From the International Middle East Media Center :On this day six years ago, Rachel Corrie was killed by Israeli soldiers in Rafah, Gaza. By now the story is well known: Rachel, standing in front of the home of a doctor and his family in hopes of preventing a demolition, was run over by an armored bulldozer, a Caterpillar D9. After six years of promises from elected leaders, no independent investigation of her death has been conducted.
In the years since her death, Rachel’s memory has inspired countless people to take action in their own communities on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Songs have been written, plays performed, and books published about Rachel and her legacy.
Her family has traveled the world talking about Rachel and about Palestinians’ rights, a cause to which she was so passionately committed.
The Corrie family returned to Gaza for this anniversary and to see the devastation created by the recent Israeli attacks. They found open arms and welcoming hearts.
Rachel has become a part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, part of it’s history of painful losses.
The anniversary, this year as in those past, is marred by fresh violence. Just days ago, an ISM volunteer was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers after a nonviolent demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni’lin.
Tristan Anderson lays in the intensive care unit of a hospital with an unknown future.
His brutal injury has received worldwide attention, as did Rachel’s death. What does not receive the same attention are the Palestinians who are injured or killed on a daily basis.
Today, on the sixth anniversary of Rachel’s death, Ayaat al-Ja’bari, age 24, was injured as she made her way home in Hebron.
Since July 2008, four unarmed demonstrators aged 10 to 22, were killed by Israeli forces in Ni’lin. Just over a month ago, the Israeli military killed over 1300 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, many of them women and children.
On this year’s anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s killing, the International Solidarity Movement wishes to express our humble gratitude to the thousands of people who have volunteered with us over the last eight years, and to those who have supported our work emotionally and financially; devoting their time and energy to Palestinian non-violent resistance.
As we all continue to work for an end to the occupation, please join us in wishing Tristan a full recovery, and for Palestine, freedom at long last.
From Her name was Rachel Corrie, and her life is a one-woman play by Robert Trussell :
One part of Rachel Corrie’s story is not in dispute: On March 16, 2003, the 23-year-old American was crushed beneath an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to prevent it from demolishing a house in Gaza.
That’s where agreement ends and widely divergent opinion begins. Corrie was in Gaza as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, and some see her as a selfless human rights advocate who died for a just cause. Others see her as a naïve activist who burned American flags and whose “defense” of the Palestinian people was at best misguided.
There’s also disagreement on the facts of her death. Some witnesses said the Israeli bulldozer ran over her twice. The Israeli Defense Force conducted its own investigation and concluded that the death was accidental, in part because the bulldozer operator had a limited field of vision in his bulletproof cab.
“My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” a play adapted by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner from Corrie’s diaries, letters and e-mails, is an effort to capture just what motivated a young woman from Olympia, Wash., to put her life on the line in Gaza.
The one-woman play was first staged in London in 2005 and the following year was produced in New York amid controversy. The first company scheduled to present it, the New York Theatre Workshop, backed out, prompting Rickman to accuse it of censorship.
From U.S. citizens critically hurt at West Bank protest :
Palestinian sources said that an American citizen, in his thirties, had sustained critical wounds during an anti-separation fence protest in the West Bank on Friday, Army Radio reported.
Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif. area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.
Protesters who were at the scene said that Anderson was standing by the side of the road when soldiers fired at him, and not near the hub of the clash. They added that there was no one in his vicinity that could have been perceived as a threat to the soldiers.
"He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition as life-threatening.
The protest took place in the West Bank town of Na'alin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel. But Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.
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