Outraged over the events following Giuliana Sgrena's release from kidnappers, when Sgrena's car was shot and an Italian agent killed, Italians demanded a rigorous investigation and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi heard them and has just announced that Italy plans Iraq troop pull-out
2 years ago, our own "American Sgrena" died, and the US did nothing of the sort.
In memory of Rachel Corrie
On March 16, 2003, the Israeli Defense Forces killed a young American woman: 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. Rachel was unarmed and wearing a bright orange vest that identified her as an international peacekeeper.
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Not even communist China dared to run a tank over a protester
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So hard to see...
The humanity in Rachel's senseless death
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A clearly visible Rachel stands in front of the dozer that killed her
“I told him that I did what I’m supposed to; anyone who enters a firing zone must be taken out. [The commander] always says this,” - Soldier who shot Briton peacekeper, while on trial |
No Pancake jokes please
The right wing excuse for ignoring the blatant killing of a US citizen in broad daylight and in front of cameras was: ""She asked for it". The problem is that Rachel had written home just a week before professing her belief that Israeli forces wouldn't dare to kill an American peacekeeper like her
The US official position
was little better than the reich wing pundits. They delegated all investigations to Israel and moved on.. Two weeks later another US citizen, Brian Avery was shot in the face and a british citizen Tom Hurndall was SHOT IN THE HEAD. Tom died 9 months later..
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Brian Avery, US citizen, shot in the face 2 weeks after Rachel |
What investigation ?
Her parents weren't even allowed to see the body... No one was, since IDF forces prevented the removal of her body from Gaza.
Israel decided to holds Rachel's body
March 18, 2003- The Israeli army yesterday prevented an ambulance carrying the body of a US activist who was crushed to death by a bulldozer a day earlier from leaving the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said... Corrie's parents were not able to fly from Washington DC to attend the funeral due to travel restrictions imposed by the United States on US citizens wishing to go to Israel in the context of an imminent war in Iraq.
An Accident ? Then why disturb her funeral ?
THE VERY SAME BULLDOZER that killed Rachel was sent a week later to disturb her symbolic funeral.
As the memorial service got under way, the Israeli army sent its own representative. A tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas. A bizarre game of cat-and-mouse began as the peace activists chased the tank around to throw flowers on it, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down.
The game ended when the Israeli bulldozers came out, accompanied by more APCs, firing guns and percussion bombs. The insult was as clear as the danger of the situation and the people went home, the service halted
The Observer
Rachel was under the impression IDF respected US citizens
Born and raised in a country the
used to value freedom of speech, Rachel couldn't conceive an American could be killed in broad daylight, like she was. Why even the Chinese army in Tianamen Square didn't dare to kill the lone chinese who stopped in front of the tank!
As we see in
Morgan Guyton: How Will We Honor Rachel Corrie?
Consider these words from her March 3rd International Solidarity Movement report:
Internationals here can walk in front of tanks on Palestinian land without being killed. We can only imagine what it is like for Palestinians living here for whom this is not a nightmare, but a continuous reality from which international privilege cannot protect them.
Rachel took it as self-evident that no Israeli soldier or bulldozer driver would dare kill the citizen of a country from whom Israel was requesting a $11 billion aid package. She did not relish her 'international privilege'--she tried her best to share it. Her duty as she saw it was not to become a poster child but to fulfill the obligations of international peacekeepers under Articles 140, 142, and 143 of the Geneva Convention..
US consulate was warned and refused to intervene
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US Consulate Refuses to Protect Rachel Corrie : SF Indymedia
SM: This is an emergency call about a group of International Peace Activists in Rafah Town that are being fired upon by Israeli troops. I'm phoning you because I want you to get in contact with the Army and advise them that there are American nationals in the area and ask them to please exercise restraint.
Ingrid Barzel: Please advise your people there to leave the area.
ISM: Look they're in the area and they don't intend to go anywhere. They're trying to stop houses being demolished by military bulldozers.
Ingrid Barzel: We have a travel advisory against traveling to the Gaza Strip and if these people are there they are there illegally. [This is untrue to enter the Gaza Strip one has to have a special authorisation stamp in one's passport and all the Rafah activists have one.]
ISM: What if one of them gets killed? Will you hide behind your excuses then?
Ingrid Barzel: They're not excuses. It's State Department procedure endorsed by the Secretary of State.
ISM: So what you're saying is you take no responsibility for the welfare of your nationals dong peace work in the Gaza Strip even if this means one of them gets killed because of your inaction?
Ingrid Barzel: We do not accept any responsibility for anyone who ignores our travel advisories and illegally enters the Gaza Strip.
Why did Rachel risk her young life ?
In a remarkable series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Rachel's war
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... no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here...
February 27 2003
(To her mother)
... 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 willful 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... 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... 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...
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.