Gazan doctor Mona Elfaraa reports from Al Awda hospital, Jabalya on clearly marked American-made shrapnel found in a Palestinian now in critical condition during the current Israeli attacks on northern Gaza. According to Israeli newspapers, the so-called “Operation Autumn Clouds” has left 57 Palestinians dead so far. From a November 6th interview with the ISM media team:
“I have seen some of the shrapnel that was recovered from the previous day’s injuries, marked clearly with ‘Made in USA’. The shrapnel pieces seem unusual; our surgeons have not come across this before. Unfortunately, we do not have the time and facilities to investigate. Some of the bodies are totally burnt and have missing limbs and one them was covered with hundreds of pieces of small shrapnel.
“No-one is safe. This morning five and six-year old children wounded in a missile attack, were brought to our hospital. They were shaking and crying with fear. Their teacher Najwa Kholeef had been wounded in the head. A sixteen-year old boy and twenty-year old man had been killed.
“Tanks and armored vehicles have been surrounding the Beit Hanoun hospital for the last six days and preventing medical volunteers and victims of Israeli violence from reaching it.
“On Sunday our colleagues, 21 year old ambulance driver Ahmad Madhun and medical volunteer Mustafa Habib were murdered and Dannielle Abu Samra was wounded while trying to tend to the wounded.”
English-speaking media contacts in Gaza:
Dr Mona Elfaraa, Doctor at Al Awda Hospital in Beit Hanoun.
Tel: +972 599 410 741 and +970 82846602
http://fromgaza.blogspot.com
Dr Abu Ala’a, Professor at Gaza University.
Tel: + 972 599441766
Dr Asad A. Shark, Gaza Strip, + 972 599 322636
Dr Ayoub Othman, + 972 599 412 826
Yousef Alhelou, Journalist based in Beit Hanoun.
Tel: + 972599697254.
Email: ydamadan@hotmail.com
Contact the ISM Media office for full resolution photos:
02 9297 1824 or 059 994 3157
info@palsolidarity.org
Israeli attacks on Gaza continue Friday with the murder of two unarmed female non-violent demonstrators in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
As one woman participating in the demonstration stated “We risked our lives to free our sons.” (source: BBC article, see below)
The BBC has published video of the non-violent demonstration at which the two women were killed. It can be seen by clicking the ‘watch’ link at the top right-hand side of the page on the BBC News site.
It is a contravention of the Fourth Geneva convention for armies to fail to make a distinction between unarmed civilians and armed combatants. Israel is continually violating its obligations under the convention, to which it is a signatory.
Blogger, doctor and citizen-journalist Mona Elfarra has been covering the attacks from inside Beit Hanoun. See below for some of her recent reports.
Gaza: While the world is silent
by Mona Elfarra
This is happening in the north of the Gaza Strip while the world is silent. Break the silence and speak for the speechless.
Gaza, 5pm, Thursday, 2 November 2006
During its large scale military operation against Gaza, the Israeli occupying army today continued its attack on the village of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza strip. Twelve people were killed and at least 75 injured, many seriously. All casualities received at Al Awda hospital emergency room were seriously injured, with gunshot wounds to chests, abdomens and heads.
Movement of ambulances in and outside of the village is greatly restricted. Many different types of patients are confined to their homes, including patients whose life depends on renal dialysis. The only hospital inside Beit Hanoun is surrounded by dozens of army tanks and military vehicles. With continuous shelling and shooting, any moving body would be shot at once.
All men over 16 were asked to gather inside one of the village schools. As I write, the local radio station has just announced the death of one of the women trying to stop the army actions against her family.
As medical teams we are working under great pressure. The situation has been very bad and is deteriorating daily, with sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, long periods of border closure, military assualts and so on.
We were hoping that negotiations for the release of the captured Israeli soldier would bring some hope for improvement of our situation, but it seems that Israel is pressing ahead with its preplanned agenda against Gaza and the Palestinian people.
I call upon you to spread the word and to try to shake the silent world.
End the Assault Against the North of Gaza
Press Release: 2 November 2006
Yesterday the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) began their grotesquely named “Operation Autumn of Fury” in the Gaza Strip. Beit Hanoun, scene of repeated massacres by Israeli forces since June 25th, was re-occupied by Israeli tanks. Since yesterday 12 civilians have been shot dead and more than 65 women and children have been injured. On the first day of Eid El Fiter last week, 7 residents of the town were killed by the IOF.
The town of Beit Hanoun was bombed by Apache helicopters and F16 and V58 fighter planes. Beit Hanoun’s residents have no water or electricity today. These air-strikes which damage essential infrastructure and terrify the civilian population are a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people and are war crimes which are forbidden under international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention calls for any military to do its utmost to distinguish between civilians and combatants and forbids attacks on civilans or civilian infrastructure. Israel is a signatory of this convention.
We therefore call on the international community to exert pressure on the Israeli Occupation Forces to conduct themselves within the boundaries of international humanitarian law and ensure the protection of all Palestinian civilians.
We also demand the immediate halt of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ attacks on the Gaza Strip and an end to the closure and isolation of the Strip, both of which are exacerbating an already desperate humanitarian situation.
For comments contact:
Dr. Mona Al Farra +970 82 846 602 or +972 599 410 741.
Dr Abu Ala’a, Gaza Strip, + 972 599 441766
Dr Asaad Abu Sharkh, Gaza Strip, + 972 599 322636
Dr Ayyoub Othman, + 972 599 412 826
Israel has ratcheted up threats of a massive ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. We go to Gaza to speak with physician and community activist Dr. Mona El-Farra.
Israel has ratcheted up threats of a massive ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops backed by tanks, helicopters and drones have already staged ground operations in parts of Gaza in yet another escalation in the ongoing assault on the Occupied Territories.
For the past four months, the Israeli military has led a wave of intense operations along the length of the Gaza Strip. It began after the capture of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants on June 25th. The Israeli military said its operations were intended to free Corporal Shalit and to halt Qassam rocket fire. Early on the Israelis bombed Gaza’s only power plant and they have kept Gaza’s crossing points to Israel and Egypt closed for most of the time.
Since the start of the operation – codenamed Summer Rain – more than 250 Palestinians have been killed. One in five were children. According to The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which has investigated each case, the vast majority of the casualties are civilian.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy has ground to a halt. Unemployment levels stand at close to fifty percent and around eighty percent of households in Gaza are living in poverty. The crisis comes at a time when the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, are deadlocked in their efforts to form a national unity government.
Dr. Mona El-Farra is a physician and community activist living in northern Gaza. She runs a blog called From Gaza, with Love. She joins us on the line from Gaza.
—
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra is a physician and community activist who lives in northern Gaza. She runs a blog called “From Gaza, With Love.” She joins us on the phone from Gaza. Welcome to Democracy Now!
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Hello, Amy, and hello to everybody. And thank you for interviewing me.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Can you start off by describing the situation today in Gaza?
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Okay. The situation, the Israeli plane jetfighters are flying over Gaza since early hours of the morning, and it’s shame that the operation of re-incursion into Gaza is coming soon. The general mood of people are very, very low. People are feeling there’s no hope, there’s no vision for the future, especially that the political negotiation between Fatah and Hamas is deadlock. And the general situation is not promising. So people are very frustrated, feeling very low.
Then, some good news that we have heard, it might be news or rumors about the [inaudible] is coming in the next 48 hours. Even this good news doesn’t make us feel happy, because feeling this while the airplanes are flying over our heads and we are sitting every minute by the incursion and going back to what we experienced also the last three months. So the general mood of the population is not very good. And our Ramadan month is finishing and the heat is coming. The streets are nearly deserted. It is not — as these people are approaching the month — the feast, and it has a lot to do with the economical crisis that we are going through. This is in brief.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra, there were reports from Italian television station RAI that the Israeli military is facing accusations it’s used experimental weapons during recent attacks in Gaza. They’re reporting the weapons have led to abnormally serious physical injuries, including amputated limbs and severe burns. This is a report by the same journalist who reported on the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon in Fallujah, the weapon believed to be similar to the U.S.-made Dense Inert Metal Explosive, or DIME. In addition to inflicting major shrapnel wounds, the weapon is believed to be highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment. Do you have any information on this?
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Actually, as physicians here in Gaza and our police in the ER rooms, because I am just a master surgeon, but what we have noticed in the general hospital in Gaza that the sort of weapon that has been used this time is different with what has been used two years ago during the incursion of Jabalia refugee camp, for example, and different parts of Gaza. So there’s difference in the sort of injuries. The injuries [inaudible] very lethal, destructive, destructive. It is very, very specific. And it seems to kill and hurt, to make handicapped. So that’s what we have noticed.
But to have tools, we don’t have the facilities to investigate what’s going on. We are isolated in Gaza. We don’t have the real facilities to say that it is such kind of weapons and it is — or it is international [inaudible] or whatever. So I can’t give you concrete information about this, but from our remarks, our notice that the increased number, increasing number of casualties and number of injured and the sort of [inaudible] of the injured is different from what we have noticed in the previous years.
AMY GOODMAN: UNICEF just came out with a report that says the number of Palestinian children killed this year is nearly double those killed in 2005. Suhaib Kadiah, a 13-year-old girl in Gaza became the 92nd Palestinian child to be killed when she was shot during an Israeli attack on Gaza. Overall, I think they’re saying Israel has killed more than 800 Palestinian children since the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada six years ago. What kind of information do you see on the ground in Gaza?
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: On the ground, more than 400 were killed in the last three months, and the number of children, more than 80 were killed. Not only children. I can say two-thirds of the people who died were civilians, entirely civilians who were just caught during the operation and have nothing to do with the goal of the Israeli occupying army. So the number of civilians that have been killed is increasing. And this is alarming. This is dangerous, too. That was what we have noticed. Entire families have been killed and vanished during these attacks to Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: You head the Rachel Corrie Center for Children, the children center in Gaza. In a few minutes, we’re going to talk with Rachel’s sister and father, who will join us here in the studio in New York. Can you talk about this center and why you’ve named it for Rachel Corrie?
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: The Union of Health Work Committees, this is the mother organization that founded this children’s center in Rafah refugee camp — the simple idea of the center was to give a place for the children of Rafah during the incursion and during those very hardship times they are facing, because [inaudible] this place to distract their attention from the war and what’s going around them. So by the time the center was finished, Rachel Corrie passed away and gave her life, sacrificing her life to defend the children of Rafah down in the south of Gaza Strip. So the Union of Health Work Committee, both directors of administration decided to call the center — to name it after Rachel Corrie to keep her memory alive, because she sacrificed her life, she lost her life while defending Rafah children and while standing [inaudible], supporting the position against the injustice that’s inflicting on Palestinian people living under occupation. This is the reason why we named the center this.
Another reason for naming the center, we wanted to be a focal point to keep the international solidarity movement going with Palestinian people through the center. So the children in the center can really — the center itself and the children can receive international solidarity groups, people who are supportive of the Palestinian cause to come to the center and meet and see the children. On another hand, the children can communicate with the world through the facilities in the center, like the internet — computer and internet, I mean — and so the children will not grow up hating the others. We want them to grow up knowing that there are still in the world place for people who respect justice and who are fighting to see the world full of justice, not hate and injustice.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, the infighting between Hamas and Fatah. On Sunday, Hamas accusing Fatah of accepting $40 million in aid from the Bush administration, as part of a U.S. effort to topple the Hamas-led government.
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: This is big problem here for us in Gaza. This is an internal fight between Hamas and Fatah, because this is a — this doesn’t make things improve. And besides the Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, the internal atmosphere is making us really very preoccupied. Everybody is occupied by these internal clashes between Fatah and Hamas and the mutual accusation between both. And after all, in my own opinion, that this is the outcome of occupation. This is outcome of occupation, what’s happening in Gaza. I don’t blame the occupation directly, but indirectly this is the outcome of our life under occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra, I want to thank you very much for being with us, speaking to us from northern Gaza. She runs the Rachel Corrie Children’s Center there. When we come back from break, we’ll be joined by Rachel Corrie’s father and sister to talk about a play that has finally come to New York.
IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?
That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.
The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.
IN ORDER to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.
That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there. After all, you can’t conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with “determination and sensitivity”, tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.
With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside. That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.
There remained a sole connection with the outside world: the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for the experiment.
THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter. George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.
But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing “good Arabs”, devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:
The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was “controlled by terrorists”. Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.
To understand the significance of this: according to the “Paris Protocol” (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories – actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.
When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs “terrorists”, who is going to complain?
The Palestinian Authority – both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.
Then came the Israeli occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with an Israeli one.
The Palestinian workers were compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.
When the intifada broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in conditions bordering on slavery. The Palestinian workers lost their jobs.
That was the situation at the beginning of the experiment: the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed, practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in all, an ideal setting for the great “experiment in hunger”.
THE IMPLEMENTATION started, as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.
The passage between Gaza and Egypt was closed in practice. Once every few days or weeks it was opened for some hours, for appearances’ sake, so that some of the sick and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.
The crossings between the Strip and Israel were closed “for urgent security reasons”. Always, at the right moment, “warnings of an imminent terrorist attack” appeared. Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another “urgent security warning” and the situation is back to normal.
To round off the picture, the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.
In the West Bank, a territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population lives beneath the Palestinian “poverty line”, which lies of course very, very far below the Israeli “poverty line”. Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.
What are the governments of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. And, most importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.
AT THE moment, the directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything? According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!
Indeed, there are some encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli soldier has not been released.
One of the explanations has to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into account.
In order to quicken the process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from this week. For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last 39 years has been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back. Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy. And the campaign did not end well.
Now the army returns to the war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage. The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of “wanted persons”, their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last three months “only” 100 Palestinians were killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded.
How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?
In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?
All the scientists taking part in the experiment – Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres – are bent over the microscopes and waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to political science.
New York, NY, October 14th – With the long awaited opening of the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” at the Minetta Lane Theater [1], we’d like to dispel some common myths that have often crept into media coverage regarding Rachel’s death so we can focus instead on her life. We hope to avert factual errors and unnecessary controversy so the play can speak for itself. Towards that end, and with the cooperation of Rachel’s family, we have prepared this fact sheet along with clearly referenced sources.
BACKGROUND
Rachel Corrie was a 23 year old college student and human rights activist from Olympia, Washington. On March 16, 2003, she was run over and killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, while defending a Palestinian home from demolition. A gifted writer, Rachel left behind a series of diaries and emails from an early age which were crafted into a play by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner. While the United States government in its annual human rights report describes Rachel as “a US citizen peace activist” and designates her as a human rights observer, [2] this is often obscured by the fog of misinformation surrounding her.
MYTH: Rachel Corrie was accidentally killed by falling debris.
FACT: According to seven international eyewitnesses, though she was clearly visible, Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer [3]. The 2005 US State Department human rights report on Israel and the Occupied Territories states that “on March 16, an Israeli bulldozer clearing land in Rafah in the Gaza Strip crushed and killed Rachel Corrie.” [4]
Photos of the event show the tracks of the bulldozer tires running on either side, and in front and behind the spot where Rachel lay dying in her friends’ arms [5].
MYTH: The bulldozer driver could not see Rachel.
FACT: Eyewitnesses testified that the bulldozer blade created a large mound of earth as it advanced, and that Rachel climbed atop that mound to a level high enough to make eye contact with the bulldozer driver [6]. Earlier that same afternoon, bulldozers had driven dangerously close to international activists on the scene but stopped before harming them [7]. This time, the driver continued forward, pulling Rachel under the blade.
MYTH: The Israeli military conducted a thorough, credible and transparent investigation into Rachel Corrie’s death.
FACT: On March 17, 2003, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assured President Bush that the Israeli government would undertake a “thorough, credible, and transparent investigation” and would report the results to the United States. On March 19, 2003, Richard Boucher, spokesman for the State Department, noted: “When we have the death of an American citizen, we want to see it fully investigated.” [8]
In response to inquiries from the Corrie family regarding the Israeli Military Police investigation, in a letter dated June 11, 2004, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, stated, “Your ultimate question, however, is a valid one, i.e., whether or not we view that report to have reflected an investigation that was ‘thorough, credible, and transparent.’ I can answer your question without equivocation. No, we do not consider it so.” [9]
Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, wrote in The Boston Globe in 2004 that, “Despite promises of a transparent investigation, only two American Embassy staff members in Tel Aviv and my husband and I were allowed to ‘view’ the full document. While it refers to evidence gathered by the Israeli military police, no primary evidence is included… For our family, the report raises questions and fails to reconcile differences between Israeli soldiers who say they could not see Rachel and seven international eyewitnesses who say she was clearly visible.” [10]
Independent, third party observers like the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem have strongly criticized Israeli military investigations of civilian deaths [11]. Human Rights Watch said that most Israeli investigations “have been a sham” [12]. As a result of pressure by the British government, Israeli soldiers have been found responsible for the killings in Rafah of ISM activist Tom Hurndall on April 11, 2003, [13] and British reporter James Miller on May 3, 2003 [14] despite initial Israeli army investigations absolving the Israeli military of any responsibility.
MYTH: Rachel Corrie was killed while preventing the Israeli Army from destroying arms smuggling tunnels used by terrorists.
FACT: Rachel was standing in front of the home of friends – pharmacist Samir Nasrallah, his brother Khaled Nasrallah, and their wives and children. The Israeli government has never even accused Samir or Khaled Nasrallah or their wives or children of links to terrorism. The Israeli army has never even claimed that the Nasrallah home hid a weapons smuggling tunnel.
In the seven months after Rachel’s death the Israeli army demolished all the other homes in the neighborhood, with the exception of the Nasrallahs’ house, not the treatment one would accord a building concealing a weapons smuggling tunnel. The Nasrallahs finally were forced from their isolated home on October 17, 2003. It was demolished shortly thereafter [15].
Khaled Nasrallah and his wife and child came to the US in June 2005 to join Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, for a speaking tour. Reporting on the tour, the Jewish Journal explained that, “The IDF [sic] did not respond to a question about whether the Nasrallahs had ever been suspected or accused of any illegal activities. However, family members were not judged a threat by U.S. customs officials, who allowed the Nasrallahs to enter this country” [16]. The US consulate conducts a security check with Israeli intelligence before granting Palestinians visas. The Israeli Government permitted the Nasrallahs to travel unescorted to Tel Aviv for the purpose of applying for U.S. visas, a courtesy unlikely to be granted to those posing any threat.
MYTH: The Israeli army has the right and ample justification for destroying thousands of Palestinian homes in Rafah.
FACT: Respected, independent third parties state that Israel’s large-scale home demolitions in Rafah are not justified and violate international law. In October, 2004 Human Rights Watch said that, “Over the past four years, the Israeli military has demolished over 2,500 Palestinian houses in the occupied Gaza Strip. Nearly two-thirds of these homes were in Rafah… Sixteen thousand people – more than ten percent of Rafah’s population – have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of whom were dispossessed for a second or third time… The pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat, in violation of international law.” [17] The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem [18] as well as Amnesty International [19] concur.
Human Rights Watch concludes that, “the IDF [sic] has failed to explain why non-destructive means for detecting and neutralizing tunnels employed in places like the Mexico-United States border and the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) cannot be used along the Rafah border. Moreover, it has at times dealt with tunnels in a puzzlingly ineffective manner that is inconsistent with the supposed gravity of this longstanding threat” [20].
MYTH: Rachel was a naïve young woman who was exploited by the International Solidarity Movement, an extremist group that supports terrorism. Rachel did not understand the context she was in or the dangers she was facing.
FACT: One article that has fostered this myth and others is “The Death of Rachel Corrie” by Joshua Hammer, published in Mother Jones [21]. However, Phan Nguyen proved that Hammer’s article was littered with errors, and that important parts were culled from right-wing websites with little credibility [22].
In her writing [23] and a videotaped interview [24] from Rafah, Rachel Corrie lucidly depicted the daily events in the lives of ordinary Palestinians in Rafah. Rachel’s accounts of destruction in Rafah generally correspond with the descriptions and conclusions of respected third party organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Rachel traveled to Rafah with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles [25]. ISM works with Palestinian communities that are undertaking nonviolent direct action. The ISM’s positions on Israel/Palestine correspond with international law [26].
The mandatory two day ISM training in Palestine that Rachel attended included intensive non-violence training, and discussion of the real possibility that the ISM trainees might be seriously wounded or killed [27]. During their training, all ISM volunteers, including Rachel, sign a form saying that “I realize I could be detained, imprisoned, taken hostage, injured or even killed.” An October 17, 2003 Seattle Times article reported, “She knew the risks of going, her friends said… from the beginning, the danger is never undersold, say those who have gone through the ISM training.” [28]. In 2002, nine ISM volunteers performing peaceful activities were seriously injured by Israeli settlers [29] and soldiers [30].
[27] For information on ISM’s training see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/join/training/
[28] Israeli bulldozer kills activist from Olympia ; Student had a life — and death — beyond belief, Florangela Davila, The Seattle Times, March 17, 2003
