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News :: Israel / Palestine |
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US Peace Activist Killed By Israeli Bulldozer In Gaza Strip |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ibrahim Barzak, AP - repost Chicago IMC
(No verified email address) |
16 Mar 2003
Modified: 17 Mar 2003 |
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This just in from AP: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An American woman in Gaza to protest against Israeli operations was killed Sunday when she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer, witnesses and hospital officials said. |
American Woman Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Army
by Ibrahim Barzak
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An American woman in Gaza to protest against Israeli operations was killed Sunday when she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Witnesses said Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, was trying to stop the bulldozer from tearing down a building in the Rafah refugee camp, witnesses said, when she was run over. She was taken to Najar hospital in Rafah, where she died, said Dr. Ali Moussa, a hospital administrator.
Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said the protesters were in the house of Dr. Samir Masri. "Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," he said. "She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop', and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her," he said.
The Israeli military and the U.S. State Department had no immediate comment. Groups of international protesters have gathered in several locations in the West Bank and Gaza during two years of Palestinian violence, setting themselves up as "human shields" to try to stop Israeli operations there.
Corrie was the first member of the groups, called "International Solidarity Movement," to be killed in the conflict. Several have been arrested in previous clashes with Israeli forces, and Israeli authorities have deported some members.
Schnabel said there were eight protesters at the site, four from the United States and four from Great Britain. "We stay with families whose house is to be demolished," he told the Associated Press by telephone from Rafah after the incident. Witnesses said she was wearing a brightly-colored jacket when she was run over.
Schnabel said Corrie was a student at Evergreen College and was to graduate this year.
The International Solidarity Movement is backed by Palestinian groups. Mansour Abed Allah, 29, a Palestinian human rights worker in Rafah, witnessed the incident. He said the killing should be a message to the U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites), who is "providing Israel with tanks and bulldozers, and now they killed one of his own people."
Israel sends tanks and bulldozers into the area almost every day, destroying buildings near the Gaza-Egypt border. The Israelis say Palestinian gunmen use the buildings as cover, and arms-smuggling tunnels dug under the border terminate in the buildings.
According to interim peace accords, Israel controls the border area. There are almost daily clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers in the area.
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Comments
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EMAIL ACTION! American Peace Activist Killed In Israel |
by richard myers
rtmyers (nospam) h2net.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
16 Mar 2003
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---------- URGENT ACTION NEEDED!! -----------------
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URGENT ACTION NEEDED!!
The story is here:
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/273457.html
American woman peace activist killed by IDF bulldozer in Gaza
By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent, and Agencies
An American woman peace protester was killed Sunday by an IDF bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Another activist was wounded in the incident.
Rachel Corey, 23, from Olympia, Washington, was killed when she ran in front of the bulldozer to try to prevent it from destroying a house, doctors in Gaza said.
"Corey was killed in the al-Salam neighbourhood when an Israeli bulldozer covered her with sand as she stood in front of a bulldozer," said Dr Ali Musa, a doctor from the al-Najar hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. He said she died from skull and chest fractures.
The IDF said it was checking the report. The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment.
Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said the protesters were in the house of Dr. Samir Masri.
"Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," he said. "She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."
Since the start of the Intifada, groups of international protesters have gathered in several locations in territories, setting themselves up as "human shields" to try to stop IDF operations.
Corey was the first member of the groups, called "International Solidarity Movement," to be killed in the conflict. Schnabel said Corey was a student at Evergreen College and was to graduate this year.
He said there were eight protesters at the site, four from the United States and four from Great Britain. "We stay with families whose house is to be demolished," he told the Associated Press by telephone from Rafah after the incident.
Indymedia links:
Israel
http://indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/52394.html
Seattle
http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=23482&group=webcast
Reuters has a picture:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2387265
Associated Press has picked up the story, so many news outlets have the info available, if they choose to use it.
AP link: http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PROTESTER_KILLED?SITE=CODEN&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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------- PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS!! ---------------
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(1) Send this message to all of your lists, friends, family, associates.
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(2) Contact the following, ask them to cover this story if they haven't, and tell them how you feel about this tragedy.
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CNN feedback:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
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Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/
page to the bottom
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ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/service/help/abccontact.html
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CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/home/main100.shtml
page down, click on "Feedback"
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MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.com/news/435157.asp?0bb=-m1
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(3) Now please contact your local news outlets.
(4) As far as specific actions beyond contacting the media, I think we should take our lead from the folks that Rachel worked with. Stay tuned.
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Peace Activist Killed By Soldier |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -4
16 Mar 2003
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Woundn't a bullet have been less expensive? Our army is much more efficient. How fast is a Bull Dozer? Do you think this death, although tragic, could have been avoided if the polically whacked out retard would have gotten out of the way? Just some safety tips to all my nutbag readers on Indymedia.
Jack |
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More On This Story |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Mar 2003
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The link below has more information and some rather disturbing pcitures of this tragedy. Some of these pictures were posted numerous times on the site earlier by DAN, who is subject to severe editing/hiding of his posts due to his abusive practices.
Due to the newsworthy nature of these disturbing events, we are providing a independent link to this page which contains a fuller explanation of the photos than DAN's cynical and exploitative misuse of the most graphic ones for his own sick neo-Nazi purposes.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml
We have also bumped the story up to the top of the Elsewhere Neswire, where it properly belongs, in contrast with DAN's repeated abuse of the Local Newswire by his reposting of several propagandized versions of this event there. |
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ISRAEL IS RACIST, EVIL And VILE |
by JA
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -1
17 Mar 2003
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to declare about the, then, apartheid state of South Africa: "Apartheid is immoral, apartheid is evil, apartheid is wrong." The very same thing is true about the Zionist apartheid state of Israel. Nelson Mandela, upon his release from prison proclaimed in his American cities speaking tour before stadium audiences in the tens of thousands (60,000+ in the S.F. Bay Area), that: "The Palestinian cause in my cause!"
Israel is just as evil and immoral as apartheid ("Jim Crow") America was; ISRAEL is just as EVIL and IMMORAL as apartheid South Africa was; Israel is just as evil and immoral as Nazi Germany was up until 1942 (long after the Nazi persecution began, ironically, of the European JEWS, but before the death camps started in the last few years of the war, 1939-1945). Only world public opinion keeps Israeli Jews from commencing "THE FINAL SOLUTION" of "THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM." The majority of the Israeli public already supports the complete ethnic cleansing--total population transfer--of Palestinians from Palestine.
The Israeli flag belongs in the pantheon of evil flags--right along side to the Confederate flag, the old apartheid South African flag, and the NAZI flag, as well as any other such flags. (I'm sure that Native Americans would put the American flag right up alongside there too.)
For those so-called "liberal/progressive" Zionists who recoil at my bluntness, it is time for you to WAKE UP and realize the fact that Israel IS a RACIST, EVIL, WICKED and IMMORAL state whose RACIST ideology needs to be abolished right along with other racist ideologies.
The courageous Bay Area Jewish-American veteran photojournalist, pro-Palestinian human rights activist, and anti-Zionist public speaker, Jeffrey Blankfort confronted some Zionist Jews at the Saturday anti-war protest rally in Jefferson Park in San Francisco, and told them that the Israeli flag that they had wrapped around themselves is just as "RACIST" as the Nazi flag was in Germany.
I am sickened to hear of Rachel's death, and the many more innocent Palestinians who are killed by Israel every day, and my heart goes out to Rachel Corrie's family, as well as to all those Palestinian families whose loved ones are killed by the state of Israel too. Rachel was a courageous person, because she didn't have to be there, bearing witness, trying to protect innocents, and doing Peace.
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Starhawk's Account Of Rachel's Death |
by via GPUSA email
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Mar 2003
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Here's Starhawk's account of the killing of Rachel Corrie in Occupied Palestine. Starhawk
Nablus, Palestine
March 16, 2003
Today a young woman was killed in Gaza. Young women, but more often young men, get killed in Gaza and the West Bank every day, and the world pays no attention. What was different today is that Rachel Corrie was an American, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the group that I'm here with in occupied Palestine. And her death is a particularly horrifying example of the cold-blooded dehumanization that characterizes this occupation.
Rachel was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home. According to the other activists who were with her, she was in dialogue with the operator of the bulldozer. She was working in the spirit of nonviolence that is a guiding principle of the ISM, which provides support for Palestinian civilians and for nonviolent efforts to bring about justice for Palestine. Rachel climbed up on the bulldozer to talk to the soldier in the cockpit. She climbed down. She sat in front of the bulldozer. The soldier in control of the huge machine drove it deliberately over her. He then backed up, and ran over her again. Rachel was twenty-three years old.
I am trying to fathom the mind that could pull the levers and gun the motor to crush the life out of her young body. That choice, that deliberate act of murder that ended her sweet life, seems incomprehensible. But here in occupied Palestine, that murder is a logical outgrowth of the system of total dehumanization that controls every aspect of life, that cannot see the human being in the Palestinian, that claims to be fighting terror by institutionalizing it. Please register your outrage -- at Rachel's murder, at the home demolitions that she was trying to stop, at the illegal occupation that can only be defended by brutalizing a whole people.
Call the Israeli Ministry of Defense
972-3-69-55476 (011-972-3-69-55476 from the US)
and 972-3-69-75220 (011-972-3-69-75-220 from the US)
Fax the Israeli Foreign Office
972-2-53-03506 (011-972-2-53-03506 from the US)
General Director: Phone 972-2-530-7704 (011-972-2-530-7704 from the US)
Call, or demonstrate, or shut down your local Israeli Embassy or your local Consulate office.
If you are from the US, call or write your Senators and Congressional Representative.
--Starhawk www.starhawk.org
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http://www.greenparty.org |
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Peace Activist |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 4
18 Mar 2003
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I have to say, what commitment to a cause.
If we had more Peace Activists like this, we would have less Peace activists like this.
Jack |
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