Jerusalem Post Smears Rachel Corrie's Memory

On the anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death it seems as if some people think it's a good occasion to vilify this brave woman's memory. The following is an appeal by Dorothy Naor of New Profile [The Committee to Civil-ise Israeli Society] This is the kind of letter that should be sent to all and sundry. You won't be doing anything too radical. Even the US Embassy in Tel-Aviv protested this slander

I found the Jerusalem Post first comment particularly nasty. Explosives smuggled to Gaza from Egypt couldn't have killed anyone in a suicide bombing in Israel. The entire Gaza Strip is enclosed by a fence and not a single suicide bomber has got into Israel from Gaza. It's just typical of the lies that Ruhama Shattan tells.

– Sol Solbe

To refresh the memory (for anyone who needs refreshing Gila Svirsky's moving tribute to Rachel is also enclosed.

Dear All,

I am as disgusted as Michael and others over the oped in the Jerusalem Post on Rachel Corrie, which denigrates her memory--the memory of a brave young woman trying to help innocent Palestinians protect their homes from being demolished.

When history reviews Israel from a distance, these past 4 years will be among the ugliest in the history of Judaism.

Meanwhile, it is up to us to defend the Rachel Corries of this world. Please make your views known to the editor of the Jerusalem Post. A ton of protest letters might discourage him from publishing trash like this in the future. Freedom of Speech, yes, but not Freedom of lies.

Thanks, Dorothy

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Gillespie
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 6:22 PM
Subject: [ACO] Protest: Rachel Corrie's memory smeared in Jerusalem Post op-ed

Friends,

March 16th will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, a young, courageous, and idealistic American college student and peace and justice activist. For many, Rachel's brutal murder has come to symbolize the brutal slaughter of innocent civilians by the mis-named Israel Defense Force (IDF) in support of Israel's ruthlessly violent and patently illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. At the same time, Rachel's life and sacrifice represent the hope that we see in the power of people to bring about change and the belief that the hearts, minds, and ideals of those committed to freedom, justice, and equality, can, must, and ultimately will prevail.

Many of us will be remembering Rachel and the thousands of other innocent lives sacrificed on the bloody altar of U.S./Israeli colonialism in the Middle East in various ways on March 16th and again on March 20th. Please take a few minutes to read the pieces below. The first is a propagandistic op-ed published in the Jerusalem Post that we need you to help us protest. Following the JP op-ed are two short published letters about the op-ed, one authored by a U.S. embassy staffer in Tel Aviv and another by an Israeli "settler" who supports the JP op-ed writer.

The second op-ed is a moving piece written by Rachel's cousin, Elizabeth, a Georgia school teacher. Elizabeth's op-ed was published in the International Herald Tribune, the world's most widely distributed English language "international" newspaper. Elizabeth's question is well stated and well taken: How is it that the state of Israel, which is utterly dependent upon the US government for political, economic, and military support that enables the IDF to systematically engage in crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine, can repeatedly snuff out the lives courageous young Americans and others engaged in completely non-violent protest against Israel's patently illegal and racist policies, without U.S. lawmakers lifting a finger in response? Please take a few moments to protest this on-going tragedy.

1) Disgusting op-ed about Rachel Corrie in the Jerusalem Post (w/letters). PLEASE PROTEST!

2) A year of silence since Rachel Corrie died - Elizabeth Corrie in the IHT

1) Disgusting op-ed in the Jerusaelm Post _ PLEASE PROTEST!

Below is an op-ed piece about Rachel Corrie that was recently published by the Jerusalem Post, Israel's main English-language newspaper, followed by two letters that were published regarding the op-ed, one by the US Embassy. This disgusting piece of propaganda is a crude attempt to smear and sully the memory of courageous young woman who can no longer defend herself or her actions. Please let your your members of Congress http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ know that America's "closest ally" seems to have little or no respect at all for the lives of American citizens. And please encourage your representatives to get off their duffs and find out exactly how and why Rachel, wearing a day-glow orange safety jacket and shouting through a amplified bull-horn at the time, was brutally murdered, run down and then backed-over, by an IDF war criminal driving a 9-ton Caterpillar bulldozer paid for by U.S. tax dollars! Demand accountability in return for the billions of U.S. tax dollars that flow to Israel each and every year!

Send your protest letters to the Jerusalem Post at:

editors@jpost.com

letters@jpost.com

or click here to submit your letter via the Jerusalem Post website: http://info.jpost.com/C002/Services/Feedback/editors.html

A 'tribute' to Rachel Corrie

By RUHAMA SHATTAN

Mar. 1, 2004

March 16 is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.

Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her martyrdom - oops, death - have been strapped around suicide bombers to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem, killing men, women, and schoolchildren (two of them classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004 bombing), and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans, and bereaved parents.

On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing Palestinian children how to despise America as she snarled, burned an American flag, and led them in chanting slogans, and as she gave "evidence" at a Young Palestinian Parliament mock trial finding President Bush guilty of crimes against humanity.

Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall.

ON THE first anniversary of her death, I wanted to thank Rachel Corrie for providing her organization, the Palestinian-sponsored International Solidarity Movement, with the opportunity to release a manipulated photo sequence "showing" an Israeli military bulldozer deliberately crushing her. (I would also like to thank AP and The Christian Science Monitor for taking up the baton and immortalizing this cynical ISM stunt.)

On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing the way to all those who seek peace in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Corrie's peace, as anyone familiar with the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, and Hizbullah organizations that she defended with her life knows - or as anyone familiar with the weekly rants of the Friday preachers in the Palestinian mosques is aware - means not peaceful coexistence but the elimination of the State of Israel, and death to those they call "the usurping Jews, the sons of apes and pigs."

Thank you, Rachel Corrie, of Evergreen State University, where the profs wear khakis and keffiyehs at graduation ceremonies, for showing us what peace really means.

The writer is a translator, editor, and writer who has lived in Israel since 1976.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull%26cid=1078113575924

Mar. 3, 2004

Letters to the Editor

Disgusting 'tribute'

Sir, - I want to pass on the US Embassy's reaction to the article "A 'tribute' to Rachel Corrie" (March 2). This article is nothing less than hateful incitement. The author's disgusting abuse of the anniversary of the death of this American citizen is inexcusable. The article reflects a level of discourse unbefitting any serious newspaper.

We're disappointed that you chose to publish this article.

PAUL PATIN

US Embassy

Tel Aviv

...no, it was fitting

Sir, - I want to commend Ruhama Shattan for her fitting "tribute" to Rachel Corrie. While all citizens of Israel clearly regret the rare loss of any innocent life resulting from IDF operations, it must be made clear who is innocent and who is not.

Corrie died while engaging in deliberate incitement and dangerous activity that, as Shattan points out, perhaps led to the death of many innocent Israelis. Exercise of free speech is a respected right in this country, and there are proper ways to go about demonstrating against policies with which one disagrees. While Corrie's family and friends may have difficulty understanding the reality in which Israelis live, in this country when the IDF gives an order, those orders are to be followed. Interfering with army activities is a crime and those who do so should no longer be considered innocent.

While Corrie's death was undoubtedly an accident, it resulted from a personal arrogance that led her to believe her moral high ground was more powerful than the IDF. She died simply because she was willing to do so, in an effort to make a point to the world.

No army in the world goes to such lengths as the IDF to avoid the loss of those engaged in innocent activity. Rachel Corrie's actions were far from innocent.

KENNETH POLINSKY

Ma'aleh Adumim

2) A year of silence since Rachel Corrie died

Killed in Israel

Elizabeth Corrie IHT
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

ATLANTA, Georgia Only a year ago, the month of March would have held the same positive associations for me as it has for many - the beginning of the end of winter, the promise of springtime and even summer. This year, and for every year for the rest of my life, the approach of March will mean something else entirely - the anniversary of the brutal death of my cousin, Rachel Corrie.

On March 16, 2003, an Israeli soldier and his commander ran over Rachel with a nine-ton Caterpillar bulldozer while she stood - unarmed, clearly visible in her orange fluorescent jacket - protecting a Palestinian home slated for demolition by the Israeli army.

The death of Rachel Corrie, and the response that her case has - and has not - received, reveal several disturbing, indeed immoral and criminal, truths.

First, Rachel died while attempting to prevent the demolition of a home, a common practice of the Israeli Army's collective punishment that has left more than 12,000 Palestinians homeless since the beginning of the second uprising in September 2000. This practice violates international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Second, Rachel was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer, manufactured in the United States and sent to Israel as part of the regular U.S. aid package to Israel, which amounts to $3 billion to $4 billion annually, all of it from U.S. taxpayers. The use of Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy civilian homes, not to mention to run over unarmed human rights activists, violates U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of military aid against civilians.

Third, the self-acquittal of the Israeli army for Rachel's death and the resistance of the state of Israel to an independent investigation into this case reveals both the Sharon administration's unwillingness to take responsibility for the death of a U.S. citizen and the Bush administration's cowardice in allowing another nation to attack U.S. citizens with impunity.

Fourth, Rachel's death was in fact only the first of several Israeli attacks on foreign citizens in the West Bank and Gaza. Brian Avery, from New Mexico, was shot in the face on April 5; Tom Hurndall, a British citizen, was shot in the head on April 11 and died Jan. 13, and James Miller, another British citizen, was also shot and killed in April. To date, only in Hurndall's case will the Israeli soldier responsible for the attack face trial, and this is because the British government, after several months, finally responded to the overwhelming evidence presented by the Hurndall family.

As we approach March 16, residents and citizens of the United States should ask themselves how it is that an unarmed U.S. citizen can be killed with impunity by a soldier from an allied nation receiving massive U.S. aid, using a product manufactured in the United States by a U.S. corporation and paid for with U.S. tax dollars. When three Americans were killed, presumably by Palestinians, in an explosion on Oct. 15, 2003, as they traveled through Gaza, the FBI came within 24 hours to investigate the deaths. After one year, neither the FBI nor any other U.S.-led team has done anything to investigate the death of an American killed by an Israeli.

Why the double standard? Perhaps this reveals the most disturbing truth of all.

Elizabeth Corrie is an administrator and teacher in a school in Atlanta.

http://www.iht.com/articles/508556.html

Copyright C 2002 The International Herald Tribune

At-Home with Gila Svirsky

Jerusalem

18 March 2003

Subject: Rest in peace, dear Rachel

Friends,

The media are eager for body counts in Iraq, but the body counts have already begun in Palestine. Under the cover of world attention riveted on the events leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, the Israeli army is having its brutal way with the Palestinians. Yesterday, the army shot and killed 11 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip - including two teenagers and a two-year old girl, cowering inside her home - and another two in the West Bank. But with all eyes on Bush and Baghdad, is anybody looking at this?

Peace and human rights activists in Israel and Palestine have been looking, and organizing as well. In the past few weeks, 26 Israeli and Palestinian organizations have joined together in the Palestinian-Israeli Emergency Committee, to try to prevent just such events from occurring, and even worsening. There is no doubt that with the outbreak of war, the army will impose more prolonged curfews and closures, resulting in greater starvation among the already malnourished Palestinian population. It is also expected that the army will seek to disrupt telephone lines and electricity in the occupied territories. And a very real danger exists of stepped-up home demolitions, expulsions, and turning a blind eye to settler militias who attack Palestinians. Activists here will be working to prevent such events, to the extent possible, and keeping the public informed.

Sunday's horrifying death of 23-year old Rachel Corrie, a peace activist from the U.S. with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza, gripped me painfully. Rachel is the brave young woman who stood in front of the bulldozer, asking with her eyes for the driver to have compassion on the home he was about to destroy, but he drove directly onto her. And then backed up to finish the job. I have gone to sleep and awakened with this image in my mind ever since. I did not know Rachel, but I can only imagine that she herself was so compassionate, that she could not envision the force of darkness about to envelope her. I shudder to recall similar acts of nonviolent resistance in recent years, which ended only with injuries and near-misses, and how this killing reveals the hardening hearts of those now giving and carrying out the orders.

The Coalition of Women for Peace placed the following ad in today's Ha'aretz:

We extend heartfelt condolences to the Corrie family and to all members of the International Solidarity Movement on the murder of Rachel during her valiant and nonviolent efforts to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian family's home.

The occupation has led to a cheapening of human life - Palestinian, Israeli, and others.

The Coalition of Women for Peace:

Machsom Watch, Movement of Democratic Women of Israel (TANDI), New Profile, Noga Feminist Journal, The Fifth Mother, WILPF - Israel section, and Women in Black.

May Rachel rest in peace, and may her family take comfort in the compassionate and precious soul of their dear child.

Gila Svirsky, Jerusalem

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