Human shield work is all about privilege: the privilege of being white or American, and by virtue of that privileged identity being a liability for the aggressors whom they encounter. For the volunteer, being a shield means giving up some of that privilege and extending it to others less fortunate. There's a long tradition of idealistic middle-class kids making common cause with the downtrodden. But in this case, that choice carries extraordinarily high risks -- which for many makes it even more attractive.

Most people who do human shield work prefer not to use the phrase "human shield" at all. They prefer vaguer terms, calling what they do "direct action," "non-violent protest" or "solidarity and communication." "Human shield" sounds distastefully passive and limited to them, as if all they do is put their bodies in front of a bullet. Activists are quick to tell you that human shield work encompasses a wide variety of activities, from escorting ambulances to participating in protests. Still, the basic premise of human shield work justifies the expression: The underlying rationale is that no one cares if a Palestinian dies, but if an American (or Canadian, or Brit, or Italian) is shot it will cause an uproar. The very presence of human shields can ward off bullets and draw the world's attention. And if one of these high-profile activists dies, the world's attention will be drawn to the situation.

As 26-year-old Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American activist and one of the founders of ISM, explains, "If you have internationals in a crowd, soldiers won't fire live ammunition in fear of killing a foreign civilian. Unfortunately, Palestinians are just numbers to people, and Israel isn't held accountable for killing them. But killing a foreigner is a P.R. disaster."

ISM sprang into being in early 2001 as the violence of the second intifada began to escalate. The group was the brainchild of a group of Palestinian activists who hoped to better the lives of civilians by working with the international activist community. Every few months, the idea went, a new delegation of peace activists would fly in to participate in "civil disobedience" and "direct action," which they would then report about in the media at home. Such early "actions" included the activist occupation of the West Bank town of Beit Jala, where Israeli soldiers attempting to suppress Palestinian gunmen were shelling homes.

ISM had planned similar nonviolent civil disobedience throughout 2002 -- "freedom rides" through Israeli checkpoints, rebuilding houses that had been bulldozed -- but in April 2002, their plans changed. Eighty internationals, from Europe, Canada, Asia and the United States, converged in Israel the day after the Jewish state responded to a bloody Palestinian suicide bombing by launching a major military offensive in the West Bank. The ISM delegation quickly decided that there was a greater need to simply safeguard Palestinian lives.

"Human shield work was all we could do; it was too dangerous to do anything else," says Robert Lipton, a 43-year-old activist who participated in the delegation. "We decided to split up into different refugee camps to serve as human shields and provide escort services for ambulances which were being targeted by Israelis and shot at." (Israel denies that it has targeted ambulances, except in cases when militants have concealed weapons in them. The Israeli human rights group B'tselem asserts that the IDF has fired on ambulances without cause; human rights organizations and news organizations have reported that Israeli troops have prevented ambulances from reaching wounded victims, at times resulting in deaths.)

One ISM activist, a young American Jew named Adam Shapiro (he is married to founder Huwaida Arraf) escorted an ambulance straight into Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah. Marooned there as the Israeli army opened fire on the buildings, he managed to have breakfast with the Palestinian leader, who welcomed his presence.

Shapiro's story, and a subsequent uproar over six other international ISM delegates who were accidentally shot while participating in a march, became front-page news back home. Within weeks, the freshly trained ISM activists were returning home to the United States to propagandize in the press, give lectures in their communities, and mobilize more volunteers. By the time summer rolled around, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists were emptying their bank accounts, booking flights, and heading out to Israel with visions of saving lives.

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Although it has been refined and vigorously promoted by the ISM activists, human shield work is not a new concept. Most human shield workers cite as their inspiration the Freedom Summer of 1964, when mostly white students flocked to the Southern states to help endangered NAACP activists register black voters. (In fact, ISM's original "civil disobedience" plans had included 54 days of activism this July and August that organizers also had dubbed "Freedom Summer"). Others look to Latin America in the 1980s, when young people went to Nicaragua to protect the locals against the Contras during the cotton harvest. (Many activists went to the West Bank this October to protect Palestinians and their vital olive groves from Israeli settlers who were harassing them and destroying trees; one Palestinian farmer was killed by a settler.)

Other ISM activists prefer to compare their current work with Palestinians to those Americans who flew to Spain in the 1930s to fight in the civil war against the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade that they formed has acquired the status of a romantic myth. As Robert Lipton puts it, "If we could do this, it would be like us going to the Spanish revolution to help out -- but without the guns. It does capture people's imaginations."

One person whose imagination was captivated was Harmony Goldberg, a 27-year-old political activist and nonprofit worker, who had studied civil rights battles during her years at UC-Berkeley and longed for a similar opportunity to "use my privilege to help in a struggle." Goldberg, who like a quarter of human shields activists is Jewish, had participated in marches and demonstrations, but felt helpless to make any real difference stateside.

"Things were getting so serious there and I was coming up against the barrier of how hard it is to directly impact what's going on in Israel and Palestine from the U.S.; it's not where things are happening," she says. When she learned that ISM was recruiting activists to go to the occupied territories, she jumped at the opportunity.

Goldberg raised money from community members in order to afford the $2,000 bill for a three-week trip. She spent time in Ramallah, where she joined local Palestinians in a march to a building where the Israeli army kept its tanks, threw red paint on the vehicles to symbolize blood, and wrote "murderer" on police cars. She moved into the homes of the families of suicide bombers, whose houses, in accordance with Israeli policy, were slated for demolition.

"Human shield work is both a way to buffer the Palestinians and just be with them during their day-to-day lives," she explains. "A lot of Palestinian resistance is just about trying to survive: staying in their houses, breaking curfews to go to markets."

In fact, Shapiro's breakfast with Arafat was something of a fluke. Volunteers mostly spend their days participating in mundane activities -- sitting in houses, riding in ambulances, joining in Palestinian-organized marches. They join the Palestinians in their everyday activities, hoping their presence will keep them safe. Rarely do volunteers have opportunities to thrust their bodies between the Israeli army's guns and Palestinian civilians.

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