Tag: Tristan Anderson

Oakland man to sue for injury in Israel protest

Bob Egelko | The San Francisco Chronicle

14 September 2009

An Oakland man who was seriously wounded by a tear gas projectile fired by Israeli police during a West Bank protest will file suit despite a military report concluding that he was engaged in an “act of war,” his lawyers said Sunday.

The case of Tristan Anderson, who remains hospitalized with brain damage and a fractured skull six months after he was injured, may test Israel’s efforts to shield itself from lawsuits for harm it causes during wartime, said attorney Michael Sfard.

Anderson’s lawyers said Israel’s Ministry of Defense has told them the demonstrators threw stones and other objects at police, who acted in self-defense.

The Ministry of Defense, Sfard said in an e-mail message, “is trying to apply the (act of war) doctrine to every (case of) damage caused in the occupied Palestinian territories by Israeli forces.”

Anderson, 38, was among a group of about 400 Palestinian and international demonstrators who gathered March 13 in the town of Naalin, near the wall Israel is building along its border to keep Palestinians out.

The wall cuts off parts of the West Bank, including a portion of Naalin, and is the site of frequent protests.

Anderson was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired from about 65 yards away by a border police officer, according to some fellow demonstrators. He had brain surgery at Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv and is no longer in critical condition, but is blind in his right eye, friends say.

His parents, Nancy and Michael Anderson of Grass Valley (Nevada County), report that he has regained consciousness and they are optimistic about his recovery, said Lea Tsemel, an Israeli civil rights lawyer who represents the family.

However, she said she believes Tristan Anderson will be permanently disabled.

Before going to Israel, Anderson was one of the tree-sitters who until last September occupied a grove next to UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium in an unsuccessful bid to stop the university from clearing the trees to make room for an athletic center.

This summer, Anderson’s lawyers received a letter from Israel’s Ministry of Defense saying its preliminary investigation had cleared government forces of wrongdoing.

“The border police force was attacked massively by about 400 demonstrators who threw blocks, stones and gas rockets,” the letter said, according to Tsemel’s translation. “The police sincerely feared that they would be hurt. … In these circumstances, we are talking about an act of war. Accordingly, the state is not responsible for any damages.”

Tsemel said numerous witnesses contradict the ministry’s report.

“He was demonstrating. He didn’t have any weapon. He was a peacenik. … Nothing was endangering the soldiers,” the attorney said in a telephone interview from her home in Israel.

While some demonstrators have thrown stones at soldiers, Tsemel said, there was no evidence of any violent activity by Anderson.

Sfard, who also represents Anderson, said the Ministry of Defense was trying to extend the “act of war” defense from armed conflicts to police responses against civilian demonstrators.

Tsemel said Anderson and his family would file suit shortly in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. In addition to compensation, she said, “we want the army to investigate the event and bring to trial the border police person who shot at him and those who gave him the orders.”

Benefit Sunday for former Berkeley tree sitter severely injured in Israel

Kristin Bender | The Oakland Tribune

9 September 2009

Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs.

Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said.

The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral spinal fluid in the head, supporters said.

“His girlfriend, Gabrielle Silverman, and his parents are hopeful and giving Tristan as much encouragement and support as they can, even though by all appearances he is struggling to get better,” said friend Karen Pickett. “There has been progress, but there have been times when they have lost ground because there have been setbacks.”

Anderson, a freelance photojournalist, sustained life-threatening injuries March 13 as he was taking photographs after a regular Friday demonstration over Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, Pickett said. He was struck in the right temple with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, according to peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement.

His skull was fractured, and some of the bone fragments entered his brain, friends said. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister, and he was blinded in his right eye, friends said.

The benefit is at 8 p.m. Sunday at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., in Berkeley. There will be music from Rebecca Riots, a female folk trio; the Funky Nixons; American Indian singer and songwriter Phoenix; spoken word, an art auction and an update on Anderson.

The doors open at 7:30 p.m., and organizers are asking for a donation of $5 to $20 to cover Anderson’s recuperation costs. The event is sponsored by Friends of Tristan and Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. For details, call 510-548-3113 or visit justicefortristan.org.

“We are trying to raise as much money as we can in support of his recovery costs,” Pickett said. “But it’s also a time to raise support and let people know what is going on with Tristan, and to make the point that things are still serious and he needs continuing support.”

On the day Anderson, of Oakland, was injured, there were several hundred protesters in the West Bank town of Naalin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently had gathered to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel, but many Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.

Before going to the Middle East, he was involved in the tree-sit at UC Berkeley to protest the building of a sports training center. That protest lasted 21 months, but Anderson, who was known as “Cricket” during the sit, did not sit in a tree the entire time.

It is not known how long he was in the trees, but he came down from his perch on June 19, 2008, and was given a stay-away order, police said.

He was found near the tree-sit the following day, arrested and sent to trial, where he was found not guilty. The tree-sit ended last September, when the university razed the trees.

Back to Warsaw 1968

Michael Sfard | Ha’aretz

3 September 2009

When my father was 21, he was arrested. Secret service agents tailed him everywhere for a few weeks, and the stress over whether and when he’d be shackled ate at him. Above all, it killed his aged parents. Many members of the student union were arrested with him. Each time the heavy iron door of his cell opened everyone’s heart skipped a beat. Who would they summon for interrogation now? Who would be spending the next 10 hours with the good interrogator and the bad interrogator?

During his many interrogations he wasn’t beaten or tortured, it was just the same questions, over and over: “Who are the leaders behind the riots?,” “Admit that you planned attacks on the security forces!,” “Who are your contacts abroad?,” “Who funds your subversive activities?” He ate well. He was never cold. But in the three months he was held his parents aged, from worry, and my mother cried rivers of tears. Warsaw, 1968.

That little village that was previously barely known even in Palestine became synonymous with the nonviolent Palestinian civil struggle and a place where Israeli and Palestinians demonstrate shoulder-to-shoulder. And now, two years after the High Court of Justice ruled that the separation fence built by the IDF there is illegal and ordered the state to redraw its route – two years in which the IDF has not carried out the ruling – the two generals concluded this was the time to smash this wonderful solidarity, to crush the Friday demonstrations in Bil’in.

But the special teargas grenades, with the increased range and the force of a small missile, represent an escalation even for Bil’in. In the neighboring village of Nil’in they caused critical head injuries to Tristan Anderson, an American demonstrator who has been lying in Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, for the past five months. Shortly after their introduction in Bil’in they killed Bassem Abu Rahme, a young man who never hurt a fly and became the first fatality of the demonstrations there.

After the special grenades came the nighttime raids. Their purpose was to arrest those who the army or the Shin Bet security services believed to be members of the village’s Popular Committee against the Wall, which organizes the demonstrations. For the past two months every few nights the children of Bil’in awaken to the screech of army Jeeps and stun grenades. Companies of soldiers under the command of the GOC Central Command, Gadi Shamni, and the commander of the IDF forces in the West Bank, Noam Tivon, break into homes, usually at 3 A.M., and arrest whoever they can grab: men, teens and children. Some are released a few hours later, others after a few days and still others remain under arrest on ridiculous accusations. No one touches the Israelis: even the major general and the brigadier general have their limits.

One of the detainees in these raids is among the leaders of the village’s organized protest, and anyone who believes in peace and coexistence can only hope he will eventually be one of the leaders of Palestine: Mohammed Khatib. In his early thirties, with youthful charm and charisma, Khatib is one of the architects of the Bil’in protests, the man who, with his friends, engineered the idea of the joint, nonviolent struggle. The Palestinian Martin Luther King, Jr. His creative mind has not rested during the past five years, every week coming up with a new exhibit, slogan, legal maneuver that will embarrass the regime, or for an article that will expose its lies and wickedness.

He is the one who coined the phrase, in reference to the settlers’ neighborhood that was built illegally on village land, “It’s not East Matityahu, it’s West Bil’in”: He came up with the idea of erecting, across from the illegal Israeli building project, the first Palestinian outpost – a seven-square-meter trailer home that within 24 hours was evacuated by a battalion of Israeli soldiers. (Who says no West Bank outposts are being evacuated?)

Khatib’s wife, Lamia, and their children remained alone in their home on the night that Mohammed was arrested. A few nights later the Jeeps returned, turned the family out of their beds and summoned Mohammed’s father for questioning. Maybe they thought that whatever they couldn’t get out of Mohammed before he’d tell them after learning that his elderly father was also interrogated.

After Khatib was released – with a prohibition against taking part in the Bil’in demonstrations – the Jeeps returned to the village once again and arrested Mohammed Abu Rahme, 48 (“Abu Nizar”), the vice president of the village council. Bil’in 2009.

The people who ordered the arrests of Khatib, Abu Nizar and dozens of their colleagues, some of whom are still in custody (such as the taxi driver Adib Abu Rahme, who has been rotting in jail for two months already, accused only of being a member of the Popular Committee), are ignoramuses who have not learned a single lesson from the human history of liberation struggles. They believed that this was the way to break the Bil’in protest movement – which, judging by the most recent demonstrations, has only grown greater in the wake of their actions.

I had the opportunity to peek into Khatib’s remand hearing in military court. (He was not present, because the Israel Prison Service forgot to bring him to the session…) I saw the military prosecutor speaking with pathos about the need to keep him in custody, about his being a “security risk.” Just like my father and his friends in Warsaw in 1968, when they organized demonstrations against the regime and for democracy. There, too, the authorities arrested the leaders of the protest in an effort to make them disappear. There, too, the arrests were made in the predawn hours. There, too, there were police officers who made the arrests, secret service agents who carried out the interrogations, prosecutors who prosecuted and judges who judged. And there, too, each one was a small but essential cog in a huge machine whose purpose was the control and oppression of millions.

Many good Israelis oppose the occupation but are disgusted by any attempt to compare the government we shaped in the West Bank with history’s detestable totalitarian regimes. Indeed, historical comparisons are dangerous. Warsaw circa 1968 does not resemble Bil’in circa 2009. The conflict is different, the struggle is different, the world is different. But there is something common to all attempts to oppress human beings. And as time passes, what they have in common outweighs the differences.

Michael Sfard is the lawyer representing the village of Bili’in in its struggle against the West Bank separation fence, which was erected on its land.

Israel declares the shooting of American activist, Tristan Anderson to be an “act of war”

For Immediate Release

18 August 2009: Israel declares the shooting of American activist, Tristan Anderson to be an “act of war.”

Tristan Anderson, an American national, was critically injured on 13 March 2009 when he was shot with a high velocity tear-gas projectile during an unarmed demonstration against the Wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin (report and video: https://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324).

The Israeli Ministry of Defense has notified the Anderson family’s lawyers that Israel perceives the incident on 13 March 2009 as an “act of war.” This classification was made despite the fact that Anderson’s shooting occurred during a civilian demonstration and there were no armed hostilities during the event or surrounding it.

The consequence of such classification is that according to Israeli law, the state of Israel is not liable for any damage its’ forces have caused.

Israeli police have completed their criminal investigation and passed the file to the district attorney of the Central District of the Israeli prosecution offices. The Anderson’s criminal attorney, Michael Sfard, is awaiting their decision.

According to Michael Sfard,

If a process by which unarmed civilian demonstration is classified by Israel as an ‘act of war,’ then clearly Israel admits that it is at war with civilians. International law identifies the incident as a clear case of human rights abuse. As such, Tristan and his family are undoubtedly entitled to justice and compensation. We will pursue this matter and take the government of Israel to court.

In addition to filing a criminal complaint against the State of Israel for the shooting of their son, the Andersons have submitted a notice of intent to file a civil suit.

Leah Tsemel, the civil suit attorney, stated,

This is another occasion where the Israeli government is alluding responsibility. The demonstrations that take place in Ni’lin and Bil’in are not acts of war. We will pursue, in Israeli courts and international courts if necessary, justice for the Anderson family.

Tristan Anderson was critically injured on 13 March 2009 when he was shot with a high-velocity tear gas projectile by Israeli forces. He was taken to Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv and to date remains in the hospital facilities. Tristan suffered multiple condensed fractures as a result of being hit in the right frontal lobe. He has had several life-saving surgeries and his prospects for recovery are unclear. On 10 August 2009, Tristan underwent another surgery to reattach the top part of his skull, which was removed in order to save his life immediately after his shooting five months ago.

Several eye-witnesses have given testimony that Tristan was shot when he could not have been perceived as any threat to the forces in the area. He was shot from around 60 meters while standing with a few internationals and Palestinians, hours after the demonstration had dispersed from the construction site of the Wall.

“We are horrified and overwhelmed,” said Nancy Anderson during a press conference on 23 March 2009. “We are scared and really still in shock. To shoot peaceful demonstrators is really horrifying to us. What we want to ask is that the Israeli government publicly take full responsibility for the shooting of our son.” (audio of press conference held by the Andersons: http://www.alternativenews.org/news-from-within:-palestine/israel-podcasts/1854-news-from-within-podcast-press-conference-of-the-parents-of-american-activist-tristan-anderson-who-was-critically-injured-by-israeli-military.html)

Israeli forces have been systematically shooting tear-gas projectiles directly at demonstrators during protests at the West Bank Wall.

After Anderson’s shooting, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem requested the Judge Advocate General, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, to immediately clarify to security forces that it is absolutely forbidden to directly aim tear-gas canisters, including extended-range type canisters, at demonstrators in the West Bank. B’Tselem also provided extensive video footage of demonstrations in Ni’lin, Bi’lin, and Jayyus showing repeated firing of tear-gas grenades directly at demonstrators, proving that, contrary to the army’s contentions, Israeli forces in the West Bank have commonly practiced this unlawful act. (report & video: http://www.btselem.org/English/Firearms/20090318_Firing_of_Tear_Gaz_at_Demonstrators.asp).

Following the killing of a Palestinian demonstrator in Bil’in, Basem Abu Rahme, by Israeli forces on 17 April 2009 with a high velocity tear gas projectile (report and video: https://palsolidarity.org/2009/04/6185), B’Tselem again demanded that the army enforce its Open-Fire Regulations and investigate the incidents (http://www.btselem.org/English/Firearms/20090422_Firing_Tear_Gaz_Canisters_directly_on_People.asp).

On 5 May 2009, Yehoshua Lemberger, deputy state attorney for criminal affairs of the Justice Ministry, asked the police to review the guidelines for dispersing protesters based on Rahme’s death and the police investigations of four additional incidents that occurred in Nil’in, including the shooting of Tristan Anderson (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710864477&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

Can civil disobedience work if the media stays away?

Bruce Wolman | Mondoweiss

11 June 2009

What if Palestinians turned to non-violent protest and none of the media showed up to cover their actions?

President Obama in his Cairo speech insisted the “Palestinians must abandon violence.” He exhorted them to imitate the methods of the Civil Rights movement in the United States:

“Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.”

Obama went further and stated, “This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia, to Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end.”

But would the freedom rides and marches, lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts have succeeded if the media had not been on the story? Had the New York Times and other papers not sent reporters to witness the protests, or had the television networks not sent crews to film the events, had Americans heard only the explanations of the George Wallaces and the Bull Connors juxtaposed with the testimony of the protesters, would the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King Jr. had succeeded?

In case President Obama is unaware, Palestinians have been non-violently protesting the occupation for some time. Tomorrow is Friday, and most likely Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and international peace activists will meet up in Niilin (also transliterated to Naalin and Nil’in) to protest the Israeli security wall running through the village, as they already have for many weekends.

On the previous Friday’s demonstration, the IDF wounded Akal Sarur and four others. Sarur later died in the hospital. Although the IDF would not confirm it, media reports stated that border police fired on Sarur using a “low-velocity gun specially designed to disperse riots.”

According to the IDF, the protest “turned into a violent riot shortly after it began.” Protesters hurled rocks at the troops and tried to damage the fence. Moreover, the IDF claims that several soldiers were attacked by a group of men, some of them masked. The soldiers then used “established crowd control measures,” which contributed to Sarur’s death.

Later, the IDF added that the victim Sarur had been throwing rocks at the soldiers, and was a known member of Hamas .

According to Jonathan Pollak, of Anarchists Against the Wall,

“clashes between the IDF, residents of Nil’in and activists began earlier in the day when the IDF tried to occupy a home in the village….” The IDF used “sniper fire against the demonstrators who headed to the “wall” after praying at the mosque. Sarur was killed by sniper fire as he tried to evacuate one of the wounded demonstrators. He was not throwing stones at the time he was shot. It was possible he had thrown stones earlier.”

Pollack went on to ask, “Even if he was throwing stones, since when do people who throw stones get the death penalty? We are talking about a sniper who was 40 meters away barricaded behind a wall and standing there very coolly, and aiming and taking a shot.”

Earlier this year in mid-March, Tristan Anderson, an American activist from Oakland, California, was severely injured when hit by a tear-gas cannister during one of the protests in Niilin. The IDF claimed there was 400 violent demonstrators throwing rock at the soldiers that day. A Swedish school teacher, Ulrike Anderson, said that the crowd had mostly disappeared at the time Tristan Anderson was hit. Whose version is accurate?

Will Isabel Kershner or Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, or any of their stringers be at Niilin tomorrow? Will Howard Schneider of the Washington Post be there? Will Reuters, the BBC, CNN or NBC send someone out? It’s not as if there have been no previous signs something newsworthy might happen. Five people have already died this year in Niilin, besides the injured American, Tristan Anderson.

If another protester is injured or killed tomorrow, will we once again have to read that the IDF claims this, while the activists claim that? What did the Mississippi police claim after Freedom Riders were harassed and killed in the old south? Did anyone care?

Tomorrow brings another potential clash in the Holy Land. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem plan to protest for a second weekend “against the opening of a municipal parking lot at city hall – free of charge and staffed by a non-Jew – on Shabbat.”

“Last Saturday, thousands of ultra-Orthodox men clashed with police, first near the Kikar Safra parking lot, and then at the entrance to the Mea She’arim neighborhood, throwing bottles, rocks and dirty diapers, and lightly wounding six officers.”

Despite the fact that rocks were thrown and police were injured, none of the crowd control techniques regularly used by the Police and IDF in Niilin were applied to the Haredim Jews. And it’s not because these Ultra-Orthodox are Zionists, they are not. They are simply Jewish.

Will any of the Western media be on hand to compare what happens during the day at Niilin with what occurs at night in Jerusalem?

If Obama wants the Palestinians to engage in non-violent protest, and in fact they already are doing just that, then he needs to urge the “free Western media” to be brave and cover the protests as if it was Birmingham and Mississippi in the Fifties and Sixties. There may even be a Pulitzer Prize to be won.