someone i know was shot today

I spoke too soon about the no-blogging thing.

My friend Bianca was shot in Gaza today.

I'm using the Palestinian standard of friendship here, by which anyone you meet for five minutes becomes your friend. I don't actually know Bianca that well. She's an activist from Malta who was on our delegation to Gaza in May/June 2009, and stayed on to work with ISM. But I met her, and got to know her a little, enough to think when I saw the press release: "Oh my God, I know that person!"

Thankfully, Bianca is okay. A fellow activist who visited her in the hospital just posted this update.

She was shot during a nonviolent demonstration protesting the Israeli-imposed "buffer zone" on the Gaza border, which prevents farmers from accessing some of the most fertile land in tiny Gaza. She was standing 80-100 meters away from the border fence, filming the demonstration, when she was shot in the thigh. As she was standing still, fully visible with a video camera in her hand at the time, it's likely that she was deliberately targeted.

Her shooting demonstrates the common Israeli army practice of aiming for the upper thigh, the location of the large femoral artery, which will cause massive bleeding if punctured. Bianca was lucky--the bullet missed both the bone and the artery and left her with a nasty, but not life-threatening, flesh wound. It also reflects the entirely common Israeli practice of targeting journalists and grassroots media-makers.

Two young Palestinians were also shot at the same protest. An 18-year-old man (boy?), Nidal Al Naji, was also hit in the thigh, and a 22-year-old woman named Hind Al Akra was shot in the stomach and is in critical condition.

The more people you know in Palestine and the longer you know them, the more statistically likely it is that you'll know someone who's been arrested, wounded or killed.

Like I said, I don't know Bianca that well. But I know her, and I know people who know her, and a network of worry and commiseration was instantly activated--hearing "international shot" and wondering who it was, checking in with friends in Gaza for updates, relaying the news to others.

We're just doing what Palestinians do all the time, of course. Someone is hurt. Is it my friend, my partner, my relative, my child? Who was there? What happened? Are they okay? The only difference is that for a Palestinian, there would have been little hope of being transported out of Gaza for treatment if the wound had been more serious than a graze.