni’lin residents during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land and critically injured one international solidarity activist.

Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29 July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital. Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot with a high velocity tear gas projectile on 13 March 2009 and is currently in critical condition. In total, 19 persons have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition.

Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin village have been demonstrating against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the occupation continues to build a Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.

Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin consisted of 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after construction of the Wall.

Are you listening, President Barack Obama?

Stanley Heller | New Haven Register

26 March 2009

How much violence against Americans overseas will U.S. accept?

Here’s a riddle. When is an American not an American? Answer: When he or she opposes crimes committed by Israel.

Tristan Anderson of Oakland, Calif., stood in a Palestinian village, Ni’lin, taking photographs on March 13. He was shot in the head by a special high-velocity tear gas grenade and is grievously injured. He wasn’t hurt by an Arab “terrorist.” He was shot by someone in the Israeli army, which the United Nations says is illegally occupying the West Bank of Palestine. Anderson was in the village taking part in a demonstration against theft of land. The Israelis intend to take a quarter of the village land and give it to Jewish-only settlements.

Now, you might think our government’s leaders would be screaming bloody murder about what was done to an innocent American. Think back to 1994, when an American who committed vandalism in Singapore was to be caned on his buttocks. Practically every politician in the country was outraged, and said so. Even President Bill Clinton made a statement.

When Israel is involved, it’s all different.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie of Washington state was run over and killed by a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip while trying to prevent Israelis from knocking down a Palestinian’s house. American and British eyewitnesses saw the bulldozer operator watch Corrie as he plowed over her, yet the Israeli investigation ruled it was an accident. No Israeli was punished in any way for the killing. The U.S. government did nothing for her family.

Now, it’s Tristan Anderson’s turn to face abandonment by his government.

He suffered a large hole in his forehead. Part of his brain had to be removed. An eye is severely damaged. The tear gas grenade that hit him from less than 60 meters is a new-generation weapon. It can be shot over 500 meters because the grenade is self-propelling.

What are American politicians saying about this outrage? U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd says nothing. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro says nothing. U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman? You might as well expect it to snow in Stamford in July.

What about the State Department, which is charged with protecting American citizens overseas? On a TV show, Andrew Parker, U.S. consul general in Tel Aviv, said the State Department was “concerned,” that it was awaiting an Israeli government report and that the United States had issued travel warnings about Israel.

That’s it. After all, the United States is a powerless country. It only gives Israel billions of dollars every year and every advanced weapon in the book. What’s the United States to do to protect its citizens against Israel?

I videotaped a similar West Bank demonstration in 2007. It was in Bil’in, which is fairly near Ni’lin. Palestinians, international supporters and more than a few Jewish Israelis walked with banners toward the separation wall, or as some Palestinians call it, “the Annexation Wall.” Before they got anywhere near it, Israeli armed forces started shooting hundreds of tear gas grenades and rubber coated bullets. A Palestinian was shot in the head with a rubber bullet.

The violence being used against demonstrators is getting worse. In Ni’lin, demonstrators are met with live bullets. One was shot in the leg the same day Anderson was injured. Four Palestinians have been killed in the last year, the youngest 11 years old. Demonstrators face being shot at with “skunk,” which is described in the Jerusalem Post as a “foul-smelling liquid” and is believed to be sewage water. “A terrible stench — the smell of a rotting, dead animal,” said Dr. David Nir, an Israeli peace campaigner. “Like jumping headfirst into a sewer.”

Ni’lin actually made it to the news in the United States last July. An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian protester who was under arrest, handcuffed, blindfolded and standing next to him. This would have been ignored except for a youth with a camcorder, who caught it all and put it on YouTube.

The guilty soldier got a slap on the hand, eventually.

Anderson is 37 years old. He faces the possibility of many operations, loss of the eye and permanent disfigurement.

Will some American in government speak up for him? Are you listening, President Barack Obama?

Tristan Anderson: A voice for justice in Palestine

Starhawk | Al Arabiya

22 March 2009

As I write, my friend Tristan lies in intensive care in an Israeli hospital, shot in the head with a tear gas canister at a nonviolent demonstration in the West Bank town of Ni’lin.

Tristan was working with the International Solidarity Movement, a group that brings internationals to the Palestine to support nonviolent resistance against the Occupation. When internationals are present, the Israeli military is somewhat less likely to use lethal force against unarmed demonstrators. For Palestinians wishing to exercise their human rights that slim margin can be a matter of life or death.

For the last six years, Palestinians have mounted a campaign of civil resistance against Israel’s apartheid wall, which snakes through the West Bank, confiscating Palestinian farmland without compensation, destroying the livelihoods of whole villages, literally setting in concrete the fractured geometry of Israel’s incursions, her illegal settlements that eat away the integrity of any potential Palestinian state. In the spring of 2004, when the army was just beginning to bulldoze olive orchards along the wall’s route and scrape land bare, the villagers of Mas’Ha set up a peace encampment, inviting support from internationals and Israelis of good will.

Since then, the movement has followed the path of the wall. Six years of sparse and tiny victories–here and there, the route of the wall pushed back a few meters–but in Palestine, even the smallest victory stands out because it is so unusual, so different from the expected course of events. Palestinians nourish their determination to survive on even the smallest crumbs of success.

Mostly ignored by the world’s media, Palestinian demonstrators face tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, arrests, beatings, rising injury, imprisonment and death. And if nonviolent demonstrations have not yet stopped the wall nor won over the hearts of Israelis, they have at least given strength to the hearts of Palestinians and those who continue to hope for some ultimate justice.

For that, many have died. March 16 marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, crushed by a bulldozer as she resisted a home demolition in Rafah. Within a few weeks, Brian Avery, another ISM volunteer, was shot in the face in Jenin, and Tom Hurndall was hit by a sniper in Rafah.

But those tragedies pale beside the ever-mounting death count among Palestinians. In Ni’lin alone, four Palestinians have been killed in the last year.

Arafat Rateb Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back by Israeli forces on December 28, 2008. On the same day, Mohammed Khawaje, twenty, was shot in the head with live ammunition. Yousef Amira, only 17, was killed with rubber-coated still bullets on July 29, 2008. Ahmed Moussa, only ten, was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on July 29, 2008.

And that is just the body count of one village, one year. It doesn’t begin to recount the toll in the rest of the West Bank, or Gaza. I grieve for Tristan because he’s a friend. I know him, I have marched with him shoulder to shoulder, shared laughter and gossip. I feel for him in a way I should feel, but can’t, for those who are just names on a list to me.

But I know that others do. Some mother grieves for Ahmed Moussa and will never fully recover from his loss. Some brother mourns for Khawaje, some father cries and rages over Yousef Amira’s grave. Multiply that grief a thousand, thousand times and it explodes in rockets and suicide bombs. Yes, I also grieve for the Israeli victims of those bombs and rockets. But they cannot be stopped by walls, by land grabs and humiliations and injustice piled upon injustice, nor can they be silenced by the shrill voices who brand every critic of Israel a terrorist sympathizer.

Tristan put justice above his personal comfort or safety. One friend describes him as “the guy who is always there”: at every demonstration, every mobilization, every fight to save an old growth forest or to shut down a war profiteer. He has always seemed fearless to me, strong and hardy, willing to sit in a tree for months to protect a grove of oaks or to show up early to clean out the convergence space, eating bad pasta and dumpster-dived vegetables for weeks on end. But I know that he feels fear. I’ve heard his stories, read passages from his diaries. He simply does not let fear stop him from doing what he believes is right.

Most of us will not face the dangers Tristan has chosen to face. But even small deeds, like grains of sand, mount up to tip the scales. We need many more courageous voices to raise a clamor for justice, for that is the only foundation upon which peace can be built.

Written for AlArabiya.net. Starhawk is an author of ten books, including her novel of nonviolence, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and her latest work, The Earth Path. She volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement between 2002 and 2004, and her accounts can be found archived on her website, www.starhawk.org.