The warped and deadly prism of ISM

Aysenur Eygi, an American-Turkish dual national, was shot and killed during a demonstration in Samaria on Sept. 6. Palestinian, Turkish and human rights organizations allege that the Israeli Defense Forces shot her intentionally while she was protesting “Israeli land grabs.”

To this day, 22 years after her death, Rachel Corrie’s parents and anti-Israel activists claim an Israeli bulldozer ran her over intentionally. She was protesting in Rafah, Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces were destroying Hamas tunnels.

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In 2010, art student Emily Henochowicz joined friends at a Palestinian demonstration in Jerusalem to protest the Israeli Navy stopping the Turkish flotilla attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israeli border police blocked the demonstration.

Henochowicz was hit in her head by a tear gas grenade and lost an eye. She and demonstration organizers claimed the police intentionally fired the grenade directly at her.

What did the three women also have in common? They were recruits to the radical, anarchist, anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement. They were passionate and careless newbies to real-life Palestinian demonstrations (not the U.S. campus camping experience), and they were unwitting cast members used by the ISM agitprop “producers” present at all three incidents.

ISM productions and producers

When Corrie was severely injured after carelessly “playing chicken” with a bulldozer, one of the ISM members did not rush to her aid. Ghoulishly, he fluttered around, taking pictures.

Without realizing it, in an interview, “Joe Smith” detailed the role of ISM’s producers. His real name: Joseph Carr, a self-proclaimed anarchist and an agitprop specialist who had all of the press contacts and numbers readily at hand to launch a press campaign just 30 minutes after her death. Here is an excerpt from an affidavit that appeared on The Electronic Intifada site:

I was doing interviews non-stop, starting 30 minutes after [Corrie’s] death, all the way until midnight, and then starting again at 6 am and continuing all day today. I literally would never hang up the phone, just switch to an incoming call on call waiting. When I did finally get a second to breathe, I’d have like 30 missed calls. Anyway, it was a bit therapeutic I think, telling the story over and over, and interviews make me feel [as if I was doing something] important [in the aftermath]. All this thing is a media event now, so we must continue a campaign as hard as possible before the new and bigger tragedy, the Iraq war, begins. The few hours I had off last night between midnight and 4 am was spent organizing today’s events, press conferences, live TV/radio interviews, a demonstration, and the beginnings of the traditional Palestinian 3-day ceremony…

(By the way, I took the pictures you may have seen of her standing with the megaphone in front of the bulldozer and the ones of her friends helping her.)

Mr. Smith/Carr was an anti-Israel propagandist producer par excellence. Could anyone top his act today?

Yes, Jonathan Pollak, a founder of the direct-action group Anarchists Against the Wall, a frequent participant in anti-Israel protests and a “trainer” for ISM who ensures the volunteers get into trouble, sometimes fatally.

Who Is Jonathan Pollak?

Pollak was perhaps the most quoted witness to the death of Eygi, providing interviews to many newspapers and broadcast networks. Incredibly, Pollak is also on the staff of the Israeli Haaretz newspaper.

The ISM production team immediately went into action, volunteering interviews, posting a Wikipedia page dedicated to Eygi, providing a graduation photo of her wearing a keffiyeh and releasing videos of her dying moments. The ISM staff followed the Rachel Corrie playbook.

Pollak claimed, “What happened today [Eygi’s death] is no accident. … The shot was taken to kill. … It was an intentional killing … because she was an American citizen.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and both the secretaries of state and defense echoed the ISM’s charge against Israel.

The anarchist admitted that Eygi had arrived in Israel several days earlier and that it was the first protest the inexperienced woman had joined. CBS reporter Elizabeth Palmer asked Pollak, “Essentially, you are asking [volunteers] to be human shields.” Pollak responded firmly, “No! They are participating in the struggle for human liberation.”

Pollak put the shooting in the context of Israel’s “genocide.” He told his own paper, Haaretz, that the soldier who shot the activist “did it because he knows he can get away with it. The context is the escalating violence and genocide in Gaza.”

Pollak is true to his agitprop. In 2010, he also charged that he witnessed Israeli border police firing a tear-gas grenade directly at 21-year-old American student Emily Henochowicz. Unfortunately for him, a video showed that the projectile ricocheted off of a cement barrier before hitting her.

Moreover, Henochowicz suggested in an interview in 2010 that Pollak may have been the catalyst for the border police shooting tear gas at the protesters:

DEMOCRACY NOW: What happened just in the period before the Israeli soldiers began firing their tear-gas canisters?

HENOCHOWICZ: Well, Jonathan Pollak climbed up on this fence and put a Palestinian and Turkish flag up at the checkpoint.

Why ISM is dangerous to volunteers and other living things

The International Solidarity Movement depends on “internationals” serving as human shields. As Pollak told CBS News, “They are not human shields; they are participants in the struggle for human liberation.” (It sounds like something I once saw on a Viet Cong poster.)

Most ISM “volunteers” are in the territories for only several weeks. They are quickly thrown into the front lines, where, as human shields, they become PR assets. They cannot learn the basics of language, the legal rules of civil disobedience, history or the essentials of living in political and military minefields.

The following are ISM’s recommendations to volunteers on how much time to spend “volunteering for peace.” Finding oneself in a West Bank donnybrook is a prescription for trouble.

“Two weeks is the minimum time commitment; longer is much better to ensure consistency, relationship-building, and skills honed and passed on to new volunteers. We suggest a minimum of a three-week stay to better integrate into the work, help with relationship-building, and ensure consistency across our volunteer group, although two weeks is acceptable if necessary.”

Ask Emily, Rachel or Eygi. American citizenship, good intentions and parents’ credit card are no guarantees that you won’t be “pimped out” as a shaheeda martyr.