International Solidarity Movement

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For other uses, see Solidarity (disambiguation).

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 by Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian activist; Neta Golan, an Israeli activist; Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American; and George N. Rishmawi, a Palestinian activist. Adam Shapiro, an American, joined the movement shortly after its founding and is also often considered one of the founders.

The organization calls on civilians from around the world to participate in acts of non-violent protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank and previously the Gaza Strip. The group has attracted criticism as well as praise for its peaceful methods. It has recently been criticised for working alongside other groups to pressure Palestinian artists to boycott the One Voice Peace Summit and for helping to prevent the Summit from going forward by creating a competing event. ISM and affiliated groups critical of the Summit say that One Voice fails to fully support Palestinian rights guaranteed under international law.

1 Goals
2 Tactics
3 Noteworthy ISM events
4 Controversies regarding the ISM
5 Legal action against ISM-ers
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Goals

ISM calls the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land the main obstacle to peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group states four goals:

To report the conditions under which Palestinians live and to protect them from physical violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers in alliance with Palestinian peace activists and through "creative resistance" efforts.
To pressure international news media to provide coverage of "the illegality and brutality of the Occupation" in an effort to change public opinion regarding Israel's non-compliance with international law and U.S. foreign aid to Israel.
To recruit volunteers from other nations to participate in non-violent resistance to the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
To establish divestment campaigns in the U.S. and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel in the same manner that international sanctions were applied against South Africa during the Apartheid era.

[edit] Tactics

Past ISM campaigns have used the following tactics:

Acting to deter military operations. Some ISM volunteers object to the use of the term human shield to describe their work because, they argue, in a Palestinian context the expression more usually refers to forced use of captive Palestinians by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) when searching Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Accompanying Palestinians to minimize alleged harassment by Israeli settlers or soldiers, for example ensuring that queues at Israeli checkpoints are processed efficiently and providing witnesses and intermediaries during annual olive harvests, which they say are often disrupted by settlers.

Removing roadblocks. These are large unmanned mounds of earth and concrete on roads throughout the West Bank, and sometimes placed at the entrances of Palestinian villages by the IDF, thereby isolating those villages' inhabitants.

Attempting to block military vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers.

Violating Israeli curfew orders enforced on Palestinian areas in order to monitor Israeli military actions, deliver food and medicine to Palestinian homes, or escort medical personnel to help facilitate their work.

Interfering with the construction of the West Bank barrier and damaging the barrier.

Entering areas designated as "closed military zones" by the Israeli military. The latter is not really a 'strategy', but a prerequisite for ISM being able to conduct many of the above activities. Confronting and harassing Israeli soldiers is a constant activity of ISM volunteers.

[edit] Noteworthy ISM events

The ISM received extensive media coverage of its presence in Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
On April 2, 2002, Australian ISM volunteer Kate Edwards sustained severe internal injuries from rounds fired by Israeli forces during a protest in Beit Jala.^{[citation needed]} The incident was captured on film and appears in the documentary by Palestinian film-maker Leila Sansour, Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army.^[1]
On March 16, 2003, ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie was killed while trying to block an IDF armoured bulldozer engaged in demolishing a house. See below.
On April 5, 2003, ISM volunteer Brian Avery was shot in the face by machine gun fire from an IDF armoured personnel carrier while he was outside in the street escorting Palestinian medical personnel.
On April 11, 2003, ISM volunteer Thomas Hurndall was left clinically brain dead after he was shot in the head by an IDF soldier. Initially the soldier claimed the shooting occurred during an armed firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian soldiers. Later he admitted firing at an unarmed civilian as a "deterrent". Hurndall died on January 13, 2004.
ISM was nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Svend Robinson, a former New Democratic Party Member of the Parliament of Canada.^{[citation needed]}
Cofounder Ghassan Andoni was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions by the American Friends Service Committee.^[2]^[3]
On Aug. 8, 2006, ISM activist Adam Shapiro announced that a group of ISM activists was traveling to southern Lebanon to attempt to deliver aid and show solidarity with suffering residents. ^[4]
On September 6, 2007, ISM activist Akram Ibrahim Abu Sba’ was killed by members of Islamic Jihad in the north Palestinian city of Jenin.^[5]

[edit] Controversies regarding the ISM

[edit] Funding

According to the ISM's website, "International volunteers who join the ISM are responsible for paying their own way and covering all their expenses in Palestine. The ISM does not receive any funding from any state, government or association. We rely on donations from average people all over the world that support peace and the Palestinian struggle for freedom." [2] The ISM does regularly send out speakers on fundraising trips and encourages funding drives.

[edit] ISM's position on violence

The ISM's website describes the organization as a "non-violent movement". The website also says "As enshrined in international law and UN resolutions, we recognise the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle. However, we believe that nonviolence can be a powerful weapon in fighting oppression and we are committed to the principles of nonviolent resistance." This has led some to question the organisation's commitment to non-violence. For example an article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper asserts that ISM is "the 'peace' group that embraces violence".^[6] ISM disputes the accusations (see ISM links below).

According to a 2003 profile of ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro in the Jordan Star, Shapiro "justifies the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel as long as it is targeting Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Otherwise, he is not in favor of suicide bombings."

ISM co-founder George Rishmawi has argued that suicide bombing is a response to the suffering caused by the Israeli occupation:

You are mistaken my friend. I am sorry to tell you this but you are. Well, When did the suicide bombing start? When did the occupation of the west Bank and Gaza started? When did the aggression against the Palestinian started?

You need to know the source of the conflict and the source of the suffering that pushes people to kill themselves and others.

I do not want to see anybody killed but we need to say that taking people's rights and freedom is the source of the problem and when this stops there should be not need for anymore killing. This is what we should advocate for it right now.

Various sources attribute to ISM the statement that suicide bombing is "noble".^[7]^[8] This assertion appears to arise from an article entitled "Why Nonviolent Resistance is Important for the Palestinian Intifada", in which Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro state:

The Geneva Conventions accept that armed resistance is legitimate for an occupied people, and there is no doubt that this right cannot be denied. But that does not mean that this right must be utilized... Hamas claims it has many men ready to be suicide bombers – we advocate that these men offer themselves as martyrs by standing on a settler road and blocking it from traffic. This is no less of a jihad. This is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation...

The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement – in India militants attacked British outposts and interests while Gandhi conducted his campaign, while the Black Panther Movement and its earlier incarnations existed side-by-side with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Responding to Paula Zahn's question on CNN,^[9] "...some people could lead to the conclusion that you were promoting suicide bombing. Would they be wrong?", Shapiro and Arraf replied:

The article that we wrote was actually in response to another article written by a Palestinian, who said the Palestinians could not be nonviolent. And so we were addressing within the context of the debate over whether the Palestinians could use violence or could not use nonviolence or could use nonviolence. So it was, first of all, within that context...

There already is violence. We’re not advocating it. It’s already there. It’s on the ground. We’re working with people and with Palestinians who want to promote nonviolence, and that was the context of the whole article.

[edit] The ISM and the Mike's Place bombing

ISM was accused of being linked to the suicide bombers that attacked the Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003, killing three people.

There are two primary sources behind this accusation. The first is an article that appeared in a May 2, 2003 article in the British newspaper The Guardian under the heading "Bombers posed as peace activists".^[10] In a January 17, 2004 article in CNN's world edition,^[11] which included parts of an interview with ISM volunteer Raphael Cohen, Cohen stated that the two bombers were among a group of about 15 people who visited an International Solidarity Movement apartment in Rafah, Gaza, on April 25, 2003. According to Cohen, after spending about 15 minutes in the apartment with the bombers, he, his colleagues and the 15 visitors (including the bombers), went to the site where Rachel Corrie was killed and placed a flower there. Following this, Cohen stated, the people "that visited us [then] went their own way."

The second source is a press release issued by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs^[12] which states "The two terrorists were careful to establish their presence in Judea and Samaria by forging links with foreign left wing activists and members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)". The release makes various other negative claims about ISM, but this is the only reference to the group in relation to the Mike's Place bombing. However, ISM states that the two did not contact ISM in the West Bank at all and issued two press releases on the issue.

[edit] Tom Hurndall

After the fatal shooting of ISM volunteer Tom Hurndall by an IDF soldier, IDF sources initially claimed that "at the time of his injury, Tom Hurndall was armed, wearing tiger fatigues, and shooting at an Israeli Defense Force outpost, taking cover behind a nearby building between shots."^[13] This was considerably at odds with the ISM's account, in which Hurndall was unarmed, dressed in the bright orange jacket of the International Solidarity Movement, and steering two Palestinian children away from a firing Israeli tank-mounted machine gun.^[14] ^[15]

Subsequently IDF Sergeant Idier Wahid Taysir, a Bedouin scout, admitted to fabricating his account of events. On 10 May 2004, Taysir's trial commenced on one charge of manslaughter in the death of Tom Hurndall, two counts of obstruction of justice, one count each of submitting false testimony, obtaining false testimony, and unbecoming behaviour. Hurndall's family pressed for a murder charge through the Israeli courts.^[16]

ISM statement on the killing of Tom Hurndall

ISM Rafah Statement on the shooting of Tom Hurndall

In August 2005 Sgt. Taysir was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a total of 8 years imprisonment, 7 years for the manslaughter of Hurndall and 1 year for obstruction of justice.^[17]

[edit] Militant in the building

On March 27, 2003, Shadi Sukiya, who, according to Israel, was a senior Islamic Jihad member and participated in a number of thwarted armed attacks,^[18]^[19] was arrested in a building in Jenin where the ISM, the Red Cross, and Médecins Sans Frontières rent offices. See the Shadi Sukiya page for more details.

A poster giving his name as "ISM - TOOLS OF TERROR AND LEGITIMATE TARGETS" on the open-publishing Indymedia UK website states that ISM member Susan Barclay was deported from Israel for allegedly giving "safe house" assistance to Islamic Jihad militant Shadi Sukiya by hiding him in the ISM office in Jenin. ^[20]. It was subsequently pointed out that Susan Barclay was in the United States at the time of Sukiya's arrest. The Israel Defence Force and the Associated Press were later forced to issue retractions of earlier reports that firearms were found in the ISM apartment. A full account of this incident is given in an article on San Francisco Indymedia ^[21].

In an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Ms. Barclay "acknowledged that in organizing a non-violent February march on an Israel-imposed gate that divided eastern and western Nablus, she worked with civilian representatives from [Hamas and Islamic Jihad]", both of which were on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, although the former was democratically elected to govern Gaza some years later. ^[22]

[edit] Advice on how to enter the Gaza and the West Bank

Access to Gaza and the West Bank has been controlled by Israel, and it is Israeli policy to deny access to ISM activists. ISM volunteers can only gain access to the occupied territories by deceiving Israeli border officials. In 2003 Israel's Foreign Ministry’s Information Chief Gideon Meir pointed out precise instructions on the ISM website on how to hoodwink Israeli border officials. "… you have to have a really good story about why you are coming, and must not mention anything about ISM or knowing, liking or planning to visit Palestinians," the website advises. "You must play it as though your visit is for other Israel-based reasons, like tourism, religion, visiting an Israeli friend, etc. So do a little research and put together a story... For example, if you say you are visiting a friend in Jerusalem, you should have the name and phone number of a real Israeli person…" Until late January of 2005 the ISM website's FAQ section had as a response to the question "On your web-site, you give advice to volunteers on how to lie to the Israeli authorities so you can get into the country and the occupied areas. Why tell lies?" the justification that "Under both Israeli and International law, we should have the right, as international observers, to visit both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories." The explicit advice on how to lie to Israeli officials, and the justification for doing so, have since been removed from the website, though the group's Information Pack still advises activists to "have a good story prepared about why you are coming to ISRAEL" and to "have a good story when you arrive."

[edit] Rachel Corrie

Main article: Rachel Corrie

Controversy surrounds the circumstances of ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie's death. She was killed as she attempted to block an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer conducting military operations in Rafah in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003. An internal IDF investigation concluded that Corrie's death was an accident but ISM eyewitnesses vehemently dispute this account, contending that the bulldozer driver deliberately struck Corrie as she was protesting in plain view. The activities of the bulldozer she was blocking are also subject to disagreement - ISM claim it was preparing to demolish the home of a Palestinian pharmacist. Other accounts claimed the bulldozer was not near a house but was removing shrubbery covering an arms smuggling tunnel - according to an article in Mother Jones magazine,^[23] hotly disputed by the ISM, Israeli authorities claimed that the crew's assignment was to sweep the area for booby traps planted by militants. The IDF itself has never explicitly claimed that the house contained a tunnel and no tunnels or booby traps were found when the home was eventually demolished 9 months later or at any time prior to its demolition.

Shortly after Corrie's death, the ISM placed photographs on a website which it claimed showed the events leading up to Corrie's death. AP, Reuters, and many Internet discussion pages reported that the photographs showed two (perhaps three) different bulldozers and inconsistent pictures of the sun's movement across the skies. The ISM then changed the site to show a more consistent group of photographs. According to Mother Jones, this incident damaged the ISM's image and its relationship with the media.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] ISM and related statements about the death of Rachel Corrie

George Rishmawi of the ISM told the San Francisco Chronicle that "When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore. But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice."^[24]

ISM activist 'Joseph Smith' (actual name Joseph Carr), who was present when Corrie died, said, "The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. And many, many, many Palestinians give their lives for it all the time. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression."^[25]

[edit] Legal action against ISM-ers

Huwaida Arraf and French ISM activist Angela Coppin were charged with violating a court order barring them from the area of Bidou, near Jerusalem where the Israeli West Bank barrier was under construction. The two were arrested in April 2004 and ordered by the court at that time to distance themselves from the area of Bidou.