The Rachel Corrie trial restarted in Haifa yesterday. Her parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, are using the civil trial to confront and vilify Israel. It is perfectly in character: in May Craig Corrie blessed the naming of one of the Gaza flotilla ships after his daughter Rachel. She had been a member of the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement, and the radical group was of the sponsors of the Gaza flotilla.
[Later this week ISM founder Adam Shapiro will be speaking at Stanford University. He is touted as a "co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (along with this wife, Huwaida Arraf), Board member of the Free Gaza Movement, and organizer of the U.S. Boat to Gaza project."]
1. Where did the Rachel Corrie bulldozer incident take place?
Few people recall that the IDF's ground-clearing operation was carried out only 50 meters from the Egyptian border -- near the infamous Philadelphi road. [See map and diagram. All graphic material is from IDF sources.] Up until Corrie's death, the IDF had unc
overed more than 40 tunnels from Egypt used to smuggle weapons and terrorists into Gaza. In recent years, after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the number of tunnels approached 1,000.
Why was the ISM trying to block the bulldozers seven years ago? Presumably, they were attempting to protect Hamas' tunnels.
2. Couldn't the bulldozer driver see or hear Corrie?
The noise generated by the bulldozer is deafening, and Corrie had a megaphone only at an earlier confr
ontation with the Israel Defense Forces. It was not with her the afternoon she died.
The field of vision on the armored bulldozer is exceptionally limited (as the chart on the left indicates), and the driver could not see her.
Corrie's comrades claim that she was standing in front of the bulldozer -- and she was not -- but even if she were, the driver's line of vision is limited as the diagram shows.
The fact is, witnesses at the time of the incident reported that Corrie was sitting.
“When the bulldozer approached a house today,” wrote the New York Times, “Ms. Corrie, who was wearing a bright orange jacket, dropped to her knees.”
“The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop as it went,” an ISM friend stated in 2003. “She knelt there, she did not move.” Another ISM colleague related: “She did not ‘trip and fall’ in front of the bulldozer. She sat down in front of it, well in advance.“ [Emphasis added.]
3. Was there a deliberate attempt by the IDF to kill Corrie, as her parents claim?
Indeed there was a plan to escalate the confrontation between the bulldozers and the "peace activists." But it was the ISM members who decided to escalate, as described by Newsweek writer Joshua Hammer in a lengthy article in Mother Jones. Why? One possible reason was because of the sexual tension that was hurting their relations with the local Palestinians.
"An anonymous letter was circulating," Hammer reported, "which referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as 'nasty foreign bitches' whom 'our Palestinian young men are following around.' That morning [of Corrie’s death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. 'We all had a feeling that our role was too passive,' said one ISM member. 'We talked about how to engage the Israeli military.' That morning, team members made a number of proposals that seemed designed only to aggravate the problem. 'The idea was to more directly challenge the Israeli military dominance using our international status,' said the ISMer."
4. But why was Corrie singled out?
She wasn't. At least two ISMers had to be pulled out from under the bulldozers' blades after they started acting in accordance with their more aggressive policy. Newsweek’s Hammer reported on “Jenny’s” close call: "An Irish peace activist named Jenny was nearly run down by a D9. 'The bulldozer’s coming, the earth is burying my feet, my legs, I’ve got nowhere to run, and I thought, ‘This is out of control,’ she told me. 'Another activist pulled me up and out of the way at the last minute.'”
5. Does anyone believe this story that the ISMers were suicidal?
They should believe that the International Solidarity Movement is homicidal. The ISM has a long record of putting its members, particularly young Western women, into harm's way. Some are unbelievably naive and just plain dumb. Like Corrie, they were encouraged to confront the Israel Defense Forces. Not surprisingly, some were injured and killed:
* On 2 April 2002, Australian Kate Edwards was shot and wounded in Beit Jala near Jerusalem from where Palestinians were firing on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo. She and other volunteers marched on Israeli lines to protect their Palestinian friends. The clearly logic-challenged Edwards complained, "I never thought for a moment that they would fire live ammunition at us."
* In April 2002, Irish ISM member Caomhe Butterly served as a human shield in Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah during the intifada. Later, on November 22, 2002, she inserted herself as a human shield again and was wounded during an IDF operation in Jenin. One of her admirers described how Butterly "would walk up to a tank and place her hand over the muzzle." Butterly was an organizer and spokesperson aboard the 2010 Gaza flotilla.
* April 13, 2003, ISM member Thomas Hurndall was shot and killed when he challenged an Israeli tank force in Gaza.
* On April 24, 2010 Bianca Zammit, a Maltese national, j
oined a group of Palestinians who charged the security fence between Gaza and Israel. That area of the fence has often seen terrorist attacks. Zammit was shot through the thigh by a sniper, but was back to her comrades an hour later (pictured, right).
* On May 31, 2010, Emily Henochowicz, an American Jewish ISMer, lost her eye after she was hit by a tear gas grenade that ricocheted off a highway divider during a violent demonstration near Qalandia in the West Bank. She had been a regular at Palestinian demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah, Bilin, Nilin and Nabi Saleh.
As the Haifa trial proceeds, it is clear that the International Solidarity Movement should be the one on trial for reckless endangerment. Yet, when young Western women are injured, arrested or killed, the media pays attention.
Maybe Rachel Corrie wasn't so dumb, after all. She wrote to her mother about the possibility of an American activist’s death as a propaganda tool: "You just can’t imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen."
Monday, September 6, 2010
Rachel Corrie Trial Restarts.
Key Questions Need Repeating
Sunday, May 16, 2010
International Peace Schlamazals
A version of this article appears in The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, May 16, 2010
Towards the end of May, a naval invasion will be attempted near Israel’s Mediterranean coast. A rag-tag armada of rust buckets loaded with international “peace” activists from the United States, Europe, and Turkey will try to “run the Israeli blockade” and dock the ships in the tiny Gaza port.
The Israeli Navy announced on May 10 that the boats will be blocked.
This attempt will be the latest of a series of schlamazal* Palestinian propaganda efforts to reenact the Jewish campaign of the 1940s to bring survivors of the Nazi camps past the British blockade. Like the Jews’ famous Exodus ship of 1948, the Palestinians even name a flagship to lead the convoy. In 1988, the Sol Phryne (pictured) ferry was purchased in Cyprus and renamed the “Awda” -- the “Return” -- in dedication to the Palestinians’ insistence on returning to present day Israel. That ship almost sank in a Cyprus port when a mysterious explosion blew a hole in the bow, seriously damaging the boat. At the time, Israeli Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari wrote, “By sabotaging the ship before it ever weighed anchor, Israel turned what was meant to be a dazzling media extravaganza into a public relations fiasco for the PLO.”
In 2007 and 2008 other international aid ships were blocked by the Israeli navy. In January 2009, the Iranian aid ship Iran Shahed was intercepted, just as tons of Iranian arms shipments destined for Hamas or Hizbullah were intercepted.
In December 2009, the international activists suffered their worst PR disaster. Organized under the aegis of the anarchist Code Pink group, they attempted to stage a “freedom march” with a convoy of trucks from Egypt to Gaza. But the Egyptian government refused to permit their transit to Gaza, and in an embarrassing fiasco, the activists ended up holding protests and demonstrations in Cairo where they clashed with Egyptian riot police. But they did achieve one historical, monumental fete: They boasted that they floated 1,400 candles down the Nile River in memory of the Palestinians who died in the Israel-Hamas war the year before. Of course, the activists made sure that the candles were in biodegradable cups. Really. Truly, a kumbaya moment.
Leading the next flotilla at the end of May will be the Rachel Corrie, a ship named for the anti-Israel American activist dispatched to confront Israeli bulldozers in 2003. To no one’s surprise, in her confrontation between flesh and steel, flesh lost. But the organization that sent Corrie to her death, the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM), continues to throw human cannon fodder at the Israeli army.
One of the stars of the Rachel Corrie’s welcoming committee will be Bianca Zammit, a Maltese woman member of the ISM and Gaza resident, who was shot in the thigh by an Israeli soldier during a demonstration close to the Gaza-Israel border on April 24. Like Corrie, Zammit was devoted to the Palestinians of Gaza, writing extensively about the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. And like Corrie, she was determined to challenge the IDF even if it killed her.
Zammit’s demonstration took place near the spot where two Israeli soldiers were shot one month earlier as they counterattacked Palestinian terrorists setting bombs along the border fence. Zammit and her fellow demonstrators charged dangerously into a “no-go zone” close to the fence in as provocative an act as Corrie and her friends throwing themselves under the blades of bulldozers seven years ago.
The audio on the YouTube clips from the confrontation indicates that Zammit and friends charged the Israeli line to the calls of “Allah Akhbar” and to the broadcasts of hits from the jihadi hit parade, “Where are the millions? Allah is with us, stronger and bigger than the sons of Zion,” and “Let us fall as martyrs (shaheeds), don’t worry.” [Translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.]
Zammit’s chutzpah is on display when she complained to the Times of Malta, “Similar protests were held in the past and the Israelis usually fired in the air.”
Indeed, the sounds of shots suggest that the IDF soldiers fired repeatedly in the air prior to a few well-placed shots at the demonstrators’ legs. (Zammit’s wounds – entry and exit – were just beneath the surface of her skin. There was little bleeding, and she showed few signs of shock. ) Even on her way to the hospital, Zammit was able to continue her anti-Israel diatribe. Within an hour she was up and walking as her friends’ photo shows.
There’s little doubt that Bianca Zammit will be standing on the beach at the end of May looking for her fellow travelers’ ships. But they won’t arrive. As long as Hamas vows to destroy Israel, rejects agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority, and rebuffs a two-state solution, Gaza’s isolation will continue. And there’s even less doubt that Zammit and Corrie’s other colleagues will continue to attack Israel for Gaza’s predicament – even if it kills them.
*Schlamazal: Yiddish for one who is always getting the soup spilled on him by the schlemiel (the one who spills the soup).
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Rachel Corrie Wasn’t the Only ISM Member Playing Chicken with a Bulldozer That Day
Reprinted from Pajamas Media
At least two of her colleagues had placed themselves under the tractor's maw on that day in 2003. Russian roulette was apparently the group's strategy.
God, sometimes we Israelis are idiots. Leave aside the colossal fashla (you call it a snafu) of the ill-timed announcement of the expansion of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that sent the Obama administration into a hissy fit. What we’re doing with the latest “lawfare” case against Israel, the trial brought by Rachel Corrie’s parents, is another beaut.
In March 2003, a young American woman named Rachel Corrie was crushed and killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza. And now her parents are in Israel, suing Israel. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot portrayed her as a saintly martyr and featured a false photo of the incident, taken at a different time and with a different bulldozer. The anchor of Israel Radio’s morning commute show rebuked Israel’s actions, and the Israeli YES cable network presented Rachel, a two-hour paean to Corrie and an indictment of Israel.
We’re nuts.
We overlook the fact that Corrie’s death took place in the midst of the “intifada” terrorist onslaught against Israel and that she was working for a Palestinian-led organization as the first line of defense against Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield to stop terrorist suicide bombers. Just ten days before Corrie’s death, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Haifa, a few miles from the courthouse where the Corrie parents are suing Israel. Seventeen Israelis died in the attack, many of them teenagers.
Today, the parents of the dead are outraged by the attention Rachel Corrie is getting and by the chutzpah of the Corries embracing Israeli courts to rail against the country Rachel Corrie loathed.
The Palestinian-led group — International Solidarity Movement (ISM) — enlisted dozens of “internationals,” including Corrie, to serve as support troops. ISM admits that it “recognizes the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle.” ISM’s creed translated into action: In May 2002, ten ISM members rushed into the Church of the Nativity to serve as human shields for Palestinian terrorists holed up there and desecrating the holy site. In Jenin in March 2003, an ISM woman hid a wanted Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, from the Israeli army. In Gaza in April 2003, two terrorists “had tea” with ISM members before they embarked on their mission to blow up Mike’s Place, a bar in Tel Aviv, five days later.
Danny Seaman, a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office, stated at the time: "Members of the ISM have been knowingly aiding and abetting terrorists and disrupting the activity of the IDF meant to prevent the murder of Israeli civilians."
Corrie and her band of ISM internationals had been disrupting IDF activity in Rafah just yards from the infamous “Philadelphi route” along the Gaza-Egypt border. This was an area of intense terrorist activity and was — and still is — the location of Hamas tunnels.
But the ISM group was frustrated, Newsweek’s Joshua Hammer wrote in a 2003 exhaustive report on Corrie in the leftist Mother Jones magazine:
"An anonymous letter was circulating which referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as 'nasty foreign bitches' whom 'our Palestinian young men are following around.'"
"That morning [of Corrie’s death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. 'We all had a feeling that our role was too passive,' said one ISM member. 'We talked about how to engage the Israeli military.' That morning, team members made a number of proposals that seemed designed only to aggravate the problem.… "
“The idea was to more directly challenge the Israeli military dominance using our international status,” said the ISMer.
On the day of Corrie’s death, the new ISM aggressive actions involved placing themselves in severe danger. Eyewitness reports recorded immediately after Corrie’s death prove that the ISMers had knowingly decided to put themselves in harm’s way.
Reported here — for the first time — is the fact that prior to Corrie’s death at least two “internationals” had been pulled out from under the bulldozers at the last second.
According to one of Corrie’s colleagues, whose recollections were published three days after her death (emphasis mine):
For two hours we attempted at great risk to ourselves to obstruct and frustrate the bulldozers in their work.
Another ISM colleague stated:Our group began to stand in front of these bulldozers in an attempt to stop them. Generally they did not stop when we stood in front of them, but continued to push the earth up from underneath our feet to push us away. Several times we had to dive away at the last moment in order to avoid being crushed. This continued for about two and a half hours. … At one point, Will from the United States was nearly crushed between the bulldozer and a pile of razor wire. The bulldozer stopped at the last minute in Will’s case. If it had moved any closer he would have been impaled by the razor wire.
Besides “Will,” Newsweek’s Hammer reported on “Jenny’s” close call:
"An Irish peace activist named Jenny was nearly run down by a D9. 'The bulldozer’s coming, the earth is burying my feet, my legs, I’ve got nowhere to run, and I thought, ‘This is out of control,’ she told me. 'Another activist pulled me up and out of the way at the last minute.'”
On that day in March 2003, the ISM internationals had decided to play a game of Russian roulette with the Israeli army, and Corrie lost.
At the trial in Haifa last week, Corrie’s colleagues testified that Rachel stood in front of the bulldozer and the driver intentionally drove over her. Israel has been saying for seven years that the driver couldn’t see her. Again, careful review of news accounts and statements made by ISMers immediately after her death prove that Corrie was squatting down amidst the rubble, thus minimizing her profile:
“When the bulldozer approached a house today,” wrote the New York Times, “Ms. Corrie, who was wearing a bright orange jacket, dropped to her knees.”
“The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop as it went,” an ISM friend stated in 2003. “She knelt there, she did not move.”
Another colleague related: “She did not ‘trip and fall’ in front of the bulldozer. She sat down in front of it, well in advance.“
He added: “Corrie dropped her bullhorn and sat down in front of one of the bulldozers. She fully expected that the driver would stop just in front of her.”
The conclusion: Corrie’s ISM colleagues may have committed perjury by insisting that she was standing.
The result of ISM’s aggressive actions and Corrie’s carelessness was tragically predictable. Wrote Hammer: The IDF “makes a credible case that the operators, peering out through narrow, double-glazed, bulletproof windows, their view obscured behind pistons and the giant scooper, might not have seen Corrie kneeling in front of them.”
There’s no doubt this is well-organized “lawfare” against Israel. Craig Corrie 
(pictured receiving an honor from Arafat) told the Israeli Yediot newspaper last week that they cannot take their case to the International Court until after exhausting all legal measures in Israel. Father Corrie’s intention is clear.
After reviewing the case, another suit should be brought: the International Solidarity Movement should be on trial, not Israel. ISM founder George Rishmaw told the San Francisco Chronicle that Corrie was cannon fodder for the organization:
"When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore. But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice."
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Upcoming Rachel Corrie Trial: Go After Her Real Killers
Reprinted from Pajamas Media
By Lenny Ben-David
Jerusalem — Craig and Cindy Corrie, I welcome you to Israel where, I understand, you plan to bring a civil suit before an Israeli court on March 10 “to put on public record,” the British Guardian wrote, “the events that led to [your] daughter Rachel’s death in March 2003.”
I thank God for the well-being of my children and grandchildren, and I cannot imagine the pain and anger you feel over the loss of your daughter, Rachel.
My sons have served as combat soldiers, and may have actually fought on the very ground where your daughter died. The area was laced with tunnels to smuggle weapons and explosives for use against Israelis. My children are Israelis who ride in buses and eat in pizzerias, and by the grace of God they have been spared attacks by the suicide bombers your daughter championed.
Some may see the irony in your using the courts and the free press of Israel in your attempt to pursue and denounce the nation your daughter loathed. I see the tragedy in your allying with the International Solidarity Movement — the very people and organization who led and, in a sense, really pushed Rachel to her death.
According to news accounts, Israel will permit four of Corrie’s colleagues from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to enter Israel to give testimony on what occurred that day. Actually, I believe it’s a good decision to permit the four into Israel’s jurisdiction where the ISM members could and should be arrested for reckless endangerment, fraud, manslaughter, aiding terrorists, and a host of other charges. The public may also discover who paid for your lawsuit and the expenses of bringing you and ISM witnesses to Israel.
Mr. and Mrs. Corrie, three pictures relating to your daughter are etched in my memory.
The first is a very agonizing photo of your daughter broken and crumpled and bleeding in a Gaza field — with her ISM friends attempting to help her: 
(Photo attribution: Right to a Sustainable Future blog)
But I am troubled by the pictures. Who took them? Someone from ISM, according to the organization’s literature. Why wasn’t that person aiding your daughter? (God, I hope they were not posing her for a better shot!) What would motivate a person to not drop everything to help a wounded colleague? Is the ISM hatred of Israel so strong that his first priority was to document the scene? Was Corrie just an expendable foot soldier of an evil organization that used her for the photo-op? Apparently so. Her ISM colleague and handler Joseph Smith, who also goes by the name Joseph Carr, took the picture, actually one of many (!), and later eulogized Rachel with these horrifying words:
The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. And many, many, many Palestinians give their lives for it all the time. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression.
The second photo is that of a very angry woman surrounded by a mob of chil
dren as she burns an American flag at a pro-Saddam Hussein rally:
The rage is palpable. What did she hate more, Israel or the United States? I suspect the former, because she justified the use of terrorism against Israeli civilians. She imbibed the ISM philosophy, as stated by one of its leaders during an interview with Al-Jazeera: “We recognize that violence is necessary and it is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we recognize their right to do so.”
That radical belief is clear in a phone message Rachel left you, Cindy, with instructions on how to speak to the press:
Please think about your language when you talk to them. I think it was smart that you’re wary of using the word “terrorism,” and if you talk about the cycle of violence, or “an eye for an eye,” you could be perpetuating the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a balanced conflict, instead of a largely unarmed people against the fourth most powerful military in the world.
And the third picture is of your earlier visit to the region to see where your da
ughter lived and died. You were met and honored by Yasser Arafat.That is where you should have realized that you daughter was his pawn, another young idealist brainwashed into hating Israel. Arafat regaled in his “shahids,” the suicide bombers who blew up Israeli civilians. The New York Times documented the training of 25,000 Palestinian teens in the summer prior to launching the September 2000 intifada. Your daughter Rachel was another impressionable youth recruited for the Palestinian cause. I’m sure that is hard for you to believe, but read what her ISM buddy Joseph Smith believed:
“We knew there was a risk,” Smith said, “but we also knew it never happened in the two years that we (the ISM) have been working here. I knew we take lots of precautions so that it doesn’t happen, that if it did happen it would have to be an intentional act by a soldier, in which case it would bring a lot of publicity and significance to the cause.”
“Her death serves me more than it served her,” said one activist [unclear if the speaker is an IMS activist or a Hamas activist] at a Hamas funeral. “Going in front of the tanks was heroic. Her death will bring more attention than the other 2,000 martyrs.”
"You just can’t imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen."
Finally, who sent your daughter into Gaza? The International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group, founded in August 2001 by Huwwaida Arraf, Adam Shapiro, Ghassan Andoni, Neta Golan, and George Rishmawi.
In July of 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle reported:
Rishmawi said the ISM’s main purpose is to increase international awareness of Palestinian suffering through the involvement of foreign activists, who pay their own way to the West Bank, where they are trained in various methods of nonviolent direct action.
“When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore,” Rishmawi said. “But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.”
Sue them.
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