The Death of Tom Hurndall

[Resistance]

By MAZIN QUMSIYEH | CounterPunch

Tom Hurndall, the British peace activist shot by the Israeli army, died after 9 months in coma. Meanwhile here in New England, temperature hover around zero Fahrenheit and we are told to stay warm and go about our lives. Yet we work and pay taxes that fund the ongoing violence claiming thousands of lives and keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in cold tents or shacks with no heating.

You will not hear much about the daily violence against the Palestinians. You will not hear much about the ethnic cleansing or the home demolitions. You will see biased glimpses of the apartheid wall as a "security fence". You will see no maps of the sprawling colonies/ settlements and shrinking native lands. You will see hardly any footage of real life in the Palestinian refugee camps or of the daily non-violent resistance to brutal Israeli colonization. You will hear little about Israel’s apartheid and racist basic laws (on land ownership, "absentee" laws, automatic citizenship laws, etc).

The 3000 Palestinians killed and 40,000 injured in the last three years will be at best statistics not real human beings. According to human rights and medical organizations, most of those killed and injured were civilians and about 20-25% of them were children.

Yet American Rachel Corrie and a British Tom Hurndall and countless others lost their lives to Israeli occupation forces. These brave human beings give all of us hope that despite all the propaganda, information is getting through. Speaking truth to power is never easy, and certainly not risk free. But those who do it consider it a patriotic duty and a responsibility to care for our fellow human beings (especially when $5 billion/year of our taxes are used to cause the pain of others). The good deeds do multiply and the work of people like Rachel and Tom provide seeds that will generate growth after the thick blanket of propaganda has melted.

[Resistance]

1. An aspiring photojournalist and committed peace activist

Obituary | The Guardian

In the spring of 2002, Tom Hurndall made a journey around Europe, which then took him on to Egypt and Jordan. He was young, a soon-to-be student, interested in philosophy - and most interested in the contrast between cultures. It was a formative experience. Indeed, an abiding image for his friends is of Tom, who has died aged 22, on his motorcycle, cigarette in hand, riding into the Egyptian desert.

By February 2003, he was in Iraq, having told his Manchester faculty head that he would still make his course deadlines. He was, after all, amassing a photographic record, and writing journals. But rather than sending the volunteers to hospitals and schools, Saddam regime officials detailed them to power stations and strategic targets.

Tom headed for Jordan. There he offered his remaining £500 to provide medical supplies for Jordanian Iraqi refugee camps, helped courier supplies and worked on building temporary shelters. In Jordan, he encountered the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), whose volunteers - committed to non-violence - were working with Palestinians as they faced the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By foot, taxi and bus, Tom set off for Gaza, with the aim of recording what he saw.

Tom, blind to nationalities and borders, exuded humanity. He wanted, he wrote in his journal, "to make a difference". He did. He also had an outrageous sense of humour and will be missed, most of all, because he made those of us who were his friends smile. He is survived by his parents, sister Sophie, and his brothers Billy and Freddy.

· Thomas Peter Hurndall, student, born November 27 1981; died January 13 2004

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