How does such flagrant disregard for the sanctity of human life constitute the actions of a civilised nation? Israel, your government is made up of barbarians and baby-killers, I pity all of you for it is you who shall ultimately pay the price for their arrogance and corruption.
Why do a different set of rules apply to Israel as those which apply to everyone else, why is this brutality allowed to go unanswered? This poor young lady was doing something none of us have the balls to do and they RAN HER OVER WITH A BULLDOZER!
What the hell is wrong with us as a society? Are we all so scared of being called anti-semites that we will let those baby-killing bastards do whatever the hell they like!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If being an anti-Semite means being against the bulldozering of people who are peacefully protesting then I am going out and getting a T-Shirt today that says "I AM AN ANTI-SEMITE!". The whole concept when used by those ignorant fundamentalist nutters is meaningless anyway because being Semitic implies that you could well be an Iraqi as well as a Jew. They can't even get their facts straight and we all let them get away with it!
What Israel is doing is MORALLY WRONG and someone needs to stand up amidst all this insanity in Iraq and say so. If this is the society we are building then I want off this planet, because I refuse to be a part of this monstrous activity! Don't forget that the Turks used the cover of World War 1 to kill 14 million Armenians, are we going to allow Israel to do the same? If they think they can kill a peace protester and get away with it then who knows what they will do next.
If the world stays silent then we will all be as guilty as the person who was driving the bulldozer that killed Rachel Corrie.
Let me ask you, as a human being, do you want to live in that kind of world?
As predicted, "the fog of war" is being used to obscure an Israeli atrocity -- a circumstance of potentially enormous consequence if it continues.
On March 16th, an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer two-stories high crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, an American nonviolent human rights protestor. According to numerous witnesses and photographic documentation, she was killed intentionally.
Rachel and a handful of others practicing Ghandian nonviolence in the Gaza Strip had been pleading with Israeli soldiers for two hours not to destroy a Palestinian family home. Suddenly, the Israeli bulldozer operator began driving his giant bulldozer toward the home, Rachel sitting in its path. Witnesses report that she then stood up on the mound of debris and dirt pushed by the bulldozer blade and looked straight at the operator through the window. He continued, and she was pulled underneath the tractor, its blade crushing her. He then backed up, running over her again, burying her deeper into the dirt.
Three friends ran to Rachel and dug her out. According to an eye-witness report by Joe Smith of Kansas City: "Her body was in a mangled condition, she said 'my back is broken!' but nothing else her eyes were open and she was clearly in a great deal of pain." A Palestinian ambulance made it through Israeli forces, and took her to the hospital, where she died. Reports are unclear whether it was her fractured skull or the suffocation caused by crushed lungs and being buried in the dirt that caused her death.
George Bush has yet to condemn this atrocity by an "ally" who receives more US funding than any other nation on earth, over $10 million per day. Congress has yet to pass a resolution condemning this use of American tax money to kill an American citizen. The U.S. State Department has yet to impose any diplomatic sanctions whatsoever against a government whose "apology" for one of its soldiers crushing a young, peaceful American student has consisted of calling it "regrettable," and blaming Rachel for the Israeli soldier's decision to kill her.
The American media have yet to accord this horror the attention it would normally merit, if it had been done by any other country on earth, including the U.S. government. We heard about Chandra Levy for many months. We read about the students in Tiananman Square for years. We heard news reports about Rachel Corrie for approximately two days. Apart from her hometown Washington state newspapers, there were virtually no follow up stories no stories about the memorial service held the next day in Gaza that was broken up by an Israeli tank, while the bulldozer that killed her drove slowly, exultantly past. No stories about Israeli forces blocking the ambulance carrying her remains from exiting Gaza. No stories about Rachel's grieving parents and siblings, about their inability to travel to Palestine. No stories.
This erasing of Rachel, her message, and her death is unconscionable. It is also extremely dangerous. Such silence is giving Israel a green light to escalate its killing of civilians, of peaceful protesters, of young girls. The day after Rachel was killed the Israeli military killed another 9 Palestinian civilians, including three children, the following weeks still more.
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