Rachel - Gaza's American Martyr

obmar · Rachel - Gaza's American Martyr

Gaza's American Martyr

IslamOnline.net & Newspapers

Rachel, 23, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza town of Rafah.

CAIRO — Five years after she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer, the diaries of peace activist Rachel Corrie will show how a young girl from Olympia, a small town an hour's drive from Seattle, died a Palestinian martyr, the Observer report on Sunday, March 2. "It takes a while to get what's happening here," Rachel wrote in one entry of her diary.

"Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with."

A collection of Rachel's writings, journals, email printouts, poems, letters and drawings will see the light next week.

The final piece in the book, entitled Let Me Stand Alone, was written only four days before her death on March 16, 2003.

Rachel, a 23-year-old college student and member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

Six eyewitnesses had testified that Corrie, with her bright orange jacket, was clearly visible to the bulldozer drivers.

They said the bulldozer lifted her up and drove over her repeatedly with its plow down.

"In the first hour after Rachel was killed, I remember saying: we have to get her words out," her mother Cindy told the Observer.

"Nobody was thinking of a book back then but, even early on, when we were in such searing pain, we were drawn to what Rachel had written as a comfort, as a connection."

In 2005, Corrie's death became the inspiration for a play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, also based on Rachel's writing.

The play has been staged in so many places around the world.
Palestinian Martyr Craig, Rachel's father, remembers an intimate phone call by late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat shortly after receiving the sad news of their youngest daughter's death.

"He told me: 'She is your daughter but she is also the daughter of all Palestinians. She is ours too now,'" he told the Observer.
In the Gaza Strip, families dedicated graffiti to the young American woman.

"'Rachel was a US citizen with Palestinian blood,'" Craig recalled the words of the graffiti.

"She had become a victim of their intifada, a heroine who had stood up to the mighty Israeli army. New mothers christened their daughters Rachel. A kindergarten was named after her."

Rachel spent the last days of her short life with the Palestinians.
"I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive," she said in a television interview shortly before her death.
"It's horrifying."

In one of her diary entries she describes the shock of moving the body of a Palestinian child killed by Israeli bullets.

Five years after Rachel's death, the same picture remains unchanged.
Scores of Palestinian kids, some as young as five-month, have been killed in an ongoing Israeli ground and air blitz in the besieged Gaza Strip.
"This has to stop!" Rachel wrote in a letter sent to her mother from Rafah shortly before her tragic death.

"I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop."

http://www.islamonline.net/servle...ename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout (3 March 0 Cool

Radiate_Truth

American Rachel Corrie was killed in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003, when she entered an area where Israeli forces were carrying out a military operation. The incident occurred while IDF forces were removing shrubbery along the security road near the border between Israel and Egypt at Rafah to uncover explosive devices, and destroying tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists to illegally smuggle weapons from Egypt to Gaza. Corrie was not demonstrating for peace or trying to shield innocent civilians, she was interfering with a military operation to legally demolish an empty house used to conceal one of these tunnels.

A misleading photo published by the Associated Press gave the impression that Corrie was standing in front of the bulldozer and shouting at the driver with a megaphone, trying to prevent the driver from tearing down a building in the refugee camp. This photo, which was taken by a member of Corrie’s organization, was not shot at the time of her death, however, but hours earlier. The photographer said that Corrie was actually sitting and waving her arms when she was struck.23

Israel’s Judge Advocate’s Office investigated the incident and concluded that the driver of the bulldozer never saw or heard Corrie because she was standing behind debris that obstructed the view of the driver whose field of view was limited by the small armored windows of his cab. An autopsy found that the cause of Corrie’s death was falling debris.24

The State Department warned Americans not to travel to Gaza, and Israel made clear that civilians who enter areas where troops are engaged in counter-terror operations put themselves unnecessarily at risk.

This was not the first time protestors have tried to obstruct Israeli operations, and the IDF has made every effort to avoid harming them. This case received worldwide publicity in large measure because it was the first such incident where a protestor was killed. In fact, the army had told Corrie and other demonstrators from the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to move out of the way. “It’s possible they [the protesters] were not as disciplined as we would have liked,” admitted Thom Saffold, a founder and organizer of ISM.25

The death of an innocent civilian is always tragic, and the best way to avoid such tragedies in the future is, first and foremost, by the Palestinian Authority putting an end to violence, and stopping the smuggling operations that have brought huge quantities of illegal weapons into the Gaza Strip. Activists interested in peace should be protesting the Palestinian actions. Activists also have every right to express their views about Israel’s policies, but they should take care to avoid the appearance of siding with the terrorists or placing themselves in positions where they could be inadvertently caught in the crossfire of a counter-terror operation or otherwise endangered by entering an area where military operations are being conducted.

“No matter how you turn the question, Rachel Corrie's death Sunday is a tragedy....But Corrie's death is no more tragic than the deaths of other young people — some of them young Americans who had traveled to Israel — who died in bombings committed by Palestinian terrorists. They're also worth remembering this day. However you feel about Corrie's actions, whether she was a martyr or misguided, she at least made her choice. Palestinian terrorists didn't give the young people killed in their bombings any choice in their deaths. That, it seems to us, is another kind of tragedy for these young Americans and their families.”

— OregonLive.com

SOURCE

The Inquisitor

RT,

Interesting take on the situation. Your cut and paste post stated this at the end:

Radiate_Truth

Palestinians' leaders have chosen the path of violence rather than negotiations, Israel still controls part of the disputed territories, and must use checkpoints, occasional curfews and other security measures to protect Israel's civilian population from terrorists. These steps certainly cause hardship and frustration, but they would not be necessary if the Palestinian Authority stops the terror.

obmar

Radiate_Truth

1. My Name is Rachel Levy (Israeli girl age 17, blown up in a grocery store)

2. My Name is Rachel Thaler (Israeli girl aged 16, blown up in a pizzeria)

3. My Name is Rachel Levi (Israeli girl aged 19, murdered while waiting for the bus)

4. My Name is Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband and son while at home)

5. My Name is Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a cafe)

6. My Name is Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 6 while sitting at home)

It would be interesting knowing how many of THESE Rachels were murdered with explosives smuggled in through the same tunnels that Rachel Corrie and her ISM pro-terrorist friends were "defending"!

SOURCE

The Inquisitor

RT,

I realize that you will only feel bad about the Israeli children dead in this comparison, but believe it or not, Palestinians are people too. Even though you don't believe that Palestinians are human beings, they are. They bleed and die like everyone else. And they are killed much more often by the IDF murderers than Israelis are killed by Hamas.

119 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 982 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

It is sad that you feel nothing towards the Palestinian children being killed by the IDF. It is sad that you can laugh about it and mock it. I believe in Our Lord, and I believe that they are His children as well. You will see, when your time comes, how Our Lord treats those who laugh at the death of His children.

Radiate_Truth

I wouldn't know the difference between a Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, Islamic, Muslim child or children if my life depended on it.

I could say the same about you. You speak out against the deaths of Palestinians but not or never against the Jewish Israeli children or civilians.

Regardless, children shouldn't be an issue or involved in any way shape or form, caught in the middle of war or even targeted out of vengence. Why nothing is done about this is not only unforgivable but unexcusable.

The Israel Defense Force doesn't deliberately go out seek Arab civilians to murder out of sheer prejudice discrimination like terrorist organizations, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, etc. who's only goal is to murder Israel's civilian population because they are Jews or Israelis.

The Israel Defense Forces Model