Rachel Corrie, 1979 - 2003: in memoriam

Rachel Corrie, 1979 - 2003
Originally uploaded by Revere.

From The Dominion blog of March 17:

Two years ago today, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old American volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, was crushed to death by an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer as she sought to prevent it from demolishing the home of a Palestinian doctor. Her family's efforts to find justice have so far been unsucessful, and her story now all but forgotten by the mainstream media.

To honour her memory, please take a moment to read the writings of, and about, this woman who died for her conviction that we all have a responsibility to stop preventable injustices, and who thought her body and her passport would be enough to stop a man in a bulldozer from going forward.

Rachel Corrie Memorial

Rachel's letters home (which were published in both the Guardian and the Globe and Mail):

The International Solidarity Movement

Background on Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

And from a letter to the International Herald Tribune on the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death from her cousin, Elizabeth Corrie:

Rachel was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer, manufactured in the United States and sent to Israel as part of the regular U.S. aid package to Israel, which amounts to $3 billion to $4 billion annually, all of it from U.S. taxpayers. The use of Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy civilian homes, not to mention to run over unarmed human rights activists, violates U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of military aid against civilians.

. . . residents and citizens of the United States should ask themselves how it is that an unarmed U.S. citizen can be killed with impunity by a soldier from an allied nation receiving massive U.S. aid, using a product manufactured in the United States by a U.S. corporation and paid for with U.S. tax dollars. When three Americans were killed, presumably by Palestinians, in an explosion on Oct. 15, 2003, as they traveled through Gaza, the FBI came within 24 hours to investigate the deaths. After one year, neither the FBI nor any other U.S.-led team has done anything to investigate the death of an American killed by an Israeli.