Twenty years ago on April 11 2003 Tom Hurndall a young peace activist from North London was shot in the head by an Israeli military sniper as he was rescuing several small children from Israeli gunfire,
Thomas “Tom” Hurndall was an aspiring photojournalist who put himself at the service of the world. In 2002, he traveled through Europe, eventually making his way to Jordan and Egypt where he felt intrigued by the mix of cultures. In early 2003, he joined the anti-war movement against the invasion of Iraq and physically moved there. But as the invasion became more and more likely, he moved to Jordan to help provide medical services to Iraqi refugees. There, he discovered the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organisation that use non-violent protest against the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
On the 6th April.2003 as a photojournalist, hoping to document Palestinians' oppressive living conditions he moved to Rafah in the Gaza Strip.and not long after he began emailing images of the IDF and the Palestinians back to his family. In his Guardian obituary it says “the tone of his journals changed dramatically” with his arrival in Palestine.
Tom even wrote of the death of Rachel Corrie, who had been crushed to death by an Israeli defence force bulldozer while acting as a human shield near the Rafah refugee camp.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2023/03/courage-to-resist-remembering-rachel.html
“I wonder how few or many people heard it on the news and just counted it as another death, just another number … ” wrote Tom.
On 11th of April Tom and and a group of activists were in the area of Rafah with the intention of setting up a peace tent on one of the nearby roads to block the IDF tank patrols, it was then that Israeli Sbipers started shooting. As all ran for cover, Tom noticed that three of the many children previously playing in the road had become paralyzed with fear. Tom dashed towards one of the children and brought him to safety. He turned back to rescue another child, but as he approached, Israeli sharpshooter Taysir Hayb fired a round into his skull. Tom hit the ground bleeding, less than a week after moving to Palestine.
At the time of the shooting Tom was in plain view of the sniper towers and was wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket with reflective stripes and was clearly unarmed. According to other ISM activists “there was no shooting or resistance coming from the Palestinian side at all.” It is also reported that an ambulance came very quickly, about 2 minutes after the shooting..
After a two hour delay at the border of the Gaza strip, Tom’s ambulance was finally allowed through. Tom received emergency treatment in Be’ersheva Hospital before being transferring to London where he remained in a coma for nine months. He died on January 13, 2004 at the tender age of 22.
A year after his death, following the family's own investigation and their determined and impartial fight to see justice done after a cover-up by the Israeli Defence Force, Wahid Taysir Al Heib, the soldier who shot him was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years for Tom's manslaughter. It was an unprecedented outcome, and a case that made legal history in bringing the IDF to account for its killing of an unarmed civilian.
Hayb was released on September 8, 2010, only having served six and a half years of his sentence after an army committe concluded that he “no longer posed any threat to society in their view.”.
O n 10 April 2006, a British inquest jury at St Pancras coroner’s court in London found that Hurndall had been “unlawfully killed”and found that the killing was intentional – in other words, murder.. Tom's father told reporters that there had been a “general policy” to shoot civilians in the area without fear of retaliation, as stated by the soldier who fired the shot, Taysir Hayb. Hayb had earlier told a military tribunal that the Israeli army “fires freely in Rafah.”
On January 10th, 2004, Jocelyn Hurndall, Tom’s mother, wrote a commentary in The Guardian, which stated: It seems that life is cheap in the occupied territories. Different value attached to life depends on whether the victim happens to be Israeli, international or Palestinian.”
Tom’s shooting followed the murder of Rachel Corrie, run over by a bulldozer on the 16th March, and the near fatal shooting of Brian Avery, shot in the face in Jenin on April 5th. Later that month, another Brit, filmmaker James Miller, was also killed by a sniper in Rafah. The Israeli military have refused to accept any responsibility for what they did to Rachel, Brian or James,
Tom's bravery and compassion should not be forgotten. Neither should the daily struggles of Gaza's Palestinians that he was working to show the world. since his death the occupation and oppression has got worse as apartheid Israel continue to lay siege on Gaza's 2 million inhabitants.
An annual lecture has been established to memorialise Tom's life, and to celebrate the ideals that he supported. Tom's mother Jocelyn Hurndall has also written a powerful biography of him called ,My Son Tom: The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall. It is an elegy for a son, full of loss but also of hope. Written with honesty, dignity and insight, this moving story of a remarkable young man, a mother's love, and a devoted family gives a human face to a conflict that, directly and indirectly, affects us all.
On 13 October 2008, Channel 4 broadcast a dramatised documentary The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall,[18] which was written by Simon Block and directed by Rowan Joffe. Stephen Dillane plays Anthony Hurndall and Kerry Fox plays Jocelyn Hurndall. Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall were interviewed at length in The Observer prior to the airing of the documentary:Hurndall.
Tom had been in Palestine for less than ten days before his life was ended by the murderers of the Israeli army. If it had not been for them, his work would no doubt have developed and grown. Like thousands of Palestinians, who do not have books devoted to their final works, his life was brutally cut short.
Toml kept a journal throughout his travels which are collected in. The Only House Left Standing:The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall in which he wrote discerningly about the injustices he had witnessed in Gaxa that had a profound effect on him/ in one of his final entries he wrote “What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.”
His commitment, courage, and love of life reminds us of the universality of human rights for all peoples – Tom’s decision to drop everything and go to Gaza to stand by Palestinians there, his generous gesture, encapsulates these principles. Tom remains a symbol of humanity, bravery and solidarity..His memory will live on forever.
