NY Jews Condemn Killing Of American Peace Activist

NY Jews Condemn Killing Of American Peace Activist - Funeral Rally At 4 P.M. Today, Clinton And Schumer Offices

NEW YORK - A U.S. peace worker, Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, was run over by a Israeli military bulldozer yesterday while protecting a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. Today at 4 p.m., activists from Jews Against the Occupation, Direct Action for a Free Palestine, Stop US Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now (SUSTAIN), and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee will hold a funeral procession from the office of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton to the office of U.S. Senator Charles Schumer.

The funeral will be to protest U.S. culpability for supplying Israel with the financial aid, weapons, diplomatic and moral support that underpins Israel's continuing assault on the Palestinian people and their land. Members of the groups are calling for a congressional investigation into Corrie's death and for Americans to contact their representatives to demand they support such an investigation.

The funeral procession will start from Clinton's office, East 48th Street and Third Avenue, and continue to Schumer's office nearby.

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Starhawk Nablus, Palestine March 16, 2003

Today a young woman was killed in Gaza. Young women, but more often young men, get killed in Gaza and the West Bank every day, and the world pays no attention. What was different today is that Rachel Corrie was an American, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the group that I'm here with in occupied Palestine. And her death is a particularly horrifying example of the cold-blooded dehumanization that characterizes this occupation.

Rachel was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home. According to the other activists who were with her, she was in dialogue with the operator of the bulldozer. She was working in the spirit of nonviolence that is a guiding principle of the ISM, which provides support for Palestinian civilians and for nonviolent efforts to bring about justice for Palestine. Rachel climbed up on the bulldozer to talk to the soldier in the cockpit. She climbed down. She sat in front of the bulldozer. The soldier in control of the huge machine drove it deliberately over her. He then backed up, and ran over her again. Rachel was twenty-three years old.

I am trying to fathom the mind that could pull the levers and gun the motor to crush the life out of her young body. That choice, that deliberate act of murder that ended her sweet life, seems incomprehensible. But here in occupied Palestine, that murder is a logical outgrowth of the system of total dehumanization that controls every aspect of life, that cannot see the human being in the Palestinian, that claims to be fighting terror by institutionalizing it. Please register your outrage -- at Rachel's murder, at the home demolitions that she was trying to stop, at the illegal occupation that can only be defended by brutalizing a whole people.

Call the Israeli Ministry of Defense 972-3-69-55476 (011-972-3-69-55476 from the US) and 972-3-69-75220 (011-972-3-69-75-220 from the US)

Fax the Israeli Foreign Office 972-2-53-03506 (011-972-2-53-03506 from the US) General Director: Phone 972-2-530-7704 (011-972-2-530-7704 from the US)

Call, or demonstrate, or shut down your local Israeli Embassy or your local Consulate office.

If you are from the US, call or write your Senators and Congressional Representative.

--Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org

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