Mother of British photographer shot by IDF to publish book

[Scurrilous]

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"The mother of the British photographer who was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip about four years ago is publishing a book about the incident in which she reiterates her accusation that Israel whitewashed and ignored the affair, and avoided paying the family compensation.

Tom Hurndall, 22, was killed in Rafah by Israel Defense Forces soldier Taysir al-Hayb, while Hurndall was trying to rescue Palestinian children who had been caught in cross-fire. Al-Hayb was sentenced in June 2005 to eight years in prison after he was found guilty of manslaughter. The London Times published an excerpt about a week ago from Jocelyn Hurndall's book, "Defy the Stars," ahead of the book's release on April 2, and yesterday The Guardian published an extensive interview with the family. In the interview, the family demanded yet again that senior IDF commanders be tried for the act.

Hurndall wrote about a meeting she had with the British military attache in Israel, Tom Fitzalan-Howard in which he told her, "You know an Israeli soldier is not like a British soldier. For a start, their soldiers are very young, conscripts mainly, though there are professional soldiers. The soldiers are invariably backed up by their commander and the chain of command.

"I was convinced that Tom was the victim of a victim," she also wrote, adding "that the policy-makers who put Taysir in this position should be on trial." Hurndall wrote that Fitzalan-Howard also told her "the investigations are invariably a sham."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/842236.html


The Guardian: My son lived a worthwhile life

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"In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three small children. Nine months later, he died, having never recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army accountable for his death and the book she has written in his memory.

It is one of the poignancies of Tom Hurndall’s short life that he had gone to Gaza in search of a story, and ended up becoming it. A 21-year-old photography student at Manchester Metropolitan University, he went to Baghdad in February 2003 to photograph human shields, activists who were trying to protect ordinary Iraqis from the threat of Anglo-American attack. While he was there he heard about Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who had been protecting a Palestinian’s family’s house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, when an Israeli bulldozer crushed her to death. Tom went to Gaza to find out what had happened.

All that is clear from the book his mother, Jocelyn, has written about Tom’s life, and about his family’s battle to bring the Israeli army to account for killing him. It’s not a political book, she stresses, though the anger, frustration and disappointment she feels towards the army, and the Israeli and British governments, is obvious."

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excerpt from Defy the Stars by Jocelyn Hurndall

[Tom Joad]

1. I wish the American authorities were as responsive to the Corries as the British

authorities were to the Hurndall's.

Then there would have been a truly independent investigation into Corrie's death.