Now That’s A Real Hero
Activist was unlawfully killed in Israel, says inquest jury
“April 6 2003. I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris and been in the way of a 10-tonne D-9 that didn’t stop. As we approached, I kept expecting a part of my body to be hit by an ‘invisible’ force and shot of pain. It took a huge amoung of will to continue. I wondered what it would be like to be shot, and strangely I wasn’t too scared. It is strange to know that each night people are shot and killed for breaking military curfew, and in the darkness on the north west side there is an Israeli settlement and a few hundred metres away with military snipers in between and any one of the four of us could be being watched through a sniper’s sights at this moment. The certainty is that they are watching, and it is in the decision of any one Israeli soldier or settler that my life depends. I know that I’d probably never know what hit me, but it’s part of the job to be as visible as possible.” Five days after he wrote these words, Tom Hurndall was shot by Israeli forces and later died.
Tom Herndall was just 22, the same age as my son is now, and it’s hard to comprehend the sheer bravery it took to put himself in harm’s way to protect children when he knew the Israeli Army’d kill him without a second thought. They did it to Rachel Corrie the same year.
Around that time a friend of ours of the same age was in the Gaza trip on a similar humanitarian trip, and it’s only sheer luck that he wasn’t deliberately shot in the back or deliberately driven over by a bulldozer too.
What Tom Herndall and Rachel Corrie did, putting themselves in the line of fire to save innocent children, is the very essence of heroism. We need more like them. When baby-boomers complain about the lack of political engagement of today’s young, those two names should be the first to be mentioned.
The onus is now on the British governmment to apply to extradite the Israeli officer who murdered Tom Herndall. But Blair is so far up the arse of Bush and the rabid Zionist Israeli lobby you can pretty much gurantee that that captain won’t see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a prison cell. Still, at least the ‘unlawful killing’ verdict is a victory, of sorts, even if the murderer is still walking around free.
