This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/28/rachel-corrie-a-memory-that-refuses-to-die
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Rachel Corrie: a memory that refuses to die | Rachel Corrie: a memory that refuses to die |
| (6 months later) | |
| Nine years after Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist, was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, a judge in Haifa absolved the state of Israel of any responsibility for her death, or for failing to hold a full and credible investigation. Perpetuating the myth that her death was a tragic accident, the judge did not deviate from the official line. He found that the driver had not seen the peace activist in her high-visibility jacket. He found a military investigation which drew the ire even of the US ambassador (the investigators initially assigned were 19 years old; they repeatedly failed to take statements from witnesses, follow up discrepancies or even issue maps of the scene) both credible and thorough. Impunity prevailed, once again, over accountability. | Nine years after Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist, was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, a judge in Haifa absolved the state of Israel of any responsibility for her death, or for failing to hold a full and credible investigation. Perpetuating the myth that her death was a tragic accident, the judge did not deviate from the official line. He found that the driver had not seen the peace activist in her high-visibility jacket. He found a military investigation which drew the ire even of the US ambassador (the investigators initially assigned were 19 years old; they repeatedly failed to take statements from witnesses, follow up discrepancies or even issue maps of the scene) both credible and thorough. Impunity prevailed, once again, over accountability. |
| Rachel Corrie died trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition [see footnote]. At the time the Israeli military had demolished 1,700 homes in Rafah, which human rights groups claimed was collective punishment for the Palestinian suicide bombings. It was the height of the second intifada, or uprising. Tuesday's verdict did not merely spruce up the whitewash over Corrie's death. It spread it yet further. It said that, because the bulldozer was part of a "combat operation", no civilians – Palestinian or American – in the area had any rights, because they should not have been there. Corrie was, in the court's eyes, a human shield protecting terrorists. | |
| She was not the only casualty. Three years into the intifada, more than 400 children had been killed by the Israeli army, many in circumstances where there was no combat. As the family of Rachel Corrie are the first to admit, Gazan families who have lost their children have had no opportunity of taking legal action against Israel. Even if they had the means to do so, the law has been amended to stop civil actions like the one the Corries mounted. To redress repeated rulings by the supreme court which narrowed the definition of combat activity, the Knesset passed an amendment to the law on compensation claims which widened it. No residents of an area, such as Gaza, that Israel deems enemy territory will be able to submit such a claim. So the limited form of legal redress available to the Corries as a civil lawsuit has now been ended. | She was not the only casualty. Three years into the intifada, more than 400 children had been killed by the Israeli army, many in circumstances where there was no combat. As the family of Rachel Corrie are the first to admit, Gazan families who have lost their children have had no opportunity of taking legal action against Israel. Even if they had the means to do so, the law has been amended to stop civil actions like the one the Corries mounted. To redress repeated rulings by the supreme court which narrowed the definition of combat activity, the Knesset passed an amendment to the law on compensation claims which widened it. No residents of an area, such as Gaza, that Israel deems enemy territory will be able to submit such a claim. So the limited form of legal redress available to the Corries as a civil lawsuit has now been ended. |
| In the last nine years, Cindy and Craig Corrie have been fighting for something that any parent who has lost their child has a right to – the truth. Revealing the truth about the death of their daughter would have cost the IDF dearly. But covering it up costs Israel more as, with each year of the occupation, it sheds international support. Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery, Caoimhe Butterly – all killed or severely injured while bearing witness to what happens to civilians in Israel's combat zones – leave a stain no court can erase. | In the last nine years, Cindy and Craig Corrie have been fighting for something that any parent who has lost their child has a right to – the truth. Revealing the truth about the death of their daughter would have cost the IDF dearly. But covering it up costs Israel more as, with each year of the occupation, it sheds international support. Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery, Caoimhe Butterly – all killed or severely injured while bearing witness to what happens to civilians in Israel's combat zones – leave a stain no court can erase. |
| • This footnote was added on 25 February 2013. Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza in March 2003 while protesting against the demolition of Palestinian homes. In August 2012 an Israeli court accepted that no homes were under threat of destruction on the day Corrie died: the IDF said its bulldozers were only clearing vegetation and explosives. The home in front of which Corrie was standing when she died was demolished in January 2004. |