Courageous student was shot dead by Israeli sniper

Published: 2 December, 2010
by DAN CARRIER

THE Journal of Tom Hurndall starts with his time in Baghdad: Tom had travelled there with a group of people who were going to act as “human shields”, to bear witness to the coming onslaught by US and British troops on the country. He travelled on an old London bus with peace activists and photographed all he saw.

“I came out here and I knew the risks,” he writes. “But I can’t handle bad shit happening to good people.”

But by March, factions are emerging among those he was with. “This is the moment I have decided to leave,” wrote Tom. After visiting the Al-Rweished refugee camp in Jordan, where he took more pictures and also helped set up tents, he went on to Jerusalem and then into Gaza.

“I’m going to Gaza tomorrow,” he writes on April 5, 2003, and then offers a chilling prophecy of what was to come: “I will be there for a few weeks until my money runs out, or I am shot.”