Evergreen State — a total "anti-Israel propaganda" immersion experience

Fresnozionism.org..
09 September '12..

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about Rachel Corrie (here and here). I was particularly interested in what prompted her to go to Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement [ISM], a group which sends idealistic young Westerners to serve as human shields for Hamas or PLO guerrillas in the front lines of the low-intensity Arab war against the Jewish state.

A few of these ‘internationals’ have been seriously hurt, or, like Corrie, killed, sacrifices on the altar of anti-Israel propaganda.

How does it happen that young people are prepared to risk everything for a cause which, by any logic, is not theirs; and which, as causes go, is not especially pressing (the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza or Judea/Samaria are better off in every way than Palestinians in Lebanon, Copts in Egypt, Sunnis in Syria, etc.)?

The answer is that there are well-tuned systems set up on many of our campuses which recruit, process and send students off in service of the Palestinian Cause. These machines have a permanent nucleus of a few dedicated faculty members, which is orbited closely by student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Association, Jewish Voice for Peace, and more.

There are also peripheral groups that support the projects of the central players, usually because of a perception of shared ‘colonial oppression’ — this sometimes includes LGBT groups, immigrants’ rights organizations, etc.

Students drawn into these psycho-political cyclotrons are insulated from all other voices, and what begins as a concern for human rights is amplified by contact with more and more extreme expressions of anti-Israel ideology until they fly off, completely one-dimensional, often white-hot with hatred for the Jewish ‘colonialists’, prepared to cooperate if need be with murderous terrorists because of their perception of the overwhelming justice and need of their Cause.

The truth about the International Solidarity Movement

The International Solidarity Movement likes to present itself as a champion of non-violence and peaceful resistance, but in fact it takes pride in serving as a human shield for terrorists. It's a shame that even Israel's media have fallen for this ruse – just like Rachel Corrie did.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
31 August '12..



The family of Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army bulldozer during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gaza in 2003, filed a civil suit against the State of Israel for their daughter's death. This week, the Haifa District Court ruled that the state was not to blame.

“Corrie could have moved away from the danger easily, but she chose to endanger herself ... The purpose of the bulldozer’s work was saving lives," wrote Judge Oded Gershon. "The incident occurred at the height of an armed conflict between Israel and terrorist groups. The bulldozers were being used to prevent explosives from being planted on the road; they did not damage Palestinian homes in the area.”

Unlike the collaborators whose knee-jerk response was to describe Corrie as a peace activist and mention only the innocent-sounding name of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) without elaborating, here are some facts of the case, most of which can be found on the NGO Monitor’s excellent website.

The ISM portrays itself as advocating non-violence, human rights, respect for international law and United Nations resolutions, and as striving for a “just peace.” But study of its documents and the statements made by its high-ranking officials shows that the organization’s ideology is in fact anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, and has adopted the Palestinians’ most radical demands. Not only does the ISM negate the policies of Israeli governments (which amounts to “Israeli apartheid in Palestine” as it calls it), but also Israel’s very existence as the Jewish homeland. Statements by ISM officials emphasize implementing the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to Israel, rejection of the Oslo Accords, and never even mention the two-state solution. However, the ISM keeps its positions vague so that it can appeal to the largest common denominator of human rights and peace activists, including Jews – most of whom, surprisingly enough, do not deny Israel’s right to exist, but merely oppose its policies.

In its internal documents, the ISM seemingly justified the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel, even at the height of the suicide terrorist attacks. Its activists gave refuge to a jihadi operative who had been involved in suicide bombings, shooting attacks and planting explosives.

They interfered with the Israel Defense Forces’ preventative operations (such as the incident in which Corrie was killed); at one point obstructing the bombing of an explosives laboratory that produced bombs used in suicide attacks.

The ISM’s activities include participation in Palestinian demonstrations and acts of protest; stationing activists as human shields to protect wanted terrorists; deploying its activists near IDF checkpoints and throughout Judea and Samaria; providing financial, logistical and moral assistance to Palestinians, including terrorists and their families; interfering with the demolition or sealing of the homes of terrorists who have carried out suicide attacks that have claimed many victims; and holding marches along the security fence and from Jenin to Jerusalem.

Rachel Corrie and Evergreen State - A Tragic Education

Shrine to St. Rachel Corrie at an Olympia art studio

Fresnozionism.org..
30 August '12..



I recently wrote about the tragedy of Rachel Corrie (it’s always tragic when a young person dies, more so when she dies for a mistaken cause, and even more when she is cynically brainwashed by a group like ISM which is directly connected to terrorist groups).

Rachel was a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, when she proposed an independent study project for her senior year to establish a sister-city relationship between Olympia and Rafah, a town that lies directly on the border between the Gaza strip and Egypt, a nexus of conflict between the IDF and terrorists smuggling weapons into Gaza.

Evergreen is a paradigm of the progressive cause-based model of education, where you can get what author Howard Jacobson (The Finkler Question) called a “modular degree.” For example, the home page for the “Gender and Sexuality: History, Culture and Politics” program includes this bemusing note:

Enrollment is open to any Evergreen student with sophomore through senior standing. It is likely that many students will have a sexual or gender identity, but this is not a prerequisite for enrollment. If you have such an identity, switching it out at any time is also perfectly fine.

Hmmm… everyone that I know has a “sexual of gender identity,” although they don’t “switch it out” too often (not that there would be anything wrong with that).

Among the many courses in gender and ethnic studies, activism, etc., I did not find anything like a course in Western Civilization. The closest to one in American History was “The Formation of the North American State,” described thus:

This program will examine the movement of the North American colonies in their separation from Britain to the emergence of the United States through the election of 1800. It will investigate the conflict; the social, racial and class divisions; and the distinctly different visions of the proper social, economic and political system that should predominate in the new nation. Much conflict surrounded the separation of the settler colonies from Britain, including a transatlantic revolutionary movement, development of slave-based plantations and the birth of capitalism. Capitalism was not a foregone conclusion. …

I just bet it wasn’t.

Rachel didn’t get her sister-city project off the ground, although it is presently being pursued in her name. What she did do on arrival was join up with several ISM activists (Olympia and Evergreen have provided a disproportionate number of members to the ISM) for a training session, then traveled to Gaza, where she did her (unfortunately effective) best to throw herself against the machine of Occupation.

Dear Craig and Cindy Corrie (Parents of Rachel)

Portrait of their daughter from the Original Terrorist

Fresnozionism.org..
28 August '12..









An Israeli court has ruled (an English summary of the decision is here) that the death of Rachel Corrie in 2003 was accidental. Some of the critical points made by the judge are the following:

 - The incident happened in a place that was a “site of daily warfare,” which civilians were forbidden to enter.
 - While supposedly a nonviolent organization, “[The ISM] exploits the dialogue regarding human rights and morality to blur the severity of its actions, which are, in fact, expressed through violence.”
 - The bulldozer was “leveling the ground and clearing it of brush in order to expose hiding places used by terrorists, who would sneak out from these areas and place explosive devices with the intent of harming IDF soldiers,” and not destroying Palestinian homes.
 - The IDF tried to distance the activists from the bulldozer, warning them, exploding stun grenades and firing warning shots, but they did not comply.
 - Corrie was not visible to the driver (see here and here).

Here is the judge’s description of the actual event that caused her death:

When the decedent saw the pile of dirt moving towards her, she did not move, as any reasonable person would have. She began to climb the pile of dirt. Therefore, both because the pile of dirt continued to move as a result of the pushing of the bulldozer, and because the dirt was loose, the decedent was trapped in the pile of dirt and fell.

At this stage, the decedent’s legs were buried in the pile of dirt, and when her colleagues saw from where they stood that the decedent was trapped in the pile of dirt, they ran towards the bulldozer and gestured towards its operator and yelled at him to stop. By the time the bulldozer’s operator and his commander noticed the decedent’s colleagues and stopped the bulldozer, a significant portion of the decedent’s body was already covered in dirt.

The decedent’s entire body was not covered in dirt. In fact, when the bulldozer backed up, the decedent’s body was seen to free itself from the pile of dirt and the decedent was still alive.

The decedent was evacuated to the hospital [in Gaza] and after 20 minutes, her death was declared.

Dear Craig and Cindy Corrie,

As a parent, I can’t imagine an experience that could compare with the loss of a child. I know that if it happened to me I would be desolated. I thought about the possibility constantly during the period of the Second Intifada, when my son volunteered to serve in a special counter-terror unit and traveled around Israel on a daily basis to try to intercept terrorists — many of them sent by the same Hamas organization that your daughter defended — on their way to kill Israelis.

Some of these succeeded despite the efforts of my son and his comrades, and hundreds of Israelis, many of them children with parents like you and me, were burned to death, penetrated by nails and ball bearings, or had their lungs destroyed by blast.

The secular beatification of Rachel Corrie ...

Sums up everything that is wrong with modern solidarity with Palestine ..

Brendan O'Neill..
The Telegraph..
28 August '12..

A court in Israel has ruled that the death of Rachel Corrie, a Palestinian solidarity activist who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in 2003, was accidental rather than being caused by the negligence of the Israeli army. The ruling will not please Corrie’s supporters. Over the past decade they have elevated her to saintly status, turning her into a paragon of virtue who wanted merely to “protect Palestinians” from Israel’s raging war machine. They have long depicted her death as a simple case of “murder” by the marauding forces of the Israeli state, which apparently is not only happy to kill uppity Palestinians but also virtuous white Americans who want only to “help Palestinians”. This secular beatification of Corrie, who has effectively been turned into St Rachel of the Put-Upon Palestinians, captures everything that is wrong with modern-day solidarity with Palestine.

Corrie’s cheerleaders – which includes actor Alan Rickman, who turned her writings into a hit play – seem unaware of how much their sanctification of Corrie echoes the old crusading Christian desire to save foreigners from wickedness. Corrie is treated as a uniquely good Westerner whose sole motivation was to “save” Palestinians, especially Palestinian children, from what Corrie herself described as Israel’s attempt to “erase” them. So one writer praises Corrie’s purity of soul, the fact that she eschewed “having a good time experimenting with drugs, booze and sex”, and even turned her back on her “Ivy League University”, in the name of travelling thousands of miles and “giving her life to save Palestinian homes and families”. Here, Corrie is turned into a kind of Christ-like figure, rejecting the shallow joys of Western privilege in favour of venturing into the desert to “give her life” for others.

Rachel Corrie - Peace Activist? Not At All.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
28 August '12..

The verdict handed down today by a Haifa court in the lawsuit filed by the parents of Rachel Corrie will be denounced by Israel-bashers everywhere, and taken as confirmation of their dim view of the country’s justice system. For them, Corrie, a 23-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement who was killed in 2003, is a martyr to the cause of peace and freedom for the Palestinians. They continue to believe Corrie was deliberately run over by an Israeli bulldozer knocking down the homes of innocent Arabs. But, as the court rightly pointed out, the truth is that though her death was regrettable, it was an accident caused by her own rash behavior.

The structures that she was attempting to protect by lying down in front of a bulldozer were fronts for tunnels along the border between Egypt and Gaza through which munitions and explosives intended to kill innocent Israelis were being smuggled. Even more to the point, the idea that Corrie was in Gaza to promote peace is a myth. The purpose of the International Solidarity Movement’s activities in Gaza was to shield Hamas and Fatah terrorists and to prevent the Israel Defense Forces from carrying out measures intended to stop the flow of arms and terrorist activity. If Corrie’s parents, who have pursued efforts to hold the state of Israel responsible for her death, should sue anyone it is the group that led the foolish American to Gaza and deliberately placed her in harm’s way.

The Death of Rachel Corrie and the Culpability of the International Solidarity Movement

NGO Monitor..
27 August '12..

***Haifa court rules against Rachel Corrie family in suit***

Judge Gershon invokes "combatant activities" exception, says US activist who was killed by IDF bulldozer in Gaza could have avoided dangerous situation;  Click here

JERUSALEM - In anticipation of the expected verdict on Tuesday, August 28 in the civil court case brought by the parents of Rachel Corrie, Jerusalem based NGO Monitor released the following statement:

“Rachel Corrie’s death was a tragedy, but it could have been prevented. Leaders of the ISM movement have repeatedly made statements in support of violence,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor.

The International Solidarity Movement describes itself as “a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” The ISM has a long record of encouraging activists to take “direct action,” even if that means putting them in harm’s way, often in direct confrontations with the Israel Defense Forces. Rachel Corrie’s actions as an ISM activist were very much part of this strategy of dangerous confrontation.

In 2002, ISM co-founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf stated, “The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent...Yes, people will get killed and injured,” but these deaths are “no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah.”

(Video) "The Forgotten Rachels" who all died as a result of Palestinian terrorism.

LOTL..
27 August '12..

Rachel Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, was accidentally killed in 2003 while attempting to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes concealing tunnels in the Gaza Strip. But there was in addition to Rachel Corrie, the deaths of many other Rachels which came about not by accident but by deliberate and murderous terror attacks. Tomorrow, Tuesday October 28th, the Haifa District Court will be handing down a verdict in the Corrie's civil lawsuit. Due to this, Rachel Corrie's name if not her deeds will be remembered but what of the many others?

This video was created 2 years ago at the time of the "Flotillas" as a tribute to "The Forgotten Rachels" who all died as a result of Palestinian terrorism.


Uploaded by JewishVLibrary on Jun 8, 2010

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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Rachel Corrie Trial is Concluding. The Key Questions Need Repeating

LOTL..
27 August '12..

Oral testimony in the Rachel Corrie civil lawsuit began on March 10, 2010. Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, was killed in 2003 while attempting to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes concealing tunnels in the Gaza Strip. The Haifa District Court will be handing down a verdict in the civil lawsuit tomorrow, Tuesday October 28th. As two years have already passed from the beginning of this trial it is important to once again revisit the factual as well as contextual background to what was known to have taken place, and Lenny Ben-David's post at the beginning of the trial still remains the best source to date.

Rachel Corrie Trial Restarts.
Key Questions Need Repeating

By Lenny Ben-David

1. Where did the Rachel Corrie bulldozer incident take place?

Few people recall that the IDF's ground-clearing operation was carried out only 50 meters from the Egyptian border -- near the infamous Philadelphi road. [See map and diagram. All graphic material is from IDF sources.] Up until Corrie's death, the IDF had uncovered more than 40 tunnels from Egypt used to smuggle weapons and terrorists into Gaza. In recent years, after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the number of tunnels approached 1,000.

Why was the ISM trying to block the bulldozers seven years ago? Presumably, they were attempting to protect Hamas' tunnels.

(Read full post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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Group that Recruits Pro-Palestinian ‘Martyrs’ Gets Okay from Bard College

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
19 January '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/387124

Compiling a list of the most egregious uses of the shootings in Arizona this month to stifle legitimate debate would be a herculean task. But surely among the worst is a statement issued by Bard College president Leon Botstein, who invoked the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in an attempt to shut up those who are asking questions about his institution’s decision to give the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) the status of an authorized student club with full access to campus facilities.

ISM is, of course, more than just another left-wing group that agitates against Israel. It is an avowedly anti-Zionist organization that has as its mission the task of sending activists into the Arab-Israeli conflict as non-combatant auxiliaries for Palestinian terror groups and their political fronts. The ISM gained fame a few years ago as the group that sent Rachel Corrie, an American college student from Washington State, into Gaza to act as a human shield for the Hamas terrorist organization. Corrie became an anti-Zionist martyr when an Israeli bulldozer that was demolishing a home that housed a Hamas arms-smuggling tunnel crushed her while she was defending it with her body.

Bard, a liberal arts school in New York’s Hudson Valley, is well known for its summer music festival, but it has now also apparently earned the distinction of being the only American college campus with an active ISM chapter. Given the extremism of this organization and its penchant for placing its volunteers in harm’s way, there are, understandably, some who question the decision to treat it as the moral equivalent of a chess club. A good argument can be made that it is not the college’s job to decide which political groups students can or cannot join. But it is slightly disingenuous to claim, as Botstein does, that the issue here is whether students should be allow to debate or express their opinions about the Middle East. Bard students certainly have the right to denounce the existence of a Jewish state, oppose its right to self-defense, and defend those who advocate and carry out terrorism in order to further that cause. But it is not unreasonable to assert that groups that exist in order to literally facilitate such actions might be considered as falling outside the bounds of even the most freewheeling campus debates.

Botstein urges critics of the ISM to keep the Arizona shooting in mind and thus lower their voices. But rather than acting as if the group’s critics are conducting some kind of a witch hunt, he would do better to worry about the consequences of allowing a group that is prepared to sacrifice the lives of students to further the cause of anti-Zionism. And instead of worrying that Bard’s Israel-haters will get their feelings hurt by those who question the propriety of their presence on campus, he might also spare a thought for the question of whether facilitating ISM’s rabid bias against Israel and its supporters might be creating a hostile environment for Jewish students there, as turned out to be the case when anti-Israel activism ran amok at the University of California’s Irvine campus a few years ago.

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America's only on-campus ISM Chapter

Carl
Israel Matzav
02 January '11

(Extracurricular activities? Y.)

New York State's Bard College has a campus chapter of the terrorist-supporting International Solidarity Movement with the support and approval of the college President, Leon Botstein.

Botstein has decided to allow the International Solidarity Movement(ISM), a group that openly admits it works with State Department designated terrorist groups such as Hamas, the PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to set up shop on his campus using campus facilities and student activity money to train ISM activists to go to the West Bank and interfere with anti-terror operations of the Israeli army, as well as to act as human shields for Palestinian terror groups.

The ISM at Bard has actually invited Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM and one of the main organizers of the Gaza Flotilla boats that continually try to run the Israeli navy's control of the sea lanes to Gaza to import weapons for Hamas. Arraf was invited to campus to do recruiting for ISM terrorism enablers once before and I alerted Botstein then, too, who did nothing about it. The Bard ISM campus group even recently raised money for the Gaza flotillas that included IHH, an al Qaeda-affiliated "charity" that was involved in the millennium bomb plot to blow up the LA airport in 2000. It is common knowledge the ISM organizes these flotillas in order to try to enable the Iranians to run weapons to the Hamas to attack Israeli civilians on Israel's southern border with rockets and mortars.

(Read full "America's only on-campus ISM Chapter")

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ISM claims another victim

Fresnozionism.org
28 July '10

This is really a tragic story.

A 21-year-old woman, an art student no less, goes to Israel as an exchange student. While she is there, she falls in with the pro-Palestinian activists of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She attends demonstrations against the security fence at Bil’in and Nil’in, as well as protests in Nabi Saleh and the East Jerusalem Sheik Jarrah neighborhood.

On May 31, the day of the flotilla incident, she takes part an a protest against Israel’s ‘crimes’ near the Qalandiyah crossing, south of Ramallah. The protest is violent, and she is struck in the face with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli police. Her eye cannot be saved.

The woman, Emily Henochowicz of Potomac MD, is Jewish. According to the NY Times, “Her father was born in Israel to Holocaust survivors whom he described as “ardent Zionists.” The AP reported that the last status update on her Facebook page was “Gaza on my mind.”

Here is a video (h/t: Daled Amos) made by Ms. Henochowicz that is… indescribable. But I think it provides a window into the mindset that gives rise to tragedies like hers.


There is a controversy about who will pay for the medical care she received at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and the followup care in the US, and another about whether she was hit directly by the canister or whether it ricocheted off of a wall, which apparently bears on the first one. I don’t care who pays. She has an activist lawyer, Michael Sfard, who will help her while doing his best to screw Israel. I feel sorry for the young woman.

Her story is much like that of Furkan Dorgan, Tristan Anderson, Rachel Corrie and others. A politically naive young ‘international’ is recruited to take part in purportedly ‘non-violent’ activities along with Israeli extremists and Palestinians.

(Read full post)

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AP Goes Soft on Hardcore ISM

The Associated Press whitewashes the real agenda of a radical anti-Israel group, portraying them as a bunch of youthful and peaceful idealists.


Honest Reporting
Media Critique
22 July '10

Even after the debacle of the Gaza flotilla, the media continues to refer to terrorist sympathizers and anti-Israel provocateurs as "humanitarian organizations." The media often presents these organizations as idealistic and charitable, concerned solely with providing humanitarian assistance to innocent Palestinians. Such is the Associated Press's profile of the International Solidarity Movement, an organization that was also intimately involved with the Gaza flotilla.

According to the AP, "The ISM was launched in 2001 for sympathetic foreigners to help Palestinians throw off Israeli rule" and is portrayed as an idealistic mix of Jews and Arabs, noting that "The chance to participate in a compelling conflict is popular with college-age students on summer breaks."

The ISM participants are described as mainly "peaceful, but provocative buffers between Palestinians and Israeli forces, mostly at protests." Aside from concerns that the ISM volunteers are sometimes unwittingly placing themselves in harm's way, the AP fails to dig any deeper. Had the AP's journalist bothered to look behind the image of a peaceful organization of youthful idealists, a far more sinister agenda would have been revealed.

Had the AP been more concerned with balance and providing relevant context and information, it would have mentioned the following about the ISM:

ISM founders Adam Shapiro and his wife, Huwaida Arraf are anything but peace activists. They wrote in 2002 in a Palestine Chronicle manifesto on the use of both violence and non-violence against Israel:

While we do not advocate adopting the methods of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., we do believe that learning from their experience... can be quite valuable and of great utility. The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics -- both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement... in India militants attacked British outposts and interests while Gandhi conducted his campaign. ...

[W]e accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms, as they are an occupied people upon whom force and violence is being used. The Geneva Conventions accept that armed resistance is legitimate for an occupied people, and there is no doubt that this right cannot be denied.

In another 2002 article, Shapiro and Arraf wrote: "The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent...Yes, people will get killed and injured," but these deaths are "no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah."

(Read full critique)

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Rachel Corrie Wasn’t the Only ISM Member Playing Chicken with a Bulldozer That Day

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
25 March '10

Posted before Shabbat

At least two of her colleagues had placed themselves under the tractor's maw on that day in 2003. Russian roulette was apparently the group's strategy.

G-d, sometimes we Israelis are idiots. Leave aside the colossal fashla (you call it a snafu) of the ill-timed announcement of the expansion of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that sent the Obama administration into a hissy fit. What we’re doing with the latest “lawfare” case against Israel, the trial brought by Rachel Corrie’s parents, is another beaut.

In March 2003, a young American woman named Rachel Corrie was crushed and killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza. And now her parents are in Israel, suing Israel. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot portrayed her as a saintly martyr and featured a false photo of the incident, taken at a different time and with a different bulldozer. The anchor of Israel Radio’s morning commute show rebuked Israel’s actions, and the Israeli YES cable network presented Rachel, a two-hour paean to Corrie and an indictment of Israel.

We’re nuts.

We overlook the fact that Corrie’s death took place in the midst of the “intifada” terrorist onslaught against Israel and that she was working for a Palestinian-led organization as the first line of defense against Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield to stop terrorist suicide bombers. Just ten days before Corrie’s death, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Haifa, a few miles from the courthouse where the Corrie parents are suing Israel. Seventeen Israelis died in the attack, many of them teenagers.

Today, the parents of the dead are outraged by the attention Rachel Corrie is getting and by the chutzpah of the Corries embracing Israeli courts to rail against the country Rachel Corrie loathed.

(Read full article)
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Martyr

My Name Is Rachel Corrie: Taken from the Writings of Rachel Corrie



Cynthia Ozick
The New Reublic
07 December '06

On Justice Brandeis's celebrated principle that "the remedy [for free speech] is more speech," it is good and salubrious that My Name Is Rachel Corrie can finally be seen on a New York stage. Last year, when the play was turned away by the New York Theater Workshop apparently because of objections from donors offended by its agitprop banalities, there sprang up, amid the foolish cries of "censorship" (as if the Constitution were being subverted), a newborn legend. The longer the play was absent from local scrutiny, the more romantically its faraway halo might glow: a visionary young woman on the barricades, part heroic Joan of Arc, part victimized Anne Frank, mercilessly cut down in the very act of defying brute injustice.

To have the play actually in hand -- the naked script itself -- is a down-to-earth corrective. It goes without saying that any play, and this one especially, is both more and less than its script: more, because of the theater's sensuous surround -- the emotive ingenuities of set, lighting, and sound; an attractive actor's winning impersonation; the magnetic rapidity of gesture, movement, and voice; and an audience whose sympathies are already in place, pacified by the play's radiant repute. But it is precisely on account of all these appeals to communal sensation that My Name Is Rachel Corrie is considerably less than its script. Stripped only to print, the play discloses what the theater's dazzlements are likely to obfuscate or diminish. Fortunately, we are assured by the director and co-editor that every word is Rachel Corrie's own, culled directly from her journals and e-mail messages. Are there incendiary omissions? If so, it hardly matters; what is on the page is revealing enough. This means that we can reasonably trust the script -- perhaps understandably manipulated as to selection and sequence -- to represent Rachel Corrie as she was, unadulterated by theatrical seductions.

Rachel Corrie, then, as she was. She can be seen in two brief films on Wikipedia. She is in Gaza, a member of the International Solidarity Movement. In one film, she is burning a replica of the American flag. Her mouth is wide, yelling. In the other, she stands fixedly, repeating phrases that appear identically in the playscript; it is as if she has scripted herself, and is speaking by rote. Wound around her neck is the familiar Palestinian scarf, declaring solidarity.

(Read full review)
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The Corrie Circus is back in town

Judy Balint
Jerusalem Diaries
11 March '10

As the Rachel Corrie circus comes around yet again--this time in the form of her parents demanding unspecified compensation from Israel's Defense Ministry through legal proceedings in a Haifa court--it's worth taking a look back at the bizarre and tragic circumstances of Corrie's death.

This is a reprint of a 2008 article I published in frontpagemag about the Corrie case:

The news that a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, was captured by an elite anti-terror unit of the Israel Defense Forces while hiding out in the Jenin offices of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) did not make a ripple in the flood of coverage from the Iraqi front in late March 2003.

Just eleven days earlier, on March 16, the ISM did make world headlines when Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old ISM member, was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah and died of her injuries.

Maybe the fact that a "peace organization" was found to be defending terrorists twice in a two-week period will factor into the inquiry called by several Washington state congressional representatives into the circumstances of Rachel Corrie's death.

Related: Statement regarding the civil suit in the matter of Rachel Corrie

With the fifth (7th) anniversary of Corrie's death having just passed us, only one thing remains certain about the events of March 16: Corrie died in Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, under very questionable circumstances.

Related: The Upcoming Rachel Corrie Trial: Go After Her Real Killers

The questions remain: Is Israel responsible for Corrie's death, or do the doctors at the Arab hospital where she was taken still alive after the accident bear any responsibility? What about the ISM that organizes protests in a closed military zone and encourages its members to play cat and mouse among the tanks and bulldozers? Or the Arabs who invite the "internationals" to risk their lives in a war zone? How she died, exactly where she passed her last moments and who should take the blame for Rachel Corrie's death are questions that demand answers.

The inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony raise doubts about the simplistic conclusions drawn ever since the event.

By all accounts, Rachel Corrie was one of a group of protesters attempting to disrupt the work of two IDF bulldozers leveling ground to detonate explosives in an area rife with terrorist activity. The bulldozers moved to a different area to avoid the protesters, and Corrie became separated from the group. Some of the agitators stood with a banner, while Corrie picked up a bullhorn and yelled slogans at the driver encased in the small cabin of the dozer. This went on for several hours on the afternoon of March 16. It's the kind of activity favored by the young pro-Palestinian types who make up the ISM.

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Related : Rachel Corrie's Dreams or ...."The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie"
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The Upcoming Rachel Corrie Trial: Go After Her Real Killers

An open letter to Rachel Corrie's parents from an Israeli parent.


Lenny Ben-David
Pajamasmedia.com
09 March '10

Jerusalem — Craig and Cindy Corrie, I welcome you to Israel where, I understand, you plan to bring a civil suit before an Israeli court on March 10 “to put on public record,” the British Guardian wrote, “the events that led to [your] daughter Rachel’s death in March 2003.”

I thank God for the well-being of my children and grandchildren, and I cannot imagine the pain and anger you feel over the loss of your daughter, Rachel.

My sons have served as combat soldiers, and may have actually fought on the very ground where your daughter died. The area was laced with tunnels to smuggle weapons and explosives for use against Israelis. My children are Israelis who ride in buses and eat in pizzerias, and by the grace of God they have been spared attacks by the suicide bombers your daughter championed.

Some may see the irony in your using the courts and the free press of Israel in your attempt to pursue and denounce the nation your daughter loathed. I see the tragedy in your allying with the International Solidarity Movement — the very people and organization who led and, in a sense, really pushed Rachel to her death.

According to news accounts, Israel will permit four of Corrie’s colleagues from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to enter Israel to give testimony on what occurred that day. Actually, I believe it’s a good decision to permit the four into Israel’s jurisdiction where the ISM members could and should be arrested for reckless endangerment, fraud, manslaughter, aiding terrorists, and a host of other charges. The public may also discover who paid for your lawsuit and the expenses of bringing you and ISM witnesses to Israel.

Mr. and Mrs. Corrie, three pictures relating to your daughter are etched in my memory.

(Read full article)

Related: Rachel Corrie's Dreams or ....."The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie"
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Rachel Corrie's Dreams or .....

"The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie"

ROBERTA P. SEID
Commentary Magazine
June 2008

By Stacey Palevsky
July 26, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO (J WEEKLY)
-- After weeks of community discord, the controversial "Rachel" documentary screened to an audience often inhospitable to divergent viewpoints. Click here

(As was the case with Muhamad Al-Dura the industry of deception continues to produce one fiction after another hoping that truth will drown beneath the tsunami. This week the latest was screened in San Francisco. It seemed appropriate to review once again Roberta Seid's excellent article from last year of what in truth actually occurred. )

The publication of Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie adds yet another item to the growing body of Corrie memorabilia.

The twenty-three-year-old American from Olympia, Washington, died in Gaza in March 2003 when, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she tried to obstruct an IDF bulldozer that, according to the IDF, was destroying rocket launchers in the overgrown brush near a Palestinian home.

An official Israeli investigation concluded that her death was an accident. The driver, in the 10 foot-high bulldozer with its limited visual field, could not see Corrie, who was hidden by a mound of dirt or standing in a trench in the military security zone. The Israeli autopsy report determined that she had been killed by a blow to the head from debris probably dislodged by the bulldozer.

However, the ISM and other activists insisted the driver had seen Corrie, and intentionally killed her. They released two photographs for evidence. The first showed Corrie standing in full view of the bulldozer, shouting at the driver through a bullhorn she was holding. In the second photo, she lay crumpled on the ground in front of the bulldozer. Within hours of the photos’ release, observers noticed from the position of the sun that the two photos had been taken hours apart, and that the bulldozer in the first picture was not the same as the one in the second. Other questions surrounded her death: had she died on the spot, in the ambulance or in the hospital emergency room; did the Gazan doctor do all he could to save her?

Despite these questions, the ISM and other anti-Israel activists seized upon Rachel’s death for public relations purposes. The young American instantly became their poster child, an alleged symbol of youthful idealism, Palestinian victimization, and Israeli brutality. As a Hamas activist said at Rachel’s funeral, “'Her death serves me more than it served her…Her death will bring more attention than the other 2,000 martyrs.'….” Corrie was the first American to be hailed as a Palestinian martyr. It is not surprising that these activists refuse to even entertain the possibility that her death was an accident. If it were, she would no longer be a useful symbol for indicting Israel’s self-defense measures and its very right to exist.

The efforts to elevate Rachel into a martyred idealist and artist began immediately, followed shortly by efforts to portray her as a new Anne Frank. Today there are Rachel Corrie memorial websites, scholarship funds, and events commemorating the anniversary of her death. More well-known is the controversial play based on her diaries, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which had runs in London, Seattle, New York and other U.S. cities. Her parents, who had never shown interest in the Middle East conflict, are now regulars on the international anti-Israel lecture circuit. This spring, they appeared at several southern California anti-Zionism week events, which are mounted annually by campus Muslim Student Associations. Corrie has also become the cause celebre for divest-from-Israel campaigns whose new strategy is to focus on the Caterpillar Corporation, primarily because a Caterpillar bulldozer was involved in her death. The family and other Palestinians brought a suit against Caterpillar in U.S. federal court for its complicity in Israel’s “inhumane actions.” The court dismissed the suit in July 2007 for being a political issue outside the court’s jurisdiction.

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Related: The Upcoming Rachel Corrie Trial: Go After Her Real Killers
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