Israel opens dam to flood Palestinians out of their homes...

yosi

Byrnzie wrote:

yosi wrote:

How about you try responding to why he says the report is biased and unfair?

o.k.

'...the next issue that Israel will have to deal with is the use of what the report calls “human shields,” which seems to have been an Israeli practice on some occasions...This is a troubling testimony. Was this done, or not? If it was done, then it is in violation of Israel’s own Supreme Court ruling on the matter of human shields.

Other testimonies pertain to the destruction of civilian property...of the total number of homes that were destroyed in two of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, about half were destroyed in the last three days of the operation. If so, then such destruction cannot be justified as in the heat of the battle. It was done to leave a brutal scar as proof of the Israeli presence, as immoral and illegal instruments of deterrence. If this were the case, then reparations should be made to the families whose homes were destroyed.

Next in order of severity comes the bombing of civilian infrastructure...Israel should now provide its version of these events. If indeed these facilities were attacked as part of a premeditated policy, then this was wrong, and Israel should say so.

The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair...

It is important...that Israel respond to the U.N. report by clarifying the principles that it operated upon in Gaza, thus exposing the limits and the prejudices of the report. A mere denunciation of the report will not suffice. Israel must establish an independent investigation into the concrete allegations that the report makes. By clearing up these issues, by refuting what can be refuted, and by admitting wrongs when wrongs were done, Israel can establish the legitimacy of its self-defense in the next round, as well as honestly deal with its own failures."

You see, the thing is, this article that you've been trumpeting for the past two days is a pretty innocuous affair. It just contains a bunch of 'If's' and 'Maybes'.
It merely asks exactly what the Goldstone report itself asks for: that Israel investigate all of the charges laid against it based on all of the evidence made available to the investigating parties. The fact that the author of the article wishes to uncover limits and prejudices in the report which may or may not exist is irrelevant. It's also irrelevant that he claims Israel acted in self-defense, which as we know, it didn't. The attack on Gaza was planned 6 months before Israel broke the ceasefire on November 5th 2008.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about. This is not a response. You haven't actually addressed any of the issues. He uses all those "ifs" and "maybes" because we don't really know whether these things happened. Palestinians have claimed that they happened, but the report never got the other side of the story. And he is entirely right that there should be an Israeli investigation and there should be serious consequences if any of these things are found to have actually occurred. As for the "limits and prejudices" of the report they are entirely relevant, as is the claim that Israel was acting in self defense. Saying that something is irrelevant is not an argument. It is the farthest thing from an argument. Either address the issues being raised, or simply admit that you either can't or won't.

yosi

Byrnzie wrote:

yosi wrote:

And as for those soldiers testimonies, if they are true then their commanding officers should be investigated, but this does not constitute an indictment of the IDF as a whole. And again, you are evading the issue by changing the subject, based on a response to one line from the article taken entirely out of context. How about you try responding to why he says the report is biased and unfair?

The subject was whether the IDF deliberately targets civilians. I provided evidence that It does, from the mouths of IDF soldiers themselves.

So how did I evade the issue and change the subject?

The issue was whether the report was biased and unfair. You did not address that issue. And you provided evidence that certain commanding officers may have given illegal orders. You then assumed that those orders must have represented IDF policy as a whole, which is a leap you make without evidence to support it.

yosi

redrock wrote:

yosi wrote:

...how can you be so adamant in your condemnation of ONLY Israel? .

I don't see Palestinians occupying Israeli land, building illegal settlements on Israeli soil, bulldozing their homes, denying them water, food, shelter, medicines and oppressing them (or, as the title of this thread says - opening dams to flood israeli homes). Therefore, yes - I only condemn Israel for the above.

This is exactly what I'm saying, there is more to this conflict than the occupation, and you can't honestly look at one aspect without looking at the other. Arab wars against Israel, terrorism, boycotts that go back well before the occupation, Islamic fundamentalism. You are choosing to look at one aspect of the conflict entirely out of the context in which it actually exists.

Pepe Silvia

yosi wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

yosi wrote:

And as for those soldiers testimonies, if they are true then their commanding officers should be investigated, but this does not constitute an indictment of the IDF as a whole. And again, you are evading the issue by changing the subject, based on a response to one line from the article taken entirely out of context. How about you try responding to why he says the report is biased and unfair?

The subject was whether the IDF deliberately targets civilians. I provided evidence that It does, from the mouths of IDF soldiers themselves.

So how did I evade the issue and change the subject?

The issue was whether the report was biased and unfair. You did not address that issue. And you provided evidence that certain commanding officers may have given illegal orders. You then assumed that those orders must have represented IDF policy as a whole, which is a leap you make without evidence to support it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ma ... ory-byline

An IDF squad leader is quoted in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz as saying his soldiers interpreted the rules to mean "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

yosi

If true then there is a serious problem with that squad leader and his interpretation of the rules. This does not prove that the IDF, as a matter of policy, told its soldiers to go into Gaza and kill as many people as they could.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

The issue was whether the report was biased and unfair. You did not address that issue. And you provided evidence that certain commanding officers may have given illegal orders. You then assumed that those orders must have represented IDF policy as a whole, which is a leap you make without evidence to support it.

The evidence to support it lies with the 1000 bodies of the civilians slaughtered by the IDF. The evidence also lies with the findings of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians For Human Rights, and the the U.N, who's findings all corroborate one another.
The fact that the Israeli's declined to assist in any investigation is not sufficient to say that the Israelis are innocent and that the report is unfair and biased.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/democr ... ne-report/

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, the report is the last in a large number of reports that have been issued on the Gaza massacre. There were two significant reports issued by Amnesty International, five reports issued by Human Rights Watch, and a whole slew of Israeli-based human rights organizations have issued reports. But this was the most awaited report of all of them. It was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council. And Richard Goldstone, as you mentioned in your own introductory remarks, is a significant international figure, legal figure.

So the report basically is consistent with the findings of the other human rights organizations, that Israel targeted civilians, Israel targeted civilians who were carrying white flags, Israel systematically targeted the Palestinian infrastructure. The findings were consistent with those of the other human rights organizations: Israel is guilty of a very significant number of war crimes. And also, the findings which were—other reports, the same conclusions, that the Palestinians were not using hospitals to hide Hamas officials. There’s no evidence that the ambulances Israel targeted were carrying Hamas militants or ammunition. And most significantly, in terms of the coverage during the Gaza massacre, the report found, as did Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there’s no evidence whatsoever—and I would want to underline that—there’s no evidence whatsoever that Hamas was guilty of human shielding. But on the other hand, there is significant evidence, actually copious evidence, that Israel was guilty of human shielding...


Richard Goldstone is a very respected jurist, and he also has a long record of being very supportive of Israel. If I’m not mistaken, he sits on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem board of directors.

Now, when the UN Human Rights Council asked Goldstone to chair the mission, originally his mandate was just to investigate Israeli crimes. He himself said he couldn’t fulfill that mandate, unless it was modified and included crimes on all sides. The Human Rights Council said, “Fine. We’ll modify the mandate, and we’ll accept your terms.” At that point, Richard Goldstone accepted to head the mission.

So you have to ask yourself the question: if what the gentleman said were true, why did Goldstone accept? If it were so biased, he always had the option of saying no. Why would a well-known supporter of Israel have accepted that mandate if it were biased against Israel?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think, Norman Finkelstein, are the limitations of the report?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The main limitation of the report is it’s all cast in the language of violations of the laws of war. And the fundamental fact about what happened in Gaza is it wasn’t a war. There was no war in Gaza. That’s the main misunderstanding about what happened there. In fact, one of Israel’s leading strategic analysts, he said—after what happened in Gaza, he said the one mistake Israelis are making is that there was a war there. He said there was no war. There were no battles in Gaza.

The picture is fairly clear. Israel flew about 3,000 sorties over Gaza. Every plane came back. None was damaged. None was downed. There was no fighting in Gaza. If you read the reports that were issued by the—the testimonies of the Israeli soldiers, the one consistent theme in all of the testimonies was they never met any Hamas militants, they never engaged in any battles. Some of the Israeli soldiers expressed exasperation: “We came here to fight. We’re not fighting anyone.” There was no—there were no battles. There were no Hamas militants in the field. The basic fact was, as a couple of Israeli soldiers said—one of them said, “This was like PlayStation, a computer game.” Another Israeli soldier said, literally—I’m quoting exactly, almost word for word—he said, “It was like a child with a magnifying glass burning ants.” That’s what Gaza was like.

One soldier after another, literally—I wish listeners would just bring up the report. It’s called “Breaking the Silence.” And then, under—enter under the search mechanism, just enter the word “insane.” One soldier after another after another after another said Israel used insane amounts of firepower. Insane amounts of firepower. There were no soldiers, no battles, but they’re using insane amounts of firepower. One soldier said—two soldiers, actually, talked about how the ground was trembling because of all the bombing and all of the missiles and all of the rockets. Another said that “We were told—even though we were firing in the distance, we were told to evacuate the houses we were in, because the shaking from the distance was going to cause the house to collapse over our heads.”

It was a massacre in Gaza. And you don’t really see that, because they’re measuring everything against what they call the laws of war. But you’re applying laws of war to a massacre. There was no war there...'

TriumphantAngel

Byrnzie wrote:

rebornFixer wrote:

Rachel Corrie chose to stand in front of a moving bulldozer, presumably to make her point. However valid her point was, there was probably a better way to make it. Sorry, but that's not the same thing as Israel bombing Lebanese or Palestinian civilians, who do not have a choice in the matter (unless maybe they choose to shelter militants). It may sound pretty crass, but I'll say it anyhow: If there is a heaven for principled but unintelligent activists, Rachel Corrie is there.

Actually, she stood in front of a bulldozer in order to try and prevent a families home from being destroyed illegally by an illegal occupying army. She was wearing a bright orange jacket and was clearly visible to the driver of the U.S supplied Caterpillar bulldozer. I don't see anything unintelligent about her actions. Do you also think that Tom Hurndall was a moron for trying to save the lives of some Palestinian children under Israeli gunfire? He was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli sniper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hurndall
'His father told a British inquest that, according to ISM and Palestinian witnesses, Hurndall had seen a group of children playing and had noticed that bullets were hitt'ng the ground between them. Several children had run away but some were "paralysed with fear"[6] and Hurndall went to help them. Hurndall's father told the inquest: “Tom went to take one girl out of the line of fire, which he did successfully, but when he went back, as he knelt down [to collect another], he was shot.”[2]'


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/ja ... ment/print

What price a life?

Jocelyn Hurndall - The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2004

The Israeli army shot my son, and the toll continues to rise




In the pensive hours of the night, I am struck by the varying values that mankind chooses to allot to life - as was my son Tom.

Earlier this month, I read with mixed feelings the news that local Palestinian militia had dynamited an Israeli defence force watchtower in the town of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. It was from this watchtower, which has been responsible for untold misery to many innocent families in Rafah, that Tom was shot in the head last April. At the time he was trying to help Palestinian children to safety. He now lies in a vegetative state in a hospital in London with no hope of recovery.

This week we learned that the Israeli soldier who has been arrested for the shooting is alleged to have smoked cannabis with his battalion. As last year was drawing to a close, a phone call from the British Foreign Office informed me that, under interrogation, this soldier has confessed to shooting my son, knowing he was an unarmed civilian. He claimed that the shot was meant as a "deterrent". From what? From rescuing children? Had he been so conditioned that an act of humanity could only inspire in him such a violent reaction?

I felt no sense of relief then but, for the first time, allowed myself to feel increasing anger. The IDF's inability to differentiate between friend and foe, truth and untruth, and to see themselves as they are seen, is clear to all.

I read the observations recorded in Tom's Middle-East journals. They show a young man determined to be open-minded, to understand and, above all, to make a difference. He had come to understand, as we do now, the customary illegal, inhuman retribution exacted by the IDF from this particular watchtower on the local community, little realising how it was to leave him a thread away from death.

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. This has been exemplified recently by the reaction of the Israeli public to the shooting of an Israeli peace activist, fresh out of his three-year military police service, demonstrating against the illegal "security" fence. Two days later an announcement was made that a military police inquiry was to be held into the shooting. Questions were raised in the Knesset. This is in stark contrast to the six months of campaigning that it took for an inquiry to be launched into the shooting of Tom.

There have been thousands of killings in Palestine since the intifada, with only a handful having the benefit of an investigation. Now, a three-week occupation of Nablus (the largest city in Palestine) has left a further 19 people dead and dozens of homes and buildings destroyed, leaving scores of innocent people homeless, all on a pretext of searching for a terror suspect.

When will those responsible accept that it is illegal to collectively and obsessively punish a whole community? Has the hard-nosed Sharon government made connections between the horror of the Holocaust and the current brutal incursions? Countless insightful Israelis, Palestinians and people the world over have done so. Is it surprising that Israel was voted the most dangerous threat to world peace in a recent European Union poll?

It hurts me to hear the deafening silence of our own government. How can there have been no statement of condemnation or condolence for the innocent victims of Israel's mindless violence from our own prime minister, Tony Blair? The silence was only broken when on Christmas day the United States president "strongly condemned" the actions of the suicide bombers responsible for killing four Israeli soldiers at a bus stop just outside Tel Aviv. Does this double standard not underline the lack of regard in which both the British and US governments hold Palestinian life?

So I have questions to ask of Tony Blair. Does he regard the children of Palestine as children of a lesser god? Does he accept that such inaction is tantamount to complicity in the process of destroying any peace initiative in the Middle East? Mr Blair, you know now that an Israeli soldier has confessed to shooting in cold blood an unarmed British citizen who was trying to shepherd children away to safety. When will you be ready to openly condemn these actions?

· Jocelyn Hurndall is on the committee of the Thomas Hurndall Foundation, which campaigns for justice for the Palestinian people

The shooting of Thomas Hurndall.
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=BD47AB4H

rebornFixer

As I stated before, if Thomas Hurndall died trying to save kids, he's a hero.

TriumphantAngel

he's a hero alright. unfortunately a dead one :(

try to watch the movie if you get a chance. it goes for about 90 minutes.

yosi

First, I can't believe this thread is still going.

Second, I see that Byrnzie still hasn't actually addressed the issue raised, which is how a report based entirely on the testimony of Palestinians, without any testimony taken from Israelis, can possibly be thought to be fair and unbiased? Even if Goldstone himself didn't bring a bias to his work (an issue which I don't think any of us could possibly address intelligently) the Palestinians who gave their testimony certainly did, and given that the report reflects only their testimony it is virtually by definition biased. This is not to say that the report could not also be true in part or in whole, only that it cannot be assumed to be so since the report is inherantly flawed, and therefore untrustworthy as an objective source. The report is analogous to a trial where only the prosecution is given a chance to present evidence. Clearly, no trial in which the defense was not given an opportunity to make its case would be considered a "fair" trial, even if every word spoken by the prosecution were entirely true, which it is not at all clear is even the case here.

yosi

Also, I just came across this in Michael Totten's reporting (he is an independent journalist covering the Middle East):

Those who believe peace in the Middle East may be just around the corner need to think long and hard about this.

Palestinian journalists who last week met with their Israeli colleagues and an IDF spokesman in Tel Aviv have come under fire from both Hamas and Fatah.

The trip was arranged by the non-profit Israel advocacy group The Israel Project, whose Web site described the group as “an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace.”

The journalists met with Maj. Avichai Edri, head of the Arabic-language branch of the IDF Spokesman’s Office.

Three of the journalists -- Lana Shaheen, Mueen al-Hilu and Abdel Salam Abu Askar -- are from the Gaza Strip, while another two are from the West Bank.

They now face expulsion from the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Journalists Syndicate on charges of promoting normalization with Israel.

[…]

One of the groups, the Democratic Press Association, called on the journalists to “repent” and publicly apologize for visiting the “Zionist entity and meeting with Zionist reporters.”

TriumphantAngel

yosi wrote:

First, I can't believe this thread is still going.

i don't care whether you can believe this thread is still going or not. i'm more than aware that it won't suit your zionist apologist agenda.

i bumped the thread today to post a link to the movie ''the shooting of Thomas Hurndall". he was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement, and an unarmed activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On 11 April 2003, he was shot in the head in Gaza, by an IDF sniper while he tried to rescue 3 small Palestinian children from the gunfire. he was left in a coma and died nine months later.

rebornFixer

yosi wrote:

One of the groups, **the Democratic Press Association**, called on the journalists to “repent” and publicly apologize for visiting the “Zionist entity and meeting with Zionist reporters.”

This is as good an example of irony as I've seen in a while.

yosi

Triumphant, glad as always to see how eager you are for calm, reasoned, and civil discussion. We used to have something of a mutual respect as I recall, despite our disagreements. I'm not sure why you have suddenly decided that I'm the worst thing since Hitler's 'stach, but I'm sorry to see that you have apparantly become just another of the demagogues on this board unable to distinguish between the person and the idea, and unwilling to be respectful of either.

TriumphantAngel

yosi wrote:

Triumphant, glad as always to see how eager you are for calm, reasoned, and civil discussion. We used to have something of a mutual respect as I recall, despite our disagreements. I'm not sure why you have suddenly decided that I'm the worst thing since Hitler's 'stach, but I'm sorry to see that you have apparantly become just another of the demagogues on this board unable to distinguish between the person and the idea, and unwilling to be respectful of either.

i am always eager for calm. reasoned and civil discussion. that went out of the window when you made your sarcastic comment of ''firstly, i can't believe this thread is still going" after i bumped this thread.

and i have no respect for you. you've shown your true colors. i had respect for you when you initially convinced and pretended to me that you actually gave a shit about the Palestinians in the occupied territories. i've seen right through you, and you completely disgust me.

rebornFixer

TriumphantAngel wrote:

he's a hero alright. unfortunately a dead one :(

try to watch the movie if you get a chance. it goes for about 90 minutes.

I regret claiming that Rachel Corrie was "stupid" ... Poor choice of words and almost certainly inaccurate. I was trying to differentiate between standing in front of a (vacant) house and doing what this guy did, which is heroic by any definition. I get that Rachel Corrie was trying to make a political point, a largely valid one. I also don't claim to be totally up on all the details of what happened to her. The bulldozer driver swears he didn't see her, her supporters claim that she was deliberately murdered, and in the absence of a decisive trial and not being there myself I am content to say that I have no idea what the "real" truth is. Anyhow, I have no issue with someone expressing their views about Gaza and its too bad Rachel Corrie didn't live longer so that she could keep expressing her views. I have an issue with these anecdotes, though, because there's rarely much in the way of background or context provided. When I refer to him as a hero, I am basically assuming that Tom Hurndall was trying to save kids that snipers were deliberately targeting, correct? Because I grew up (fairly) safe and sound, it is difficult for me to go "OK, yeah ... Snipers shooting at kids .... Not just non-combatants, but kids. On purpose." Believing this kind of stuff does not come naturally to me, although I am not so naive as to pretend it never happens. Someone with field experience once told me that wealthy people used to fly over to the former Yugoslavia, and fucking PAY to shoot civilians, as some sort of perverse, disgusting thrill. Makes me nauseous just thinking about that conversation. I'd rather not believe that either.

yosi

I didn't mean for that comment to sound sarcastic, although in retrospect I guess I can see why you took it that way. I just meant that the thread is from so long ago that I had forgotten about it, and I was surprised to see that it was still being used.

As for caring about the Palestinians, whether you believe it or not, I care deeply. I won't pretend that my sympathies are not with Israel in this conflict, but I am certainly more than capable of criticizing Israeli policy when I feel it necessary. If I haven't often offered such criticism on this board it is only because I feel that if anything this board has a general tendency to be overly and irrationally critical of Israel.

In any event I think I am right in saying that I am one of the few people commenting on this board with a vested interest in this conflict, and seeing as how Israelis and Palestinians are inextricably linked I could not possibly wish violence on the one without realizing that it will come back to the other. Peace for Israelis requires peace for Palestinians, and so I hope that there will be peace for both.

As for you "seeing through me" and spying my "true colors," I'm not quite sure what you mean. I don't think I've ever hidden my politics. Everyone knows where I stand. Perhaps if you could be somewhat more specific...?

TriumphantAngel

rebornFixer wrote:

TriumphantAngel wrote:

he's a hero alright. unfortunately a dead one :(

try to watch the movie if you get a chance. it goes for about 90 minutes.

I have an issue with these anecdotes, though, because there's rarely much in the way of background or context provided. When I refer to him as a hero, I am basically assuming that Tom Hurndall was trying to save kids that snipers were deliberately targeting, correct?

correct.

i can honestly say that i've never felt more helpless and beaten down with regards to posting my thoughts than i do right now. it just never ever stops. i can't even post about someone who deserves to be recognized and remembered for the brave and selfless individual his was.

i already explained why i bumped the thread, which i shouldn't have had to do. i explained why i posted about Tom. i also attached my link to a post Byrnzie had previously done about Tom, rather than starting a new thread that explained what his story was and how he died.

if anyone wants to know anymore than what i've already posted, and if they care enough, they will watch the movie.

yosi

It's an interesting and tragic story. If the information about the children is correct then he would certainly seem to have been a courageous individual. I'm not sure that volunteering to be a human shield in the middle of a war zone (which I gather he did twice, in Iraq and then in Gaza) is the safest or most intelligent (at least in my opinion) way of advancing one's values, but it is certainly brave. I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but the soldier responsible for the shot that killed Mr. Hurndall was convicted of manslaughter along with a number of other crimes by an Israeli court, and is serving, I believe, an 11-year prison sentence in Israel. I also found the identity of the soldier responsible for the shooting to be of interest. The soldier, Idier Wahid Taysir Hayb, is a Bedouin, which is interesting (to me at least) insofar as it complicates the over-simplification of the conflict as being exclusively about "European" Israelis/Jews vs Arabs.

TriumphantAngel

Tom's sister talking about the devastating impact his death has had on her family and their campaign for the Palestinians,

When a young person dies, the instinctive reaction of those who love him is to dwell on his qualities, often to a point where the lost one becomes a hero. He was extraordinary, courageous, determined to make a difference, they say. All those words have been used about Tom Hurndall and, as his sister Sophie likes to point out with amusement and affection, they are a considerable part of the truth, but not all of it.

“Tom is like every brother, he winds you up at times and seems like the most amazing person in the world at other times,” she says. “There's that constant balance of loving someone so much and not wanting to leave those irritating parts out.

“I say bad things about him because it makes me feel closer to him. You know, the pizza boxes covered in mould on his bedroom floor. For me these are the things that make him who he was. He was human and normal and sometimes very annoying and that's what made him real. The amazing things he did made him who he was as well. I need to see both to keep hold of him. I think if you put him on a pedestal you'd lose him. It wouldn't be him any more.”

In April, 2003, Tom Hurndall, a 21-year-old photojournalism student, was shot in the head by an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) sniper as he tried to protect a group of Palestinian children in the Gaza strip. He died the following January without regaining consciousness. During those months and beyond the Hurndall family - dad Anthony, a solicitor, mum Jocelyn, a teacher, and Sophie, just out of university, (there are also two younger brothers, Billie and Freddie) - suspended their lives as they sought to discover how and why Tom had died, and in doing so they took on the IDF. Eventually the family's tenacious refusal to accept a cover-up forced the IDF to investigate and to acknowledge that Tom had been wearing the fluorescent jacket of a non-combatant and had not been caught in Palestinian crossfire. In 2004 Taysir Hayb, an IDF soldier, was convicted of Tom's manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison. Next week the Hurndalls' story will be the subject of a powerful Channel 4 drama-documentary, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. It has been made with the co-operation of his family and for Sophie, two years older than Tom, it is a way not only of pursuing his humanitarian agenda, but of feeling close to him.

We meet at her mother's home and sit in the patio garden Jocelyn created after Tom's death as a sanctuary for her family. Sophie is 29 now, outwardly cheerful and poised. As children she and Tom hurtled around together, climbing trees, exploring, exchanging the banter she regards as the sibling's way of being close without being cheesy. Tom would leave her lunchbox at the top of the highest tree (whether by design or absent-mindedness, she isn't sure) and claim that her toys were his, but at the North London family home he was her closest ally. Their parents' divorce six years before Tom was shot made them feel jointly protective of Freddie, who is 11 years Sophie's junior. She felt protective of Tom too, especially when, in 2003, he told her that he planned to go Baghdad to photograph the “human shields”. “I was angry, frustrated and afraid for him. I didn't want to come across as the typical big sister and say you can't go. It was hard. I tried to ask him a few questions to establish whether he knew what he was doing. I wanted to sow some doubt. It was things like, ‘Do you know what you would do if there were bombings around you? Do you know what you're getting yourself into?' He tried to laugh it off. It was bravado to make himself and me feel more at ease. There was some part of him that needed to put on a tough face for himself as well as for me to get through it.”

Sophie recognised that Tom was someone who wrote his own rulebook and that he was an idealist motivated by seeking truth. He had always intervened when he saw injustice, protecting bullied children at school, confronting a man mugging a child near his mother's home. He went to Iraq and later to the Palestinian terrortories, she believes, because he had become aware that abuse of civilians was being misreported. “I think that took a huge amount of courage. You almost delude yourself to get through and he was conscious he was doing that and writes in his diary about having to pretend things are OK just to do what you believe in.”

There were divisions in the family about whether to read his diaries; some have read bits, others haven't. “Through his diaries we know how he was making his decisions,” Sophie says. “In some ways his decision-making fills me with terror, but there's pride and admiration too. Also anger because I get pissed off with him sometimes.” She laughs. “Why the hell did you put us through this? But it wouldn't have been Tom to have done anything else.”

His death has changed her, of course. Initially she was angry about the IDF's dismissive response and threw herself into the family's campaign to seek accountability. “We did a lot of running around and trying to make a difference and being worthy in a crazy and intense way. It was like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the family. We rowed over things that didn't matter.

“It's taken a long time to get back to a point where we can be around each other and not be thinking ‘but Tom should be here too' - for that to be so painful that you don't want to look at your brothers because they remind you of him, or have a conversation with your mum who's going to talk about how much she misses him until you want to scream. I feel like after five years we're coming back together.”

Both Sophie and her mother have found catharsis by working for charities involved in the Middle East - Sophie, who once planned to be a psychotherapist, now works for Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map). Discovering that her brother is one of thousands of civilians killed by the Israelis in the occupied territories was shocking and salutary, she explains, and gives her job an emotional force she finds irresistible.

“That was almost more shocking than what happened to Tom and the loss and the grief and the pain and watching him dying and not being able to turn his life support machines off and fighting with the doctors over whether they could or couldn't. You can't use morphine, it has to be by the withdrawal of food and water, a hugely traumatic process. I can't put into words how awful that was. Not quite as bad was the number of Palestinian families that were coming to us saying this [Tom's shooting] is exactly what happened to my brother or my sister. That opened my eyes and I needed to do something to help to support Palestinian civilians who don't have any recourse to justice. What I find shocking is the consistency with which the IDF proactively covers up this kind of case.”

She cites the 13-year-old Palestinian girl shot on her way home from school, the woman refused help at a checkpoint as she was in labour (her baby died). She has often thought about how she would feel if she saw Taysir Hayb, whose actions have made her feel full-blown fury, she says. Almost as emotionally difficult is the prospect of visiting Gaza for her job - for the first time since Tom's death - next year. “I very much want to go and I'm terrified of going. Just to get through the checkpoint without shouting, punching, screaming is going to be very hard, knowing what Palestinians have to go through every day. I don't know how much strength it must take to get through that and not fight back.

“Tom has come to define my life. I still wear his ring. I'm terrified of losing it because I feel if I do I'll be losing the last thing of Tom. I've had several near misses. But I think working for Map and the film helps me to feel a bit like Tom's still alive.” She raises her voice in a question mark.

“I don't know that there's a feeling of obligation, but there is part of me that feels closer to Tom by following the path that he left for us. Once your eyes have been opened I don't think you can turn and go back.”