Tag: Rachel Corrie - Page 25 - International Solidarity Movement

Rachel’s emails

23-year-old American ISM activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying a home owned by the Nasrallah family in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. What follows are a series of emails to her family:

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 peak 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.

February 8 2003
I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don’t have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel’s response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you.

Received by Rachel on February 7 2003
I am a reserve first sergeant in the IDF. The military orisons are filling up with conscientious objectors. Many of them are reservists with families. These are men who have proven their courage under fire in the past. Some have been in jail for more than six months with no end in sight.

The amount of AWOLS and refusals to serve are unprecedented in our history as a nation as well as are refusals to carry out orders that involve firing on targets where civilians may be harmed. In a time now in Israel where jobs are scarce and people are losing their homes and businesses to Sharon’s vendetta, many career soldiers – among them pilots and intelligence personnel – have chosen jail and unemployment over what they cold only describe as murder.

I am supposed to report to the Military Justice department – it is my job to hunt down runaway soldiers and bring them in. I have not reported in for 18 months. Instead, I’ve been using my talents and credentials to document on film and see with my own eyes what the ISMers and other internationals have claimed my boys have been up to.

I love my country. I believe that Israel is under the leadership of some very bad people right now. I believe that settlers and local police are in collusion with each other and that the border police are acting disgracefully. They are an embarrassment to 40% of the Israeli public and they would be an embarrassment to 90% of the population if they knew what we know.

Please document as much as you can and do not embellish anything with creative writing. The media here serves as a very convincing spin control agent through all of this. Pass this on letter to your friends. There are many soldiers among the ranks of those serving in the occupied territories that are sickened by what they see.

There is a code of honor in the IDF – it is called “tohar haneshek” (pronounced TOWhar haNEHshek). It’s what we say to a comrade who is about to do something awful, like kill an unarmed prisoner or carry out an order that violates decency. It means literally “the purity of arms”.

Another phrase that speaks to a soldier in his own language is “degle shachor” (DEHgel ShaHor) – it means “black flag”. If you say, “Atah MeTachat Degle Shahor” it means “you are carrying out immoral orders”. It’s a big deal and a shock to hear it from the lips of “silly misguided foreigners”

At all times possible try to engage the soldiers in conversation. Do not make the mistake of objectifying them as they have objectified you. Respect is catching, as is disrespect, whether either be deserved or not.

You are doing a good thing. I thank you for it.

Peace,

Danny

Continuation of her email to her mother, February 28 2003
I think I could see a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within my lifetime. I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports.

I look forward to increasing numbers of middle-class privileged people like you and me becoming aware of the structures that support our privilege and beginning to support the work of those who aren’t privileged to dismantle those structures.

I look forward to more moments like February 15 when civil society wakes up en masse and issues massive and resonant evidence of it’s conscience, it’s unwillingness to be repressed, and it’s compassion for the suffering of others. I look forward to more teachers emerging like Matt Grant and Barbara Weaver and Dale Knuth who teach critical thinking to kids in the United States. I look forward to the international resistance that’s occurring now fertilizing analysis on all kinds of issues, with dialogue between diverse groups of people. I look forward to all of us who are new at this developing better skills for working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism and becoming more effective

One other thing – I think this a lot about public protest – like the one a few weeks ago here that was attended by only about 150 people. Whenever I organize or participate in public protest I get really worried that it will just suck, be really small, embarrassing, and the media will laugh at me. Oftentimes, it is really small and most of the time the media laughs at us. The weekend after our 150-person protest we were invited to a maybe 2,000 person protest. Even though we had a small protest and of course it didn’t get coverage all over the world, in some places the word “Rafah” was mentioned outside of the Arab press. Colin got a sign in English and Arabic into the protest in Seattle that said “Olympia says no to war on Rafah and Iraq”. His pictures went up on the Rafah-today website that a guy named Mohammed here runs. People here and elsewhere saw those pictures.

I think about Glen going out every Friday for ten years with tagboard signs that addressed the number of children dead from sanctions in Iraq. Sometimes just one or two people there and everyone thought they were crazy and they got spit upon. Now there are a lot more people on Friday evenings.

The juncture between 4th and State is just lined with them, and they get a lot of honks and waves, and thumbs ups. They created an infrastructure there for other people to do something. Getting spit on, they made it easier for someone else to decide that they could write a letter to the editor, or stand at the back of a rally – or do something that seems slightly less ridiculous than standing at the side of the road addressing the deaths of children in Iraq and getting spit upon.

Just hearing about what you are doing makes me feel less alone, less useless, less invisible. Those honks and waves help. The pictures help. Colin helps. The international media and our government are not going to tell us that we are effective, important, justified in our work, courageous, intelligent, valuable. We have to do that for each other, and one way we can do that is by continuing our work, visibly.

I also think it’s important for people in the United States in relative privilege to realize that people without privilege will be doing this work no matter what, because they are working for their lives. We can work with them, and they know that we work with them, or we can leave them to do this work themselves and curse us for our complicity in killing them. I really don’t get the sense that anyone here curses us.

I also get the sense that people here, in particular, are actually more concerned in the immediate about our comfort and health than they are about us risking our lives on their behalf. At least that’s the case for me. People try to give me a lot of tea and food in the midst of gunfire and explosive-detonation.

I love you,

Rachel

Rachel’s last email

Hi papa,

Thank you for your email. I feel like sometimes I spend all my time propogandizing mom, and assuming she’ll pass stuff on to you, so you get neglected. Don’t worry about me too much, right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don’t feel particularly at risk. Rafah has seemed calmer lately, maybe because the military is preoccupied with incursions in the north – still shooting and house demolitions – one death this week that I know of, but not any larger incursions. Still can’t say how this will change if and when war with Iraq comes.

Thanks also for stepping up your anti-war work. I know it is not easy to do, and probably much more difficult where you are than where I am. I am really interested in talking to the journalist in Charlotte – let me know what I can do to speed the process along. I am trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I leave here, and when I’m going to leave. Right now I think I could stay until June, financially. I really don’t want to move back to Olympia, but do need to go back there to clean my stuff out of the garage and talk about my experiences here. On the other hand, now that I’ve crossed the ocean I’m feeling a strong desire to try to stay across the ocean for some time. Considering trying to get English teaching jobs – would like to really buckle down and learn Arabic.

Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back – which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too. One of the core members of our group has to leave tomorrow – and watching her say goodbye to people is making me realize how difficult it will be. People here can’t leave, so that complicates things. They also are pretty matter-of-fact about the fact that they don’t know if they will be alive when we come back here.

I really don’t want to live with a lot of guilt about this place – being able to come and go so easily – and not going back. I think it is valuable to make commitments to places – so I would like to be able to plan on coming back here within a year or so. Of all of these possibilities I think it’s most likely that I will at least go to Sweden for a few weeks on my way back – I can change tickets and get a plane to from Paris to Sweden and back for a total of around 150 bucks or so. I know I should really try to link up with the family in France – but I really think that I’m not going to do that. I think I would just be angry the whole time and not much fun to be around. It also seems like a transition into too much opulence right now – I would feel a lot of class guilt the whole time as well.

Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life. I love you very much. If you want you can write to me as if I was on vacation at a camp on the big island of Hawaii learning to weave. One thing I do to make things easier here is to utterly retreat into fantasies that I am in a Hollywood movie or a sitcom starring Michael J Fox. So feel free to make something up and I’ll be happy to play along. Much love Poppy.

Rachel

Hundreds Salute International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie’s Parents

Pat and Samir Twair | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

The world was shocked March 16 by photos of International Solidarity Movement volunteer Rachel Corrie standing before an Israeli bulldozer that, seconds later, crushed her to death. The international outcry didn’t faze the Israeli government, however, which on April 5 shot ISM member Brian Avery in the face and on April 11 shot Tom Hurndall, who has been declared brain dead.

While global attention was focused on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israeli tanks and bulldozers drove roughshod over Palestinian towns, killing Associated Press journalist Nazih Darwazeh in Nablus April 20 and British photographer James Miller on May 2. In the midst of this rampage, Southern California humanitarian groups decided to raise funds for ISM and honor Rachel Corrie’s parents for their dignity throughout the tragedy of losing their daughter.

The Israeli propaganda machine immediately launched its spin on the unnecessary deaths of American and British peace advocates, but Israel’s pattern of threatening, beating and now murdering foreign observers refutes the occupier’s explanations.

Eyewitnesses report that Rachel stood a couple of yards in front of the American-made Caterpillar D9 bulldozer about to demolish the home of a Palestinian physician. She looked the driver in the eye before he buried her in debris and drove over her, then went into reverse and crushed her a second time. Israel says the driver, who has not been reprimanded, said he did not see the American woman in a bright orange day-glo vest.

Just as invitations were issued to the May 17 event, Israeli troops raided the ISM office in Beit Sahour, confiscating computers, photographs and files and arresting three women on the premises. Adding insult to injury, Israel decreed on May 11 that all internationals entering Gaza must sign a “waiver” absolving Israeli soldiers from any deaths or injuries they inflict.

Nonetheless, a respite from these images of escalating brutality was offered May 17 with an evening of poetry, music and recollections of Rachel Corrie in the Hyatt Regency Orange County Hotel.

A violin solo by Dr. Nabil Azzam, a debke dance by children of Birzeit, and poetry by KPFK newsman Jerry Quickley and Dima Hilal opened a window onto Arab culture for the more than 600 guests on hand.

ISM spokesman Adam Shapiro vowed that the Israeli clampdown on international rights activists will not succeed.

“We all know the risks involved,” he said, “and this summer, we hope to have 1,000 volunteers to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. We’re going to go to the Apartheid Wall that is forcing Palestinians off their land and we’re going to take down that wall with our hands.”

Acknowledging that Israel has billions of dollars, and weapons and bulldozers, Shapiro said the Palestinians have sumud, a unity and strength of knowing their cause is just, which cannot be taken away.

“Many think nonviolence is passivity,” Shapiro noted, “but it means being pro-active.” In August 2001, 50 people volunteered with ISM. By December of the same year, 300 internationals and Palestinians took over a checkpoint between Ramallah and Birzeit. “We laid on the ground and when they threw tear gas canisters at us, we threw them away.”

He urged people to check the ISM Web site and to join in ISM Freedom Summer 2003.

In presenting the Muslim Public Affairs Council Courage Award, Dr. Maher Hathout said that courage is not the opposite of cowardice, but rather the principle of standing up to injustice.

“When Rachel Corrie faced that bulldozer and with her own hand tried to stop it from demolishing a house, she transcended the pettiness of life,” he declared. “Rachel became a flickering candle in thick darkness. For darkness cannot be complete if just one candle is lit.”

Rachel’s father, Craig Corrie, disclosed that, ironically, when he served as a combat engineer with the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam in 1970, he had been in charge of bulldozers.

“But I didn’t harm anyone,” commented the tall, greying insurance actuary.

He now realizes, he said, the courage it took for his daughter to put on her ISM vest every day and witness calculated cruelties and human rights abuses. In her hometown of Olympia, WA, she had encouraged her parents to talk to the street people and feel their pain.

“We don’t dwell on what we didn’t do or what might have been avoided,” Corrie concluded, “but we do demand more accountability from our government.”

Cynthia Corrie acknowledged that over the past few weeks she has found it difficult to adequately describe her daughter, because there were so many dimensions to her character. Rachel sent many e-mails home from Gaza, always stressing the need for Palestinian voices to be heard in the U.S. and marveling over the Palestinians’ ability to organize against all obstacles.

Rachel grew up in a home on two acres near Puget Sound, Mrs. Corrie said. By the fifth grade, Rachel wrote that she wanted to be a lawyer, dancer, actress, mother, wife, children’s author, distance runner, poet, pianist, pet store owner, astronaut, envioronmental and humanitarian activist, psychiatrist, ballet teacher and the first woman president. In the seventh grade she organized a student walkout on behalf of the teachers. When her mother told her she shouldn’t go through with the strike, Rachel said she had to because she’d already called a press conference.

During her sophomore year in high school, Rachel was an exchange student and lived with a Russian family for six weeks in the Sakhalin Islands.

“Rachel witnessed the hardships the family endured, and she realized how lucky Americans are,” Mrs. Corrie said. It was about this time that a teacher remarked that “Rachel is destined to make a difference.”

Rachel took one year off from her studies at Evergreen State University to serve in the Washington State Conservation Corps. Her volunteerism included weekly drop-ins over three years to mental patients in a hospital diversion house.

“Some of these patients talked publicly after Rachel’s death and mentioned the positive impact she had on their lives,” Mrs. Corrie continued.

“Rachel went to Gaza to do more than stand in front of bulldozers. She was doing the paper work to make Rafah a sister city of Olympia and was negotiating with a local storekeeper to sell hand crafts from Gaza. Rachel was concerned about the water shortage in Gaza and slept beside wells to protect them.”

The young idealist confided in e-mails that being in Gaza was the most important work of her life. “Rachel admitted she was often afraid,” her mother said, “but she wanted to see an end to the injustice perpetrated there.”

The emotional finale was the presentation of a hand-embroidered Palestinian jacket from Sameera Sood of the Palestinian-American Women’s Association to Mrs. Corrie. Other organizers of the ISM fund-raiser were American Friends Service Committee, Los Angeles-Palestine Solidarity Committee and MPAC.

And, as her teacher once predicted, Rachel has made a difference. Olympians are carrying out Rachel’s endeavors to establish a sister city relationship with Rafah and, according to Phan Nguyen, Olympia’s ISM coordinator, many people are signing up to serve with ISM this summer.

The Corries have established the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.

Protest on Israeli Crackdown

It may be difficult to stop Israeli atrocities, but much can be done to expose Israel’s new push to expel foreigners bearing witness to its assault on the Palestinian population. A noisy, attention-getting May 16 demonstration was arranged within four days at the Los Angeles Israeli Consulate, where passing motorists honked their horns and gave the V sign to protesters on both sides of Wilshire Boulevard.

Many protesters wore hastily sewn orange and yellow day-glo vests, the uniform of International Solidarity Movement workers in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the rally, Michael Shaik of Canberra, Australia, recalled his experiences with the ISM from Jan. 16 to April 16. “The U.S. wants all these abuses covered up, they don’t want Israel to be embarrassed,” he told the crowd of 150 people. “This year the U.S. is giving $15 billion to Israel to keep up its occupation of the Palestinians. Israeli soldiers bear no responsibility, they can deliberately kill anyone with impunity.”

One month before Rachel Corrie was murdered, Shaik said, he had called the U.S. Consulate to say that American citizens were being threatened by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The response was that the Americans shouldn’t be there.

“What if Americans are killed?” he asked.

The consular officer responded that that was no excuse.

“I won’t let Rachel’s death be in vain,” the young volunteer told the Washington Report. “Brian [Avery] is my friend as well. So much must be told to the world. It is stupefying to see how the truth is muffled.”

Avery was shot in the face April 5 in Jenin by soldiers in an armored personnel carrier who opened fire on unarmed ISM members.

Protesters sent a letter to the Israeli Consulate demanding Israel rescind requirements that foreigners entering Gaza sign waivers absolving the Israeli army if they shoot them.

Across the street from the consulate, a dozen demonstrators held a 32-foot-long banner that read “No Occupation in Palestine or Iraq.” A husky, bearded protester wearing a red beret and plaid shirt carried a sign reading: “Sharon’s Orgy of Hatred, Bush’s Orgy of Greed.” As he approached the demonstration, he remarked, people asked, “Who’s Sharon, your old girlfriend? Are you advertising a porno flick?”

Haaretz: Army decides to close file on death of U.S. peace activist

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Staff

The Military Advocate General, Major General Menahem Finkelstein, has decided to close the file on the death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who died after being crushed by an army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March.

Corrie, a 23-year-old college student who belonged to the International Solidarity Movement in the territories, was killed by an IDF bulldozer in Rafah, where she was taking part in protest efforts to prevent the army from demolishing houses, in an effort to block smuggling from Egypt.

An investigation conducted by the IDF Southern Command determined that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen Corrie and had not intentionally run over her. A probe conducted by the Military Police revealed similar findings.

Finkelstein reached his decision after reviewing the findings of the investigation conducted by the Military Police.

This brings to an end the military’s probe into the incident, and means that no disciplinary measures will be taken against any of those involved in the incident in which Corrie was killed.

Eyewitnesses in Rafah said a routine IDF demolition operation was underway on the day of Corrie’s death, with two D-9 bulldozers and a tank as protection.

The troops had destroyed three buildings that were already partially demolished and a number of walls. The ISM activists then deployed in the area and used bullhorns to call on the drivers to stop. According to ISM activists, at one stage the IDF forces left the area and took up positions near the border, a few hundred meters away.

But around 5 P.M., the force returned, and the activists assumed the bulldozers were on their way to other houses.

“They began demolishing one house,” said an ISM activist, who said his name was Richard. “We gathered around and called out to them and went into the house, so they backed out. During the entire time they knew who we were and what we were doing, because they didn’t shoot at us. We stood in their way and shouted. There were about eight of us in an area about 70 square meters. Suddenly, we saw they turned to a house they had started to demolish before, and I saw Rachel standing in the way of the front bulldozer.”

According to the activist, Corrie was wearing a bright jacket and climbed onto the bulldozer shovel-plow and began shouting at the driver.

“There’s no way he didn’t see her, since she was practically looking into the cabin. At one stage, he turned around toward the building. The bulldozer kept moving, and she slipped and fell off the plow. But the bulldozer kept moving, the shovel above her. I guess it was about 10 or 15 meters that it dragged her and for some reason didn’t stop. We shouted like crazy to the driver through loudspeakers that he should stop, but he just kept going and didn’t lift the shovel. Then it stopped and backed up. We ran to Rachel. She was still breathing.”

Activists said the tank arrived on the scene and was only 20 meters away, but the soldiers did not offer any assistance. A little while later, the heavy equipment pulled away, and a Red Crescent ambulance took the badly injured woman to Abu Yusef Najar Hospital in Rafah, where she was declared dead on arrival.

Army sources said the demolitions were meant to prevent sabotage along the Philadelphi road parallel to the Egyptian border. The sources said the bulldozer driver deviated from the track and apparently was moving a block of concrete that hit the woman.

Haaretz: ‘It’s a terrible thing, living with the knowledge that you crushed our daughter’

By Nathan Guttman
Originally published by Haaretz

WASHINGTON – Craig Corrie sent just one e-mail to his daughter during the seven weeks she spent in Rafah. She addressed most of her letters to her mother, Cindy, and Craig read them with concern. When he was a soldier serving in Vietnam, he would send his loved ones letters with few details and mostly laconic, knowing that too much of a detailed description of the war and the dangers would only increase the worry at home. At home in North Carolina when he read his daughter’s letters, he knew she too was concealing a lot of the dangers. “I knew she didn’t write long letters in order not to make it hard for us,” he says, “it was hard for me to write back.” Eventually, he sent her a brief letter a week before she was killed – “I find writing to you hard, but not thinking about you impossible,” he wrote in an e-mail to his daughter, “I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be. But I’m also proud of you – very proud.” Rachel wrote back the next day. It was the last e-mail she sent before she was struck and killed by a blow from an IDF bulldozer in Rafah on March 16.

Since the Corrie family’s worst fears came true, they have been busy – setting up foundations, launching projects in memory of their daughter, trying to advance the investigation of the incident and working in Congress to promote their interest. One of their immediate goals is to go to Rafah to see the place where Rachel was killed, meet her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Palestinians with whom she developed a connection during her stay there and also visit Israel. “We’re not looking for revenge,” they say; they just want to continue on the path their daughter took.

Young activist

Cindy and Craig Corrie remember very well the conversation when Rachel told them of her plans to go to Rafah to join an international delegation of activists that assists the Palestinians and fights against house demolitions. “She gave all kinds of hints and then she said: `I’m going’,” says Craig Corrie. “I thought to myself – why don’t you find yourself a soup kitchen here instead of going over there, but I didn’t say anything.” Cindy and Craig tried to talk about the dangers involved in facing down tanks and bulldozers on battlefields, but knew they wouldn’t be able to stop her from going. Rachel told her mother she didn’t believe anyone would hurt international activists, certainly not Americans, who are unarmed and nonviolent. She also made sure to point out that in the two years that the ISM has been active in the territories, none of its activists has been killed. Since the then, the ISM has endured one death and two serious injuries.

“I know that in her heart, the most difficult thing for her was to know we will have to face this terrible loss,” says Cindy Corrie tearfully, “but she had to do it – it was a natural result of her activism.” A film friends showed to the Corries last week reminded them of the roots of Rachel’s activism. The short film shows a project run by Rachel’s school in Olympia, Washington whose topic was world hunger. Young Rachel Corrie appears in the film standing on the stage saying that humanity must strive for a solution to the problem of hunger by 2000. “People from other countries also have dreams and we have to think of them,” the young girl says in the film.

In high school, Rachel Corrie participated in a youth exchange program. She hosted a Russian student in her home and afterward was hosted by him for six weeks in his home on Sakhalin Island. “I feel that after that her life had changed,” says Cindy Corrie. “She was shocked to see people that have so little. She became skeptical about all we have and of how little we know about the Russians.”

‘Opening our eyes’

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, she decided to join a group of activists in Olympia. She contacted all the organizations but decided to focus on one that deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to a large extent as a result of conversations with Simona Sharoni, a former Israeli who taught Corrie at Evergreen College and told her about what was going on in the territories. From there she came to the International Solidarity Movement and got the idea of coming to the territories. At the beginning of last year she moved in with her sister, Sara, in order to save up some money for the trip, and continued studying the subject by reading a lot about it and speaking with other activists.

Rachel’s family believe the main reason why a young student from the state of Washington chooses to devote her time, energy and life to the distress of the Palestinians in the territories was her sense that the American public and the surroundings where she grew up do not know enough about and do not sufficiently understand what is going on in the Middle East. For her parents, she prepared a reading list so that they would know more and once she was already in Rafah she was happy to hear they were reading the material and discussing the subject with their friends. “She wanted to open our eyes to this side of the conflict, that Americans, in general, do not understand. She felt that this is an unbalanced conflict between a powerful military force that has the support of the U.S. and people who have no power,” says Cindy Corrie. “She was for all humanity, against the suffering of the Israelis and against the suicide attacks. But she felt the Palestinian side is invisible and that’s why she chose to be there,” she continues. She now says she feels uncomfortable that her whole life she has heard about the conflict, but has never done anything – “our country and our family’s sympathy was always to Israel,” says Cindy Corrie.

All the reading, the chats with Rachel and the e-mails they received from her during her stay in Rafah changed the Corrie family’s position. In one phone conversation, Cindy asked Rachel about the Palestinian violence and wondered why they did not use nonviolent forms of protest. Rachel responded in a long e-mail in which she wrote in detail about what the Palestinians in Rafah she meets must go through and said: “I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could – I think I would.”

“Rachel felt that we don’t understand the ongoing violence toward the Palestinians, says Cindy. She herself said she empathizes with all the sides. “I know there are families in Israel that lost more than one family member in suicide attacks and I know now that their pain is double,” she says. But on the day Rachel would have celebrated her 24th birthday, Cindy’s anger won out. A day earlier, Tom Horndal, British ISM activist, had been critically injured and she phoned the Israeli consul in San Francisco and told him that despite her great empathy for the Jewish people, the fact that the army had already injured three unarmed peace activists was not giving her any peace. “Even worse is that that same week 17 Palestinians were killed, including five children and that didn’t make any waves here,” says Cindy Corrie.

Since Rachel Corrie was killed, around 10,000 letters have reached the e-mail boxes of the Corrie family; many of them were sent by Israelis and Jews wishing to express their sorrow. One of them is a reserve officer and a father of two who was in contact with Rachel during the course of her stay in the territories. He was the one who suggested that she try to appeal to the humane side of soldiers and he also is the one who taught her a few key Hebrew phrases so she say them to the soldiers. “What would your mother think about what you’re doing,” was one phrase; another was “you’re operating under a black flag.” After her death, the reserve officer wrote to her family and told them how sorry he was that he told Rachel that soldiers also have a conscience.

No comment from the IDF

Rachel Corrie’s parents make an effort to show they are not angry with Israelis, but they do not hide their opinion about who is responsible for the death of their daughter. As terrible as Rachel’s loss is for his family, Craig Corrie thinks it is also terrible for the nation when it agrees to accept such actions or agrees that its army should act this way. He cannot understand why the bulldozer driver hit his daughter while she stood in front of him – “this is a girl who weighed 125 lbs. He could have picked her up and put her under arrest.” He himself was in charge of a bulldozer force while serving as a soldier in the engineering corps in Vietnam.

The Israeli establishment has not made a real effort to contact the Corrie family. Around two days after Rachel was killed, the Israeli consul called the family home and spoke with her brother Chris. The consul expressed his condolences and said he appreciated Rachel’s dedication even if he did not agree with her politics. Chris got angry and said Rachel’s only politics was to support all humanity. The family says it never received a report from the Israeli army about the circumstances of the incident nor has it ever heard directly from any military official. The only information reaching them comes from ISM members or from the U.S. State Department.

Seeking justice

Last Thursday, the Corrie family went again to Capitol Hill in Washington. They are trying to convince members of both houses of Congress to support a draft bill that would require the U.S. to investigate the circumstances of their daughter’s death. Craig and Cindy do not conceal their frustration – mobilizing Congress members goes very slowly, political considerations interfere and suddenly, they find themselves facing a countermove, that mentions all the Americans killed in suicide attacks in Israel. Craig and Cindy say they will be happy to support this proposal, but not instead of a demand for an investigation. In the meantime, they ignore the U.S. State Department’s advice to sit and wait for the results of the judge advocate general in Israel, while also insisting that the U.S. government launch its own investigation. Left-wing Jewish organizations voiced their support, but on the list of supporters, the names of the large organizations do not appear.

What kind of justice do they expect? Cindy Corrie says they continue to demand an investigation because they believe Israel and the world must pay attention to the issue and show responsibility, but “we are not perusing it with malice,” she stresses. Sara, Rachel’s sister, believes if the driver had stepped out and talked with Rachel for a minute, “he would have met a beautiful soul, that came to talk and convince,” while Craig Corrie says, “If the bulldozer operator will be able to understand what he did, then I hope he has a long life. It’s a terrible thing, living with the knowledge that you crushed someone like our daughter.”

The Corrie family does not think the death of their daughter and the injuring of two other ISM activists present proof that this kind of activity is too dangerous or provocative. They believe the presence of international peace activists can prevent more violent actions on the part of the Palestinians. They stress that their daughter not only faced down tanks and bulldozers – she worked to rebuild wells that had been destroyed in Rafah, tried to organize an exchange of letters between children there and in the U.S. and also tried to realize her dream – a twin-city agreement between Olympia and Rafah.

The family’s life now revolves around Rachel. Craig, the father, 56, took leave from his job as an actuarial adviser and is trying to promote the issues of the legislation and the memorials. The same is true of Rachel’s mother, Cindy, 55, who in normal times did volunteer work with children. Rachel’s older siblings, Sara – who lives in the family’s former home in Olympia and Chris, who lives in the suburbs of Washington DC – are trying to run the memorial foundation that perpetuates their sister.

Cindy feels the main message in memorializing Rachel should be the interpersonal connection – ties between Israelis and Palestinians, between peace activists on both sides, between Americans who want to act to further Rachel’s causes.

Last weekend, the parents traveled to Washington State to attend the annual ceremony marking Earth Day, when it is customary to dress up as animals and connect with nature. A few years ago, Rachel organized a group of white doves. This time there were more doves than ever at the event, including Craig and Cindy.

Rachel Corrie’s letters home

February 7, 2003

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 peak 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 aggressive – shooting into the houses as we wander away.

February 20, 2003

I still feel like I’m relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest.

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.

February 27, 2003

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

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.

March 12, 2003

I am trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I leave here, and when I’m going to leave. Right now I think I could stay until June, financially. I really don’t want to move back to Olympia, but do need to go back there to clean my stuff out of the garage and talk about my experiences here. On the other hand, now that I’ve crossed the ocean I’m feeling a strong desire to try to stay across the ocean for some time. Considering trying to get English teaching jobs – would like to really buckle down and learn Arabic. Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back, which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too. Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life.

L.A. Times: In West Bank, a risky quest for peace

Ruth Morris | Los Angeles Times

Activists’ use of human shields is questioned after two members are killed by Israeli forces.

TULKARM, West Bank – Wearing sandals and amber-colored earrings in a region where soldiers don bulletproof vests, Radhika Sainath stepped up to the driver’s side of an Israeli military jeep on the dilapidated outskirts of the West Bank and demanded an explanation for the armored personnel carriers roaring past.

“Why aren’t you in Israel?” asked the disbelieving soldier at the wheel. “You’re like a superman. You come to fix all of the world.”

“I’m hoping if I’m standing in front of Palestinians, you won’t shoot,” Sainath countered.

Halfway around the globe from the boat slips and glossy swells of her native Newport Beach, 24-year-old Sainath has signed on as a human shield with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement – one of the most controversial and ill-fated activist groups patrolling the battle lines of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Dubbed terrorist sympathizers by some, martyrs by others, ISM has seen three of its volunteers killed or seriously wounded by Israeli security forces in just over a month. That turn of events has focused a harsh light on the group’s high-stakes brand of activism and raised some tough questions for organizers: When does gutsy activism cross the line into unwarranted risk? How can activists stay above the fray in communities where dangerous militants mingle with smiling civilians? In a world of heavy armor, how far is too far?

“I don’t know what too far is. I think we could all go a little further, frankly,” said Fred Schlomka of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a group that works alongside ISM to block armored Israeli bulldozers from razing Palestinian homes.

Besides kneeling before hulking bulldozers, ISM volunteers ride along with Palestinian ambulance drivers to negotiate quick passage through Israeli checkpoints. They bust military curfews and try to be present when Palestinian youths are hurling stones at tanks. When they hear firefights at night, they go outside to bear witness.

To Palestinians, who see the Israeli army as abusive and trigger-happy, ISM’s losses have brought a degree of credibility and clout to the organization. To the Israeli security forces, pitched into a public relations quagmire, the group’s members are meddlesome and naive.

Schlomka’s group was particularly saddened by the death of ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash. Corrie became the group’s first international “martyr” in late March when she tried to obstruct a mammoth D-9 bulldozer, used by Israel to clear anti-tank mines and demolish Palestinian homes along the Egyptian border.

Israeli security forces say that the bulldozer’s driver couldn’t see Corrie from his perch and that ISM acts provocatively by protecting structures used by terrorists to dig gunrunning tunnels. Witnesses charge that the driver purposefully buried her under a mound of gravel.

Kneeling before an armored Israeli bulldozer “is either foolhardy or extremely courageous,” Schlomka said. “I prefer to think of it as extremely courageous.”

A few weeks after Corrie died, ISM volunteer Brian Avery, 24, of Albuquerque, suffered a gunshot wound to the face while investigating a gun battle in the West Bank city of Jenin. ISM said an armored personnel carrier fired toward Avery and another member of the group while they stood in plain view, in reflective vests, hands above their heads.

Military sources said Israeli troops in the area that evening didn’t report the incident, although they did fire to disperse four youngsters who appeared to be building primitive bombs.

In the most recent violence to befall the group, British ISM activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the back of the head while shepherding a group of children to safety under sporadic fire from an Israeli observation tower. Israeli security forces are investigating the shooting; Hurndall remains on full life support in an Israeli hospital.

Throughout the bloodshed, Israeli critics have cast ISM’s foreign activists as a nuisance.

“They come into a war zone without experience. They don’t know how to behave, and they think that because they’re holding an international passport, nothing will happen to them,” said Sharon Feingold, spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces.

The Israeli army says its incursions into the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip are meant to root out terrorists before they reach Israeli streets. In the nearly 31 months since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began, hundreds of Israelis have died in suicide bombings and armed attacks.

“The split second a soldier hesitates to make sure he’s not shooting the wrong guy, he puts himself in danger,” Feingold added.

ISM’s defenders say the group’s run of misfortune is a reflection of hardhearted Israeli military tactics, not reckless activism. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, “soldiers have had a license to do more and more severe things,” said David Nir, an Israeli activist with the group Taayush, which targets Israeli activities it considers discriminatory against Palestinians. “Once they’re used to one level of brutality, they can go on to the next.”

At ISM headquarters in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur, a poster of Rachel Corrie – blond hair tucked beneath a head scarf – adorns an outer wall lined with tattered and rain-stained posters, mostly of civilians killed during Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories.

The group is “about being open to radical change and higher levels of danger,” said Ghassan Andoni, one of its founders. Small-framed and intense, Andoni said 40% of ISM’s foreign members register over the Internet, while others are referred by support groups working abroad.

ISM has 40 to 100 foreign volunteers rotating through at any given time, who are accompanied by Palestinian members, Andoni said.The group lightly screens foreign volunteers, and everybody undergoes a day and a half of training after arriving in the region.

“International participation was necessary to provide a level of protection. We’re talking about a scenario where pulling the trigger is easier than drinking water,” Andoni said.

Volunteers vary from pony-tailed bohemians to politically minded professionals to deeply religious conscience-raisers. Most come on three-month tourist visas, and all pay their own airfare. Accommodations are provided – usually a rollout mattress on a hard floor – and the group recommends bringing $200 to $300 a month to pay for pita sandwiches and phone cards. Alcohol is strictly forbidden.

Sainath, the Newport Beach volunteer, has sometimes stayed with olive farmers in villages outside Tulkarm.

“It’s not very comfortable,” she said. “But with what I’ve seen these people go through, I can’t complain.”

One recent training session for a batch of new volunteers was led by a veteran activist known as Starhawk, a frizzy-haired writer on feminist politics and pagan spirituality.

“Ground a little more. Put those roots down,” Starhawk told the recruits as she went from one to another pushing her fists into their chests and shoving them backward. Between plastic cups of dark, sugary tea, she also showed them how to protect a shoulder socket while being dragged across the floor and how to use their peripheral vision while maneuvering through volatile crowds.

Andoni admits the training is limited and says some volunteers have lost their composure during heated confrontations. But after a “painful” review of recent events, he concluded that ISM was not at fault in the shootings and standoffs that killed and injured the three members.

ISM first made headlines last spring, when its activists slipped past Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Ramallah and entered the headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat as it was pounded by Israeli shells. Other volunteers entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and stayed through the end of a five-week standoff with Israeli troops.

The group’s most recent move that infuriated Israeli security forces occurred several weeks ago, when members stationed in Jenin took in a wanted Palestinian fleeing from Israeli troops. The two ISM volunteers accused of harboring the suspect later said that he had come into their office from the roof, frightened and dripping wet, and that they didn’t know he was being chased.

“I’m a mainstream American. I’m not an activist,” said Jennifer, who is one of the ISM volunteers accused of protecting the wanted man and who asked that only her first name be used.

Around the corner from where she spoke, Palestinian militants in black hoods discharged automatic rifles into the sky and waved Palestinian flags to commemorate the first anniversary of a deadly Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp.

“There was a curfew. There was gunfire. Knowing that it’s dangerous for anyone to be in the street during curfew, we indicated he could stay,” said Jennifer. “Harboring a terrorist? It’s not even something I thought about.”

As far as ISM’s future is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate threat. Despite the controversy, risk and living conditions, new recruits are signing up at a record pace, Andoni said.