Hurndall case: Israeli military forces still kill civilians with 'near-total impunity'

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Ahead of a new television drama based on the controversial killing in 2004 in Gaza of British national Tom Hurndall ('The Shooting Of Thomas Hurndall', Channel Four Television, Monday 13 October), Amnesty International has renewed its call for justice for Mr Hurndall's family.

The human rights organisation has described a situation where Israeli military forces kill civilians in Gaza with 'near-total impunity' - and while Mr Hurndall's death has led to the conviction of one Israeli soldier on manslaughter charges, Amnesty insists that this was almost solely due to the determination of his family rather than the Israeli military authorities' own efforts to see justice done.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

The shocking truth is that Israeli soldiers kill civilians in Gaza with near-total impunity, week in week out.

'Tom Hurndall's family have fought hard to achieve justice over his tragic death but the general position is one where independent investigations of civilian killings almost never happen and where the process itself lacks independence and impartiality.

'Where, exceptionally, an individual Israeli soldier is held responsible for a civilian death or injury, typically no-one further up the command structure is ever held accountable.'

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[aquart]

1. Wow. Just like our army.

They kill civilians "week in week out"? Got a ballpark figure there? Got a definition of "civilian," too, btw?

[amdezurik]

2. Rachel Corrie?

As to how many per week, estimates vary depending on your source. Israelie sources dicount them if they bother to count them at all, and arab sources would "exaggerate" them by including children killed by unexploded cluster-bombs and such. So it would be hard to find a number that is real. As to a definition would photography student do? Or does simply not approving of some of the actions of the IDF count as being an "enemy combatant" subject to having a sniper kill you?

[Scurrilous]

3. They shot our son but they can't kill his spirit

Tom Hurndall, 21, was a young, compassionate man when he went to Gaza in 2003. Months later, while he was rescuing Palestinian children from gunfire, he was shot by an Israeli army sniper. On the eve of a Channel 4 film, his parents tell of their anger, loss, intense grief and political awakening as they sought to bring his killer to justice

<snip>

"This story begins with an ending. On 11 April 2003, Thomas Hurndall, a 21-year-old photojournalist, was shot in the head in Gaza by a sniper from the Israeli army.

Tom was a brilliant, intrepid young man, driven by an energetic morality, a wish to make a difference in the world. The shooting left him with unsurvivable brain damage, but he clung to life - against the odds - in a coma, for nine months.

While he lay dying in Tel Aviv and later in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, his parents, Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall, took on a heroic struggle against the Israeli army. They were determined to seek truth and accountability at all costs. They had no idea how hard this was going to be.

The Israeli army appeared to view Tom's death with indifference; there were no plans to investigate the shooting, interview witnesses or go to Gaza. Nor, at first, were they willing to meet the Hurndalls. Their claim was that their soldier had fired at an armed terrorist. Tom, dressed in an orange jacket (a known sign for peace workers), was unarmed. What's more he was shot while rescuing Palestinian children.

Faced with lies and silence, Anthony, a commercial lawyer, did the only thing he could: he took the case on himself. It was his meticulous investigation that led to the prosecution of Bedouin sniper Sergeant Wahid Taysir, who got eight years (the longest sentence ever received by an Israeli Defence Forces soldier for shooting an unarmed civilian in the occupied territories). Vengeance was not Anthony's motivation. He wanted only to find out what had happened. But the verdict was, in the bleakest way imaginable, a personal victory."

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[Scurrilous]

4. Last night on television: The Shooting of Thomas Hurndal

"An aura of controversy was perhaps inevitably going to attend the broadcast last night of the fact-based drama The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall on Channel 4, given the potentially inflamatory nature of its subject matter. Directed by Rowan Joffe and written by Simon Block, the film told the story of the wounding and subsequent death of Thomas Hurndall, a 21-year-old British photography student shot by a sniper of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in April 2003, and his parents’ campaign to see his killer brought to justice.

Hurndall was covering a peaceful Palestinian demonstration in Rafah, Gaza during the Second Intifada. At the time he was shot, he was trying to save Palestinian children coming under fire from an Israeli observation post. He was also wearing an orange vest clearly showing that he was a peace worker. The soldier who shot him was a Bedouin Arab Israeli, a 20-year-old sergeant in the IDF called Wahid Taysir. Two years after the shooting, following Hurndall’s parents’ campaign, Taysir was sentenced by an Israeli army judge to 111/2 years in prison for manslaughter and obstruction of justice.

Concern was expressed before transmission from within the British Jewish community that the film caricatured Israelis, portraying them as uncaring. Yet although the drama presents the IDF as slow to respond to the Hurndalls’ efforts to prompt an investigation into the death of their son, it equally showed no Israeli military ogres demanding the blood of Palestinians (or, indeed, international peace workers).

And Joffe’s film was careful to present an element of the Israeli side of the story, through a sensitive study of Taysir himself. However, the drama emphasised the distinction between the (mainly Muslim) Bedouin Arabs and other Israelis, depicting the Bedouins as a marginalised community within Israel, whose young men have few career options other than joining the Israeli army. One of the reasons Taysir may have been so trigger-happy, the film implied, is that he already felt like an outsider with little to lose.

Still, given that the drama was based largely on evidence collected by Tom’s father Anthony (who, along with the rest of the Hurndalls, acted as a consultant on the film), the whole thing came across as relatively well-balanced and composed. It had two standout performances, from Stephen Dillane and Kerry Fox as Hurndall’s not always likeable parents, Anthony and Jocelyn. Dillane in particular captured the near-invisible outward signs of a man fighting back his grief, skimming fluidly between apparent emotionlessness and sudden, trembling vulnerability.

And as he began collating the evidence which would eventually prompt the IDF to prosecute Taysir, he provided the beating heart of the film. Up leapt quasi-Hollywood lines of dialogue pledging truth and justice, to which Dillane added authenticity by delivering them in a tone of cool British reserve. When Tom was still in a coma, for example, he said: “This is my son. One day soon I’m going to have to watch him die. But not without the fight of my life.” It was a masterful performance, which conveyed the – uncontroversially – heart-wrenching plight of a parent suffering from the loss of a child."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/14/nosplit/bvtv14last.xml