Photo
story: Israeli bulldozer driver murders American peace activist Nigel
Parry and Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 16 March 2003
An ISM volunteer holds
up Rachel Corrie's US passport as another peace activist sits in shock,
Al-Najjar Hospital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel was killed by an
Israeli bulldozer driver while protesting the demolition of a
Palestinian home. (Mohammad
Al-Moghair)
On 16 March 2003 in Rafah, occupied Gaza, 23-year-old American peace activist
Rachel Corrie from Olympia, Washington, was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer
driver. Rachel was in Gaza opposing the bulldozing of a Palestinian home as a
volunteer with the International
Solidarity Movement.
The girl, Rachel Corey [sic], 23 years old from
the state of Washington, was killed while she was trying to prevent Israeli
army bulldozers from destroying a Palestinian home. Other foreigners who were
with her said the driver of the bulldozer was aware that Rachel was there, and
continued to destroy the house. Initially he dropped sand and other heavy
debris on her, then the bulldozer pushed her to the ground where it proceeded
to drive over her, fracturing both of her arms, legs and skull. She was
transferred to hospital, where she later died. Another foreigner was also
injured in the attack and has been hospitalized - at this stage his
nationality is unknown.(15 March 2003)
A press release from the International Solidarity
Movement stated that:
Rachel had been staying in Palestinian homes
threatened with illegal demolition, and today Rachel was standing with other
non-violent international activists in front of a home scheduled for illegal
demolition. According to witnesses, Rachel was run over twice by the Israeli
military bulldozer in its process of demolishing the Palestinian home.
Witnesses say that Rachel was clearly visible to the bulldozer driver, and was
doing nothing to provoke an attack. (15 March 2003)
The photos below clearly show that Rachel was
well marked, had a megaphone, and posed no threat to the bulldozer driver.
Rachel Corrie confronts
the bulldozer driver. (ISM Handout)
A clearly marked Rachel
Corrie, holding a megaphone, confronts an Israeli bulldozer driver
attempting to demolish a Palestinian home, Rafah, Occupied Gaza, 16
March 2003. (ISM Handout)
Other peace activists
tend to Rachel after being injured by the Israeli bulldozer driver,
Rafah, Occupied Gaza, 16 March 2003. (ISM Handout)
Rachel Corrie lies on
the ground fatally injured by the Israeli bulldozer, Rafah, Occupied
Gaza, 16 March 2003. (ISM Handout)
Rachel in Najjar
hostpital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Ha'aretz newspaper reported that
Dr. Ali Musa, a doctor at Al-Najjar, stated that the cause of death was
"skull and chest fractures". (Mohammad
Al-Moghair)
A later report from ISM Media Coordinator Michael Shaikh in Beit Sahour offered
more details about the events:
The confrontation between the ISM and the
Israeli Army had been under way for two hours when Rachel was run over. Rachel
and the other activists had clearly identified themselves as unarmed
international peace activists throughout the confrontation.
The Israeli Army are attempting to dishonour her memory by claiming that
Rachel was killed accidentally when she ran in front of the bulldozer.
Eye-witnesses to the murder insist that this is totally untrue. Rachel was
sitting in the path of the bulldozer as it advanced towards her. When the
bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside she climbed up onto the mound of dirt
and rubble being gathered in front of it wearing a fluorescent jacket to look
directly at the driver who kept on advancing. The bulldozer continued to
advance so that she was pulled under the pile of dirt and rubble. After she
had disappeared from view the driver kept advancing until the bulldozer was
completely on top of her. The driver did not lift the bulldozer blade and so
she was crushed beneath it. Then the driver backed off and the seven other ISM
activists taking part in the action rushed to dig out her body. An ambulance
rushed her to A-Najar hospital where she died.
Colleagues of Rachel
comfort each other in Najjar hostpital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Ha'aretz
newspaper reported that a second activist was also injured at the same
location. (Mohammad
Al-Moghair)
"This is a regrettable accident,"
Israeli Defence Forces [sic] spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal was reported as
saying in Ha'aretz newspaper. "We are dealing with a group of
protesters who were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger."
Members of the Israeli army and associated Israeli settler paramilitary units
have been responsible for the killing of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of
another 22,218 between 29 September 2000 and 14 March 2003.
In addition to the killing of Rachel Corrie by the bulldozer driver, Israeli
troops have shot and killed several other internationals in different incidents
during the Intifada: German doctor Harald Fischer, Italian cameraman Rafaeli
Ciriello, and British
United Nations worker Iain Hook.
STATEMENT BY RACHEL CORRIE'S PARENTS 18 March 2003 | |
We are now in a
period of grieving and still finding out the details behind the death of Rachel
in the Gaza Strip.
We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global community
and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel
was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived.
And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are unable to protect
themselves.
Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the media
her experience in her own words at this time.
Thank you.
Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her family on February 7, 2003.
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--at least regarding Israel.
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that 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 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, of course, the fact 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. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be
held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US
citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be
relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half
way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with the
power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home
again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and
incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely
about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.
They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents
shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen
the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not
stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you
haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking
you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone--
once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by
murderous towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal
wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood
spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the
world’s fourth largest military--backed by the world’s only superpower--in
it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about
these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000
people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom are twice or
three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here
are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their
homes in historic Palestine--now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai
returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high
wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the
houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely
bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes
that have been partially destroyed is greater.
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. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". There is
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.
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the
western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF
towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of streets. Some just
army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of
netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the
horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to
do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some
of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have
lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of
the city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can tell,
there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or
another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to
the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a
time.
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 they will start.
I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six
internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence
are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There
is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of
Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the
municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah’s
water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be
present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After
about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army
treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are
too few.
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by
deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-community
relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have expressed interest in
e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work
that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we
need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard
directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning
internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect
to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against
all odds, and to resist against all odds.
Thanks for the news I've been getting from friends in the US. I just read a
report back from a friend who organized a peace group in Shelton, Washington,
and was able to be part of a delegation to the large January 18th protest in
Washington DC. People here watch the media, and they told me again today that
there have been large protests in the United States and "problems for the
government" in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a
complete polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the
United States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are
learning from global examples how to resist.
Nigel Parry and Arjan El
Fassed are two founders of the Electronic Intifada. Michael Brown and Ken Harper
also contributed to this report.
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