‘No amount of reading and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality’— Remembering Rachel Corrie

MondoWiess

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, the peace activist whose life was cruelly cut short in 2003 by the Israeli military when the IDF crushed her with a bulldozer. Corrie was just 23 years old when killed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza, but her memory continues to inspire many long after her death.

To those who knew her, Corrie was thoughtful, sensitive, and courageous. The ISM remembered Corrie:

It rained on Kufr Qaddoum where attack dogs clenched in their jaws the peaceful freedom fighters of Palestine, an image reminiscent of a segregated America.

It drizzled as the folks of Al Ma’sara demanded the wall to fall, an echoing cry humanity heard from Germany.

Puddles formed along Shuhada Street in Al Khalil where Apartheid still lurked despite South Africa’s continued victories.

And it watered on Gaza, where the dust never seems to settle between the murderous attacks of the Zionist military.

It is fitting to honor Corrie with a poem, as she is known for her letters and emails from Palestine to her family, compiled in a book edited by her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie. So let us remember Corrie with an excerpt from an email sent by Corrie to family and friends, while in Rafah.  The email was published in Let Me Stand Alone:

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. 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.

Israel has no intention of finding justice for Rachel Corrie

“Thorough, credible and transparent” means “collusion, sabotage and deceit” in Israel.

 

The Palestine Monitor has witnessed nearly half of the Rachel Corrie family’s civil suit against Israel. Since last March, we, along with Al Jazeera, Electronic Intifada, Haaretz, Ynet and many others, have brought the world shameful stories from Israel’s halls of justice in Haifa: witness contradictions, investigative negligence, tampered evidence, amnesiac witnesses, judicial prejudice and continual perjury. Through public, political and now judicial pressure, our hope was that Israel would finally explain how Rachel Corrie died. We know they can - they have the video and audio tapes and nearly a dozen eyewitnesses.

But now we know they won’t, ever.

At the last court session, we heard two witnesses - men present when Rachel fell beneath a nine-ton steel blade. Both gave testimony after the event, sworn statements in affidavits, and (one would assume) felt some guilt some eight years after their collective actions led to a grisly, high-profile death. However, on 6 April—as in all the previous court dates—these witnesses denied having even the most basic knowledge of the incident: one said he couldn’t remember Rachel Corrie’s name, the other couldn’t recall the time of year his team found her mortally wounded.

Judge Oded Gershon did not hold them accountable when they obviously contradicted earlier sworn statements and both men were hidden behind a so-called security wall, hiding giveaway body language and emotive faces or eyes. With the pleading gaze of grieving parents and sister - would these witnesses have blamed Rachel for her own death, as they did, and profess to forgetting much of her infamous end?

Rachel’s mouth was ripped open and her body was savagely broken. Perhaps the shock wiped the Israeli soldiers and engineers memories. Perhaps their plentiful deployment of the phrases “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” was in their pre-trial briefing with military and judicial officials. Are they under orders - or threat? Or are they simply lying?

If they were concealing the truth, however, it wouldn’t matter.

Yesterday, the commander of the bulldozer team that killed Rachel slipped up. After he asserted he was at the scene of the crime and not in a military command bunker, the courtroom gasped. Just an hour before he had said the complete opposite. The Corrie family lawyer Hussein Abu Hussein checked his notes, peered over his silver frames, and asked the witness to clarify. He repeated his statement, perjuring himself before the court, the judge, the family and the silver menorah of the Israeli justice system. But Judge Gershon seemed not to notice.

The oath he’d administered - sworn before God and the Jewish state of Israel - lay broken before him, but you wouldn’t know it by the judge’s impassive face.

“It’s as if he’s already made up his mind,” a lawyer present at the trial said about the judge.

This entire trial has been a sham. No one requires the witnesses to answer truthfully. A former military judge, Gershon openly favors the state defense attorneys. The chamber is woefully small, limiting the amount of foreign press, translators and representatives. No translators are provided by the state for the family, journalists or foreign officials. Gershon has routinely stretched and changed trial dates, with scant thought for the economic and emotional toll on Rachel’s family.

It is beyond clear the state of Israel will not try to understand March 16, 2003. Why should they show any remorse or respect for a young woman deemed “an enemy combatant” by one witness?

The valiant efforts of Abu Hussein and Jamal Dakwar, the Corrie’s lawyers, have exposed a criminally negligent military investigation and many facts - effectively establishing the closest thing to the “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation Ariel Sharon promised George W. Bush. But the fact is that, as of now, Israel simply doesn’t care.

While waging another Gaza campaign, again, why would they?

Unless something radically changes in the stance of the US government or Israel, the Corrie family won’t get the symbolic one dollar and recognition they are asking of the political system that killed their daughter. And while the trial continues, the policy Rachel died fighting - Israeli demolition of impoverished and occupied communities - rages on.

Let it be very clear. You won’t find justice in Israel.

Portland Stands in Solidarity with the People of Egypt

Federal subpoenas hit more Palestine solidarity activists

Attorney Jim Fennerty

Grand-jury subpoenas Friday afternoon may signal that the federal government is expanding a probe of Midwest antiwar activists.

Attorney Jim Fennerty said the FBI served subpoenas to at least two Chicago-area women who visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank this summer. Fennerty represents some antiwar activists who defied an order to appear before a grand jury in Chicago this October.

Fennerty said at least one new subpoena requires the recipient to appear before a grand jury on January 25. He declined to name the recipients but said they’re both young and frightened.

“They’re widening the scope of this investigation,” Fennerty said. “They’re trying to squeeze anybody they can. This is an attack about people who do solidarity work around Palestine.”

Subpoenas served to 14 Midwest activists in September suggest an investigation relates to foreign groups the federal government calls terrorist.

A spokesman for the FBI’s Chicago office said officials can’t comment on grand-jury proceedings.

Gaza flotilla delayed after mystery faults hit two boats

Independent

A Gaza-bound flotilla's confrontation with the Israeli navy was delayed yesterday after mystery faults developed simultaneously in two of its boats. The Greek Cypriot government also prevented up to another 30 pro-Palestinian activists – including European parliamentarians – from joining the crafts.

The flotilla, now down to five instead of the original eight boats, is carrying 10,000 tons of aid supplies and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists. It prepared to leave Cypriot waters en route to Gaza last night despite warnings by Israel that it would be stopped – by force if necessary – from landing in the besieged territory.

The voyage – the biggest effort yet to break through the three-year blockade of Gaza – had been described by senior Israeli spokesmen as a "cheap political stunt" and "an attempt at violent propaganda against Israel". But Greta Berlin, one of the flotilla's organisers, said yesterday that it had been mounted by "intrepid civilians who are doing something [about the siege of Gaza] because their governments don't".

Israel has made it clear that its navy is ready to arrest the flotilla's passengers and hand them over to civilian authorities for deportation or trial if they ignore warnings to turn back or yield control of their vessels to the military. Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, said: "We will not let this flotilla get through. It harms Israeli security."

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh claimed that, either way, the flotilla would bring the end of a blockade imposed when the Islamic faction seized control of the strip after its coalition with Fatah broke down in June 2007. As he toured Gaza City's fishing harbour, he told around 400 supporters: "If the ships reach Gaza, it's a victory for Gaza. If they are intercepted and terrorised by the Zionists, it will be a victory for Gaza, too, and they will move again in new ships to break the siege of Gaza."

The Greek Cypriot authorities, under pressure from Israel, refused to allow the boats to dock at its ports. They also prevented passengers who had flown to Cyprus to join the flotilla, including MPs from various European countries, to transfer on to the vessels. Yesterday's delay came as attempts were made for an alternative embarkation from the Turkish Cypriot port of Famagusta.

Turkey has been the most prominent national supporter of the flotilla, with its Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging Israel to let the boats through. Israel's alliance with Ankara was severely strained by the 2008-09 military offensive in Gaza.

Meanwhile, two of the movement's small passenger boats developed mechanical trouble at around 3.30pm on Friday as they neared the Cyprus coast from Crete. Last week, another vessel was delayed leaving Ireland by a propeller fault.

While saying Free Gaza was still awaiting details of Friday's malfunction from the boats' captains, Ms Berlin said the coincidence of faults developing in all three boats had given rise to speculation of possible sabotage. Claiming that one Israeli official had indicated that the best tactic would be to pick off the boats one by one before they joined the flotilla, she added: "As far as I am concerned, there is a suspicion that this is what was done."

Israel has accused the participants of betraying their claim to be human rights activists by ignoring Hamas's attacks on Israeli civilians and internal repression within Gaza. Critics of the blockade argue that it has harmed and impoverished the 1.5 million population of Gaza while leaving the rule of Hamas intact, and even entrenched.

For Those Who Don't Believe Israel Shoots Innocent Farmers

Tim King

Images from video, courtesy: International Solidarity Movement
Uruknet
Salem-News, May 9, 2010

Activists have repeatedly witnessed Palestinian farmers being shot at by Israeli forces as they attempt to work on agricultural land situated within 700m of the Green Line.

(SALEM, Ore.) - It was late February in 2009, when Israeli forces shot a twenty-year-old Palestinian farmer as he worked his land in the village of Al-Faraheen, east of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. made HUMVEE used by IDF

Weeks earlier, on Tuesday 27 January 2009, in Al Faraheen, Israeli forces shot at several farmers, killing a 27-year-old man whose job in life was that of a farmer.

We are told this happens often, though Israelis deny it.

As it turns out in the February case though, International Human Rights Activists were accompanying the group of farmers at the time as they worked approximately 500m from the Green Line.

They were rolling when the shots were fired. To underscore the real responsibility for these actions, the camera shows that the Israeli Defense Force soldiers, murderers in this case, driving a HUMVEE - just exactly like U.S. forces.


Israeli soldiers were shooting as this American stood calmly and told them to stop shooting, as the people were unarmed farmers working their own land

I'm sure the Palestinians always see a hint of Americanism in the bullets that slay their families, from far away, from a military force with no courage, but plenty of violent hostility toward an unarmed, defenseless populace.

20-year-old Mohammad al-Breem, was shot in the right leg as the farmers worked together with the international Human Rights Activists. There were more shots as they attempted to leave the area having worked on their land for 2 hours in full view of the Israeli forces situated along the Green Line.

There was no surprise, no provocation; the IDF let them think they could work their own land, and then after a while they opened fire.

Farmers of every persuasion, from every corner of the globe, should condemn this ongoing genocide of the Palestinians by Israel's unaccountable government forces.

In case you were curious, the farmers' crime, that Israel deemed open season over, was the loading of parsley and spinach from the agricultural lands.

The shots were fired from Israeli forces on the border. Mohammad was shot in the right leg and evacuated, while still under fire, to a hospital.

International Human Rights Activists have repeatedly witnessed Palestinian farmers being shot at by Israeli forces as they attempt to work on agricultural land situated within 700m of the Green Line.

Learn more:

In Gaza - ingaza.wordpress.com/

International Solidarity Movement - palsolidarity.org