New Quaker Notebook

The US media routinely ignore news about Palestinian protests, whether against home demolitions or the separation fences. Here is another that may also flicker only briefly.

US citizens critically hurt at West Bank protest
Haaretz
March 13, 2009

Palestinian sources said that an American citizen, in his thirties, had sustained critical wounds during an anti-separation fence protest in the West Bank on Friday, Army Radio reported.

Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif. area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.

Protesters who were at the scene said that Anderson was standing by the side of the road when soldiers fired at him, and not near the hub of the clash. They added that there was no one in his vicinity that could have been perceived as a threat to the soldiers.

"He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition as life-threatening.

The protest took place in the West Bank town of Na'alin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel. But Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.

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We should not forget that in 2003 the 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed in the Gaza strip, crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Rafah refugee camp, during a protest by the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to End the Occupation of Palestine (ISM) against Israeli government demolitions of Palestinian homes. The anniversary of Rachel's death will be Monday, March 16.

More Hurt by Protest in Palestine