ccasionally an American takes
his or her role as an American seriously and demonstrates the basic values we once lived by out of shear generosity and compassion.  One such American died in service to humanity on March 16, 2003, and it is this young woman, I'd like to remember today.

A beautiful, vivacious twenty-three year old Evergreen State college student out of Olympia, Washington, Rachel Corrie was murdered trying to save the property of a man, Rafahinian, Dr. Samir Nasrallah, who had done nothing wrong except be born in the wrong country, with the wrong color skin and the wrong faith.  Rachel represented all that is good about America, what we once were: brave, compassionate, caring, humane, seekers of peace and people who do something about what is wrong with the world instead of complaining in complacency.  She died trying to save a man's home, murdered in cold blood by a US made and funded Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer in the hands of a two vengeful soldiers.  Each Caterpillar is manned by two Israeli soldiers. 

What She was Defending

United Nation's reports over the past three years Israel has destroyed nearly 900 houses in Rafah, (a total of near 15,000 in Palestine). For the families, there is no compensation, and this destruction of property falls under the Rome Statues definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population under their control.  A form of collective punishment and surgical terror, this is like the US government showing up one day, telling you you don't live in your home anymore, even if your family has owned that land for hundreds of years. Once confiscating your home the government then destroys it and everything in it as you and your family watch, now homeless, penniless, with only what you can carry. 

Rachel was working to prevent actions of a holocaust in progress and the best way to explain this is through a movie most are familiar with. Watching Schindler's List last week knowing the reality in Palestine, the Nazis became Israelis and the Palestinians the Jews.  Oskar Schindler reminded me of America, complicit and even supportive at first and slowly waking up to the horror unfolding. Perhaps in time Rachel will become our little girl in the red coat. Knowing the present situation, these similarities were impossible to shake during the first half of the movie, right  up through the emptying of the ghetto. The victimized have become the victimizers and history is repeating itself at the hands of the very people who should know better.

The scene in the Judenrat where complaints are registered and the woman says, "They come into our house and tell us we don't live there anymore", so many times I've heard the same stunned frustration from Palestinians. The lines of people standing, the humiliation, the restriction to freedom, racial laws, forced starvation, the desecration of religious sites and symbols, the targeting of people for their faith, (in this case Gentiles instead of Jews) the shootings in the streets, the roads closed off to Jews in the movie are the same roads closed of to Arabs today. The theft of property even the taunts "Good bye Jews" by the little girl on the day of the Krakow Ghetto immigration.  Today Israeli settlers scream at Palestinians, "We will kill you all!".  The guerrilla warfare the Jews fought from the ghettos against the Nazi military might  is the same guerrilla warfare fought by the Palestinians against the Israeli military might. Up through the emptying of the Krakow Ghetto in the movie, this is exactly what Palestine is like today.  The next step is concentration camps and forced deportation.  The Israeli government already speaks publicly of forced deportation and worse.

Gaza exists today as a walled ghetto.  Rather than simply force people out of their homes and acquire them, in the Occupied Territories the homes and everything in them are destroyed. If the resident doesn't hear the bulldozer or is too slow to move, he/she is crushed to death.  The excuse of late is these homes must be destroyed  in order to create a one hundred meter "buffer zone" between Palestinian homes and the wall. Daily shelling and armed raids over the past three years have killed nearly 300 Palestinians in Rafah and have left more than 8,600 people homeless. This is what Rachel was fighting and trying to prevent.  Any American with conscience, Jewish or Gentile witnessing this would have done the same. 

Currently, Rabbi Arik Ascherman originally from the United States, and the Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights is awaiting trial in Israel for trying to prevent the demolition of two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the same non-violent protesting as Rachel Corrie.  March 17. 2004, over 400 Rabbis from around the world signed a letter sent to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon protesting Israel’s home demolition policy and the trial. The letter noted that: “The homes that were demolished were not connected with terrorism. None of the people in these homes or their relatives engaged in violence or harboring terrorists. The homes were demolished because of a violation of zoning regulations. The inhabitants had failed to secure a building permit for an extension in the context where it is almost impossible for Palestinian families in those parts of the West Bank under Israeli civilian control or in Jerusalem to legally obtain them.” 

Taken by force, East Jerusalem is part of the Occupied Territory and does not legally belong to Israel.

Standing with the Rabbis are hundreds of non-Zionist Christian and Muslim clergy and clerics. This issue, what Rachel attempted to prevent, is not about anti-Semitism or anti-Americanism.  It is about humanity, ending apartheid and removing the situations that cause terrorism.

The Last Minutes of Rachel Corrie   Rachel Corrie confronts the bulldozer driver. (ISM Handout)   A clearly marked Rachel Corrie, holding a megaphone, confronts an Israeli bulldozer driver attempting to demolish a Palestinian home, Rafah, Occupied Gaza, 16 March 2003. (ISM Handout)   Other peace activists tend to Rachel after being injured by the Israeli bulldozer driver, Rafah, Occupied Gaza, 16 March 2003. (ISM Handout)   Rachel Corrie lies on the ground fatally injured by the Israeli bulldozer, Rafah, Occupied Gaza, 16 March 2003. (ISM Handout) Click Here for Audio to Hear one of the Eyewitnesses describing the attack on Italian Radio (in English)

March 16, 2003 This day six activists were attempting to prevent the destruction of more homes. On several occasions, the bulldozers stopped several times directly at the feet of the demonstrators, before pulling back, indicating they could see the protestors even at the base of the blade. The protesting the ISM volunteers conduct is similar to the protesting in the United States you see where environ-mentalists or human rights activists will place themselves in the path of trucks and equipment to prevent destruction.  For whatever reason, this time the driver and his lookout decided not to stop. Rachel slipped below the blade wailing in pain, the massive machine crushing her; not satisfied, the driver moved over her and then reversed course while several horrified people screamed and attempted to stop him. Military personnel nearby, allowed it to happen.  Her death is tragic, but not nearly as tragic as America's response.  Our response, none but ridicule shows how sick, morally sick as a nation we have become.  Rachel was an American citizen killed exemplifying all that Americans consider righteous.  As a student activist she devoted her life through civil disobedience to ending one of the longest, cruelest and inhumane occupations in the history of man.  An occupation defined illegal by UN Resolution 242, (a total of 84 sanctions) and wholeheartedly funded by the United States. An occupation that targets children with bombs shaped like toys, which then explode, gutting the children and killing or maiming playmates near.

Rachel was doing exactly what the majority of Americans wish they could have done, had they been alive, during the most widely publicized of seven holocausts[1] of the twentieth century. Miss Corrie didn't sit around and wish she could help. She did.

She fought peacefully and unarmed against tanks and an armed military that has crushed alive the elderly, handicap and ill in their homes with bulldozers.   She fought an oppression that at times places numbers on the arms of those trapped in its ghettos.  She protested against an occupational force that tosses poison nerve gas into the courtyards of homes where women and children are playing. 

The us Media's Tribute to Rachel

As a nation did we express outrage that one of our unarmed citizens, barely an adult was murdered in a selfless act assisting others?  Did we insist upon an investigation?  Did we do anything?  Yes.  Rachel became the butt of jokes on comedy shows.  She was ridiculed by our newscasters and vilified by our pundits, some even saying she "Deserved it".   Who deserves to be squashed to death under a giant bulldozer?  Prostrate with grief, her parents began touring America in an effort to educate people to the real issues in Palestine.  Many times they were prevented from speaking.  Why?  Their daughter did nothing wrong and everything right.  Rachel Corrie is hero in the truest sense of the word.  She represents everything good about America.  Unfortunately she was murdered by the only group of people with full immunity from accountability and prosecution.  She was murdered by two Israelis.

The British press and even some in the Israeli press wrote some beautiful eulogies to Miss Corrie. Her country however, the United States turned a blind eye and degraded her.  In the rest of the world she is a hero.  In America, her home, she is ridiculed. Case in Point:

On Today, the anniversary of her death, The Wall Street Journal, one of the largest newspapers in the United States posted the following:

IN MEMORIAM

A Tribute to Rachel Corrie
Thanks for showing us what "peace" really means.

BY RUHAMA SHATTAN
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

Today is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.

Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her martyrdom--oops, death--have been strapped around suicide bombers to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem, killing men, women and schoolchildren (two of them classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004 bombing) and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans and bereaved parents.

Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall. <end excerpt>
 

The last name, "Shattan" is Arabic for "The Devil". Devote Muslims are forbidden from speaking this name, making this a cruel, sadistic  joke toward them.  To protest the letter, they must read it and cite it. Psychological warfare, the story purposely instigates.  This first appeared in the Jerusalem Post, considered by the majority of international journalists as the most racist paper on the planet.  Its nickname, "The Hate Sheet" as this example shows, is well earned.

What possessed the Wall Street Journal to pick up such an opinion defies words. Blatant hate, this racism and errant propaganda vilifies an American citizen, ties her to ideas, organizations and actions she and the groups she worked with have no ties to.  Though the US embassy failed to protect her death and insist on an investigation,  it did voice its disapproval in a letter to the editor of the originating paper, the  Jerusalem Post:

US Embassy accuses J'Post of publishing ''hateful incitement''
March 16, 2004, By Warrick Page for IMEMC

The US Embassy condemned the Jerusalem Post in a letter to the editor on Wednesday, saying an editorial written about the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death, was "nothing less than a hateful incitement".

The editorial, written by Ruhama Shattan, "thanks" Ms Corrie - a US peace activist killed in Rafah on March 16 last year -for "defending" the arms-smuggling tunnels in Gaza and "for showing Palestinian children how to despise America".

The response from the US Embassy, written by Paul Patin, said, "The author's disgusting abuse of the anniversary of the death of this American citizen is inexcusable".

Such treatment of an American citizen is shameful and the Wall Street Journal should be held accountable for posting hate speech,  a horrendous breach of ethics.  The publication took a selfless act and made it evil, an unconscionable leap. The person who approved this propaganda demonstrates his/her judgment severely lacks the critical thinking skills and morality required of a professional journalist. Research disproves its allegations and the person posting did not check the facts. Posting such constitutes extraordinarily sloppy journalism. The only motivation for such libel is pure hate.

More revealing is how Americans responded to this opinion. The Journal chooses which to post and many of us sent in objections to the article. These were not posted, (they have since in the following weeks posted some of the objections). Rather, the Journal posted a majority demonstrating a crass disregard for Americans and the life of one of our own.  Any doubts that the posting was unintentional or "slipped through the cracks" evaporates. The responses posted show it to be intended, purposeful and with malice.

The Investigation into Rachel's death

In Israel, even though photos show the action and many witnesses were present, no one was charged or reprimanded for the murder of Rachel Corrie.  In a characteristic stroke of cruelty, the Israeli government  even celebrated her death, taunting her grieving family in correspondences to her parents. Of late the story shifted from denying that Rachel was run over by the bulldozer, to maintaining that Rachel was not actually touched by the bulldozer, (despite the fact its imprints are visible on her) but killed by falling on a concrete block.  This is refuted by the Israeli autopsy report the Corrie family obtained, and as is clear in the pictures above, there are no concrete blocks in existence.

The US never investigated Rachel's death and the Israeli government refuses to release its June 2003 military police investigation final report to the United States, only allowing an American embassy official to read and take notes from selected parts, (kind of like us removing 800 pages from the report on WMD's before allowing others to see it.) The Israeli's refuse to allow a memorial to her the Palestinians would very much like to build.  She is a hero to the Palestinian people.  She should also be a hero to the American people.  Israel's reaction to her death was to change its laws so that all aid workers have to sign a release allowing them to be killed without repercussions. Summary executions of Palestinians are common and peace activists are often targeted along with children in the West Bank and Gaza. After Rachel was killed, Brian Avery of New Mexico was shot in the face on April 5; Tom Hurndall, (22) a British citizen, was shot in the head on April 11 attempting to protect some children playing and died Jan. 13, 2004 and James Miller, another British citizen, was also shot and killed in April 2003. NEXT