Days before a British suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt in Mike’s Place, a bar in suburban Tel Aviv, the bomber and an associate took tea with members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian group that promotes non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation.

ISM immediately disassociated itself from the bombers (one escaped), saying the pair merely tagged along with a group of new arrivals to the region, but Israeli security services quickly began to clamp down on foreign supporters of the Palestinian cause.

One Israeli journalist who has studied foreign supporters of the Palestinian cause says Israeli security is “panicking”,coming to realize rather late in the game how serious [these groups] can be.

David Bedein, bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency, said ISM’s denials of links to Palestinian violence are hypocritical, since they have explicitly endorsed the Palestinian right to “armed struggle”and actively assist in Palestinian violence.

“They have crossed all red lines by openly embracing and endorsing the armed struggle”, he said.

Speaking in a telephone interview from Israel, Bedein said that while ISM says its goal is to mitigate Israeli violence, in reality it serves as “a front to support the [Palestinian] armed struggle”, like the unarmed support units in an army whose efforts make the military wing effective.

Last month, Israeli security forces raided ISM offices in Beit Sahour and the foreign affairs ministry issued a statement that said: ISM members take an active part in illegal and violent actions against Israel Defence Force [IDF] soldiers. At times, their activity in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip is under the auspices of Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Bedein, who has interviewed several ISM activists in the region, said the group’s North American operations ought to be investigated by local law enforcement, since ISM spokespeople openly call for the overthrow of Israel, a country with which Canada and the United States have friendly relations.

Canada is home to an active, if tiny, ISM branch in British Columbia that is pushing to indict Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon for war crimes, he said.

The ISM-Canada Web site claims other support groups can be found in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. (Calls to the ISM’s Vancouver office and e-mail to its national office were not returned.)

Later this month, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) will present the ISM with the 2003 Rachel Corrie Award, named after an ISM volunteer who was killed earlier this year in what the Israeli army has described as an accident, at the PRRC’s annual convention at the University of Toronto June 20-22.

Though the ISM’s orientation is left-wing, “its rank and file tend be naive follower type people, like in a cult”,Bedein said.

“They are not evil, not lefties, just hangers on who want to do a good thing for the world. Then you have a few people at the top manipulating it”.

ISM Canada’s Web site, www.ISMCanada.org, states the ISM is “Palestinian-led” and “trains observers from around the world and co-ordinates their activities within the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. Its principal activities revolve around human rights observation and documentation of abuses, direct intervention to mitigate the brutality of Israel’s illegal 35-year occupation, as well as practical everyday actions and work in Palestinian urban and rural communities.

Bedein, however, said ISM spokesperson Raphael Cohen, a British Jew, told him the ISM opposes “the Zionist presence in Palestine”.

“Group members have also reported Israeli troop movements to armed Palestinian units”, Bedein said, and they intervene at checkpoints to facilitate the transit of Palestinians who may be terrorists. As well, they have prevented Israel from monitoring and closing tunnels used to smuggle arms into Gaza from Egypt.

That’s where Corrie was killed. The ISM Web site said Corrie was in clear view, trying to prevent a bulldozer from destroying a doctor’s home, but Bedein said he spoke to the doctor, who told him the bulldozer did not threaten his residence. Bedein said his investigation indicate Corrie was seated on a mound of earth, out of view of the bulldozer operator, when she was killed, contrary to the ISM’s assertions.

This piece ran in the Canadian Jewish News on June 19th, 2003

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