Ha’aretz reports that ISM “activist” Tom Hurndall has died 8 months after being shot by an IDF soldier.
Tom Hurndall, the 22-year-old British peace activist who was shot by an IDF soldier in April as he tried to protect Palestinian children from gunfire in a Gaza refugee camp, has died in a London hospital, the British Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.
Where is Ha’aretz getting its terminology? Al-Crapeeza?
Hundall’s family have criticized Israel for mentioning that the offending soldier was an Arab Bedouin who smoked dope.
The family has also criticized reports stemming from the IDF that the soldier in custody was an Arab, a member of a Bedouin unit, and that he faced separate charged of smoking marijuana on duty. Family members have called the reports an attempt to shift responsibility away from army policies in the territories.
“We hope that prosecution of the soldier involved in the shooting of Tom will send a message to all soldiers in the occupied territories that they cannot commit breaches of human rights whether these be killing, maiming, humiliation, the destruction of homes or the collective punishment of whole communities,” the paper quoted Jocelyn Hurndall as saying.
“But I am extremely sceptical at the way the Israeli army has chosen to highlight certain facts about this particular soldier – that he had previously been arrested for smoking cannabis and is an Arab.
Sounds relevant to me. If the Hundall’s call into question the morality of the IDF’s actions, it is surely relevant that the shooting was perpetrated by a dope-smoking soldier who obviously had problems and scant regard for IDF policy. Perhaps there is less of a case for mentioning his Bedouin origins – but it will at least bring no solice to the Jew-haters who would have liked to have used the killing as some kind of proof of Jewish immorality.
