flying kites

From the active stills group.

An archive photo, taken on 25/7/2008, shows Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahme (ElFeel) during a protest against the wall in the village of Bilin.

Bassam was murdered by the Israeli army [17 April, 2009], during a protest against the apartheid wall in Bilin. He was shot with an extended range teargas projectile directly at him from a distance of 30 meters. Bassem was critically injured in the stomach and died not long after in a hospital in Ramallah.

That is a similar teargas projectile, and a similar way of targeting, that caused American, Tristan Anderson's, criticial condition.

*Note: I see that Israeli Uri Avnery at Gush Salom has commented on this. His post is short. It follows in full (my emphasis, apart from the title):

Bil'in demonstrator Bassam Abu Rahme killed – soldiers' trigger-happiness inspired from higher up
Already for four years, demonstrations are taking place at the village of Bil'in, to protest the "Separation Fence" which robs the villagers of much of their land, and whose route is in blatant violation of the Supreme Court ruling. Also before, the army used violence to disperse the Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators. But, until this morning no one got killed. The killing of Bassam Abu Rahme today, a Bil'in resident, follows upon the severe head wounding of American peace activist Tristan Anderson a month ago, and constitutes a grave escalation.

This escalation was not caused by the demonstrators' behavior, in which there had been no change, but to new instructions given to the military forces on the ground. Whether by explicit instructions or by a tacit nod and a new "spirit of the commander", the finger on the trigger was loosed and authorization given for the tear gas containers as lethal missiles.

This is the harsh heritage of the Gaza War and the mass killings which it entailed. To this is added the odious spirit of the new government, which confronts the entire world and places a racist provocateur in charge of its foreign affairs - not to speak of the new-old Defence Minster Ehud Barak, who is responsible for a lot of bloodshed.