Violence in Israel alters local man's life
SUSAN BROILI
Chapel Hill Herald-Sun, 27 June 2003
As he lay badly wounded for two months in an Israeli hospital, Brian Avery dreamed of coming back home to Chapel Hill.
"The biggest thing I was looking forward to was having some privacy and some peace and quiet," Avery recalled.
The 25-year-old Avery, a 1996 graduate of Chapel Hill High School, was shot in the face April 5 in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Members of Avery's Palestinian-backed International Solidarity Movement to Protect Palestinian People [sic] said an Israeli armored personnel carrier fired the shot that hit him. The Israeli government, in a statement issued to the Chapel Hill Herald, said the soldiers in question did not shoot the self-described peace activist.
Since he returned home June 7, Avery has found some of the peace and quiet he longed for. He spends time reading, taking walks and allowing the lush beauty of his hometown to help him heal.
"There's so many trees and flowers," he said.
Avery already has undergone three surgeries to rebuild his face. It will take at least four more to restore his features.
He almost made it home physically unscathed from his time in the dangerous West Bank region, where he also acted as a human shield.
After almost four months of volunteering for the ISM, Avery had planned to leave the day before he was shot. But his taxi to the airport could not pick him up because of an around-the-clock curfew imposed April 3 by Israel Defense Forces, said his father, Robert Avery.
His speech muffled by his closed and injured jaw, Brian Avery spoke recently of the events that left him with pulverized facial bones and teeth, an injured eye and a road map of scars.
The day it happened
Avery said he had slept most of April 5 because he had been out with a Palestinian ambulance crew the previous night.
With fellow ISM worker Tobias Karlsson, Avery was entertaining friends on the roof of the apartment that served as the group's headquarters when machine gun fire erupted about two blocks away. He and Karlsson decided to investigate.
On the way, Avery said, both grabbed vests that ISM volunteers routinely wore to identify themselves as noncombatants -- although, he added, the vests are supposed to be worn by medical personnel.
Last week, his mother Julie showed the vest she said Brian wore that day. Stained with blood, the red vest had a white, fluorescent band on the front and back with the word "doctor" in English and Arabic.
As he and Karlsson walked, Avery said, they heard military vehicles approaching. At an intersection, two Israeli armored personnel carriers came into view, he recalled.
"We stopped with our hands held out so it was clear we weren't holding any weapons. After a few moments, they just opened fire (from about 50 feet away)," Avery said.
He said he remembers the sound of shots, but that everything immediately afterward was mostly a blur. He does recall the ambulance ride to a Jenin hospital and to another hospital in Afula and finally the helicopter trip to a hospital in Haifa.
"The last thing I heard was the helicopter, and then I woke up in the hospital in the intensive care unit," Avery said.
His father Robert -- who went to Israel April 9 to be with his son -- said Karlsson told him he started running away, then looked back to see Brian, lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
Robert Avery said he also spoke with four other ISM members who said they witnessed the shooting. The four had heard gunfire close to the ISM apartment -- apparently the same gunfire that prompted Brian Avery and Karlsson to investigate.
The four other ISM members arrived at the intersection in time to see Brian Avery and Karlsson standing still on the other side of the street, Robert Avery said.
Robert Avery said he went April 13 to see the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, in Tel Aviv about what had happened. After that visit, the U.S. State Department requested that Israel Defense Forces conduct an investigation into the shooting, Robert Avery said.
The Israeli government commented on that investigation as part of a statement sent to the Chapel Hill Herald.
"The results of this investigation found that the soldiers in question were not involved in the shooting of Brian Avery. What did occur to Brian Avery is truly a tragedy, and Israel does regret all incidents which alter innocent people's lives," a spokesperson from the Israeli government said in the statement.
"It's still an ongoing case," Robert Avery said.
He said he continues to be in contact with the U.S. State Department and Congressman David Price's office, which he said has been very helpful.
"We are still involved," said Stuart Patt, spokesman for the consular affairs bureau of the U.S. State Department.
Patt said the State Department is looking into the findings of the Israel Defense Forces' investigation of Avery's injury.
"We're also seeing if (Israel) will continue to help with his medical expenses," he said. "We're still very much engaged with his situation and trying to come up with a satisfactory solution for him."
Robert Avery said he does not know if the issue of blame will ever be resolved.
"I would just like for (Israel) to accept financial responsibility for his recovery," he said.
Brian Avery is not covered by health insurance and faces "enormous medical expenses," his father added. He said Israel did cover the expenses for Brian's two-month stay at the hospital in Haifa.
The recovery
In the hospital, Brian Avery received 2,000 e-mails from around the world, said his mother, who spent a month in Israel when her son was hospitalized.
His spirits remain good in large part because of his prognosis for recovery. Doctors have said they can restore his face, not 100 percent but "darn near," Robert Avery said.
Brian's tongue, split by the bullet, has healed fully. He said he is not in pain anymore, but that he is uncomfortable at times. Liquids remain his only nourishment.
"He wants steak and lobster," said Julie Avery.
Emotions run deep about the shooting. Anger flashes when she speaks about it. Still, she and Robert Avery say they have a lot to be grateful for. Brian could have died that night had it not been for a lucky combination of efforts to save him, Robert Avery said.
Brian's fellow ISM workers administered immediate first aid and used a cell phone to call for an ambulance. In a Jenin hospital, a doctor performed a tracheotomy that allowed Brian to breathe. The U.S. Embassy in Israel arranged for a helicopter to take Brian to the hospital in Haifa.
A growing fear
Julie and Robert Avery had worried when Brian left for Palestine. But their fears eased after his early e-mails about his activities, which were mostly nonconfrontational, Robert said.
Julie particularly recalled one e-mail in which Brian wrote: "Mom, don't worry about me. They don't shoot Americans.' "
Their fears rose after an Israeli bulldozer killed ISM member Rachel Corrie, who had been protesting its use to level Palestinian houses in Gaza. The Israeli government has said the incident was an accident. ISM officials have called it deliberate.
Corrie's death caused concern about the safety of ISM volunteers, Brian Avery said, but he never expected to get shot.
Israeli officials said ISM members put themselves in the line of fire. A spokesperson from the Israeli government said the ISM had "directly hindered efforts to bring an end to wanton terror against our citizens," and in March had harbored a wanted Palestinian terrorist in their Jenin office, according to the statement given to the Chapel Hill Herald.
Avery said the ISM did not harbor Palestinian terrorists and helped only women and children -- not armed Palestinians.
While in the West Bank as an ISM volunteer, Avery said, he worked with local schools to organize games and sports for children, delivered food and medicine to Israeli-occupied homes of Palestinian families when solders would not permit these families to go out and get these supplies.
He also said he helped people go through Israeli checkpoints, especially the elderly, pregnant women and others with medical conditions.
"A lot of our role was more like human rights monitors," Avery said, "to be in these confrontational situations to be able to document if there are some violations of civil liberties, human rights.
"It's a very dangerous place. You're always afraid of something happening."
He said he also went with other ISM members to the homes of several families of suicide bombers or armed fighters in an attempt to discourage bulldozing of the homes. No bulldozing was attempted during those times, Avery said.
"We don't support terrorism in any way," he added. "We support people who are trying to live their lives and are prevented in doing that by an illegal occupation force. I'm personally against (suicide bombings)."
The situation is complex, Avery acknowledged.
"I think there's plenty of space for both (Israelis and Palestinians) to live comfortably," he said. "The average person doesn't care about ideology. They just want to live their lives regardless of who's their neighbor."
He said he wants to go back, but as a visitor next time, not an ISM activist.
"I definitely would be very cautious," he said.
But Avery said he plans to continue being an activist in his own country and working on a grassroots level to build community.
Birth of an activist
His move in that direction started when he lived for a year in a Chicago housing cooperative, a time he called "fulfilling and empowering."
Avery said he met many politically active people who influenced his decision to become an activist. So, he said, did his association with the Arab-Jewish Peace Alliance in Albuquerque, where he worked on a community farm after leaving Chicago.
At the alliance, Avery said, he met people who had participated as activists in such organizations as Christian Peacemakers and the ISM.
"I had been thinking of going to Palestine for a while, been studying about the conflict for quite a while. I was interested in seeing for myself," Avery said.
But he did not become an activist immediately after graduating from Chapel Hill High. He enrolled at UNC Greensboro to study music, only to drop out to be a musician, playing percussion in rock bands for two years.
In 1999, he took a six-month apprenticeship in organic farming in Asheboro, then spent eight months working on organic farms in France, Spain and Portugal before going to Chicago, Albuquerque -- and the West Bank.
Some of his Chapel Hill High classmates might have seen signs that he would become an activist, Avery said.
"I was not part of the mainstream crowd," he recalled. He said he listened to heavy metal music and was anti-authority.
Fred Kiger, Avery's former high school history teacher, pointed to other reasons.
"I'm not surprised at hearing that he was in an activity, in an organization that was hoping to help other people," Kiger said. "Brian was one of those kids who in his eyes and in his heart and soul, history mattered. He was one of those kids who each day he came in my room, he made my day and his peers' day a little brighter."
Kiger even compared Avery to a Civil War hero, Confederate soldier Richard Kirkland of South Carolina, who had been moved to help wounded Union soldiers and put himself at risk. He died in battle one year later, Kiger said.
The history teacher said that what happened to his former student brought to mind another history lesson.
"I am saddened that in this effort, (Brian) has been reminded of another dose of history. You place yourself in harm's way and he is dealing with this consequence," Kiger said. "He was a student of history. He, now, unwittingly has become a part of it."