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.
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?
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.
Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
Peace campaigner was struck in head with teargas grenade during demo in occupied West Bank
The parents of an American peace activist who was severely injured by Israeli forces at a demonstration in the occupied West Bank called on the Israeli government today to take “full responsibility” for the shooting.
Tristan Anderson, 38, was hit in the forehead by a high-velocity teargas canister fired by an Israeli border policeman in the village of Nilin earlier this month. The incident came after a demonstration against Israel’s West Bank barrier, which as elsewhere has cut off a large slice of the village’s agricultural land.
Since last July, four Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in similar demonstrations in the village.
Anderson was rushed to the Tel Hashomer hospital in Israel, where he has already had three operations. He lost the sight in his right eye and doctors had to remove portions of his frontal lobe. It is not clear if he will survive, or how much brain damage he may have suffered.
His parents, Nancy and Michael, who flew out from their home near Sacramento in California to be at his bedside, said he remained in a “very critical condition” in a medically induced coma.
“We are horrified and overwhelmed,” said Nancy Anderson. “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.”
She said no Israeli official, from either the government or the military, had contacted the couple since their son was hurt. “I don’t carry any negative feelings towards the soldier who shot our son,” she said. “All I feel is love for Tristan and fear for his recovery.”
Tristan Anderson worked in Oakland, California, as part of a crew involved in setting up conventions. He arrived in Israel in February with his girlfriend, and was planning to stay three months before joining his parents in Europe for a holiday.
He had been involved in previous peace demonstrations elsewhere in the world, including in Iraq in 2003, El Salvador and Guatemala. He was at the 2000 demonstration in Prague against the World Bank and IMF.
“Tristan has always been interested in how societies that go through conflict are able to resolve their issues,” said his father. “He came to understand for himself what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about. It is ironic that the country in which he was shot is a democracy where it is supposed to be a duty for everyone to follow their conscience. We want to know the truth of what happened and we want justice for our son.”
Jonathan Pollack, an Israeli activist who was at the demonstration this month, said Tristan was hit at around 4.30pm inside the village, at least 1km from the barrier, at a time when the demonstration was dispersing. Although, as is often the case, there had been some stone-throwing at the protest, he said Tristan had never thrown any stones or taken any violent action. Pollack said Israeli border police had led an incursion into Nilin that morning.
“For hours before he was shot, Tristan was nowhere near the wall,” he said. It is thought he was hit by a high-velocity teargas grenade, a weapon newly being used against West Bank demonstrators. It comes in a black canister labelled in Hebrew “40mm bullet special/long range”, and is silent when fired, according to demonstrators. Tristan was hit from a distance of about 60 metres, they said.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer acting for the Anderson family, said he had filed an official complaint demanding an independent investigation. He said that evidence from Israeli human rights researchers showed neither the border police nor the barrier itself were under any threat at the time of the shooting.
“The incident took place in the village of Nilin when the protesters came back to the village after a peaceful demonstration,” Sfard said. “The policemen involved, both the guy who shot and the officers who gave orders, must take the full might of criminal justice.”
The Israeli military described the protest as a “violent riot”, saying that “approximately 400 rioters threw a massive number of rocks at security forces”.
“Israel regrets that the Israeli and foreign nationals co-operate with violent rioters against the building of the security fence, whose purpose is saving the lives of Israeli citizens,” it said. “As such, any Israeli, Palestinian, or foreign national who illegally participates in a violent demonstration takes upon himself the risk of personal harm during the dispersal of these disturbances.”
Tristan Anderson, a 38 year old American citizen, was critically injured during a demonstration in the village of Ni’lin after being shot in the head with a tear-gas canister from Israeli forces. Being unable to visit Tristan in the hospital in Tel Aviv, Ni’lin villagers decided to dedicate the demonstration on the 20th of March in solidarity with Tristan and in protest against the continued violence of the occupation.
After the Friday prayer the villagers marched in large numbers towards the town center chanting against the occupation and in support of Tristan. Several posters with pictures of Tristan was used in the demonstration, demanding engagement with the international community and protesting the violence of the occupation. From the town center the demonstrators continued on the main street towards the entrance of the village where the Israeli army were guarding roadblocks. The demonstration then stopped a safe distance away from the roadblock, since people had spotted the army preparing their weapons, and turned instead towards the construction ground of the wall around the village. Soon thereafter, the army started shooting rounds of tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and 0.22 live ammunition.
During the demonstration, one Swedish solidarity activists was lightly injured by ammunition hitting her jaw. The army also went further into the village, occupying a house by the main road from where they shot at demonstrators in the streets. Two army jeeps attempted to enter the town next to the occupied house but were prevented from doing so by roadblocks built by protesters. On one occasion, soldiers deliberately torched a car by shooting tear gas canisters into it while standing in a family’s garden.
At this week’s demonstration, no extended range tear gas canisters, the type that have injured Tristan and numerous villagers, were used. The demonstration also ended with a low number of injuries, in contrast to previous weeks.
Four residents of Ni’lin have been killed since August 2008 during these weekly demonstrations, and hundreds injured. Currently, Tristan has been taken to the neurological department and is in intensive care. He continues to be listed in critical condition.
