Tribute To A U.S., Jewish Peace Activist

"It is very clear that we’ve lost our status as privileged internationals. We’re now just as likely to be shot as Palestinians. I think they’ve stopped differentiating between us," said Gordon, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of four ISM peace activists operating in Rafah.

Working For Peace

Despite the Israeli occupation army’s crackdown, Gordon carries on her work with fervor.

"Jews have a history of social action. It’s written into our religion and our culture," she said. "We are obligated when there is oppression and when there is pain to go to that place and to try to ease the pain. It’s called ‘tikun ha-olam’ (make the world a better place," she said.

Gordon hopes that the Israeli authorities "could understand that I feel that I’m working for peace. And there won’t be occupation and there won’t be suicide bombings. Equally."

"There are a lot of things that I won’t do anymore that I would have done two months ago.

"I would have stood in front of the bulldozers and the tanks much more and I would have walked around maybe later at night. Now we are taking much more of a community focus, much more of a media focus," Gordan told AFP at the ISM office in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Gordon came to Israel in December as part of an official program to help Jews from the Diaspora learn about the Jewish State and encourage them to settle in Israel.

Since then many people have told her she has "betrayed the program", Gordon said.

As part of the program Gordon initially visited a young Israeli who was seriously wounded in a Palestinian resistance operation — before she became interested in the pain experienced on the Palestinian side.

Now with her ISM comrades, Gordon’s job is to report on the Israeli army’s destruction of Palestinian homes, when they cannot simply prevent the demolitions from happening.

Set up two years ago in the region of Bethlehem, up to 20 percent of the movement’s members are Jews, according to one of the group’s founders, Ghassan Andoni.

Back then, the ISM boasted 100 members in the Palestinian territories but now it has shrunk to 20, he said.

Over the last two months, peace activists paid dearly with their lives for their pro-Palestinian praise-worthy support.

On March 17, peace activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old woman from Washington D.C., died when a military bulldozer ran over her in the town of Rafah.

On April 11, Thomas Hurndall, a 21-year-old British activist, was shot dead in the head by an Israeli soldier in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

U.S. Activist Expelled

In a related development, the Israeli interior ministry ordered Saturday, May 10, that a U.S. peace activist be expelled following her arrest the day before near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

"This American, Christiane Lonron is going to be expelled from Israel within a few hours," the spokesman said.

"This measure was taken because she was in a sector that had been declared a closed military zone and where she had no business.

"She is also accused of interfering with Israeli army operations."

An Australian peace activist arrested by the army at the same time as Lonron had been released, the spokesman said.

On Friday, Israeli occupation forces gate-crashed the main office of the ISM and arrested Lonron, another female peace activist and a Palestinian employee in addition to confiscating equipment and six computers.

On Saturday, Israeli troops also arrested two activists, claiming that "they had ignored an order forbidding Israelis and foreigners without a special authorization from entering autonomous Palestinian territories."

The spokesman, however, did not give their nationalities or say if they also risked expulsion.