[News] Heroism in the Holy Land

[News at freedomarchives.org]

The article can be found online at 
<http://www.sfbayview.com/100604/heroism100604.shtml>http://www.sfbayview.com/100604/heroism100604.shtml 
and is also pasted below:


Heroism in the Holy Land

Chris Brown Beaten for Walking Children to School

<http://www.ifamericansknew.org/images/racist.gif>
8bde65.gif

This graffiti across the street from his apartment in Hebron is aimed at 
Chris Brown, who grew up in apartheid South Africa and has joined the 
Palestinians in their struggle against apartheid.
Source: <http://www.cpt.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=hebron>CPT

By Alison Weir
<http://www.sfbayview.com/>San Francisco Bay View
October 6, 2004

There are a small number of people around the world who exhibit 
extraordinary courage. An even smaller number commit repeated acts of 
heroism. San Francisco resident Chris Brown is one of them.

On Wednesday morning, Brown, with his colleague Kim Lamberty, was on the 
other side of the world walking children to school. The children were like 
any other children – except for one thing. They were scared. Not that they 
would fail a test, not that their teacher would call on them with a 
difficult question, not that they would lose a schoolyard game. These 
children were scared that adults would physically try to attack them.

They were right.

It was a bright morning. There were two girls and three boys, and they 
ranged in age from 6 years old to 11. Chris, 39, and Kim, 44, were there to 
protect them. The children were Palestinian.

Children in a small village outside of Hebron, Tuba, attend school in the 
neighboring village of Tuwani. The problem is, Israeli settlements lie 
between Tuwani and Tuba. The route around these settlements is over 6 miles 
– too long for small children to trek twice a day. There is an alternative 
route between settlements that reduces the journey to a little over a mile. 
Villagers asked <http://www.cpt.org/hebron/hebron.php>CPT (Christian 
Peacemaker Team) to accompany the children on this shorter route.

Then he saw why.

8bdee2.gif

San Franciscan Chris Brown was beaten by Israeli settlers with a bat and 
chains and his head smashed with a rock simply for walking Palestinian 
children to school.

“I saw men with black masks on, dressed all in black, wielding chains, one 
carrying a bat, most of them wearing black.” As the five men rushed at 
them, Chris called out, “Please don’t hurt the children, please don’t hurt 
the children.”

The men smashed a rock to his head, knocking him to the ground, and began 
beating and kicking him with steel-toed boots. The attackers tried, 
unsuccessfully, to break his left wrist and dislocate his shoulder.

“I said, ‘Why are you doing this? All we’re doing is walking children to 
school – we’re nonviolent,” Chris told them. “We’re Americans.” An attacker 
laughed, and Chris heard a man say, in a heavy Israeli accent, “They’re 
Americans.”

Kim, meanwhile, lay face down, not moving as the men kicked and beat her. 
She says much of the attack is a blur – “It’s almost like for a moment you 
leave reality ... I just remember thinking, ‘If I just lie here like I’m 
unconscious, maybe they’ll leave me alone.’”

Finally, the men sauntered away, stealing Kim’s waist-pack containing her 
money, passport and cell phone. Unable to walk, she crawled over to Chris, 
who still had his phone and was able to call for help.

Upon receiving Chris’s call, two CPT members rushed over immediately, 
despite fear that the attackers might still be nearby. They called for an 
ambulance on the way, and arrived to find Chris and Kim bleeding and in 
enormous pain.

Twenty-five minutes later, Israeli officials, who, according to 
international law, are responsible for the safety of all civilians under 
their occupation, finally arrived, having taken half an hour to cover the 
10-minute distance. The officials took statements, provided an ambulance to 
transport Chris and Kim to an Israeli hospital, but made no effort to find 
their assailants.

At the hospital, Kim was found to have a broken arm, a severely injured 
knee, and bruises across her head and body. It is still difficult for her 
to move. Chris has a punctured lung and broken ribs and is similarly 
covered with cuts and body-wide contusions. He is still in the hospital. 
The children, who were able to flee immediately, are largely unhurt, 
physically.

Who committed this vicious assault? Why? What kind of people try to prevent 
small children from going to school?

It is unlikely that non-Israeli Americans will ever learn the names of the 
attackers, since Israel rarely shares this kind of information with its 
“ally.” We do know, however, the type of people who attacked Chris, Kim and 
the children. And we do know why.

<http://www.ifamericansknew.org/images/way-to-school.gif>
8bdf4f.gif

To get to their school in Hebron, children must pass Israeli soldiers.
Source: <http://www.cpt.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=hebron>CPT

To answer this, it’s necessary to first take a lightning trip through 
Israel’s strange history. The nation of Israel was created only a little 
over 50 years ago, and its purpose was to be “Jewish state.” While people 
throughout the world were profoundly sympathetic to this goal, there was 
one major problem: two-thirds of the inhabitants were Palestinian 
Christians and Muslims.

As a result, Israel’s creation entailed the forcible expulsion of over 
750,000 Palestinians. Many of these people ended up in the West Bank and Gaza.

In 1967, the situation worsened, when Israel expanded its borders in the 
Six-Day War, capturing the West Bank and Gaza. Immediately, the Israeli 
government began confiscating Palestinian land in these newly occupied 
areas to build Jewish-only settlements.

As might be expected, such actions are illegal – both because a government 
cannot just take other people’s land, and also because the acquisition of 
territory by conquest has been deemed illegal by the international 
community. The United States cannot decide – simply because we have the 
military might – to kick Canadian farmers off rich farmland and give the 
farmers’ land to Americans – and then say that this is American land for 
all eternity. Yet, this is what Israel is doing to Palestinians.

Many Israelis oppose these settlements, considering them illegal, immoral 
and bad for Israel. Many of those who go to live in them are economically 
disadvantaged Israelis simply availing themselves of subsidized homes.

A significant portion of these settlers, however, are a far different 
story, and these are the settlers that the villagers around Hebron, in 
particular, are facing. This group is made up of religious fanatics who 
believe that only Jews have the right to live in “Eretz Israel.” They move 
onto Palestinian land, they say openly, to “redeem” it and to “cleanse” it 
of Christians and Muslims. These settlers are notorious in Israel for their 
extremism, violence and deeply racist religious beliefs.

For Palestinians around Hebron, it is like living next to KKK members who 
can kill you with impunity. Murders of Palestinians are rarely prosecuted, 
and when they are, little results. For example, three years ago, when a 
settler was found guilty of killing an 14-year-old boy by breaking his 
neck, the punishment meted out was a fine and six months community service.

“It’s just like South Africa,” Chris Brown says, “only worse.” South 
Africa, many point out, didn’t use F-16s against its Bantustans.

Brown should know, having spent the first eight years of his life under 
South African apartheid, and then returning to fight apartheid as an adult, 
being imprisoned, largely in solitary confinement, for a year and a half.

8bdfad.gif

21-year-old Tom Hurndall spent 9 months in a coma before dying from gunshot 
wounds to his head. He was shot by an Israeli soldier when he tried to 
bring Palestinian children to safety.

Brown went to Palestine to oppose such a system and to reduce the violence 
costing so many lives – both Israeli and Palestinian. From the very 
beginning of the current uprising, Palestinians called for an international 
presence that would reduce the violence. While the U.S. government, at 
Israel’s behest, blocked United Nations efforts to provide this, nonviolent 
activists from around the world, including Israel, have tried to fill this 
need.

Long before the attack on him, Brown knew what he was getting into. Israeli 
forces and settlers are not gentle in their treatment of peace activists. 
In June 2001, Israeli peace activist Neta Golan joined Palestinian 
villagers in a nonviolent march. An Israeli soldier twisted her arm until 
it snapped. In March 2003, Rachel Corrie, 23, participated in a tiny sit-in 
to prevent a Palestinian home from being demolished. An Israeli military 
bulldozer two stories high crushed her to death. Two weeks later, Tom 
Hurndall, 21, tried to help Palestinian children away from Israeli gunfire. 
An Israeli sniper shot him in the head.

Yet the need for the world to do something has continued to grow. While 
Americans are well informed about the tragic deaths of Israeli children, 
very few realize that approximately six times more Palestinian children 
have been killed, and that their deaths occurred first.

For three and a half months, Palestinian children were being killed – often 
by gunfire to the head – and the world’s governments did nothing. If this 
had been stopped, it is quite likely that not a single Israeli child would 
have died.

While Chris’s knowledge of this situation compelled him to do something 
about it, most Americans have little awareness of these facts, because so 
little of all this is reported in the American media.

The attack on Chris, Kim and the children is a case in point. While the 
BBC, Agence France Presse, Israeli newspapers and a wide variety of other 
international media reported this attack on American citizens immediately, 
the Associated Press, inexplicably, sent out no report on it for a day and 
a half – and this only after numerous people had called complaining.

A six-month study of the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of children’s 
deaths reveals a similar pattern of omission. Analysis of their headline 
stories found that the paper had reported prominently on Israeli children’s 
deaths at a rate 30 times greater than Palestinian ones. While 150 percent 
of Israeli children’s deaths had resulted in headline coverage – some 
deaths generated multiple stories – only 5 percent of Palestinian 
children’s deaths received parallel coverage.

Chris feels that Americans have an intimate connection to this carnage, 
because it is American tax money to Israel that is fueling the violence. 
While most Americans are unaware of this connection – again, studies show 
that news media rarely report it – the fact is that U.S. taxpayers give 
Israel over $10 million per day, far more than to any other nation on 
earth. This is more money than that allotted to all of Sub-Saharan Africa. 
Israel’s population is approximately the size of the greater Bay Area.

Meanwhile, Chris Brown recovers in a hospital bed in Israel. Numerous 
Israeli friends come to visit, outraged at the actions of their government, 
and grieving with him at the escalating violence. His Palestinian friends 
are not allowed into the area, but they send their support, prayers and 
thanks. And wait for the next assault.

8be00b.gif

Israel invaded Gaza this week, killing over 80 Palestinians, many of them 
children.

In Gaza in the past week, there has been massive carnage. Dozens of 
Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, hundreds injured. By 
the time this piece is printed, it is possible some innocent Israeli lives 
will be lost as well. Over 140 Palestinians were killed before the first 
suicide bombing; now the violence seesaws back and forth, with the 
Palestinian death rate approximately three times greater than the Israelis. 
All these deaths, Chris feels, are tragic.

Americans, Chris points out, have a responsibility to work to bring this to 
a stop. He asks people back in San Francisco to “put pressure on 
(Congresswoman) Nancy Pelosi, (Sen.) Barbara Boxer and (Sen.) Dianne 
Feinstein to demand that Israel remove the settlements.” He points out that 
all three have “a notorious record of always voting for everything that 
Israel wants. This is unacceptable.” All three receive massive pro-Israel 
PAC funding. Chris believes that enabling the Israeli government to 
continue actions that result in escalating violence, “is not being a friend 
to Israel.”

Regarding the attack, Brown says that he wants “to hear statements from the 
floor of the House and the Senate that this kind of thuggery is not 
accepted in any democratic society.”

“The settlement that the attackers came from, Ma’on, isn’t even supposed to 
be there,” Chris points out. “It was supposed to be dismantled,” according 
to a plan presented to the U.S. months ago.

Chris says that as soon as he’s recovered, he’ll return to Hebron, to 
escort Palestinian children to school. He hopes to be back on the job by 
the end of the month. Asked whether he worries that next time he may be 
killed, he thinks it over and then replies: “Yeah, probably one day they’ll 
succeed, if I keep going on the path that I will go.” He explains that he’s 
“not looking for martyrdom” and insists that he’ll take “as many 
precautions as possible” while he’s in Palestine, but finally concludes, 
“If I have to die to see this country free, I’ll do it ...

“I like to quote Archbishop Oscar Romero,” Chris says: “‘If I die, my 
spirit will rise up in the lives of the other people, and they’ll keep 
going on.’”


School journey blocked

Hebron, West Bank – Monday morning members of the Christian Peacemaker Team 
again escorted children from Tuba to their school in Tuwani in the South 
Hebron hills. They attempted to follow the same path, past the Ma’on 
settlement, as Chris Brown and Kim Lamberty had taken when they were 
attacked and badly injured last Wednesday, Sept. 29.

Despite a military permit confirming the children’s right to pass, the army 
and the settler security police blocked their path, declaring it to be a 
Closed Military Zone. After long negotiations, the Israeli police finally 
allowed the children to pass with a police escort but without their CPT 
accompaniers.

On their journey home, the children, with their CPT escort, were forced to 
take a 10-km detour along ill-defined sheep tracks.

The actions of the military have made it clear that they are responding 
more to the wishes of the settlers than to the needs of the school 
children. Indeed the lieutenant in command said outright, “Ten km is not a 
long way to school. I went further than that. They can take a tractor like 
everyone else. These people are used to it.”
_______________________________________________



The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8bde65.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 27045 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8bdee2.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 23279 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment-0001.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8bdf4f.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 160122 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8bdfad.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 84878 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment-0003.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8be00b.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 33262 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20041011/b66a0498/attachment-0004.gif>