Death in Palestine No Accident

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   The Lantern  Friday, April 4, 2003
Death in Palestine no accident

On March 16, a 23-year-old woman from the United States was killed in
the Middle East. But wait - you might ask - wasn't that before the
war on Iraq was officially launched?

This is true. Rachel Corrie was not in the U.S. Armed Forces. And she
did not die in Iraq, but in occupied Palestine.

A student at Evergreen State College in Washington, Corrie had gone
to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a
group that uses nonviolent methods to oppose the Israeli occupation.

It was no bombing attack that took Corrie's life. Rather, she was
crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer. These bulldozers are,
along with artillery tanks and gunship helicopters, key weapons in
the U.S.-supplied arsenal of the Israeli military - an arsenal that
is employed daily to intimidate, dispossess and murder the
Palestinian people.

Corrie was among several activists who were defending Palestinian
homes from demolition in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip. Following
ISM procedures, she placed herself in the path of the bulldozer,
waving her arms in clear view of the driver. But the bulldozer did
not desist. It rolled over her once and then backed up over her for
good measure. Eyewitness accounts make it clear that her death could
have been no accident.

The destruction of Palestinian homes is a staple in the Israeli
occupation. Often without warning and under the flimsiest of
pretexts, the Israeli military destroys Palestinian homes almost
daily, even if it means killing civilians in the process.

The home demolitions are a central tactic in Israeli military
actions. In last year's deadly incursion by Israel into the Jenin
refugee camp, for example, bulldozers followed closely behind the
armored personnel carriers, leaving a devastating toll in lives and
possessions.

Corrie's murder was, in one sense, nothing unusual; it typifies the
violence and repression Palestinians face every day. The only thing
extraordinary that she was an American. As an ISM spokesperson said
afterward, "We thought we had an understanding (with Israeli troops).
We didn't think they would kill us." But Palestinians enjoy no such
"understanding" under Israeli occupation.

It would be a mistake to consider Rachel Corrie more important than
any of the thousands of victims of the occupation - which, in
February alone, claimed 82 Palestinian lives. To cite just one
example, about two weeks before Corrie's death, an Israeli bulldozer
in the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian woman, Nuha Sweidan, who was
nine months pregnant.

But we would be wise to allow Corrie's murder to teach us the true
nature of the Zionist regime. Is this what it means to be "the only
democracy in the Middle East," as its supporters so often proclaim?

Rachel's murder can also be a starting point to understanding the
role of the U.S. government, which supports Israel to the tune of
some $6 billion a year. This massive aid, as one writer put it, is
"the lifeblood of the occupation." Just who is being "aided" anyway?

To place U.S. support of Israel in its regional context, we should
realize that the U.S. war on Iraq is part of the same dubious
package. People throughout the Middle East sense - correctly - that
even if they don't live in Palestine or Iraq, they could very well be
next.

Rachel Corrie's life also reveals another crucial truth about the
Israeli occupation: Military repression has not broken the people's
will. To the contrary, it only fuels their resistance. And this may
hold just as true of the bombings in Baghdad as it does of the
demolitions in Rafah.

Paul Coltrin is a future graduate student in Spanish, and is studying
through Continuing Education. He can be reached at paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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