Newly dedicated Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah.On March 16th 2003, an Israeli bulldozer killed the American activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah, Gaza. Today, in Kafr Sur, near Tulkarem, and in Ramallah, family, friends and supporters gathered together to commemorate the anniversary of her murder.
Students of Kafr Sur Secondary School, who have been working on a research project about Rachel’s life and death, today marked the anniversary with a march to a memorial stone at the entrance to the village. The students were joined by children from the nearby primary school, as the stone was unveiled and speeches were delivered by the headmaster, one of the students, and an ISM activist.
A boy in Tulkarem smiles and holds photos of Rachel.Approximately fifty Palestinians, Internationals and media then joined Craig and Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s parents, for the inauguration ceremony of Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah. Speeches were delivered by both the Mayor and Governor of Ramallah, the Minister of State, National Parties’ Coordinator, an ISM activist and Rachel’s parents.
At both events, speakers talked of the lasting impact left by Rachel, as an inspiration to those involved with the non-violent resistance in Palestine and across the world. Rachel’s mother spoke about how her daughter has become a symbol for the anti-Occupation movement, and of how grateful she and her family are to the Palestinians they have come to know and love over the past seven years for their unfailing support, despite the suffering they themselves continue to experience.
The coming weeks also mark the seventh anniversaries of the shootings of the British activist Thomas Hurndall, who was shot in the head whilst shielding children in Rafah from Israeli sniper fire, and who died in hospital nine months later, and Brian Avery, an American who was shot in the face in Jenin, but who mercifully survived. Last weekend saw the one year anniversary of Tristan Anderson being hit in the head with a high velocity tear gas canister in Nilin. Tristan is still recovering in an Israeli hospital.
Today 14 March 2010 the Haifa District Court saw the second full day of testimony in the civil lawsuit filed by Rachel Corrie’s family against the State of Israel for her unlawful killing in Rafah, Gaza. Rachel Corrie, an American human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003 by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer. She had been nonviolently demonstrating against Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct action methods and principles.
In today’s hearing:
– Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the former head of the Israel Forensic Institute who conducted the autopsy of Rachel Corrie at the request of the Israeli military, admitted that he violated an Israeli court order requiring that an official from the U.S. Embassy be present during Rachel’s autopsy. Hiss also stated that his policy was not to allow entrance to the autopsy to anyone who is not a physician or biologist. Dr. Hiss stated that he spoke by phone with the US Embassy after receiving the court order and was told they would not be sending a representative, and that the Corrie family had agreed to the autopsy. Dr. Hiss admitted there was no documentation in his file of this conversation with the Embassy. The U.S. Embassy has repeatedly told the family that this was not the conversation that occurred.
– Dr. Hiss also disclosed that he had kept samples from Rachel’s body for histological testing without informing her family. Dr. Hiss admitted that he did not inform the family about their right to bury the samples and that the samples were likely to have been buried with other body samples from the Institute, but he was uncertain. This was the first time that the family of Rachel Corrie received confirmation that the Israeli Forensic Institute had indeed kept samples of her body, despite prior attempts to receive this information. Dr. Hiss has been the subject of a prior lawsuit in Israel brought by families for whom he did not return body parts and samples.
– The judge granted the Corries’ request to expand their punitive damages request, to include the failure to ensure that a U.S. Embassy official was present during the autopsy. In response to the State’s demand, the judge requested that the Corries specify the amount of claimed punitive damages. The Corries set the punitive damages at the symbolic amount of $1, stating that the court’s pronouncement of accountability and preventing future harm to others was more important to them than money.
– The judge granted the Corries’ motion to allow into evidence the medical report of Dr. Ahmed Abu Nikera the Palestinian physician who pronounced Rachel’s death in Rafah, Gaza. The State agreed to the admission of this report only after the judge granted the Corries’ earlier motion to allow Abu Nikera to testify via video conference from Gaza. In Professor Hiss’s testimony, he stated that Abu Nikera’s medical report was consistent with his findings, including the statement that Rachel had arrived dead at the hospital.
Today’s hearing also included the conclusion of Tom Dale’s testimony, a fellow ISM activist and eyewitness to Rachel’s killing.
Today’s hearing was attended by several observers, including Andrew Parker, the U.S. Embassy Consul General and human rights representatives, including Lawyers without Borders, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
Testimony will continue on March 15 from 9am-1pm, and on March 17 from 9am-4pm.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who arrived in Israel yesterday, didn’t look for camels among the cars on the road from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Jerusalem. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held two years ago for the United States Ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, Biden heard that the Israelis even know how to ride bulldozers.
Then a senator from Delaware, who chaired the committee, Biden asked for a detailed report on the affair of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was run over and killed by the treads of an Israeli bulldozer.
If Biden schedules a meeting with Corrie’s parents here, the Israeli Information and Diaspora Ministry will have to work overtime. The parents, who arrived in advance of the scheduled deliberations on their suit against the state of Israel, will tell him that his hosts are continuing to deny any responsibility for their daughter’s death.
Rachel was a 23-year-old student run over by a 64-ton bulldozer in March, 2003, when she and others from the International Solidarity Movement tried to use their bodies to stop the demolition of a house in Rafah.
At the Senate hearing, Cunningham spoke about the Israel authorities’ refusal to open a thorough investigation into the affair and not rest content with an internal report.
Cunningham detailed numerous written and oral requests to top people in the Israeli government by senior people in the American administration and his predecessor at the embassy. In reply to Biden’s question, Cunningham undertook to stand by the Corrie family in the demand for a credible investigation of the tragic event. Tomorrow the witness stage in the Corrie family’s suit will open at the Haifa District Court. Facing the family and friends will be representatives of the state who are demanding the suit be withdrawn. They claim Corrie was killed in “an act of war,” during the course of an armed conflict in a closed military zone. Therefore, even if it is proved there was use of excessive force as well as gross negligence – the state is totally exempt from liability. The defense is giving legal cover to the bulldozer operator and the soldiers who secured him, on the grounds it was a sovereign “act of state.” In other words: Corrie was responsible for her own death.
Apparently Israel takes responsibility for the deaths of foreign civilians only when threatened. For more than five years legal wrangling dragged on between the state and the family of British television filmmaker James Miller, who was shot and killed in Rafah. With respect to that incident too, which took place two months after Corrie was killed, the state hid behind the excuse of “an act of war.” In this case too questions arose as to the credibility of the Investigative Military Police report and the top political level in London urged the government of Israel to compensate the widow and the orphans. The case was closed (with the payment of more than 1 million pounds Sterling in compensation) after the British threatened to issue an official extradition request for the Israeli soldiers who shot the cameraman.
The American media have long ceased to follow American VIPs who come to give artificial respiration to “the peace process.” Perhaps the White House reporters who are accompanying Biden will evince interest in the Corrie case.
Rachel nonviolently blocks Israeli bulldozers from destroying Palestinian homes along the Rafah/Egyptian boarder while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement.
As many of you know, a civil lawsuit in the case of our daughter Rachel Corrie is scheduled for trial in the Haifa District Court beginning March 10, 2010. A human rights observer and activist, Rachel, 23, tried nonviolently to offer protection for a Palestinian family whose home was threatened with demolition by the Israeli military. On March 16, 2003, she was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar D9R bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza.
The lawsuit is one piece of our family’s seven-year effort to pursue justice for our daughter and sister. We hope this trial will illustrate the need for accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by occupation—in a besieged and beleaguered Gaza and throughout Palestine/Israel; bring attention to the assault on nonviolent human rights activists (Palestinian, Israeli, and international); and underscore the fact that so many Palestinian families, harmed as deeply as ours, cannot access Israeli courts. In order to deliver these interconnected messages as effectively as possible, we are asking for large-scale participation in the trial itself as well as in the events surrounding it. We hope you will join us for all or some of the events listed below and help us to put the call out to others.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10
9:00-16:00—Trial Begins in the Haifa District Court (12 Palyam St. Haifa)
A strong presence of human rights observers, legal observers, and others on the first day of the trial will send the message that this case is being closely monitored and that truth, accountability and justice matter to us all. Other trial dates are: March 14, 15, 17, 21, 22 and 24. Supportive presence at all court sessions is both welcome and needed!
FRIDAY, MARCH 12
13:00-15:00—Film Screening at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque (2 Shprinzak St. Tel Aviv)
Screening of the documentary film RACHEL followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Simone Bitton and the Corrie family. RACHEL is a cinematic inquiry into Rachel’s killing. It raises many of the questions that should be asked and addressed during the trial.
TUESDAY, MARCH 16
20:00-22:00—Memorial; Location TBA
March 16th marks the seven-year anniversary of Rachel’s killing. We hope to mark this day as a “Day of Conscience” with a large gathering that calls for truth, accountability and justice, in Rachel’s case and beyond. There will also be events in Gaza (at the Rachel Corrie Children and Youth Cultural Center in Rafah), possibly in the West Bank (TBA), and around the world. If you are not with us in Palestine/Israel, please think about how you and your group/community can be visible/audible on March 16.
Cindy and Craig Corrie
We expect this to be a challenging time, but we know the friendship we have felt from so many of you over the years will help us navigate the weeks ahead. Though the course and outcome of the trial are unknown, we welcome the opportunity to raise and highlight many of the critical issues to which Rachel’s case is linked. Thank you for your continuing support.
The Jerusalem Municipality issued a further 8 demolition orders on February 24 applying to Palestinian homes in Silwan village East Jerusalem. The main street of Wadi Hilweh neighbourhood of Silwan collapsed that evening at the same point it collapsed in January due to structural damage caused by settler project “City of David”’s subterranean excavations.
A large force of Israeli Police and Border Police, accompanied by Jerusalem Municipality representatives, executed an early morning raid on the village of Silwan that day to deliver a further 8 administrative demolition orders. Amongst the affected families are that of Riad a-Tawil, Nayef Alqam, Hani Haymoni, Yassin Salaymeh and Salfiti.
The demolition orders state “Under Construction & Management Law of 1956 you are ordered to immediately halt all current construction work and return the area’s condition to its status prior to initial construction [to remove the structure entirely]. If no action is implemented with regards to this warning the Municipality will consider taking legal action against you via administrative demolition.”
Riad a-Tawil stated that Municipality representatives visited his shop in the Wadi Hilweh district of Silwan to measure and photograph it from the exterior prior to their delivery of the demolition order to be applied to the property. He denounced the exclusive enforcement of the law on Silwan’s Palestinian residents whilst various illegal settlement construction continues unabated in the village.
Hani Haymoni reports similar treatment, wherein Municipality officials photographed and assessed his family home from the outside before issuing its order for demolition. The house is home to 8 members of the Haymoni family.
The same evening at approximately 8:30pm the Wadi Hilweh neighbourhood’s main street collapsed a second time, the cavity having been repaired since it collapsed at the same point on 2 January 2010. The collapse was due to structural damage caused by extensive excavations undertaken by settler conglomerate Elad’s “City of David” project underneath large areas of Silwan, severely compromising the structural integrity and safety of Palestinian homes, shops and streets. Elad has employed methods of “political archeology” to lay claim to the area, claiming to have uncovered the Biblical city of King David, reinforcing the right-wing ideological vision of Jerusalem as Israel’s unified capital on the basis of ancient history. Its plans are to convert the majority of Silwan in to a “Biblical theme park”, which, should they succeed would ethnically cleanse thousands of Palestinian residents from the region.
There are already over 200 standing demolition orders on Palestinian homes in Silwan that face a renewed threat since Jerusalem mayor Nir Barakat’s statement last week that the Municipality will implement all demolition orders on structures deemed illegal. The statement was made in response to an in effect order of eviction on the illegal Jewish settlement project of Beit Yehnatan in Silwan issued by the Jerusalem Civil Court. Although the law stipulating the illegality of construction without the required permit applies to all residents of Silwan, it has only been applied to Palestinians to date, betraying the Municipality’s racist policies regarding the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. The law has been used as one of the Municipality’s fundamental tools in its attempts to limit or prevent natural growth of Silwan’s native population and its underhanded support for seemingly private settler projects such as Beit Yehnatan or Elad’s “City of David” project.
