Maha El-Nahas pays tribute to Rachel Corrie, a little over a year after her brutal murder "Though there is no balance of power between the Israeli and Palestinian people, the fear is very real on both sides. The violence, however, inside Israel is a direct result of the 36 year occupation of Palestine and of the ongoing abuse of Palestinian human rights. There are no home demolitions in Israel, no gardens and orchards destroyed there, no wells and cisterns damaged and water taken away, no land taken away to create settlements, and apartheid walls. We in America see the horror of the suicide bombings. We seem to see much less the ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. Our blindness is an enormous contributing factor to this problem. We need to remember that, as we have watched the deaths of some of the 773 Israelis who have died since September 2000, there have also been 2,298 Palestinian deaths." This account of the conflict in Israel, a conflict between unarmed Palestinians and a military occupation intent on wrecking their lives and appropriating their land, is one Cindy Corrie presented during a speech at Sylvester Park, Olympia, Washington, in May 2003, only weeks after her daughter, Rachel, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. On 16 March 2003, Rachel Corrie, 23, American peace activist and member of the International Solidarity Movement, stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer to protect a Palestinian home from being demolished. Rachel, a college student from Olympia, Washington, was among a group of peace activists, including Americans and Britons from the International Solidarity Movement, who went to Palestine to provide international protection for the Palestinian people, to peacefully support their cause and to act as eyewitnesses to the atrocities and human rights violations committed by Israeli forces. In an e-mail to her mother, Rachel wrote that if anyone had their lives and stability taken away from them, they too would resort to violence to protect the little they have left. Rachel's view accords with that of Jenny Tonge, the UK Liberal Democrat who had to give up her parliamentary seat after saying that the living conditions of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation are what entices them to blow themselves up in martyrdom operations, and that had she suffered the same conditions she would have acted in a similar manner. On 16 March 2003, Israeli bulldozers arrived in Rafah to destroy a Palestinian house on the pretext that weapons were hidden inside. For two hours, peace activists tried to stop the bulldozers. One bulldozer kept charging towards the house, and Rachel attempted to block its way. Rachel was wearing a dayglo orange vest, the distinctive outfit of peace activists, and carrying a loudspeaker through which she told the bulldozer driver to stop. It did, but only after running her over. Rachel's friends extracted her body from under the rubble and rushed her to hospital where she died. Rachel was an eyewitness to Israel's atrocities. She wrote regularly home, describing what she saw. In one letter, she tells this to her mother; "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 ... 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 form 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." Rachel adds, "I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others)." Poor Rachel. She imagined that just because she was a US citizen, this would protect her from the brutality of Israeli forces and shield her from their lethal blows. She did not know that Israeli brutality does not distinguish between friend and foe. Rachel was the first peace activist to fall victim to Israeli occupation forces, but she was not the last. In June 2003, UK student Tom Hurndall, 21, was wounded by Israeli gunfire when he and other activists formed a human shield to protect some Palestinian children from the shots of the Israeli army. Hurndall was wearing a vest indicating his status as a peace activist, but this was of no avail. He died in January 2004 in a London hospital. Activist Brian Avery, 24, also a US citizen, was wounded by Israeli gunfire in Jenin. UK journalist James Miller was killed while preparing a feature on the life of Palestinian children in Rafah, although he and others were waving white flags and wearing vests clearly marking them as television workers. The Israeli government claimed that the death of Rachel Corrie was just an accident, saying that Rachel ran in front of the bulldozer and the driver didn't see her, but Rachel's colleagues who were present at the scene dispute this story. Investigations into the case were halted. US human rights organisations, as well as Rachel's parents, have called on the US government to investigate Rachel's murder. The organisation also called on the US government to stop supplying Israel with the military hardware and bulldozers which Israel uses to violate human rights and international law. US law, including the US Arms Export Control Act, prohibits the use of military aid in attacks against civilians. On the first anniversary of Rachel's death, Elizabeth Corrie, her cousin, wrote an article for The International Herald Tribune expressing outrage that the Israeli government refused to conduct an independent investigation in this crime. "This reveals both the Sharon administration's unwillingness to take responsibility for the death of a US citizen and the Bush administration's cowardice in allowing another nation to attack US citizens with impunity." Elizabeth Corrie wonders how it is that an unarmed US citizen can be killed with impunity by a soldier from a nation receiving massive US aid, using a product manufactured in the US by a US corporation and paid for with US tax dollars, whereas "when three Americans were killed, presumably by Palestinians, in an explosion on 15 October 2003, as they travelled through Gaza, the FBI came within 24 hours to investigate the deaths." After one year, Elizabeth Corrie adds, "neither the FBI nor any other US-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." Rachel's parents still await answers from the US government regarding the death of their daughter. Israel, meanwhile, is doing its best to prevent foreign peace activists from entering the occupied territories.
