If it did come to that moment, though, many ISM volunteers say that they would die for their cause. "No one comes to Palestine and says 'I'm ready to risk my life now,' but they want to come and see," says Arraf. "But they get there and we give them training: We don't tell anyone to expect to die, we don't want anyone to get hurt, and we've been fortunate that we've had no deaths so far. Then people make the decision that they are willing to get beaten down and step in between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian, to protect innocent civilians."

Jordan Flaherty, a 29-year-old ISM volunteer, says that the possibility of death is ever present. "I've definitely had guns pointed at my face several times by soldiers, I've been shot at many times," he says. "One of the earliest times was when I first arrived in a refugee camp in March, and the main [Jewish] settlement was shooting into the camp from a sniper tower. The week before, they shot and killed an 8-year-old girl; and when we got there they shot at us, too. Bullets landed right by me."

Matt Horton shrugs off the danger. "A lot of people die here, in this city, every day, so I wasn't really worried about that. What I was worried about was the people there getting killed, and if I could help de-escalate that in any way, I owed them."

Even as bullets are fired in their general direction, many volunteers speak of feeling a curious sense of safety because of their identity. As Goldberg puts it, "In a way I felt safer doing actions there than in the United States, because the starkness of the privilege was so extreme."

Many activists never make it to the occupied territories. For some, it's simply a lack of money or time; others make it to Israel, only to be turned away by the Israeli government, which has a policy of not admitting obvious activists. People are now being stopped and shipped back to the States simply because of appearance. "They've stopped letting anyone who even had long hair, who looked like a hippie peace activist," says Levine, the UC-Irvine professor. As a result, the need for volunteers is always greater than the number of available activists; ISM has to take whatever bodies it can get. And without extensive screening, the drama of human shield work can draw a mixed bag of volunteers.

"There's a mentality of 'I'm a star,' and a lot of egotism: 'I am the greatest person in the world because I am coming to help these poor people,'" says Horton. "Then there are the people going, like, 'We are going to make the revolution.' People who really endanger other people's safety because they aren't committed to working in consensus and listening to the community."

Lipton says the work attracts many people he calls "danger freaks." Some, he says, have "this idea that 'We're here, let me at them. I'm going to lie down in front of the tanks, the soldiers.' They wanted to essentially be like nonviolent soldiers: They are suited up and ready for battle."

Drawn by both compassion and the adrenaline rush of a combat zone, human shields activists evince a curious mix of idealism and self-effacement -- and sometimes a willingness to see reality through one lens that can be interpreted either as reflecting naiveté or ideological blinders.

During the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem last spring, for example, an activist who had managed to enter the church told Salon that there were no Palestinian militants in the church. Kristen Schurr, who was associated with the New York-based group Direct Action for Justice in Palestine, told Salon by phone that "there are no [militant] Palestinians in here."

Schurr was wrong: It is undisputed that among the Palestinians who had taken refuge in the church were a number of militants, including 13 on Israel's most-wanted list. (Negotiations resulted in their being sent into exile.) Schurr's statement, and some activists' refusals to condemn Palestinian terrorism, provide grist for the mill of critics who regard them as hypocritical and biased. Such critics could point out that the activists are outraged by the demolition of Palestinian houses, but have very little to say about the fact that the former inhabitants of those houses might have blown up Israeli children.

But in the spectrum of activists, some are more moderate, more prepared to condemn violence on both sides and engage in dialogue with their adversaries. In a journal entry published on the International Solidarity Movement Web site, for example, an American Jewish woman named Louisa Solomon describes a conversation with an Israeli soldier who told her he hated serving in the occupied territories and supported those soldiers who have refused to serve there (the so-called "refuseniks") but was afraid to refuse.

"He also argued about Palestinian violence against Israelis, but was able to have a decent conversation about it until he was sent to ID people somewhere else," Solomon writes. "The real issue for someone like that is about not understanding power relations. I mean, that's the issue for so many people that equate Palestinian and Israeli violence. I said to him, look, do you remember Warsaw? and he said yes, so I said, we made Molotov cocktails, we threw bombs, because we were in ghettos, being killed, what choice did we have? and so he listened.

"I find that rather than calling soldiers Nazis (listen up activists who think that's a good tactic), it is effective to address power issues from the other side, trying to get them to remember their (our) history of resistance. Trying to get them to realize what it is to be forced to use violence because the other side is OCCUPYING with tanks, and military/financial support from our very own USA. It is still possible to condemn targeting the Hebrew University, for example, or discos, but not have those incidents obfuscate the entire history of (imperialist, colonial) domination."

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