Corrie, Rachel (d. 2003)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2003 Jun 9 p. 5

Birth date:

text of obituary:

Tragic end to a young life

WORLD NEIGHBORS

Kathleen Kern

An Israeli reserve officer taught Rachel Corrie a few Hebrew phrases to appeal to the humane side of soldiers she would encounter in Gaza. Such as, "What would your mother think about what you're doing?"

After the Israeli military crushed Rachel with a bulldozer on March 16, 2003, this Israeli reserve officer wrote her parents, telling them how sorry he was he had taught Rachel that these soldiers had a conscience.

Rachel died trying to save Palestinian houses from demolition the week before the U.S. invaded Iraq. So her death dropped out of the news quickly. But it has continued to haunt Israelis, internationals and Palestinians working as human-rights advocates in the Occupied Territories.

So many of them have stood in front of Israeli bulldozers, assuming that the worst consequence would be their arrest and failure to save Palestinian homes and farmland from destruction.

But the photos of the event provided stark proof to these activists that the bulldozer driver intended to kill Rachel. in one taken just before she was run over, she stands on a mound of dirt wearing a florescent orange jacket and talking through a bullhorn. She is at eye level with the man driving the bulldozer.

Human-rights activists in the region noted that no cries of outrage came from the U.S. State Department or the president. Can you imagine how they would have reacted if a Cuban or Iraqi soldier had crushed a U.S. citizen to death with a bulldozer?

The Israeli military seems to be going out of its way to show that it is indifferent to international opinion regarding the incident. Since Rachel's death, soldiers have shot several more international human-rights activists and journalists. At the memorial service for Rachel in Gaza, soldiers teargassed the mourners as they laid flowers on the site where she died.

Other photos taken after the bulldozer ran Rachel over shows her with her body twisted and blood coming from her nose and mouth while he colleagues kneel in the dirt beside her, calmly tending to her. The next-to-last photo in the series shows her pale cadaver in the Gaza hospital.

Oddly, the picture that affected me most in the series of photos did not show Rachel at all. Instead, it showed two of her co-workers — the same two shown kneeling calmly beside her mangled body — holding each other and weeping. I have experienced the camaraderie that develops between people taking risks for human rights, and the thought of watching my Palestinian, Israeli or international friends die in such a way is nearly unbearable.

I also cried when I learned that she clawed her way out of the dirt after the bulldozer ran her over and told her friends that she thought her back was broken. I cried when I learned that the doctor who tried to save her owned the house she died trying to save. I cried for the pain of Simona Sharoni, an Israeli-American professor I know and like in Olympia, Wash., who had encouraged Rchel, her student, to go to Gaza.

And later, I cried when I read one of her last e-mails home to her parents:

"I am trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I leave here. . . . I really don't want to move back to Olympia, but I do need to go back there to clean my stuff out of the garage and talk about my experiences. . . . Considering trying to get English teaching jobs — would like to really buckle down and learn Arabic. Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back, which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too. Let me know if you have nay ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life."

Kathleen Kern of Webster, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker teams.

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2003 Oct 13 p. 5

text of obituary:

Updates on past columns

WORLD NEIGHBORS

Kathleen Kern

. . .

■ The soldier who crushed Rachel Corrie to death with a bulldozer also got away with murder. At the end of June, two weeks after my column on corrie appeared, the Israeli military acquitted the man who killed her. Photos clearly showed that the soldier must have seen Corrie holding a bullhorn and wearing an orange fluorescent vest as she attempted to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has built a Peace Center in East Jerusalem with a mural commemorating Corrie and Nuha Makadna Sweidan, a pregnant Palestinian woman killed when the army demolished her house on top of her. the Israeli military has issued a demolition order for the peace center and the mural.