On rescuing Private Lynch and forgetting Rachel Corrie
Naomi Klein is in the Guardian today, with an intelligent and emotional piece of writing. Her subject today is the quickly forgotten deaths of peace protestors in the Gaza Strip.
I can understand Klein's emotion. She writes a great piece.
I am still recovering from watching a Dispatches report from Gaza on the same subject. 'The Killing Zone' was screened on Channel 4 last week. It was a gut wrenching documentary, and perhaps slightly biased in favour of the Palestinian cause.
But Sandra Jordan and producer Rodrigo Vasquez are to be praised for this documentary. They did indeed risk their lives. In some of the scenes they come close to being shot by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) snipers.
I have always stayed fairly quite on the Israel/Palestine problem. In many ways it always seemed so similar to problems in Northern Ireland, and to be frank, I grew being bored by Northern Ireland and its local in-fighting and politics.
This documentary managed to get me really thinking about the problems currently faces in the Occupied Territories. If only it was archived online.
Perhaps the most awful scene was that of Tom Hurndall. A student of photography he was visiting Gaza to take photos and join the protests. It shows the photos of him shot through the head by a high velocity bullet, wearing a bright red luminous jacket that all peace protestors wear - supposedly so they will not be fired on by the IDF.
Cut to the hospital, Tom is being kept alive barely, his head wrapped in bandages, the bullet passed through the lower back part of his head and went out the other side. He is all but dead - the Palestinian hospital is woefully ill-equipped to deal with him, and on camera, blood begins to pour through the bandages, and pour out of his nose.
It is perhaps one of the most powerful images I have seen on television in my life. It was just shocking - I was in shock. And he died trying to get three children to safety. Such a waste. Such a god damn waste.
11:47:27 PM 
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