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CounterPunch
November
23, 2002
I Was Shot While
Escorting Jenin's School Children
by CAOIMHE BUTTERLY
(Interviewed by Annie Higgins)
In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the
Israeli Occupation Forces made the bottom section of the camp
into a closed military zone in the morning, using about twelve
tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache helicopter gunships.
I had been trying to get between the unarmed children and the
tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to
evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances
through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist,
and we were immediately arrested, along with another international
volunteer, and taken to a place where about twenty Palestinian
men were being held. They were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped
to their trousers or underwear, and beaten severely. After I
was detained for two hours and interrogated briefly, the Israeli
soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked permission to remain
with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the soldiers
refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave,
I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that
if I returned to the area I would be shot.
I went back the way I had come, past
the United Nations compound. There I spoke briefly with Iain
Hook, Project Manager of UNRWA [United Nations Relief Works Agency]
in Jenin, who said he was trying to negotiate with the soldiers
for women and children to go home. He came out of the UN compound
waving a blue UN flag, and the soldiers' only response was to
broadcast with their microphone in English, "We don't care
if you are the United Nations or who you are. Fuck off and go
home!" They were trying to go home. Iain said that things
were not going well. He insisted that he wanted to provide safe
passage for his forty Palestinian workers and himself using legal
means, i.e., official coordination with the Army. Some worried
parents had begun to knock a hole in the wall at the back of
the compound to evacuate children who were there for a vaccination
programme. We accompanied some of the children home.
After this, I headed again to the sick
girl's house. On the way I met a group of children who told me
that a ten-year-old friend of mine, Muhammad Bilalo, had been
killed and three children had been wounded by tank fire, one
of whom sustained brain damage. So I went to where the children
were gathered, and the tanks were firing on them erratically.
I walked down the road between the children and the tanks until
I was fifty meters from the tank, where I tried to dialogue with
the soldiers. I implored them not to shoot live ammunition at
unarmed children. At that point, they stopped their shooting.
A few moments later, an APC drove up to the tank [an armed personnel
carrier, like a tank with all the armour except a cannon]. I
could see their faces very clearly and I imagine they could see
mine also. I had seen both of these tanks earlier in the day.
A soldier raised his upper body and his gun out of the hatch
of the second vehicle and began shooting. At first he shot into
the air, and most of the children dispersed, running into an
alley on the left side of the street. About three small children
remained, however, and I tried physically to get them to the
alley, dragging and pushing them. I looked back over my shoulder
and could see the soldier in the APC pointing his gun at me from
about one hundred meters. Near the entrance to the alley, I was
shot in the thigh. When I fell they continued shooting in my
direction. I crawled part of the way up the alley, and then some
of the youngsters dragged me up the rest of the way. No ambulances
were allowed into the camp, so I was carried on a makeshift stretcher
to where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me near the entrance
of the camp. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin Hospital,
Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later.
We have been told that when he was shot,
the Israeli Army prohibited a clearly marked UN ambulance from
evacuating him and transporting him for nearly an hour, during
which time he lost much blood. Finally the ambulance crew evacuated
him by taking him out by the back wall that employees had broken
down earlier.
Having been present in the Camp all morning,
I can testify that any Palestinian fighters had stopped shooting
a good two hours before either of us was wounded. When I passed
the UN compound in the morning, it was surrounded by Israeli
Army snipers and soldiers who were shooting erratically into
the Camp. Two people were killed and six wounded. All but one
were shot by tank fire outside what the Army deemed a closed
military zone. I was not caught up in any kind of crossfire as
the Israeli Occupation Forces are falsely stating, and I don't
believe that Iain was either.
The massacre has not stopped. Human rights
violations and war crimes seen so blatantly across the world
in April of this year continue on a daily basis in Jenin. Yesterday,
with the casual killings that marked it, was not an unusual day
in Jenin. It has become a potentially suicidal act to engage
in the most basic acts of survival. The Israeli Occupation Forces
engage again and again in a shoot-to-kill policy without regard
as to whether its targets are civilians or armed fighters. Israelis
have been shown in April that they can get away with a massacre,
and that all the international condemnation in the world cannot
get one ambulance in to evacuate a wounded person.
Thus the lack of accountability on Israel's
part has become bolder as the events witnessed yesterday become
almost standard. These are not military campaigns. They are acts
of terror designed to humiliate, brutalise, and bully Palestinians
into subjugation. They are being denied not only the right to
resist, but to exist.
Yesterday's
Features
Jason Leopold
Secrets
and Lies:
Bush, Cheney and the Great Rip-Off of California Ratepayers
Ali Moayedian
Letter
from Ayatollah Ashcroft to His CounterPart Ayatollah Shahroudi
of Iran
William MacDougal
Heroes and Villains:
The Sun, Saddam and the Fire Strike
Carol Norris
Secret
Burial for the Bill of Rights
4th Amendment R.I.P
Mark Hand
From Wal-Mart to Proudhon
Michael Neumann
Reflections
on Kant and Moral Equivalence
Philip Farruggio
The Dagger of Futility
Michael Rossman
The Betrayal
of Lenny Glaser
Michael Rossman
The Free Speech Movement & the Rossman Report:
A Memoir of Making History
New
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to Subscribers:
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The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
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