Brian Avery

Brian Avery (born 1979) is an American who, while volunteering for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the West Bank town of Jenin, was shot in the face by Israel Defense Forces on April 5, 2003. The shooting, which according to Human Rights Watch was "unprovoked and did not occur in the context of any apparent hostilities", caused Avery to suffer permanent disfigurement. Early life Avery was born in Connecticut, the youngest of three children. His father served 30 years in the United States Navy, and his mother is a schoolteacher. He attended school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to study music. He dropped out after a year to play in a rock band for two years, then worked on communal organic farms in North Carolina, France, Spain, and Portugal. He lived for a year in a housing cooperative in Chicago, and later became associated with the Arab-Jewish Peace Alliance in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he came into contact with the ISM. Shortly thereafter, in January 2003, he traveled to the West Bank to participate in ISM protests against Israel. Shooting incident In a February 2005 interview, he said: