He risked all for others by Tom Hurndall's mother 12:15am Sun Jul 20 '03 On Friday 11 April, my eldest son, a photojournalist, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. He was trying to protect two young girls in the Israelis' line of fire in Gaza. He is 21 and now lies in a coma, with severe brain damage. We know he is not expected to recover and our family are endeavouring to come to terms with this. Recently, we were able to fly him home from Israel and he is now in The Royal Free in Hampstead, in a room overlooking London, filled with photographs of his life. print article Saturday, July 19,2003 As written by Tom Hurndall's mother Emily Sheffield On Friday 11 April, my eldest son, a photojournalist, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. He was trying to protect two young girls in the Israelis' line of fire in Gaza. He is 21 and now lies in a coma, with severe brain damage. We know he is not expected to recover and our family are endeavouring to come to terms with this. Recently, we were able to fly him home from Israel and he is now in The Royal Free in Hampstead, in a room overlooking London, filled with photographs of his life. Two large sheets covered in wonderful written messages from friends hang on the walls. I was at work when I first heard Tom had been seriously wounded. I'm head of learning support at the Argyle primary school in Camden. My daughter, Sophie, phoned: a news reporter had called her to ask if she had been told about her brother. We hadn't appreciated that Tom had gone down to Rafah in the Gaza Strip that week - we thought he was in a refugee camp in Jordan. I went into shock. The first thing I did was to call Tom's father, Anthony, a lawyer, who was in Russia on business. We decided he would fly to Israel the next day with Billy, our second son, as Tom had been airlifted to Seroka hospital in Be'er Sheva. I followed on the Monday and shortly after that Sophie, 23, and my youngest son, 12-year-old Freddy, arrived. We were expecting the worst. The surgeon had told us Tom might not survive even a few days and that there was shrapnel still lodged in his brain. When I first saw him, there was a young Israeli girl beside his bed who kept repeating, "I am so sorry for my country". Tom's head was bandaged up and there were tubes and monitors everywhere. Tom was a vital young man who had been so full of life. As a child, he was very popular at his school. He always threw himself into things and when he was a teenager, he jumped into the sea in Cornwall to swim with seal pups, oblivious to their angry mother. He has always been highly intelligent, articulate and inquisitive, constantly asking questions, and it seems an awful waste that his adventurous spirit has led to this. Tom was studying photography at Manchester Metropolitan University and had travelled to Baghdad in February with some British "human shields" for an assignment. He wanted to be a photojournalist. We had tried to persuade him not to go but he was insistent, saying he had done extensive research. From Baghdad he moved to Jordan and while he was in a refugee camp, he hooked up with a Palestinian peace group, the International Solidarity Movement. He agreed to accompany them to Rafah, a town on the southern end of the Gaza Strip caught between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters. Soon after arriving, he saw a little boy shot in the shoulder, which profoundly affected him. He was also shot at, gassed and hit by falling debris. A few days before he was shot, he wrote in his journal: "The certainty is that they are watching and it is on the decision of any one Israeli soldier or settler that my life depends." A week later, the activists were peacefully trying to stop an Israeli tank from blocking access to a local mosque when Tom saw soldiers in a watchtower open fire. Numerous shots were directed at a group of children playing in the rubble nearby. He pulled one five-year-old Palestinian boy to safety, then returned to save two little girls. As he reached out to grab their hands, Tom was hit in the head by the sniper fire. He was wearing a fluorescent orange flak jacket demonstrating that he was a civilian. This was typical of Tom, to put another's safety before his own, to help the underdog. Only two months before he left for Palestine, he had squared up to a mugger trying to steal a mobile phone from a young boy near our home. It used to worry me that his feelings for others would override any care for his own safety. He had such an empathetic side and would always listen when someone was in trouble. Tom wanted to experience everything; he threw himself at life. He had gone to Israel to see a world outside his own. He kept a beautifully written journal of his travels. It was found in his knapsack after he was shot. We value it greatly. He wanted to understand and feel at first-hand what civilians were suffering in Palestine. He wanted to find the truth behind the propaganda, seek out injustices. Tom is the third Westerner to have been wounded or killed in Gaza in recent months. In March, a 23-year-old American student, Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death in Rafah by an Israeli armoured bulldozer while she tried to protect a Palestinian family home from being flattened. We have detailed evidence and are sure now that the Israeli army has deliberately been targeting foreigners who go into the occupied territories to help protect Palestinians and to witness and record the conditions there. Very soon after arriving in Israel, Anthony and I went with a military attachי from the British embassy to the spot where he was shot. We met the activists he had made friends with and the mother of the child he had saved. I was still in terrible shock. Everything seemed unreal. I was taking information in but not processing it. Fortunately, Anthony had switched into lawyer mode and was asking hundreds of questions. We had to seek justice for Tom and it has helped us to deal with our grief and given us a focus. We returned to Rafah several times and were once even shot at in the same place as Tom. This was despite the Israeli soldiers having been warned three times of our approach, in a clearly marked British embassy Range Rover. The Israeli government has consistently denied shooting Tom with intent, first claiming that he had been carrying a gun, which is untrue, then saying he had been near a man carrying a gun. This is also untrue - the family has collected 14 witness statements to the contrary. Ten weeks later, we are still fighting for an official inquiry. We want the officer who fired the gun and those in high command brought to justice. Tom was in intensive care in Israel for four weeks. So many people came to support us. Many of the activists would sleep at the hospital at night. One human rights lawyer even lent us his flat. On 29 May the hospital said we could risk bringing Tom home - we wanted all his friends to be able to see him. The horrific reality of Tom's condition hit me as we followed his ambulance to the airport in Tel Aviv. It felt as if this was the end of Tom's journey. It's a moment I will never forget. I've only recently stopped being in a state of intense shock; now it is more a feeling of gradual loss. We are gradually returning to some kind of normality; we are all back at work and Freddy is at school. Billy stayed out in Israel, documenting footage of the soldiers' behaviour. We recently met up with Jack Straw. We sought legal advice in order to find out how the government was obliged to support us. If we produce enough evidence to prove there was injustice - and we have done that now - they are obliged to investigate. We are hoping to publish a book of Tom's journals and photographs soon. The BBC correspondent Rageh Omar read from his journals at a recent concert we held to raise funds for our campaign. We've had talks about Tom's quality of life; we know he wouldn't want to be hooked up to a machine. But for now we will play a waiting game, let nature take its course and ensure that each of us has time with Tom on our own, to give him comfort and support and to feel close to him. At first, whenever we saw the slightest movement, it was easy for us to imagine he was more cognisant than he actually is. In reality, these are reflex movements and we now know there is no chance of recovery. I'm intensely proud of Tom. He taught himself to have courage; he saved a life. We can't all remain in safe little cages. Tom went to Gaza to expose the injustice. I profoundly respect the fact that he sought to make a difference. Somewhere along the line he decided to value life, not just his own, but those around him. These past months have naturally been a life-changing experience but we will not be in a permanent state of sadness. Tom understood that we are not here just to live for ourselves. He may be my son but what he has done is inspirational. • To donate to the campaign, visit www.tomhurndall.co.uk news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=781552... add your comments Source file

HE IS A HERO by AGAHST 1:36am Sun Jul 20 '03 print comment HE IS A HERO MAY JUSTICE BE DONE SOONER THAN LATER add your comments

Come more, die more by Fuck antisemite assholes 6:58pm Sun Jul 20 '03 print comment You want to come and help suicide bombers and terrorists, don't expect not to get shoot. add your comments

Israel needs a new name by John Veldhuis 12:18pm Mon Jul 21 '03 print comment The terrorists, that are the settlers, the Israely army, the Border police. Yeah and some Palestine militias. How a photographer trying to protect children is supporting terrorism is beyond me. We should stop trusting the government, the army the police, and all the colonists belonging to this mideastern New-Naziland, that calls itself Israel. add your comments

a victim of the ism by goldberg 5:19pm Mon Jul 21 '03 print comment ...poor tom and rachel were both victims of the ism.they bring these naive fools out,and then shove them into terrible danger, for one purpose,to get headlines,to put israel in a bad light.these poor souls are the victims of the islamakillers as much as the suicide bombers victims were add your comments

Naive fool by Marcus 9:32pm Mon Jul 21 '03 print comment So Corrie and company got what they deserve did they, well maybe you can give us some idea acceptable on how to resist occupation. Let me guess, don't resist right. Maybe you should have neen the one run over by the IDF tractors. At least one less militant would be alive. Accepting and aknowledging your states incorrect policies rather than finding excuses might help your argument. Repeating what you were told by any religious person is absurd. add your comments

rebuilding the Image of the jewish people by ! 11:54pm Mon Jul 21 '03 print comment The only way to stop making Israel look bad in the eyes of the international world is for Israel to stop shooting none armed International Peaceful activists. If that is "easier said than done" than the gung-ho troops should be removed from the scene of temptation(the occupied land Of Palestine) and return to Israel proper. add your comments

Too Bad by Frank 6:39pm Tue Jul 22 '03 print comment I thougt that our grandparents treatment during the second world war was a reason enough to avoid discrimination of palestinian i Israel. add your comments

Too bad by Fran 6:47pm Tue Jul 22 '03 print comment to avoid discrimination of course add your comments

what you really mean by goldberg 5:46pm Wed Jul 23 '03 print comment ...what do these people mean, world reputation of the jewish people? is it that ,to be defenseless, to run from trouble, to die with a minimum of fuss, the jewish people gave the world great gifts over the the eons, we are finished also giving our lives without a bloody fight, and if the world and the arabs and the weak kneeded brain dead jews dont like it , well f--k them add your comments

then... by kn jhn 7:03pm Wed Jul 23 '03 print comment how dare you instruct the defenseless Arab population to run from trouble n' die with minimum fuss, hypocrite ? add your comments

, by m l l 7:17pm Wed Jul 23 '03 print comment The Arabs have been hospitable to the diaspora. The recent history is not exemplory of the warm and trust worthy relations they've developed throughout their mutual histories. When the Spanish pogroms occured, the spanish Jews retreated to Morocco and found a safe haven. When the Palestinian Jews in recent centuries became the minority in Palestine, they lived as equals with the Christian and Muslim arabs. Zionism is a European phenomenon, and as such it brings with it the bagage of centuries of european colonial attitude. The europeans (whether they be Native American, Native Africans or Native Palestinians) look upon the Native Population as a barbaric of sorts. They come to plunder the land in the name of civilizing the population and bringing em freedom. add your comments

run for cover by goldberg 12:05am Thu Jul 24 '03 print comment ..the arabs are hardly running, they are attacking in a most vicious way, the israeli defense is just that, a defense...if the facts were reversed....the arabs would kill every jew in israel,incuding the quislings, and you damm well know it add your comments