Jürgen Todenhöfer, German author and journalist, was in Gaza on June 14, participating in the weekly ‘Great March of Return’ demonstration, in solidarity with Palestinians, Days of Palestine reported.
Todenhöfer was videotaped holding a sign with the words, “Dear Israelis, please treat the Palestinians the same way you want to be treated!” In a show of outright disregard for human rights, an Israeli sniper shot this peaceful foreign activist with a rubber-coated steel bullet in his back.
Todenhöfer wrote on his Facebook page afterward, stating “Dear friends, one cannot ‘demonstrate’ more peacefully than I tried to do today at the border fence of Gaza.” Readers are encouraged to watch the video of this peaceful protester, here. He then said “There is no other constitutional state in the world where you are shot at for such a conciliatory sentence. It can’t go on like this.”
Not only does he report being a few hundred meters from the border, but that the Israeli soldier shot him in the back with a rubber bullet. The question is, what type of threat was this older gentleman, a few hundred meters away from the fence, with his hands up, facing away from the soldiers?
On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, an American activist, and member of pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was killed by Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer.
Corrie was involved in an effort to stop the demolition of homes in southern Gaza, with other international activists.
Since March of 2018, Palestinians in Gaza have been demanding Israel lift the illegal blockade it has imposed on the highly densely populated strip, and for the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their ancestral lands, occupied and colonized by Israel.
