Will the cold blooded murder of an American icon by an Israeli go unpunished?

Well, if that's what the reports say...but did you read about the letters and phone calls to her parents over the previous weeks? She said she was willing to die for the cause, and well, that's exactly what she did.

It also should be noted that they were not tearing down random Palestinian houses, as the article above seems to imply. They were tearing down houses owned or used as meeting places by Palestinian terrorists. I don't know if this was her intention. I can't imagine why she would want to try to save the home of a suicide bomber or someone who supports that sort of thing. Either way, she's not my hero.

That being said, I think what happened is disgusting. How hard would it have been to get out of the vehicle and toss the girl to the side?

 

Well, they believed they were defending the home of a doctor. Is it possible he was a terrorist? Of course, anything is possible. Just like it's possible that the Israeli's have torn down homes that belonged to innocent people to clear away land for more settlements. They also tear down housed they believe provide cover for hamas. Well, all you have to do is get behind a building and you have cover. I don't think anybody has to think of her as hero, I just wish people would stop acting like she was some r****d who just stood there while a tractor ran her over. It wasnt the first time she stood in front of a bulldozer, it seems she walked away from those previous instances unscathed, can't say the same for whatever houses she tried to protect.

 

I'm sorry but when you place yourself in front of a bulldozer, something may go wrong, and unfortunately it did.

 

Carnations are quite dangerous to tanks. We need to cut off aid to this Sharon scumbag.

 

Damn, I haven't noticed that nobody has given felt like giving their opinion on the Israelis attacking people who were laying carnations at the spot. I guess that means there's no rational explanation for that act.

 

To quote mindless conservatives:

"Ditto"

 

My pointly superficial remark was in response to your pointly superficial remark.

 

Of course it will. Christian fundamentalists love Israel if for no other reason, the second coming of the son of god will happen after the Jews rebuild the original temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock. Their votes are important to a large percentage of congressman.

 

FYI: Arabs are Semites also.

 

As most people know by now, Rachel Corrie was a 23-year old Evergreen College student from Olympia, WA, who was in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement, protesting and trying to prevent the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israeli occupation forces. As she
was non-violently standing in front of a bulldozer set to demolish the home of a Palestinian family, attempting to communicate with the driver, the bulldozer drove over her and killed her. Contrary to IDF statements, this was not an "accident". The website below gives details of the story and
pictures.
The images and events are horrifying beyond belief. I urge you please to look at them and let the meaning of this event really sink in; reflecting on what it means for us that we have come to this point.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml


This young woman was there voluntarily, with a particular intention, to become aware of and direct COMPASSIONATE ATTENTION to something going on in our world. She gave up her life for that. It would be a gesture of acknowledgement and gratitude to her, to also attend to what she was seeing
and saying.

Here are her words from the last e-mail messages she sent to her family:
(From the UK The Guardian, 3-17-03, via www.rense.com)



February 7 2003
Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many
of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere.
An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and
they laugh when I say, "Bush Majnoon", "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: "Bush mish Majnoon" ... Bush is a businessman. Today I
tried to learn to say, "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of
leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed
soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are
refugees - many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. And then waving and "What's your name?". Something disturbing about
this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peek out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously - occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving - many forced to be here, many just agressive - shooting into the houses as we wander away.

I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza". Gaza is reoccupied every day
to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start.

My love to everyone. My love to my mom. My love to smooch. My love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and Lincoln School. My love to Olympia.

Rachel

February 20 2003

Mama,

Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won't make it.
We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.

The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the "reoccupation of Gaza", but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar incursions and possibly the oft-hinted
"population transfer".

I am staying put in Rafah for now, no plans to head north. I still feel like I'm relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest. A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon's assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking me about you.
She doesn't speak a bit of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently - wants to make sure I'm calling you.

Love to you and Dad and Sarah and Chris and everybody.

Rachel

February 27 2003

(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded.
Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank.
This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600,many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon(the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza
international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in
the world. There used to be a middle class here - recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people's vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything.
I can't.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience,that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long,and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours - do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially
when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed - just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think
Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who
are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about
it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn't completely believe me. I think it's actually good if you don't, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of
independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I'm much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make.
A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I'm doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things -constitutes a somewhat gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive -removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to
survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to
give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave. Because they can't even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won't let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can't get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don't remember it right now. I'm going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don't like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to
have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

February 28 2003

(To her mother)

Thanks, Mom, for your response to my email. It really helps me to get word from you, and from other people who care about me.

After I wrote to you I went incommunicado from the affinity group for about 10 hours which I spent with a family on the front line in Hi Salam - who fixed me dinner - and have cable TV. The two front rooms of their house are unusable because gunshots have been fired through the walls, so the whole
family - three kids and two parents - sleep in the parent's bedroom. I sleep on the floor next to the youngest daughter, Iman, and we all shared blankets. I helped the son with his English homework a little, and we all watched Pet Semetery, which is a horrifying movie. I think they all thought
it was pretty funny how much trouble I had watching it. Friday is the holiday, and when I woke up they were watching Gummy Bears dubbed into Arabic. So I ate breakfast with them and sat there for a while and just enjoyed being in this big puddle of blankets with this family watching what for me seemed like Saturday morning cartoons. Then I walked some way to B'razil, which is where Nidal and Mansur and Grandmother and Rafat and all the rest of the big family that has really wholeheartedly adopted me live.
(The other day, by the way, Grandmother gave me a pantomimed lecture in Arabic that involved a lot of blowing and pointing to her black shawl. I got Nidal to tell her that my mother would appreciate knowing that someone here was giving me a lecture about smoking turning my lungs black.) I met their
sister-in-law, who is visiting from Nusserat camp, and played with her small baby.

Nidal's English gets better every day. He's the one who calls me, "My sister". He started teaching Grandmother how to say, "Hello. How are you?"
In English. You can always hear the tanks and bulldozers passing by, but all of these people are genuinely cheerful with each other, and with me. When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I
am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them - and may ultimately get them - on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their
strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity -laughter, generosity, family-time - against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the
disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven't seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe,hopefully, someday you will.

Rachel



If the story moves you to want take action to protest this brutal and senseless killing, here are some leads, from Starhawk:

I am trying to fathom the mind that could pull the levers and gun the motor to crush the life out of her young body. That choice, that deliberate act of murder that ended her sweet life, seems incomprehensible. But here in occupied Palestine, that murder is a logical outgrowth of the system of total dehumanization that controls every aspect of life, that cannot see the human being in the Palestinian, that claims to be fighting terror by institutionalizing it. Please register your outrage -- at Rachel's murder,at the home demolitions that she was trying to stop, at the illegal
occupation that can only be defended by brutalizing a whole people.

Call the Israeli Ministry of Defense
972-3-69-55476
(011-972-3-69-55476 from the US)
and
972-3-69-75220
(011-972-3-69-75-220 from the US)

Fax the Israeli Foreign Office
972-2-53-03506
(011-972-2-53-03506 from the US)
General Director: Phone
972-2-530-7704
(011-972-2-530-7704 from the US)

 

edit- this is the intro to that email that was forwarded to me

Dear Friend,

Here is more on the tragedy befalling peace activist Rachel Corrie. This was just forwarded by way of Ralph Metzner whose words introduce Rachel Corrie's.

 

Look out for the obligatory "Rachel burning some paper and rolleyes post."

 

Are you saying it's ok that she burned papers with the symbol of an oppressive govt on it and screamed? Anyone burning papers and screaming obviously hates the country, the soldiers that fight for it. Any paper burning screamer has bought into some crazy tree-huggin conpsiracy, and obviously supports terrorists and dictators.

Paper and Sotto Voce - Love it or leave it!

 

I see that picture and Rachel's words ring hollow to me. She is very one sided in this whole thing. 90% of the people on this board can at least aknowledge that both sides have done things that are wrong. If I were formulating an opinion based soley on her emails, I would think that Israel coexisted peacefully with the Palestinians for a time, and then for no reason decided to wipe them out in a senseless act of genocide. So you might think the "obligitory picture and rolleyes" is rediculous, but I think it is an important contextualizing element. I see a lot of the typical Palestinian line in Rachel Corrie. To the world they try to present one side, a bunny rabbit like, soft, cuddly, poor me innocence, but there is another, dark, ugly side that always seems to rear its ugly head. The side of the picture, and Arafat, and Hamas. That is the side the keeps the Palestinians down, and guess what, that is exactly what Arafat wants.

 

Just another day ...

Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Teen
Mar 24, 9:52 AM (ET)

By MARK LAVIE

JERUSALEM (AP) - A 15-year-old Palestinian throwing stones at Israeli troops in the West Bank was killed by army fire Monday, Palestinian hospital officials said.

...

The Palestinian teen, Ahmed Abahreh, was killed in the West Bank town of Jenin, where troops were enforcing a curfew as they searched about 30 homes. Dozens of Palestinians, many of them youths, threw stones at soldiers, who fired live rounds from armored vehicles and jeeps, residents said.

Abahreh died after a shot to the head and a second youngster was wounded in the leg, doctors at Jenin Hospital said.

...

 

Saying that this Rachel Corrie person is an American icon is like saying that the Space Shuttle Columbia astronauts were heroes. Not true, merely victims of a very unfortunate tragedy.

 

The Columbia Seven are heroes not because they didn't come back, but because they went. They went knowing there were great dangers involved, but they still went and carried our dreams with them.

Having saluted the heroes, I will not say a word more on Rachel Corrie.

 

Wow,

Reading those letters of hers to her family is quite sad and I see her as similar to most of us but having a stronger conviction towards peace and acting on it.

I do feel its farfetched to call her an American Icon, but she was an individual that risked her life to tell a message to the world about the atrocities happening in Israel. The policies of house demolition to create new settlements and economically and socially destroying the Palestinians is truly a horrendous act.

If they intentionally ran her over - TWICE - an American citizen, then there should be some sort of action by the US.

"Members of the Israeli army and associated Israeli settler paramilitary units have been responsible for the killing of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of another 22,218 between 29 September 2000 and 14 March 2003. "

Is that considered terrorism as well??? I say yes.

 

No, the Columbia crew WERE heros because of what they did before they lost their lives. They werent just "victims of a very unfortunate tragedy". Go look up the definition of the word "hero" and you will find that it fits astronauts to a T (IMO).