Journeyman Pictures - Life and Death in Gaza: The Killing Zone (2003)

Speaker 1: Rachel Corrie, American, killed by an Israeli army bulldozer. Tom Herndl, British, shot through the head by an Israeli army sniper. James Miller, British, shot dead by the Israeli army. If foreigners are dying like this in Gaza, What's happening to the people who live there? Gaza, a city under siege from Israeli forces. We'd arrived on the eve of the war against Iraq. We wanted to know how armed Palestinian groups Like Hamas would react.

Speaker 2: We happened to be walking home late in the evening. As we walked down the road, suddenly we were surrounded by these guys on either side of us.

Speaker 1: But that wasn't to be the story of the next 40 days. In Gaza, Over 1 million Palestinians live under the gun, and most of the guns are Israeli. The danger we were in didn't come from the Palestinians.

Speaker 2: All day long, there's been extraordinary action in the sky. You could hear all of these planes going up and down, drones. You couldn't see most of them. They're flying too high. And now, suddenly, there's been a number of explosions. The planes are still overhead. You can hear them.

Speaker 1: The explosions were in a residential area. A precision missile from an Israeli helicopter had just assassinated Sa'ad al-Arabideh, a leader of the armed Palestinian group Hamas, together with 2 bodyguards. 10 minutes later, helicopters began to circle the crowd. An Israeli helicopter had fired 2 more missiles at the Hamas leader's car. Shrapnel had ripped through scores of bystanders. The Israeli Defense Force announced the elimination of 3 terrorists. No mention of civilian casualties. 10 years ago, Israel gave limited independence to the Palestinians of Gaza. Now, to combat the armed groups who are based here, Israel has turned Gaza into a battlefield.

Speaker 2: This is Mahmoud. He's 10 years old. He's got shrapnel in his eye, in his stomach, in his leg, in his foot, pieces of metal all over his body. He was playing on his bicycle outside his own house.

Speaker 1: 47 people had been wounded, many of them children. 4 more people lay dead in the hospital morgue. When I asked the Israeli Defense Force why they had fired rockets into the crowd, they told me they wouldn't comment on security matters.

Azmi Kashawi: Mohamed, he's from last night. He's 13 years old.

Speaker 2: This is Mohamed, another victim of last night's attack. He's got severe head injuries and shrapnel in his body. He's in the critical He's in a very dangerous situation, like all of the other people we filmed in here. He might make it. Then again, he might not. This is Hala, aged 15, another civilian casualty. Every time the Israelis use a missile to assassinate somebody here, it sends shrapnel flying everywhere. And this is what shrapnel does to the human body.

Speaker 1: Hala died shortly after we filmed these pictures. The next day, the dead were taken from the hospital. Ahmed al-Ashram was only 13. His mother and sister bade him farewell. Gunmen appeared, mourning the dead Hamas leader.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: But most of the crowd was there to The feeling here is that the West accepts this kind of action.

Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how much so-called collateral damage there is.

Speaker 1: Whichever side kills last says it is a response to the one before. In the grim calculus of this conflict, around 3 Palestinian civilians die for every Israeli killed. It's an equation that can't be solved.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

Speaker 1: In the south of Gaza, near the border with Egypt, is the district of Rafah.

Speaker 2: This is one of 4 towers that overlook Rafah. Israeli army watchposts. People have been shot from these towers without the Israelis ever coming into Rafah.

Speaker 1: The Israeli Defense Force say the soldiers in the towers target only gunmen. That may be true, but those bullets also kill civilians.

Azmi Kashawi: Hey, hey, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2: Where's it coming from?

Azmi Kashawi: Go, go down. Go down, go behind.

Speaker 2: Behind where? Where is it coming from?

Azmi Kashawi: It's coming from the towers behind the wall. And it's so fucking scary, because the bullets could bounce anywhere.

Speaker 2: We're being shot at by Israelis from a watchtower at the moment. The shooting was just coming down the street. The danger is, if a bullet ricochets, it can hit you. It seems to be coming straight down. As you can see, all the buildings here are completely pockmarked. This happens every single day down here.

Azmi Kashawi: But one of them bullets was very close by, very, very close by.

Speaker 2: These women are passing by, their children.

Speaker 1: They're used to it.

Speaker 2: They think it's quite normal for these bullets to come flying down this road, so they don't even seek cover.

Speaker 1: They should. Since September 2000, over 250 people have been killed in Rafah, a third aged under 18.

Speaker 2: We can see the army post over there, and they can certainly see us.

Azmi Kashawi: And that's the southern command headquarters of the Israeli army.

Speaker 1: Almost every day, Israeli troops leave their base to bulldoze Palestinian houses. They say it's to deny terrorists cover. But most of the houses belong to ordinary Palestinians. Thousands have lost their homes, some with only moments' notice. And there's no compensation. For 2 years, despite tear gas and bullets, a small group of British and American protesters from the International Solidarity Movement has tried to stop the bulldozers.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: I don't know.

Speaker 1: One of the protesters filmed these pictures.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Please stop shooting. And I wish that you may learn to love your neighbors and not— Thank you.

Speaker 1: 2 days before our visit, a protester had been killed. Rachel Corrie was the first American to be killed in Gaza.

Speaker 5: She was at eye level with the driver of the bulldozer. She was up— her head and upper torso were actually above the blade of the bulldozer, so he could very clearly see that she was there. Her in her orange fluorescent jacket that she was wearing. But instead of stopping at this point, he continued forward, which buried her legs and pulled her legs down. And as she got pulled down, she was pulled out of view of the bulldozer driver. And if he had stopped at this point, he may have only just broken her legs. But he continued forward anyway, until she was sucked all the way underneath the bulldozer.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Oh, my God!

Speaker 1: The Israeli Defense Force says the driver did not see her, that Rachel Corrie died because of her own irresponsible and illegal behavior.

Speaker 5: You can see the space underneath the bulldozer. It wasn't the treads that killed her. He did— she didn't get run over by the treads. It was only the blade. Either a really gross mistake or a really brutal murder.

Alice Coy: She was talking, and her lip was torn. But it was just like, oh, my god, she survived. And then she said, my back is broken. And I held her head. I'd taken my phone out to call an ambulance, but as soon as she said, my back is broken, I dropped my phone and just held onto her head to try and stabilize her spine. And it was just such a miracle. It was like, how did she survive? She looks a mess, but it doesn't matter. She's alive. She's talking.

Speaker 1: But not for long. Rachel died soon afterwards.

Alice Coy: I just had an— have an image of her as I last saw her, before she was engulfed, just scrabbling desperately, trying to free herself and trying to get out of the way of the bulldozer.

Speaker 1: That afternoon, Rachel Corrie's friends planned to hold a memorial service on the front line. If Rachel made a mistake, it was to believe she could protest in the same way she would have in America. But here there are different rules.

Speaker 2: The peace activists are going to lay flowers on the spot where Rachel was killed by the bulldozer a couple of days ago.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 2: This area is surrounded by Israeli checkpoints, so we're being watched by Israelis right now.

Speaker 1: I was about to learn my own lesson about the rules of life here.

Speaker 2: How do you feel about what Rachel did? He said he's glad that she defended the Palestinians.

Speaker 1: The shots came from an armored personnel carrier speeding towards the memorial service.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: We are trying to mourn the death of our friend, that one of your friends murdered. We mourn.

Speaker 1: When some of the protesters stood their ground, the armored personnel carrier teargassed them and then fired over their heads.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Get down! Get down! Get down!

Speaker 1: Rachel Corrie's memorial service came to an abrupt end. Later, I returned to the house that overlooks the place where Rachel Corrie died. She used to sleep here to help protect it. It's owned by a pharmacist, Dr. Samir Nasrallah.

Speaker 2: This house is really the front line. This is the last house left standing in what was a neighborhood. And now this is just one lonely house on the frontier, on its own.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Walk with me, OK?

Speaker 1: His front door opens onto what the Israelis call the combat zone. They shoot first, then ask questions.

Speaker 2: So that's where Rachel was when she died.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Yeah. And the bulldozers start to coming to this—

Speaker 1: We heard the sound of something approaching. Dr. Samir sprinted for the house.

Speaker 2: We've had to cut that in fear. They've— a tank is now coming. We have to get inside, which may not be much safer.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: It's huge.

Speaker 9: هي واحدة بس الموجودة.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Wow.

Speaker 9: That noise?

Speaker 2: Is that a tank?

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: And aren't your children scared?

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Yeah.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Every day hearing gunshots. Every day.

Speaker 2: What's that banging?

Speaker 1: Azmi Kashawi, our local producer, is worried.

Speaker 2: I hope they're not demolishing this house.

Speaker 1: They stay because they've put their life savings in this house. They're still paying off the mortgage.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: I cannot sleep, you know. I smoke about 40 to 50 cigarettes, because during night, I'm thinking, wait, sound. I open, see near my house what happened. Prepare yourself like this. Open the door. Notice everything.

Speaker 2: And do you hear them outside all the time, like we've heard them driving around this evening?

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Do they come in the night?

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Yeah, of course. I don't know. Maybe I will die tomorrow. Maybe my daughter. My son. But I'm laughing in front of them.

Speaker 1: 3 hours later, it went quiet, and we crept outside.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Take care.

Speaker 1: We'd rented a flat in the center of Gaza's Rafah district. Every night we were there, the Israelis fired hundreds of bullets into the area. The Israeli Defense Force say they return fire when they're shot at.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Fire! Fire! Fire!

Speaker 1: But Israeli fire was overwhelming, relentless and hugely dangerous to civilians.

Speaker 2: After a whole night of shooting, everybody's waking up to just another normal day. But in Rafah, that's another day of war.

Speaker 1: You can die anywhere, at any time, in Gaza. One morning, we heard that the Israelis were making one of their regular raids into Palestinian territory. Asmi, our local producer, guided us to where we could see what was happening.

Speaker 2: We need some protection for the car. That's why we're parking it in here.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Yes, we do.

Speaker 1: Israeli troops go in to arrest militants. Civilians often get killed. Here we've got the tanks.

Speaker 2: This is what happens during an incursion. They seal off the roads. The people inside are trapped in there. There's no getting out. And for people like us who want to go in and find out what they're doing, it's impossible to get any closer than this. Even this is probably too close. The tanks are right in here now. There are kids down there. The kids are being teargassed right now. They've been throwing stones at the tanks. The tanks have been shooting towards the children, shooting down the street. It's lethal being here.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: I'm a mother.

Speaker 1: This time, no one was killed. There are several such raids every week. This is from the tanks. We went to a district called Nusurat that Israeli tanks had invaded in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2: These are fresh tank tracks. It's quite easy to see the route the Israeli army took, down that road and then down here.

Speaker 1: The military objective was to capture an important Palestinian fighter. It was successful, but 7 civilians died and 67 were wounded.

Speaker 2: When the fighting was going on, a 16-year-old boy came out here and stood there and looked down the street to see what was happening. A shell came flying down the street from one of the Israeli tanks through the boy's head, then through the wall there and there.

Speaker 1: I came back a few days later to talk to the boy's family. They were watching a video of him dancing at his sister's wedding. Omar had just got a job as a builder's apprentice.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: I'm so happy.

Speaker 1: In the last 2 and a half years, hospital records show hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed, thousands injured. I visited the family of 12-year-old Huda Darwish. She was sitting in her classroom when she was hit in the head by an Israeli bullet.

Speaker 2: This is Huda's school uniform, the one she was wearing the day she was shot. That's the headscarf she was wearing. Here are the bullet holes, and that's her blood.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Yes.

Speaker 2: And this is her jacket.

Speaker 9: Her jacket. There was wounds here. Her scalp wound.

Speaker 10: Yes.

Speaker 9: We collected her scalp wound. What is her guilty to be like this?

Speaker 2: What has she done?

Speaker 9: What she's done? She's in her class, in her desk. She's writing.

Dr. Samir Nasrallah: Why?

Speaker 9: Why this happened to her?

Speaker 1: I went with Amal Darwish, Huda's favorite aunt, to the hospital. The doctors had said Huda was waking from her 3-week coma.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Hi. Huda.

Azmi Kashawi: Hello.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Hi. Hello.

Speaker 1: To their joy, she recognized their voices. But to their despair, they realized the bullet had blinded her.

Speaker 9: في مرة وتطلع زقا. خفيف لا خفيف خفيف خفيف خفيف. إيش موجة؟ إيش موجة؟ إيش موجة؟ إيش موجة؟ خفيف.

Speaker 1: طيب لا يا ستة لا لا. Huda had wanted to be a schoolteacher.

Speaker 9: لا أنا عندك كست. لا لا لا أنا مش هكذا.

Speaker 1: أنا عندك هنا.

Speaker 2: هنا عندك كست.

Speaker 9: ما تبربيوتي. طب لما كتبتوا؟ كتبت. أنا لا يواجه. أه كتبنا؟ إيه؟ أجيب الشات كتبين؟ شاس كتبت هامور.

Speaker 2: she's worried about her homework.

Speaker 11: هامور.

Speaker 9: yeah. كمورز؟ مرة خد هاي الشبا.

Speaker 2: دايماً استفدت.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: نتفق.

Speaker 1: هذي المواز؟ أدهمنا جيب المواز؟ and then the reality of her shattered life suddenly seemed to dawn on her.

Speaker 9: ما جاي دايماً دايماً. طيب.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: دايماً. يا ماما.

Speaker 9: She said that, I want to die. I want to give up this pain. What did happen to me? Why did it happen to me?

Speaker 1: Huda's school is run by the United Nations. It's a big, open site, not easy to mistake. I went there to work out how a bullet could possibly have hit her at her desk.

Speaker 2: This is a school picture of Huda. Everyone says she was very beautiful.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Bomb?

Speaker 2: It's a bomb.

Speaker 1: In fact, an Israeli shell had exploded nearby.

Speaker 2: This is Huda's classroom. This is where she got shot a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1: They told me it happens a lot, but that doesn't dull the fear.

Speaker 2: These children are so traumatized. This girl is in a state of shock. This happens to the kids here all the time.

Speaker 1: I realize this school is always at risk. The bullet that struck Huda came from an Israeli position just 500 meters away. Gaza is completely surrounded and sealed off by the Israeli army. They say it's to keep suicide bombers out of We'd arranged to meet with a commander of the Israeli troops surrounding the Rafah district.

Colonel Pinky Soaret: The settlement, they shoot for—

Speaker 1: Colonel Pinky Soaret drove us towards his front line.

Colonel Pinky Soaret: Bring you back in one piece. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 1: We approached a desolate area of bunkers and watchtowers. We were forbidden from filming them in case we revealed their position.

Colonel Pinky Soaret: The border between the Israeli and Egyptian—

Speaker 9: Egypt.

Speaker 2: No sign for us here.

Speaker 1: We stopped in the colonel's command post. He said he wanted to show me what they were up against.

Speaker 2: So, this is the footage you were telling me about?

Speaker 1: Yes. On his laptop was night-vision footage of Palestinian fighters launching rockets towards his positions.

Speaker 5: This is a firing—

Speaker 1: Second one?

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Correct.

Speaker 1: The Israelis have a sophisticated surveillance system.

Speaker 2: And how do you film this?

Colonel Pinky Soaret: We have cameras in the tanks.

Speaker 2: So you have CCTV in your tanks. You film everything that they're doing?

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Yes.

Colonel Pinky Soaret: You see the weapon here? You see the kassab?

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: They put it on a kind of a stick.

Speaker 2: So how did you stop them?

Speaker 9: With a tank.

Saira Shah: With a tank.

Speaker 2: Did you kill them?

Colonel Pinky Soaret: I hope so.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: I think so.

Speaker 1: Down below, the Rafah district where we were living. To the colonel, it was a combat zone.

Colonel Pinky Soaret: I tried to Hit the terrorists, people that conduct terrorist activity on my troops on this area.

Speaker 1: Do you ever get it wrong?

Colonel Pinky Soaret: Excuse me?

Speaker 1: Do you ever get it wrong?

Colonel Pinky Soaret: Yes. Yes. There is stray bullets here, because it's a fighting zone. And sometimes there are people that get inside the range of the bullets when we are fighting against terrorists that work in this area. And this is a combat area. You don't have option not to do something when your people, when your troop is under risk in this area. And the fact that Palestinian use, or try to use, and use the civilian here as a human shield, it's something that I cannot understand. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: Back in Rafah, the protesters were still trying to stop the Israeli bulldozers.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: No! No! No! No! Stop! No!

Alice Coy: No!

Speaker 5: No!

Abdulrahman Abdullah: We do not want to be here. We know it sucks for you to be here, too. We know you don't want to be here. There are internationals in front of you! I'm 5 feet away from you, and I won't hurt you.

Speaker 1: A new arrival was Tom Herndle, a British 21-year-old student with dreams of being a Fleet Street photographer. As part of his university photography course, he was taking pictures of the protest. And doing some himself. 4 days after the protesters took these pictures, Tom Herndl was shot. One of the protesters was carrying a camera.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: No!

Speaker 1: Tom Handel wasn't shot as he stood in front of a bulldozer. He was standing on a street in Rafah. He was wearing the bright fluorescent jacket most protesters wore. He'd been shot through the head by an Israeli sniper.

Speaker 7: Hello. I'm calling you from Rafah. A British citizen called Tom Hearn-Dowell has just been shot in the head by the Israelis. We would like you to inform the Israeli army to stop shooting in the Yivna area.

Speaker 1: The news reached us within minutes in Gaza City.

Speaker 2: We're on our way to Rafah, where a young peace activist, a British guy, is shot He's been shot in the head. He's in the hospital down here. And we're waiting at the checkpoint to get through.

Speaker 1: At his bedside was one of the protesters. Alice Coy is a young Jewish woman from South London.

Speaker 11: Stay strong.

Speaker 2: Stay there, OK?

Alice Coy: I'm just touching your shoulder.

Speaker 2: This is Alice, OK?

Speaker 9: You're going to be great.

Alice Coy: You know, everyone is now going to know that they're shooting children in Rafah.

Speaker 1: The situation was desperate.

Speaker 10: He's very bad. He's looking very bad. There is inlet and outlet from the right to left.

Speaker 2: So the bullet went in one side of his head, through his brain, and out the other. Yes.

Speaker 10: There is the damage in the brain, and there is the fracture in the skull, multiple fracture in the skull, in exit.

Speaker 2: Is he breathing on his own, or is there machine breathing?

Speaker 10: No, no. No, no. There's no breathing. He's under mechanical ventilation now.

Speaker 1: The doctor said Tom's only hope was major surgery. Speed was of the essence, but they lacked the They said they can do whatever.

Azmi Kashawi: Israeli helicopters, they can come, they can take him from here just to—

Speaker 1: Azmi, the local journalist we were working with, suggested the protesters contact the British Embassy. British diplomats might be able to negotiate safe passage for Tom across the front line to a nearby Israeli hospital.

Speaker 11: Hello?

Speaker 2: My name is Alice.

Alice Coy: I'm in Rafah. There was a British citizen, Tom Herndl, who's been shot. I can give you the phone number of the hospital.

Speaker 2: We're waiting to hear back from the British Embassy. They're waiting on a call from the IDF. Everything at the moment is in chaos. Meanwhile, time is being wasted, and Tom needs to be moved.

Speaker 1: Alice called constantly to check the progress of negotiations with the Israeli army. But there was no news.

Speaker 2: My name is Helyeh Doutaghi.

Speaker 10: I'm a doctor.

Speaker 1: The doctors considered the alternative of taking Tom to the main Palestinian hospital in Gaza. But Israelis control part of the road, sometimes closing it completely, even to ambulances. With Tom so ill, it seemed too much of a risk.

Speaker 2: He's very bad, very critically ill. His brain is exposed. The tissue is out. They don't really give him much of a chance.

Azmi Kashawi: Thank you.

Speaker 1: More than an hour had passed since Tom Herndl had been shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. The British Embassy had still not managed to negotiate for an ambulance to take him across the front line You've spoken to the British Embassy?

Azmi Kashawi: Yes. And the British Embassy has said give us 5 minutes.

Speaker 2: It's been like an hour.

Alice Coy: It's been like an hour since he's been shot.

Speaker 1: And they've spoken to the IDF?

Azmi Kashawi: Until now, they said they're speaking to him, you know? They said give us 5 minutes.

Speaker 1: They've been dealing with the British Embassy for an hour and a half now, and still nothing is happening.

Speaker 2: And Ali and the others are really shocked. because they expected that in a situation like this, it would happen like clockwork, that the IDF could arrange an escort into Israel or send a helicopter. But so far, nothing is happening.

Speaker 1: After 2 and a half hours, the British Embassy got authorization for Tom to be taken to an Israeli outpost.

Speaker 2: They've sent him to Gush— for Gush Katif, yeah? He's going to Gush Katif, to the settlement, to be met by helicopter.

Speaker 1: Another problem: Israel says Palestinian ambulances are used to smuggle explosives. They're often fired on. The doctors wanted a written guarantee of safety.

Azmi Kashawi: I can't send a medical crew to Ghosh Yatif without a guarantee they're going to come back out of Gaza alive. I can't send 3 people to die in Ghosh Yatif for one— for someone who might make it and might not make it.

Speaker 1: Well, they've got the guarantee, but we need to get him now. The helicopter's in the air. And the British embassy said that, yes, it's fine.

Speaker 10: The man I'm looking for, our Palestinian doctor, to give this patient to come safely without any problem from the Israeli. This is the only thing we want. We are emergency, and this is a dear emergency. The patient will die if we are not in the hurry.

Speaker 2: Would you please get it for me?

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Well, it won't be OK if we're waiting any fucking longer.

Speaker 2: The Palestinian doctors still haven't received a written guarantee They've been given a guarantee of safety from the British Embassy for their staff, for their driver and their 2 paramedics.

Speaker 1: But they're going to go now, because there's no more time to waste.

Speaker 2: They're taking a big risk. They're afraid that once their staff go into Israel, that they could be imprisoned or anything could happen to them, could get caught in an ambush or anything. But they've just decided they can't wait for this fax anymore.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Leave, please, everyone!

Azmi Kashawi: Yalla!

Alice Coy: Out!

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Out!

Speaker 2: We're going to try and follow the ambulance and make sure there's no trouble along the way.

Speaker 1: We hope Perhaps the soldiers knew we were coming. Alice and I kept in touch on the mobile phone.

Speaker 2: We're on the border with Egypt. The British Embassy has arranged with the IDF for Tom to be collected here by helicopter and ambulance and transferred to hospital in Israel. This is happening for Tom because he's a British citizen. But if it was a Palestinian who'd been injured in a similar way, there would be no medical treatment in Israel.

Azmi Kashawi: Fucking stupid.

Speaker 2: They said go back.

Speaker 1: In Hebrew, the soldiers told the ambulance to reverse. The Arab driver misunderstood.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: Galbe reverse!

Speaker 2: Alas, they're telling the ambulance to go back. The Israelis are saying to reverse.

Azmi Kashawi: OK, now he's telling him—

Speaker 2: It's OK. He's saying go forward. You're fine. He's just yelling commands at you. You can go forward now. OK, bye.

Speaker 9: Good luck.

Speaker 1: I'll speak to you soon.

Speaker 2: I'm not going to wait here, because— I'm sorry. Asmi said it's dangerous for us to wait there by the border.

Azmi Kashawi: We're going to wait further down.

Speaker 1: We're going to wait further down. 30 minutes later, the Palestinian ambulance returned, having transferred Tom to an Israeli ambulance. The next morning, the Israeli Defense Force gave us a statement. They said a soldier had fired a single shot, which had hit a man in camouflage uniform holding a gun.

Speaker 2: It's the morning after Tom was shot.

Speaker 1: Apparently, he's possibly brain dead.

Speaker 2: He's still on life support in Beersheba Hospital.

Speaker 1: The Israeli authorities claim that the international solidarity movement acts illegally and supports terrorists. I went to their office and confronted them with the IDF statement about Tom's shooting.

Speaker 2: Hello.

Speaker 1: I spoke to 10 eyewitnesses. All contradicted the Israeli version of events.

Speaker 11: A sniper from the tower shot against the bus. The wall of the house, not very high above the heads of a large group of children. And then there were more shots, and people shouted in alarm and ducked down and tried to run out. But not all the children came out. From where I was, about 20 to 25 meters from where Tom went to stand, I could see a little boy.

Alice Coy: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11: And further in, 2 little girls, who might have been, I don't know, 6, 7 years old, something like that, perhaps less. Tom saw them, that they were in danger. And he was a very loving boy, and his concern was for the children. So he went back. He was wearing— sorry. The fluorescent orange jacket. So he was very obvious. He didn't duck down. He stood. And he signaled to the children to come out. And then he bent to help the little boy out, and then saw there were 2 little girls further in and was going back to try and get them. And he actually was stooping He was running to help them when he was shot in the head and fell forward, and then gave a roar of pain, and that's all.

Speaker 1: Another protester who had witnessed what had happened agreed to take me to the site of the shooting. Lara Gordon is a young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2: There's a tower there from which Tom was shot. And there's another military tower a little bit down the ways.

Speaker 9: And then, further west, you can see there's a tank that just sits there guarding, monitoring.

Speaker 2: Tom was more or less here in this very spot. The bullet came from there, went into his head and exited. That's his blood.

Speaker 1: The eyewitnesses we spoke to said the Israelis had fired multiple shots.

Speaker 2: A bullet went through his head, leaving shrapnel behind, but it did exit. So I don't know where that bullet went. But here are some of the other shots. They're head level, absolutely eye level. Anyone standing here was gone.

Speaker 1: I followed the trail of Tom's blood along the road. When this happens to a foreigner, everyone takes notice. For Palestinians, it's daily life. Routine and bloody. Soon there was more desperate news. An award-winning team, director-cameraman James Miller and correspondent Syre Shah, had started making a documentary for American television about children trapped in violence.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: No!

Speaker 1: That night, after filming, holding a white flag and shouting they were British journalists, they approached an Israeli armored personnel carrier. James Miller was shot dead. The IDF said James Miller had approached their troops while they were fighting a battle with Palestinian gunmen and had died in the crossfire. We went to the site to find out what had happened. I was With us was our trusted local producer, Azmi, and the local journalist, Abdulrahman Abdullah, who had been working with Miller.

Azmi Kashawi: And we'll go from the back road, in between the houses.

Speaker 1: Everyone was on edge. Since James's death, we were being even more careful. The Israelis talk about tunnels which gunmen use to bring in weapons. We found a Another sort of passageway— holes knocked between houses to help the people living here to move about without getting shot.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: ¡Vamos, vamos, vamos!

Speaker 1: We were getting a further taste of what it's like to be a Palestinian in Rafah. Finally, we arrived at the house where James Miller had been filming that night.

Speaker 2: It was close to where Rachel Corey had died.

Speaker 1: Close to where Tom Herndl had been hit.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: And she was looking at me. And at this moment—

Speaker 1: Abdulrahman insisted on showing us where James had died.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: They shot 2 or 3 or 4 bullets. I saw James, and he— he was here.

Speaker 1: What happened that night was filmed by a local news agency. That film, and the testimony of the journalists there, contradicts the Israeli army's account. Through the night, Miller filmed these bulldozers at work. At 11 o'clock, things went quiet. Rather than take the back route and invite sniper fire, the team decided to leave James and Habyib openly walking towards the Israeli armored vehicle outside. There was no gunfire.

Speaker 14: James was wearing a helmet with TV in fluorescent letters. Aboud was wearing a helmet with TV in fluorescent letters. We had been sitting in a very well-lit veranda for the last 4 hours filming these APCs, filming these bulldozers. I have absolutely no doubt that they had seen us. And they had seen us for exactly what we were, which was journalists.

Speaker 1: The second shot had hit James Miller.

Saira Shah: James was in a very, very bad way, and I thought he had a wound on his neck. Later, I discovered.

Speaker 1: When the firing stopped, the journalists begged the soldiers to give James Miller first aid. The soldiers eventually threw down a stretcher into the mud. All the evidence points to a cold-blooded killing.

Saira Shah: James died because we trusted them to behave like a civilized army, because we knew that they could see the We were civilians, that we weren't armed, and that we were carrying a white flag. We trusted them not to kill us under those circumstances. And they shot James anyway.

Speaker 1: The Israeli Defense Force say they've launched a thorough inquiry into James Miller's killing, but they've refused to take evidence from the journalists who were there, and in their public statements continue to ignore the video evidence.

Speaker 15: Anti-tank rockets were fired at our soldiers. The soldiers returned fire. This was very late at night, in a combat situation, as I say. And apparently, James was wandering the streets late at night in a place where military activity was going on. And as a journalist, he knew that he was endangering himself. And unfortunately, again, as I say, he was hit by the exchanges of fire.

Speaker 1: Tom Herndle is still in a coma. The IDF are investigating his shooting, but have again refused to take evidence from eyewitnesses. The IDF continue to maintain they fired a single shot at a gunman who was firing on them.

Speaker 15: A soldier identified him as wearing a camouflage kind of jacket. And he was pointing a pistol, shooting both in the air and then aiming at the outpost and shooting at the outpost, the commander of the outpost also identifying the gunman with a gun in his hand, fired a single shot at his direction.

Speaker 1: The IDF's investigation into Rachel Corrie's death has now concluded that she was not run over by an Israeli army bulldozer, but was probably hit by a falling slab of concrete, a tragic accident.

Speaker 15: She was in the wrong place in the wrong time, endangering her life, the Palestinian lives and our soldiers' lives by disturbing an IDF operation.

Speaker 1: With reason, the Israeli authorities underline the suicide bombings and outrages on their own soil. But since we've made this film, they've made it even more difficult for journalists to visit Gaza. As James Miller's death shows, anyone who tries to report this side of The truth of the story is now in real danger. But if Gaza fades from the news bulletins, don't confuse silence with peace. It is still a killing zone.

Abdulrahman Abdullah: No!