The Supreme Court is gearing up for the latest round of a 10-year-old lawsuit surrounding the death of Rachel Corrie, a radical activist who was killed by an IDF bulldozer while protesting on behalf of Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Corrie was a 23-year-old student from Olympia, Washington who had travelled to Israel to participate in International Solidarity Movement activities against Israel. On March 16, 2003, she acted as a human shield to protect an IDF bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home on the Philadelphi Road, near the Gaza border with Egypt.
The incident occurred at the height of the Oslo War (al-Aqsa Intifada), at a time when Palestinians routinely shot at IDF troops from homes along the Philadelphi Road. Corrie was killed while protecting one of those homes.
The Corrie family claims that their daughter made eye contact with the driver during the protest, who then proceeded to ignore Rachel and instead drove the machine over her, killing her. To support their claim, the family has produced photographic “evidence” that supposedly details the sequence of events leading to her death, including images of Rachel standing in front of the IDF bulldozer, and then a photograph of the dead body behind bulldozer.
But upon close examination of the photographs, it is clear that the pictures are not a sequence of events,but rather were shot hours apart. The family has repeatedly refused to address questions by this reporter on the matter.
Following the incident, IDF investigators ruled that the death was an accident because the driver didn’t see Corrie, and that in any event, the army bore no responsibility for her death because she had chosen to enter a Closed Military Zone in order to interfere with military operations in a wear Zone.
In August, 2012, the Supreme Court validated that finding and ruled that the military was not to blame for Corrie’s death.
Not Exactly Ghandi-like
Although pro-Palestinian activists view the ISM as a non-violent organization, the group hardly espouses the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ISM offices in B On April 30, 2003, two ISM volunteers blew themselves up at Mike’s Place, a bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront. Three people were killed and more than 50 injured. And group leaders Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro have written that “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…”
Even Mother Jones, a far-left magazine that is generally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, was forced to admit that the ISM “embrac(es) Palestinian militants, even suicide bombers, as freedom fighters.”