Overview

The unfolding events in the run up to the Iraq war had given Tom Hurndall, a 21-year-old British photojournalist, an increased curiosity and desire to journey to the Middle East. In February 2003, initially as an observer alongside the Human Shields, he left with a passion to make a difference, to record and photograph the truth for himself. We follow his journey first from Baghdad, then to Amman and the Al-Rweished refugee camp in Jordan, and finally on to the town of Rafah in Gaza close to the Egyptian border, where US peaceworker Rachel Corrie had been killed just weeks previously, On April 11th, unarmed and wearing and internationally recognized orange peacekeeper jacket, he was severely wounded while carrying Palestinian children to safety. He died nine months later in a London hospital. The book follows Tom's life and thoughts in the final weeks leading up to the shooing. Motivated by a sense of injustice and striving to remain objective we are drawn into his increasingly serious photographs and words, through extracts from his diary, emails and poems. It is realised through collaboration with the Hurndall family on the sixth anniversary of the fateful day, and with the recent Channel 4 film-documentary 'The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall'.

Full Product Details

9781904563518

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Thomas Hurndall (27 November 1981 – 13 January 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On 11 April 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper. Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later. Aged 21, Tom Hurndall took a working break from his degree course at Manchester Metropolitan University in photographic journalism to join the ""human shields"" in Iraq before the 2003 Iraq War. As the volunteers ran out of money and war became inevitable, he moved to Jordan and donated £500 to medical supplies for refugees from Iraq. It was here that he encountered the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and decided to make his way overland to Gaza. He arrived in the town of Rafah on 6 April 2003 and began emailing images of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Palestinians back to his family. His Guardian obituary states that ""the tone of his journals changed dramatically"" and he justified his new location with ""No one could say I wasn't seeing what needs to be seen now"". ""What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done."" Tom Hurndall On 13 October 2008, Channel 4 broadcast a dramatised documentary The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, which was written by Simon Block and directed by Rowan Joffe. The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall was nominated for the 2009 British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama (Simon Block, Rowan Joffe, Barney Reisz, Charles Furneaux) and won Best Actor (Stephen Dillane) and Best Director Fiction/Entertainment (Rowan Joffe). At the Monte Carlo TV Festival Rowan Joffe won Golden Nymph 2009 as Best Director in a TV Film

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available