In January 2003, Rachel Corrie went to the Gaza Strip to work as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. The trip was part of an independent-study project she had proposed during her senior year at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.
The foreign nationals who work with the ISM often volunteer to act as human shields to prevent the Israeli Occupation Forces from acts of aggression against Palestinians and their infrastructure. One of these activities is to stand in front of armored bulldozers to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes.
Another human shield activity Rachel Corrie participated in was accompanying municipal workers being shot at by Israeli snipers while attempting to repair a well. Prior to being damaged by IOF bulldozers, the well had supplied the local population with much of its drinking water. It bears mentioning that the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including dwellings, is expressly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.
According to ISM eyewitnesses, on March 16, 2003, an IOF soldier operating a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer deliberately killed Rachel Corrie when she was standing between the bulldozer and a wall near the home of a local pharmacist, Samir Nasrallah. The ISM accounts all agree that Rachel Corrie ended up on top of a mound of earth being pushed by the bulldozer. She was looking directly at the driver when she either fell or was dumped by the bulldozer’s operator. After that, the driver ran her over.
‘Blaming the victim’
The official Israeli investigation made the claim that she was not run over by the bulldozer. This report directly contradicts the evidence from her autopsy, which has never been officially released. Regardless, the official Israeli position is that the ISM activists are responsible for any injuries that might occur to them, since they choose to place themselves in a combat zone. This perverse logic can only be characterized as “blaming the victim.”
In 2005, Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s parents, filed a lawsuit against Caterpillar alleging that the company knew that the bulldozers were going to be used for activities in violation of international law. This lawsuit was dismissed in 2005 for lack of jurisdiction, and the dismissal was upheld in 2007.
In 2010, Corrie’s parents, represented by Hussein Abu Hussein, filed a lawsuit against the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli Judge Oded Gershon’s ruling Aug. 28 of this year blamed the victim for putting herself in harm’s way. The judge also justified the destruction of homes in the area, saying that “to clear the area” was a military necessity.
All Palestinian and ISM witnesses agree that the goal of the bulldozer operator who killed Corrie was to destroy the Nasrallah family home. The Israeli government accords itself the right to kill activists when they non-violently attempt to stop Israeli war crimes of house demolition and destruction of civilian infrastructure. It is doubtful that the Israeli government would be able to act with such impunity without the unqualified military and economic support of the world’s only superpower, the United States.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2003 and again in 2008-09 primarily targeted civilian infrastructure. The majority of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are refugees and the descendants of refugees who ended up there after the massive ethnic cleansing that occurred during the formation of the settler state of Israel. Israel has the fourth most powerful military on the planet, whereas the population of Gaza possesses only rifles, handguns and rockets that rarely cause damage or inflict casualties.
The military operations performed by the IOF in 2003 and subsequently were brutal acts of violence against an oppressed and captive population. It resembled nothing so much as a cop beating a prisoner who has been handcuffed to a chair. It is only the arrogance of power that lets the Israeli government and its backers in the U.S. ruling class assign the blame for Corrie’s death on her non-violent act of resistance to the blatant war crime of destroying homes in a residential neighborhood. Corrie’s case is hardly the only instance of Israeli lack of accountability for the death of civilians at the hands of its military in areas that it controls. The Electric Intifada website in its article on the recent Israeli ruling on the Corrie’s lawsuit enumerates many instances of Palestinians being killed by the IOF without any accountability for the perpetrators.
The Corries have announced that they will appeal this unjust verdict.
