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ISM Ties to Violent Groups Although the ISM claims to be a non-violent group, some of its volunteers recognize violence as a legitimate means of achieving Palestinian goals. In an article in the Palestinian Chronicle in 2002, ISM co-founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf wrote: "We accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms, as they are an occupied people upon whom force and violence is being used." Palestinian resistance, they say, "must take on a variety of characteristics - both nonviolent and violent."
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned that ISM activity "at times" is "under the auspices of Palestinian terrorist organizations." For example: Two British suicide bombers met with ISM members before blowing up a popular bar in Tel Aviv near the U.S. embassy in April 2003. The ISM claimed that the only contact it had with the suicide bombers "was a brief social encounter" at an ISM apartment in Rafah. However, five days before the Tel Aviv bombing, the bombers attended a memorial service in Rafah for ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, an American college student crushed to death in 2003 while trying to block demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza by an Israeli army bulldozer (the Israeli Army's investigation of the Corrie death concluded that the soldiers operating the bulldozer had no intention of harming her).
In March 2003, Israeli troops raided the ISM's West Bank offices in Jenin and captured a suspected member of the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad. The Israeli army identified Shadi Suqiyeh, who was hiding in the ISM office, as a senior member of Islamic Jihad who had planned a number of foiled attacks on Israelis. A statement released by the ISM soon after the incident explained that Suqiyeh was brought into the apartment by an ISM volunteer "concerned about his welfare" because "under Israeli military curfew, Palestinians spotted in the streets are shot on sight."
More ties to hard-line Palestinian groups were revealed three months later, when ISM issued a press release inviting activists to "join the ISM, the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces and the Apartheid Wall Defense Committee…to block construction of the apartheid wall" during the Freedom Summer 2003 campaign. The Palestinian National and Islamic Forces is a group made up of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the hard-edged wing of Arafat's Fatah organization.
Next: ISM Tactics Back to ISM Backgrounder Source: ADL, used with permission |
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