Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004, pages 48-49

Special Report

People Around the World Pay Tribute to Rachel Corrie

By Patricia Lynn Morrison

WHEN, ON MARCH 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie put on a fluorescent orange vest, took a megaphone in hand and begged an Israeli military bulldozer operator not to demolish the Palestinian home up the hill behind her, she never expected to die. She also never expected that, a year later, thousands of people around the world would be gathering in colleges, churches and parks in at least 27 U.S. cities to remember her—and to continue her nonviolent protest.

Corrie, a native of Olympia, WA, had traveled to Rafah at the southernmost edge of the Palestinian territories, near Egypt, in January 2003. She was a member of a 10-person team deployed by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to practice nonviolent resistance while supporting the Palestinian people. Living with local families in the Gaza Strip, Corrie and fellow ISM team members not only placed themselves in front of Israeli bulldozers intent on demolishing Palestinian homes. They slept in the fields to guard water supplies from destruction by the Israeli Defense Force and became human shields against IDF gunfire, encircling Palestinian municipal workers who tried to repair their damaged wells and homes.

The ISM was founded in 2001, after the U.S. vetoed a United Nations proposal to send international peacekeeping forces to Israel and the Palestinian territories in an effort to stop the violence and to monitor human rights abuses.

Corrie, who was active in numerous peace and justice causes at Evergreen State College in Olympia, signed up. In Rafah, she worked with the children, teaching and playing with them in their refugee camp that had no books, no crayons, and nothing resembling a normal existence. Her dream was to establish a sister city relationship between Olympia and Rafah.

Rachel Corrie died last March 16 of injuries she sustained after she had been run over by an Israeli bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian home in Rafah. Israeli and U.S. government accounts of the incident claim variously that the bulldozer operator did not see Corrie, because she fell under the blade and was crushed when the bulldozer then ran over her; at least one “official” account claims she was not run over by the machinery. Eyewitnesses, both Palestinian residents of Rafah and Corrie’s ISM team members, state that the equipment operator had to have seen her but never stopped—even when Corrie, in her bright orange vest, disappeared from his line of vision. According to their testimony, after running over her at least once the bulldozer operator never got out of the cab, and simply backed the equipment off the area. Later, witnesses claim, IDF forces tried to prevent a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance from getting to the critically injured Corrie, who still lay at the site, and from transporting her to the hospital. She died of her injuries later that night.

One of the eyewitnesses to Rachel Corrie’s death was Joe Carr, a 21-year-old fellow Evergreen State College student who was also a member of the ISM team in Rafah. Carr, a performing artist and peace activist, had first met Corrie on campus, when she asked him to help her make some large puppets—doves—to use in peaceful demonstrations.

Carr and two members of Corrie’s family were in Kansas City, Missouri for an evening of remembrance and a candlelight vigil on the first anniversary of her death. An interfaith audience attended the event, which was hosted by All Saints Unitarian Universalist Church and co-sponsored by several Kansas City peace and justice groups, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Muslim Student Association of the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

Carr was the main speaker at the event, and also performed several poetic and musical pieces composed in Rachel’s honor, including his original hip-hop theme, “The Dove’s Last Song.” With images of Corrie, and the people and destroyed homes of Rafah, projected on the wall behind him, Carr also read a poem Corrie had written and shared excerpts from her letters.

Before the evening’s memorial tribute began, Carr updated the audience on the situation in Palestine, specifically Rafah. He described Rafah as a place of desperate existence, where 65 percent of the residents are refugees and 80 percent are unemployed. Business of any organized kind has ground to a halt, he said, there are no schools, and the buildings that remain are pock-marked by bullets and bombs. Since 2001, more than 300 people have been killed in Rafah alone—an average of one person dead every four days. Of these, Carr noted, 50 were children. More than 2,350 Rafah residents have been injured, and over 1,100 homes have been destroyed by Israeli forces—aided by U.S.-made Apache helicopters and Caterpillar tractors and bulldozers that have been specifically modified in the U.S. for Israeli military use in home demolitions.

It is not enough to remember Rachel Corrie simply with memorial services, Carr told the audience. The peace movement needs “to educate the American people on what the U.S. government’s role is in Israel,” he said, and “how U.S. dollars are funding human rights violations” carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people.

“I want people to remember Rachel,” Carr said later in an interview with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,, “but I know she would also want people to realize she is only one representative of all the thousands of civilians who have been killed” in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” Carr said he also believes Corrie would want Americans to know that “the occupation wouldn’t be possible without U.S. financial support of Israel. We as a people need to keep questioning that,” he emphasized, and calling our government to accountability for our tax dollars.

Those thoughts were echoed by two of Rachel Corrie’s aunts, Collette and Cheryl Brodersen, both of whom braved snowstorms in Iowa to travel the 300-plus miles to Kansas City for the evening’s events and others in her memory.

Cheryl Brodersen, of Denison, Iowa, described herself as a newcomer to peace activism. “When I first heard of this International Solidarity Movement,” she said, “I wasn’t at all sure I liked what it was about, and not sure I liked our Rachel getting involved in it... But then I learned what’s been going on. And it changed me.”

Brodersen is now spearheading a campaign on Capitol Hill to pass a congressional resolution calling for a thorough investigation into Rachel’s death. A current report sponsored by the House International Relations Committee mentions Rachel Corrie in a paragraph, and states that Israeli investigations and reports show there was no negligence on the part of the bulldozer operator.

Brodersen wants Americans to call for a fuller and independent investigation. The last time she saw Rachel, she recalled, was at a family wedding. The image that remains with her, she said, is her niece reaching out her hand inviting her aunt and others to dance. “I’m here tonight,” Brodersen said, “asking all of us to reach out to take Rachel’s hand and Joe’s hand and approach the government of the United States and say, ”˜We want justice.’“

Following the candlelight vigil, both Cheryl and Collette Brodersen spoke with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Collette Brodersen, who traveled from her home in Iowa City, said she recalled Rachel’s words in a letter, calling for Americans to exercise “critical thinking.”

“I would hope that we Americans might think more critically,” Collette said, “take time to really learn what our foreign policy is, especially in regard to Israel....I think people would be amazed if they knew that our tax dollars are going to destroy people’s homes, and their lives.”

Asked what she hoped would come from her niece’s sacrifice, Cheryl replied, “Peace in the Middle East. And I do think it’s possible—one step at a time, one person at a time.”

Patricia Lynn Morrison writes from Overland Park, Kansas.