Tag: Rachel Corrie

CNN: Israeli bulldozer kills American protester

RAFAH, Gaza (CNN) — An Israeli bulldozer killed an American woman Sunday who had been protesting its use to destroy Palestinian houses in Rafah.

The woman, Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Washington, was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries. She was a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia but was not enrolled this quarter, the school said.

Since January, she had been working with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to protest Israeli actions in the occupied territories, said Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the group.

Corrie had recently appeared in a televised mock trial in Gaza in which President Bush was accused of war crimes for his alleged support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“This morning, when she was killed, she was attempting to prevent the Israeli military from destroying Palestinian civilian homes,” Arraf said.

“She was raising her hands and yelling at the bulldozer driver to stop,” Arraf said. “The bulldozer driver paid no attention. … He buried Rachel with dirt, which ended up, obviously, knocking her down. Then he ran over her, and then reversed and ran over her again.”

Other witnesses, however, reported that Corrie had scaled a pile of dirt but then lost her footing and fell backward behind it, out of sight of the bulldozer operator. The bulldozer continued moving forward, covering Corrie with dirt and then crushing her.

It was not clear whether the bulldozer operator could hear protesters’ yells over the sound of the machine.

A member of the solidarity group, who identified herself as Alice from London, said she and Corrie had sat for about three hours in front of houses belonging to their friends. The driver of the bulldozer must have seen them, she said, but drove over Corrie anyway.

She emerged from under the bulldozer saying, “My back is broken, my back is broken,” Alice told CNN.

Tom Dale, who said he was about 10 yards from Corrie, said she was in plain view and was wearing an orange jacket. As the bulldozer lifted a pile of earth, it moved forward and caught Corrie under its blade, he said.

Israel: ‘Very regrettable incident’

“This is a very regrettable incident,” an Israeli military source said. “This is a group of protesters who are acting very irresponsibly. They are putting everyone in danger, the Palestinians, themselves, our forces, by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone. We are checking the details of the incident and believe it to be a very regrettable incident.”

Arraf said the activists use only nonviolent tactics. “We definitely don’t believe that this was an accident,” she said.

Corrie’s parents, who live in Charlotte, North Carolina, said their daughter felt an obligation to help others.

“I’ve raised my children to be independent and to make their own choices, and I knew that I couldn’t tell her not to go,” said her mother, Cindy Corrie.

“We were very proud of her,” said Craig Corrie, her father. “We’re very proud of her courage and what she stood for, and we’re very proud of Rachel. She’s 23 years old, and while that seems young to me, it’s old enough for her to make up her own mind about what she wants to do. There’s no holding her back.”

The U.S. State Department said it was in contact with Corrie’s family.

“The United States deeply regrets this tragic death of an American citizen,” spokesman Lou Fintor said. “We offer our sincere condolences to Ms. Corrie’s family.”

Fintor said the United States urged Israel and the Israel Defense Forces to conduct “an immediate and full investigation into the circumstances of this death.”

The United States also repeated its call for the IDF to take all possible measures to avoid harming civilians, Fintor said.

ISM statement on the killing of Rachel Corrie

OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND

Our friend and fellow activist for peace, Rachel Corrie, was murdered on Sunday March 16, when she was purposely run over by an Israeli-driven, US-made (Caterpillar D9) bulldozer, while trying to prevent a Palestinian civilian home from being demolished by the Israeli military in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip.

Rachel was in Rafah volunteering for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement of both Palestinians and internationals working together for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Rachel and the ISM have chosen nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles to resist the daily brutality of Israel’s 36-year-old military occupation and its ongoing and illegal land confiscation and settlement of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A direct result of the international community’s failure to offer Palestinians an international protection force, Rachel Corrie and other ISM activists have actively confronted Israel’s policy of home demolition and international apathy towards this policy by living with families under threat and by refusing to leave homes or areas threatened with demolition. The ISM believes that its presence slows the process of destruction and hopes that the international community will ultimately act to support the daily nonviolent struggle of normal Palestinian families to exist.

Demolishing civilian homes is an atrocious act of violence that violates Articles 12 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 33, 53, and 54 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Despite this clear international prohibition, the Israeli military government has carried out thousands of these home demolitions with impunity; resulting in thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians left without basic shelter and experiencing a cataclysmic blow to their lives, some becoming refugees for the second or third time in their lives.

Deaths during home demolitions are far too common. On 2 December 2002, 68-year-old Ashur Salem, deaf, was crushed to death when the Israeli army dynamited his home while he was sleeping. On 6 February 2003, 65-year-old Kamla Abu Said, partially deaf, was also crushed to death when the Israeli army razed her home in Gaza. On February 19, brothers Said and Ala Heloo, were crushed to death when the Israeli army blew up a nearby building causing the collapse of their home. And less than two weeks before Rachel’s killing, on 3 March 2003, 33-year-old Nuha Sweidan — 9 months into her pregnancy — was crushed to death when the Israeli military dynamited an adjacent home to her own, causing Nuha’s house to collapse on top of her. This is only a small sample.

None of the governments or international bodies that criticize Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes has taken any concrete actions to stop it, despite universal condemnation by human rights organizations. Words of criticism are empty when they come at the very moment an additional $1 billion in supplemental military aid to Israel and an extra $9 billion in loan guarantees are under consideration by the US Congress. Rachel’s death should at least give them pause. Instead, news of her death was juxtaposed in one newspaper with two articles detailing wide bipartisan support for further aid to Israel.

On Sunday 16 March 2003, Rachel and her fellow ISM volunteers were confronting the drivers of two bulldozers who were in the process of razing Palestinian civilian land and homes. For two hours, Rachel and other ISM activists followed the bulldozers, trying to block their passage and hamper their efforts at destruction. Rachel was clearly identifiable in a bright fluorescent orange jacket and was speaking through a bullhorn when she was brutally run over.

In its attempts to sweep responsibility for the incident under the carpet, the Israeli government has undertaken efforts to discredit Rachel, and to blame her and her colleagues for her death. Reports from the other seven ISM volunteers who witnessed the event and what is plainly obvious from photographs taken at the scene — before and after — make it incredible to assert that Rachel’s death was an “accident”. Following her crushing by the bulldozer, an Israeli tank came near the fallen activist and her friends, and then backed off. At no point did the Israeli forces offer any assistance.

The Israeli government typically blames its victims for their fate. In the pages of the international media Palestinians whose homes are destroyed or who die trying to protect them are reflexively called “terrorists” or “terrorist supporters”. Rachel was not Palestinian and therefore was hard to label a “terrorist”, but nevertheless, Rachel was blamed for her own death. In addition, Rachel was accused of “protecting terrorists”, even though the home she died protecting was that of a Palestinian medical doctor.

NOTES ON THE EVENTS AND AFTERMATH

– When she was killed, Rachel was engaging in what is typically a relatively low-risk action, serving as an international monitor to an ongoing, blatant abuse of international human rights law and confronting a soldier in the process of committing an act of violence against an unarmed, nonviolent Palestinian family.

– Rachel was clearly identifiable and non-threatening in both her nature and approach. Rather, Rachel did put her life on the line to stand up against a policy that is inhumane. Thousands of people do this every single day around the globe, in an effort to stop violence and atrocities against land, people, animals and crops. In this case, the bulldozer driver decided not to stop when Rachel nonviolently confronted him, instead choosing to run her over with a 9-ton bulldozer. Rachel is guilty only of assuming that another human being into whose eyes she was looking would not take her life.

– A picture has been circulated that shows Rachel burning a drawing of the American flag. Trying to use this picture to somehow indicate that Rachel deserved to be run over by a bulldozer is an appalling act of demonization that infers that forms of protest which include flag burning are capital offences. In the words of Rachel’s parents: “The act, while we may disagree with it, must be put into context. Rachel was partaking in a demonstration in Gaza opposing the war on Iraq. She was working with children who drew two pictures, one of the American flag, and one of the Israeli flag, for burning. Rachel said that she could not bring herself to burn the picture of the Israeli flag with the Star of David on it, but under such circumstances, in protest over a drive towards war and her government’s foreign policy that was responsible for much of the devastation that she was witness to in Gaza, she felt it OK to burn the picture of her own flag. We have seen photographs of memorials held in Gaza after Rachel’s death in which Palestinian children and adults honor our daughter by carrying a mock coffin draped with the American flag. We have been told that our flag has never been treated so respectfully in Gaza in recent years. We believe Rachel brought a different face of the United States to the Palestinian people, a face of compassion. It is this image of Rachel with the American flag that we hope will be remembered most.”

– Eyewitness testimony to Rachel’s killing is clear and consistent. However, some journalists chose to selectively quote Rachel’s colleagues, leading to different reports of the events that led to Rachel’s death. For example, some media outlets reported that Rachel “slipped and fell”, leaving out the additional detail her colleagues reported — that she fell under the weight of the dirt and rubble that was heaped on top of her.

– Some journalists reported that Rachel sat, crouched, and/or lay in front of the bulldozer, implying she could not be seen. Witnesses report that first she sat down in front of the bulldozer when it was still at least 10 meters away and she was in plain sight. Then as the bulldozer kept advancing, she got up, climbed up on a mound of dirt and rubble, in order to look the bulldozer driver in the eye. It is not credible to assert that the bulldozer driver could have missed her.

– The photographs taken on the day of the incident and at the scene show various angles of Rachel engaging the bulldozer drivers and show two different bulldozers. Again, reading the eyewitness testimonies will clarify that Rachel and the other ISM volunteers were in the area engaging two bulldozer drivers for approximately two hours before Rachel was crushed. The photos are 100% consistent with the eyewitness accounts and offer clear evidence that the bulldozer drivers were aware of the presence of the ISM volunteers and their efforts.

– The Israeli Embassy in Washington DC has been using quotes by Thom Saffold in the Washington Post (Monday March 17, 2003), to try to advance their claim that Rachel bears sole responsibility for her death. Thom Saffold, while a previous volunteer with the ISM, is not a spokesperson for the ISM, he was not present at the incident, nor is he currently in Palestine with the ISM. Washington Post correspondent Molly Moore distorted the plain meaning of Saffold’s words when she irresponsibly composited three separate and unrelated statements into a single quote that does not reflect the philosophy of ISM or Saffold’s original meaning.

CONCLUDING STATEMENT

Rachel Corrie was acting in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King when her life was deliberately snuffed out. Many justice and human rights defenders before Rachel have lost their lives in their struggle for righteousness and in their attempts to make this world a better place and, sadly, others will follow after her.

Rachel was a mature, conscientious human being who worked to bring people together and did wonders as an ambassador of the true face of the American people in a different part of the world — an American people that does not turn up outside Palestinian homes and give their occupants 5 minutes to gather what possessions they can, before bulldozing into dust the fruits of a life spent working to provide for a family.

In a very direct way, Rachel stood up for family values and for those who were too poor and powerless to be able to protect themselves. She was a true American hero.

The United States government has a particular responsibility to investigate Rachel’s death, not only because she was a US citizen killed by a foreign government, but also because the US government actively supplies Israel with the military hardware and funds that enabled and continue to enable Israel to carry out these illegal and immoral acts.

The world cannot go on ignoring the violence that continues daily to claim the lives and livelihoods of many other unarmed, nonviolent Palestinian civilians. Rachel Corrie offers us an opportunity to look through a window into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and see things as they are. Let us not close the curtains and go about our business. She and the people of both Palestine and Israel deserve better.

RELATED RESOURCES

For eyewitness accounts and photos:
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
https://www.palsolidarity.org

RACHEL CORRIE MEMORIAL WEBSITES
http://www.distanceeddesign.com/rachel/
http://www.rachelcorrie.org

PHOTO STORY: ISRAELI BULLDOZER DRIVER MURDERS AMERICAN PEACE ACTIVIST
Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 16 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml

THE DAY AFTER: ISRAELI FORCES KILL 9 PALESTINIANS, INCLUDING 3 CHILDREN
PCHR, press release, 17 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1258.shtml

REMEMBERING RACHEL CORRIE
Peter Bohmer, The Electronic Intifada, 17 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1252.shtml

OF BROKEN BODIES AND UNBREAKABLE LAWS
Laurie King-Irani, The Electronic Intifada, 19 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1259.shtml

RACHEL CORRIE, NUHA SWEIDAN AND ISRAELI WAR CRIMES
Steve Niva, The Electronic Intifada, 17 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1250.shtml

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNS KILLING OF RACHEL CORRIE
GROUP CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION, SUSPENSION OF WEAPONS TRANSFERS
Amnesty International , Press Release, 17 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1265.shtml

ACTIVISTS DEMAND IMMEDIATE HALT OF CATERPILLAR
BULLDOZER SALES TO ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES
Press Release, SUSTAIN, 18 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1261.shtml

“THIS IS NOT A POEM. THIS IS A PROMISE.”
Suheir Hammad, Poetry, 20 March 2003
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1272.shtml

The closest eye witness account on the murder of Rachel Corrie

by Tom Dale
March 17, 2003

Many of you will of heard varying accounts of the death of Rachel Corrie, maybe others will have heard nothing of it. Regardless, I was 10 metres away when it happened 2 days ago, and this is the way it went.

We’d been monitoring and occasionally obstructing the 2 bulldozers for about 2 hours when 1 of them turned toward a house we knew to be threatened with demolition. Rachel knelt down in its way. She was 10-20 metres in front of the bulldozer, clearly visible, the only object for many metres, directly in it’s view. They were in Radio contact with a tank that had a profile view of the situation. There is no way she could not have been seen by them in their elevated cabin. They knew where she was, there is no doubt.

The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop as it went. She knelt there, she did not move. The bulldozer reached her and she began to stand up, climbing onto the mound of earth. She appeared to be looking into the cockpit. The bulldozer continued to push Rachel, so she slipped down the mound of earth, turning as she went. Her faced showed she was panicking and it was clear she was in danger of being overwhelmed. All the activists were screaming at the bulldozer to stop and gesturing to the crew about Rachel’s presence. We were in clear view as Rachel had been,
they continued. They pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop but they never did.

I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing signs of brain hemorrhaging. She died in the ambulance a few minutes later of massive internal injuries. She was a brilliant, bright and amazing person, immensely brave and committed. She is gone and I cannot believe it.

The group here in Rafah has decided that we will stay here and continue to oppose human rights abuses as best we can. I want to add that more than 10 palestinians have died in the Gaza strip since Rachel.

If you’re wandering about Rachel: her writings, photos of her and statements on her death are available on the below website. More photos: go to yahoo news section, search for photos by ‘rachel’.

If you’re wandering about the International Solidarity Movement: www.palsolidarity.org

If you’re wandering about Rafah: in the southern Gaza strip, next to the Egyptian border. Apart from suffering in excess from the problems all over Palestine: Israeli manipulation of the water supply, economic strangulation, regular shootings and army operations, Rafah is afflicted by the building of an extra border wall. It has caused hundreds of homes to be destroyed. The house in question, that of a doctor, like dozens of others in the area is not set to be demolished because of any supposed link to militants. Only because it lies within 100 metres of the new border wall, currently in construction. Families receive no compensation from Israel, and are frequently given just a few minutes warning in the form of live ammunition being shot through the walls of their house.

Haaretz: IDF: Death of U.S. activist in Gaza was ‘regrettable accident’

By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent, and Agencies

The killing of an American woman peace protester Sunday by an IDF bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, was a “regrettable accident,” a spokesman for the the IDF said.

“This is a regrettable accident,” said IDF spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal. “We are dealing with a group of protesters who were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger.”

Rachel Corey [sic], 23, from Olympia, Washington, was killed when she ran in front of the bulldozer to try to prevent it from destroying a house, doctors in Gaza said. Another activist was wounded in the incident.

Hours later, two Palestinians were shot dead by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. A Palestinian youth was shot in Khan Yunis, according to the sources, while another man was shot in southern Rafah on the Egypt-Israel border.

“Corey [sic] was killed in the al-Salam neighbourhood when an Israeli bulldozer covered her with sand as she stood in front of a bulldozer,” said Dr Ali Musa, a doctor from the al-Najar hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. He said she died from skull and chest fractures.

Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said the protesters were in the house of Dr. Samir Masri.

“Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop,” he said. “She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled ‘stop, stop,’ and the bulldozer didn’t stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her.”

Since the start of the Intifada, groups of international protesters have gathered in several locations in territories, setting themselves up as “human shields” to try to stop IDF operations.

Corey [sic] was the first member of the groups, called “International Solidarity Movement,” to be killed in the conflict. Schnabel said Corey [sic] was a student at Evergreen College and was to graduate this year.

He said there were eight protesters at the site, four from the United States and four from Great Britain. “We stay with families whose house is to be demolished,” he told the Associated Press by telephone from Rafah after the incident.

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment.

Haaretz: American peace activist killed by army bulldozer in Rafah

By Haaretz Staff

IDF expresses ‘regret’; State Department ‘assessing’ reports

A 23-year-old American woman, Rachel Corrie, a college student from Olympia, Washington who belonged to the International Solidarity Movement in the territories, was killed yesterday by an IDF bulldozer during a house demolition in Rafah.

Israeli officials expressed “regret” over the incident to American officials, sources in Jerusalem said, and in Washington, a State Department statement said it had received reports of the incident, and was “assessing the situation.”

The ISM activist was taking part in protest efforts yesterday afternoon in Rafah, to prevent the army from demolishing houses in a strip of land a few hundred meters wide between the Rafah refugee camp and the nearby Egyptian border, in an effort to block smuggling from Egypt.

According to eyewitnesses, a routine IDF demolition operation was underway in the area, with two D-9 bulldozers and a tank as protection. They destroyed three buildings that were already partially destroyed 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 ISM 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.”

According to the activists, 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. A second activist was slightly injured. The destroyed house belonged to Dr. Samir Nasrallah.

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.

The ISM is an international pacifist movement that draws its inspiration from a quote by Albert Einstein: “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

Since the start of the intifada, hundreds of the foreigners, mostly students, have taken a rigorous course in nonviolent theory and practice and then been placed in Palestinian towns and villages, where they report on events at checkpoints, villages under curfew and house demolitions, help move humanitarian aid into besieged areas, and accompanying ailing Palestinians to hospitals. As non-Palestinians, they enjoy a certain measure of immunity – Corrie was the first ISM casualty in the nearly 30 months of intifada.