[quote][img]http://mondoweiss.net/images/2013/03/RC-bulldozers.jpg[/img]
I was at my home in Olympia, Washington, on the morning of Sunday, March 16, 2003, when I received a call from Will, a friend who had traveled to Rafah. It was a pleasant surprise. I had already heard from Rachel Corrie, whom he had gone to Palestine with, but not from him, so my enthusiasm was pronounced when I asked him how he was doing.
“Um ... really bad,” he said. “Rachel’s dead.”
• • •
Rachel did not travel to Rafah with the intention of standing in front of bulldozers or performing direct action. In the initial years of the second intifada, international media focused on the West Bank. Rachel had heard from a friend that the suffering in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, was being ignored. She thought one way to draw more attention to the situation there was to establish a sister city relationship between her hometown of Olympia and Rafah.
My reaction when she told me her plan in the fall of 2002 was, “Why Rafah?” If she wanted to foster a sister city relationship to expose the humanity of Palestinians, why not go with a more approachable city such as Bethlehem, that would be more photogenic and easier to appeal to an uninformed public?
But it was precisely because Rafah had been so ignored, and because it seemed so unapproachable, that Rachel felt Rafah had to be the one.
• • •
Will had called me to get the phone number for Rachel’s parents. He was with Rachel at the time she was killed and wanted to be the one to break the news to them.
As a precautionary measure before traveling overseas, Rachel had emailed me and a few other people a list of emergency contacts. The biggest concern at the time was that she could be detained or arrested by Israel.
While on the phone with Will, I pulled up her list of contacts and discovered that the list—a very long list—was not in any sensible order. It was just a bunch of names and phone numbers, with no explanation of her relationship to the names. Which ones were her parents?
I told Will that I’d have to call him back after I determined which phone number belonged to her parents.
Thinking back on this ten years later, I can sort of laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and blame it on Rachel’s character.
• • •
Although Rachel did not travel to Palestine to do direct action, she wasn’t averse to it, and the dire situation in Rafah made it inevitable. She had received training with the International Solidarity Movement to prepare herself for the unexpected, and to familiarize herself with her new surroundings.
Rachel was staying in Jerusalem in late January, waiting for an opportunity to make it down to Rafah. At the time, Israel was conducting a major assault in the Gaza Strip, making it difficult to get in. On January 27, 2003, Rachel wrote from Jerusalem:
We are going to try to make it to Rafah today, to join the internationals there who have set up a tent to stop the blanket fire and demolitions as much as possible. Everything is under strict curfew because of the election. More later.
When she finally made it to Rafah, she learned that some water wells had been destroyed, and the remaining functional wells were at risk of damage by the Israeli military. One of the first tasks she took on was to help guard the water wells.
• • •
On the morning of March 16, 2003, I was at home staring at a long list of emergency contacts for Rachel, trying to determine which number belonged to her parents so they could receive the news of her death. I needed to get them in touch with Will before they found out what had happened to Rachel through the news.
I called a few friends, hoping they would have the answer. That also meant breaking the news to them, which took some time. I then tried a few educated guesses from the list. I got some voice mail responses. Simultaneously, I was checking online news feeds, hoping that reports of Rachel’s death hadn’t traveled too far.
But the reports were spreading fast, and she was being named. By the time I got a hold of a family member, it was too late. They already knew.
...[/quote]
[b]Source:[/b] [url]http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/thoughts-anniversary-rachel.html[/url]
Long article; prepare to face palm and lose hope in humanity as you scroll down.
To be honest I do have to agree with the sentiment that in a sense she was partially at fault herself.
The curfew was known, the military operations were known and the fact that the area was incredibly dangerous was also known.
The fact that death, any death is a tragedy doesn't invalidate that point of view.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;39948832]To be honest I do have to agree with the sentiment that in a sense she was partially at fault herself.
The curfew was known, the military operations were known and the fact that the area was incredibly dangerous was also known.
The fact that death, any death is a tragedy doesn't invalidate that point of view.[/QUOTE]
I think the article raises some incredibly valid points though. The writer even talks about that argument, "Why was she in a warzone?". These weren't soldiers hunting down armed insurgents though. These were soldiers bulldozing homes. Yes she stood in front of an army bulldozer, but she didn't throw herself under it to "make Israel look bad" like some fuckheads seem to think. They murdered her and made another hundred Palestinian lives that much more miserable.
I also agree with the writer and despise how the media loves to work through a person's history to decide the answer to that one single question: "Is this person good or are they bad?"
They ask this question like the world is black and white.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;39948832]To be honest I do have to agree with the sentiment that in a sense she was partially at fault herself.
The curfew was known, the military operations were known and the fact that the area was incredibly dangerous was also known.
The fact that death, any death is a tragedy doesn't invalidate that point of view.[/QUOTE]
She was protesting a bulldozer attempting to destroy a Palestinian civilian doctor's home - probably because one his relatives was a terrorist, as [URL="http://www.stanford.edu/group/scai/images/darcy.pdf"]Israel demolishes all of your relatives homes if one of your distant relatives decide to snap[/URL]. The whole point of a protest is to stay as the bulldozer comes. You don't jump out at the last second because that defeats the purpose (see Tienanmen Square). Only Israel is fully responsible for her murder.
[QUOTE=MuTAnT;39950406]I also agree with the writer and despise how the media loves to work through a person's history to decide the answer to that one single question: "Is this person good or are they bad?"
They ask this question like the world is black and white.[/QUOTE]
That's because for them, the world [I]needs[/I] to be black and white; they need to fit every story to a narrative. This requires a clear bad guy for the masses to hate, and a clear good guy for them to hate.
no no he's right, it's totally her fault that the bulldozer didn't stop and ran her over
her death was completely unjustified, yet I do find it unfair how if the reverse had occurred on American soil there would have probably been less controversy over it
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