Israel Shoots Another Nonviolent Protester in the Head
Yesterday, the International Solidarity Movement announced that Tristan Anderson, 37, from Oakland, CA was shot in the head by the Israeli Defense Forces with a high velocity tear gas canister and is, according to overnight reports, in critical condition at an Israeli hospital.
Another one. You bastards! Rachel Corrie. Tom Hurndall. It's not just the foreigners though, as Starhawk reminds us:
For that, many have died. Tristan, young though he seems to me, has had more of a life than Arafat Rateb Khawaje, who was shot in the back by Israeli forces at a demonstration in Ni’lin on December 28, 2008, when he was only twenty two. On the same day, Mohammed Khawaje, aged twenty, was shot in the head with live ammunition. Brain dead, he lingered for three days until he died in a Ramallah hospital. And they, so young, still had more life behind them than Yousef Amira, only seventeen, shot with rubber-coated still bullets on July 29, 2008. And yet they, too, seem ancient compared to Ahmed Mousa, only ten, shot in the forehead with live ammunition on July 29th, 2008.
A fellow protester from Sweden said she could see Tristan’s brain when she went to provide aid and that medical personnel and the ambulance was detained outside the village by the IDF, but were finally allowed to pass and tend to Tristan. The video below shows the paramedics when they arrive on the scene, clearly marked, while the IDF continues to fire tear gas canisters directly at the medics, the wounded and those trying to help.
And the video of this event. Heartbreaking:
And it's not just the Palestinians. In 2003, the IDF shot an Israeli protester in the West Bank. Gil Na'amati was seriously injured. Israel was up in arms after that, with many serious people condemning the IDF for what was obviously a violent over-reaction to nonviolent protest. Needless to say, no one was punished. You can see a video of Na'amati's shooting and the reaction in Israel here.
Words fail me.
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