Israeli Bulldozer crushes to death US Peace Activist Rachel Corrie by The Age 1:14pm 17th Mar, 2003   March 17 2003    An Israeli army bulldozer has crushed to death a US peace activist trying to prevent house demolitions in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli fire also killed two Palestinians in separate incidents.    The killings occurred as Israel sealed off the Palestinian territories amid fears of a Palestinian attack during the Jewish spring festival of Purim and as a US-led war against Iraq loomed.    Peace activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old woman from Washington DC, died today when a military bulldozer ran over her in the town of Rafah, said Rafah hospital's chief doctor Ali Mussa and another US activist who witnessed the incident.    "She was sitting in the path of the bulldozer. The bulldozer saw her and ran over her. She ended up completely underneath it," fellow activist Joseph Smith told AFP.    "He absolutely knew she was there," added Smith, a 20-year-old student from Missouri.    The peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement were blocking the paths of two bulldozers and an Israeli tank tearing down Palestinian buildings in Rafah, which sits on the Gaza Strip's Israeli-controlled border with Egypt.    The army had no immediate comment on Corrie's death. Mussa said she had died of injuries to her head and legs, while Palestinian officials said the Israeli bulldozers had destroyed two houses before the young woman's death.    Israel forces make frequent incursions from their border positions into Rafah, a sprawling autonomous town with a large refugee population. Dozens of Palestinians and several Israeli soldiers have been killed in the sector.    Tanks and bulldozers are sent to destroy houses used by militants to fire on Israeli positions and that are also used as a cover for smugglers moving weapons through tunnels under the Egyptian border, the army says.    Shortly afterwards, Israeli fire killed 43-year-old Palestinian civilian Ahmad al-Najar, near his home in Rafah, Palestinian officials said.    And just to the north in Khan Yunis, 18-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abdel Hadi was killed and three other people wounded when Israeli troops in the Gush Katif settlement bloc fired on the town, Palestinian officials said.    The area is another flashpoint in the conflict which has claimed 3,089 people, including 2,314 Palestinians and 717 Israelis.    Increasingly deadly Israeli raids in the Gaza Strip, a stronghold of militant Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, earlier this month drew a rare US rebuke to Israel for the mounting civilian death toll.    Last Thursday, the Israeli daily Haaretz leaked a government document revealing that of 1,945 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in the uprising against Israeli occupation, 365 were innocent civilians, including 130 under the age of 16.    In an editorial today, Haaretz slammed the army for its use of force, criticised this month by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as "indiscriminate."    Haaretz said the army, "which brought up generations of soldiers on the myth of purity of arms and educated its commanders with the idea of the moral deliberating soldier ... is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking."    Meanwhile, Israel braced for a US-led attack on Iraq which could see Iraqi missiles hit the country as they did in the 1991 Gulf War, with Sharon hinting he will strike back if attacked.    "I think there is a strong possibility that Israel will not be attacked. We have taken all the necessary precautions. But if Israel is attacked, it will know how to defend itself. We have expressed ourselves clearly on this point," Sharon warned. Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would hit back militarily if Baghdad attacked.    - AFP    March 16, 2003    American Woman Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Army by Paul Queary.Associated Press    OLYMPIA, Washington. - In a matter of months, Rachel Corrie went from the orderly peace movement of this small liberal city to a deadly world of gunfire, bulldozers and violent political conflict.    Corrie, 23, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, died Sunday in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah while trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a Palestinian physician's home. She fell in front of the machine, which ran over her and then backed up, witnesses said.    Israeli military spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal called her death an accident. State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said the U.S. government had asked Israeli officials for a full investigation.    In an e-mail earlier this month, Corrie described a Feb. 14 confrontation with another Israeli bulldozer in which she referred to herself and other activists as "internationals."    "The internationals stood in the path of the bulldozer and were physically pushed with the shovel backwards, taking shelter in a house," Corrie wrote in the e-mail, distributed in a March 3 news release by the International Solidarity Movement.    "The bulldozer then proceeded on its course, demolishing one side of the house with the internationals inside," she wrote.    Just a few months before her death, Corrie had been organizing events as an activist in Olympia's peace movement and at Evergreen, a small campus know for its devotion to liberal causes.    Through a local group called Olympians for Peace in the Middle East, she joined the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group that uses nonviolent methods to challenge Israeli occupation. Among their methods is standing in front of the bulldozers Israel sends into the area nearly every day to destroy buildings near the Gaza-Egypt border.    Other protesters who were with Corrie in Gaza on Sunday said she was wearing a bright colored jacket when the bulldozer hit her.    "Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," said Greg Schnabel, 28, of Chicago. "She waved for the 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."    A tearful Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, described his daughter Sunday as "dedicated to everybody." "We've tried to bring up our children to have a sense of community, a sense of community that everybody in the world belonged to," he said from his home in Charlotte, N.C. "Rachel believed that - with her life, now."    Corrie was already a committed peace activist when she arrived at Evergreen, said Larry Mosqueda, one of Corrie's professors and a fellow activist.    "She was concerned about human rights and dignity," he said. "That's why she was there."    Clashes of ideas are commonplace in Olympia. Peace activists waved signs on the city's streets long before a war with Iraq loomed, and Evergreen's students are well-known for their compassion for the plight of the oppressed in faraway lands.    But most never hear the sound of live gunfire, or smell plaster dust from a demolished house, as Corrie did before she died Sunday.    The move from organizer to front-line opposition in a war zone was a switch for Corrie, whom friends said was not usually inclined to the overt acts of civil disobedience that characterized such events as the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999.    "As long as I've known her she's always been very energetic and very focused about social justice," said Phan Nguyen, 28, a friend and fellow activist who has made several similar trips to the West Bank. "It seemed natural that she would do something like this."    In her e-mailed dispatch from Rafah, Corrie painted a picture of the perilous life of a human shield, recounting a Feb. 14 confrontation with the Israelis.    "We can only imagine what it is like for Palestinians living here, most of them already once-or-twice refugees already, for whom this is not a nightmare," Corrie wrote, "but a continuous reality from which international privilege cannot protect them, and from which they have no economic means to escape."    UN News. New York, 17 March 2003 - Statement attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General on the Middle East    The Secretary-General strongly deplores Israel's continuing raids in the Gaza Strip. These have already killed at least twelve people in the course of yesterday and today, including a four-year-old girl shot in the chest and a young American peace activist run over by a bulldozer. He sends his deepest condolences to the families of the innocent victims.    The Secretary-General is especially troubled that Israel appears to be flouting a central tenet of international humanitarian law, which requires it to take all possible measures to protect the civilian population during military operations.    03/20/2003 Rachel Corrie's Echo by John Nichols of The Nation.    In the last note that 23-year-old American college student Rachel Corrie wrote to her father from a Palestinian community on the Gaza Strip, she thanked Craig Corrie for stepping up his antiwar activism in the United States and urged him to continue speaking out against a US-led attack on Iraq. Four days later, on March 16, Rachel was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian physician's home. Even as he and Rachel's mother mourned the death of their daughter, they carried out her wish Wednesday on the terrace of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC.    With three Democratic members of Congress from Rachel Corrie's homestate of Washington -- Jim McDermott and Brian Baird, who voted against the October resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, and Adam Smith, who voted for it -- standing behind them, Craig and Cynthia Corrie read a statement that poignantly added their daughter's voice to the chorus of corncern regarding the Bush Administration's launch of a preemptive war with Iraq.    "We are speaking out today because of Rachel's fears about the impact of a war with Iraq on the people in the Occupied Territories. She reported to us that her Palestinian friends were afraid that with all eyes on Iraq, the Israeli Defense Forces would escalate activity in the Occupied Territories. Rachel wanted to be in Gaza if that happened," explained Cynthia Corrie. "In the last six weeks, Rachel became our eyes and ears for Rafah, a city at the southern tip of Gaza. Now that she's no longer there, we are asking members of Congress and, truly, all the world to watch and listen."    The Corries expressed particular concern for international activists and Palestinians who are seeking to prevent home demolitions, as Rachel Corrie was on the Sunday she was killed. "We are asking members of Congress to bring the US government's attention back to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and to recognize that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is an overwhelming and continuous act of collective violence against the Palestinian people," said the Corries. "We ask that military aid to Israel be commensurate with its efforts to end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories and to adhere to the rules of international law."    Rachel Corrie, who was due to graduate this year from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was a longtime activist on environmental, social justice and peace issues. Before traveling this winter to the Gaza Strip to join International Solidarity Movement protests against the tactics used by the Israeli military in Palestinian refugee camp, she was active in Olympia's antiwar movement. Her parents said they had learned from Rachel that they must speak out loudly against violence. "Rachel's brutal death illustrates dramatically the madness of war," explained Craig Corrie, an insurance actuary.    Rachel Corrie's parents are not the only ones being inspired to action by her death. Baird, the congressman who represents the Olympia area, said he would introduce a House resolution calling for an investigation by the US State Department of Corrie's death. "I am a strong supporter of Israel, but that doesn't mean you look away," said Baird. "It is incumbent for our State Department to conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation" of the incident, added Baird, who described the circumstances of Corrie's death as "profoundly troubling to me" and said "I think people should be held accountable."    Baird ripped into conservatives who have criticized Rachel Corrie for placing herself in harm's way as part of a political protest. "To suggest a nonviolent person should be run over by a bulldozer because she said and did things we don't agree with, I find that morally repugnant," argued the congressman. "This is not just about Israeli policy, this is about Israeli conduct against an unarmed American citizen engaged in nonviolent action."    McDermott echoed the call for an investigation and for respect of Rachel Corrie's nonviolent activism, saying, "We must look at this event in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. A girl took action against a policy (home demolitions) that needs to have the light of day shown upon it." Visit the related web page
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