Latest lawsuit cashing in on the dead

[Lyion]

Even more beautiful, Martrae's link again

http://www.alisrael.com/rachel_corrie/whokilled.html

Who Killed Rachel Corrie ?



By Judy Lash Balint



Jerusalem—Only one thing is certain about the circumstances surrounding the death of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) protestor Rachel Corrie: she died in Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip.



But is Israel responsible for her death, or do the doctors at the Arab hospital where she was taken still alive after the accident bear any responsibility? What about the ISM that organizes protests in a closed military zone? How she died, exactly where she passed her last moments and who should take the blame for Rachel Corrie’s death are the questions that demand answers.



The congressional inquiry called for by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) will have to sort it all out, but the inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimonies raise doubts about the simplistic conclusions already being drawn.



By all accounts, Rachel Corrie was one of a group of protestors attempting to disrupt the work of two IDF bulldozers leveling ground to detonate explosives in an area rife with terrorist activity. The bulldozers moved to a different area to avoid the protestors, and Corrie became separated from the group. Some of the agitators stood with a banner, while Corrie picked up a bullhorn and yelled fruitlessly at the driver encased in the small cabin of the ‘dozer. This went on for several hours on the afternoon of March 16. It’s the kind of activity favored by the young pro-Palestinian types who make up the ISM.



There wasn’t enough action for Corrie. According to a fellow Evergreen State College student, Joseph Smith, 21, who was at the site, 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. “We were horribly surprised,” Smith told me by phone from Rafah the day after the incident. “They had been careful not to hurt us. They’d always stopped before,” he said.



As the ‘dozer plowed forward heaping up a pile of dirt and sand, Corrie scrambled up the pile to sit on the top, screaming slogans at the driver. Smith says she lost her footing as the bulldozer made the earth move beneath her feet. “She got pulled down,” he says. “The driver lost sight of her and continued forward. Then, without lifting the blade he reversed and Rachel was underneath the mid-section of the ‘dozer—she wasn’t run over by the tread.”



Capt. Jacob Dellal of the IDF spokesperson’s office confirms what Smith says about the driver: he lost sight of Rachel. Inside the cab some 8’ off the ground, visibility is very restricted. The protestors should have known that and kept within the driver’s line of sight to avoid getting hurt, Dellal asserts.



The strange thing about this part of the story is the discrepancy over the photos given to the press and posted on several pro-Arab websites.



As Smith describes to me his version of events, I ask about the series of photos printed in an Arab newspaper I picked up that morning in Jerusalem’s Old City. “They aren’t of the actual incident,” he states firmly. “We’d been there for three hours already, we were tired—we already had a lot of pictures.”



Yet these are the pictures used on the ISM website, http://www.palsolidarity.org to document the before and after of Rachel’s interaction with the bulldozer. The same pictures are featured as a photo-essay on the site of Electronic Intifada, (http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml) where they’re even attributed to Joseph Smith.



There are several shots of the back of a woman with a blond ponytail facing a bulldozer. She’s standing in an open field, wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, holding a megaphone.



Even Michael Shaikh, the ISM media coordinator, won’t confirm that these are pictures of Corrie taken the day she died. “I’m fairly sure” they’re of the incident, he tells me by phone from his Bethlehem office. In the same conversation, Shaikh asks me not to contact Joe, Greg or Tom, the Rafah ISM eyewitnesses again directly: “They’re still in trauma…”



The pictures should have raised all kinds of questions to photo editors, but all the major newspapers and wire services chose to run the photos regardless. If there are pictures of Rachel before and after, why didn’t the same photographer consider it important to document the act of the bulldozer running her down?



Where is the mound of earth Rachel clambered up and was buried in? The woman shown lying bleeding from her nose and mouth is lying on a flat piece of ground, and she’s not covered in sand.



So Corrie was either knocked down by the ‘dozer, or fell in front of it. ISMers assume that she was intentionally run over, but there’s no proof that was the driver’s intent.



The real issue is was Rachel alive when she was taken by Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance to Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital? In other words, where did she die? Were adequate efforts made to save her in the hospital?



Again, there are conflicting stories. Joseph Smith tells me in a telephone interview the day after the tragedy, “She died in the hospital or on the way to the hospital.” CNN also reported that Rachel died there. (“Israeli bulldozer runs over 23-year-old woman.” CNN, Monday, March 17, 2003)



In his account posted on http://www.arabia.com, ISMer Tom Dale has a slightly different story. On March 17 he writes: “I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing signs of brain hemorrhaging. She died in the ambulance a few minutes later of massive internal injuries. “



But Dr. Ali Mussa, director of Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital where Corrie was taken isn’t so clear. On the day of the event, Dr. Mussa tells AP Gaza reporter Ibrahim Barzak that Rachel died in the hospital. (“American Killed in Gaza” AP. March 16, 2003)



One week later, in a telephone interview with me, Dr. Mussa states definitively that Rachel died at the scene, “in the soil,” as he puts it. “The main cause of death was suffocation,” Mussa asserts. There were no signs of life, no heartbeat or pulse when she arrived at the hospital, he says. Mussa states that Rachel’s ribs were fractured, a fact determined by X-rays. (Is it normal procedure to X-ray a dead body?)



Doesn’t quite jive with the photo essay on the pages of the Electronic Intifada website for March 16, 2003. (Photo story: Israeli bulldozer driver murders American peace activist by Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 16 March 2003. http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml)



A caption under one photo of doctors leaning over a female patient reads: “Rachel arrived in the Emergency Room at 5:05 p.m and doctors scrambled to save her. By 5:20 p.m, she was gone. Ha’aretz newspaper reported that Dr. Ali Mussa, a doctor at Al Najar, stated that the cause of death was “skull and chest fractures.” Dr. Mussa told me he was one of the treating physicians—yet he alone maintains that Rachel was dead before she was put into the ambulance. To further complicate matters, on that same website, a report from the Palestine Monitor is cited. Here, the writer says that Rachel fractured “both her arms, legs and skull. She was transferred to hospital, where she later died.”



Just who is Dr. Ali Mussa? Clearly a man in favor with the Palestine Authority hierarchy. Dr. Mussa’s views are aired on the official website of the PA’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation: (January 27, 2003)



There, Dr. Mussa accuses Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “terrorist government” of “deliberately killing Palestinian children in Rafah.”



A few days after the incident, ISM Media Coordinator Michael Shaikh tells me by phone from Rafah that three ISMers, Tom, Alice and Greg were in the ambulance with Rachel. “She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” says Michael. But Greg Schnabel, 28, who is quoted in numerous wire service and newspaper stories, never says he witnessed the death of his comrade in the ambulance. In his account published a few days later on the ISM website, he carefully states that she died twenty minutes after arriving at the hospital.



What happened to Rachel’s body after her death? Depends who you ask. Dr. Mussa says it was kept for 24 hours at the hospital before a Red Crescent ambulance transported it “to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv,” via the border where an Israeli ambulance took over. Michael Shaikh says “we lost track of it (her body) after she died.” Three ISMers tried to escort the body, but only one was permitted on the ambulance on the Israeli side. According to his account, the ambulance drove straight to the Israeli Forensic Institute at Abu Kabir, where an autopsy was performed. “The Israelis are trying to say she died from a blow to the head by a rock,” Shaikh recounts.



Speaking about the autopsy, one of Rachel’s ISM trainers, Iowa native LeAnne Clausen, a fieldworker for the Christian Peacemaker Team based in Beit Sahour, tells me: “The general sentiment within ISM is that the Israelis are trying to suggest perhaps Rachel was on drugs.”



In reality, IDF spokesperson Dellal says that initial Israeli investigation results indicate that the cause of death was most likely a blow to the head and chest by a blunt object—possibly a chunk of cement dug up by the bulldozer.



In keeping with ISM sympathies, Rachel received a “shaheed” (martyr) procession in Rafah, the day after her death. But here again, there’s confusion between reality and photo opp. Some accounts noted that her coffin draped in an American flag was paraded through the streets. Yet a picture on the site of her college town’s peace movement, the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (http://www.omjp.org/rachelphotos.html) shows Arab women holding a coffin covered by a Palestinian flag with the caption: Palestinian funeral for Rachel.



Confusion and obfuscation seem to be a trademark of the ISM. Last May, a number of ISMers raced past Israeli soldiers into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian terrorists had holed up to evade capture by the IDF outside. After an agreement was reached, the ISM members refused to leave the church, holding up the solution. Then they charged that they were mistreated by clergy, who claimed the ISMers desecrated the church by smoking and drinking alcohol.



Another revealing ISM action took place shortly before the Bethlehem incident, when a number of protestors managed to make their way past IDF barricades into Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah compound to “protect” the terrorist leader.



Last week’s Rafah activity falls into the same category of ISM defense of Arab terrorists. IDF efforts in Rafah are concentrated on preventing the flow of arms and explosives over the border from Egypt into the terrorist’s dens that riddle the area. Less than a week after Rachel died defending terrorists, Israeli tanks moved into Rafah , surrounded several houses, and arrested two Hamas members. IDF spokesperson, Dellal calls Rafah “the most dangerous area in the West Bank and Gaza, and decries the “provocative protests” of ISM. “There’s nothing wrong with civil disobedience, but these people crossed the line of what was safe for everyone,” Dellal says.



So, while the memorial services laud and remember Rachel Corrie as a “peace activist” “murdered by Israeli occupation forces,” the truth lies elsewhere.



An Israeli bulldozer injured Corrie as she tried to prevent it doing its job of protecting Israeli civilians, but she was alive when she was taken to An Najar Hospital, according to at least three eyewitnesses. Only Dr. Mussa, a man intent on accusing Israel of child killing, claims otherwise. None of Rachel’s comrades have stated they were with her in the hospital when she died.



The Corrie episode in Rafah may end up being ranked with the “murder” of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura by Israeli forces in a firefight at nearby Netzarim in September 2000. Months after the event, the official IDF inquiry and a German TV report revealed that there was little doubt that al-Dura was hit by Palestinian fire. An independent French journalist, Gerard Huber, claims that the entire incident was fabricated for press consumption. (‘Contre-expertise d’une mise en scene,’ Editions Raphael, Paris).

[Rust]

I stopped reading his posts when I realized it is all self mastubatory bullshit that only supports his argument. When information is presented contrary to his own, he cries.

If I had to choose a poster whose support would matter less on this board, Fin, I'd be sure to think of you.

--R.

[Rust]

Even more beautiful, Martrae's link again

http://www.alisrael.com/rachel_corrie/whokilled.html

Who Killed Rachel Corrie ?

That article doesn't exactly support your position, Lyion.

I'm not sure what you posted it for. Maybe she died in the ambulance, maybe she died in hospital. Some of the photos were taken earlier in the day. Wow. Earthshaking.

Apparently your author finds is suspicious that someone who has been run over by a bulldozer would be found lying on flat ground. And here I always thought bulldozers MADE flat ground. I mean, stupid me would have thought, if someone was run over by a bulldozer, who pressed me into the dirt, and then backed off me, you know, that I would likely be on a flat bit of dirt, you know, bulldozers having a tendency to flatten dirt. Apparently the claim that bulldozers flatten dirt is totally wrong and suspicious.

I mean, wow. That post totally changed my world. Thanks. Got any more amazing ones like that?

--R.

[Langston]

Fact: She jumped/stood/marched/sat/picked her ass in front of a bulldozer

Fact: Sitting 8 feet up in a cab with a 6' tall blade on the front of it, the driver can't always see someone standing there

Fact: The driver was operating the machinery as intended, proceeding with his assigned work

Fact: NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT SOME STUPID BITCH THAT GOT HER FUCKING SORRY ASS SQUASHED INTO THE FUCKING DIRT.

Serves her right. Hopefully more of her friends will do the same thing. Maybe you can join them since you're so sympathetic to their stupidity, Rust.

[Diabolik]

I'm all for Palestinians getting their own state and all (in a non-violent manner; I'm hoping the new PM gets the ball rolling) but damn...

that chick was a fucking DUMBASS. I don't feel the least bit sorry for her.

[Ganzo]

We need Ganzo here. I'll email him this link, he has much more info on this crap.

Yes I do have infoz, but why would I bother with posting any arguments, when Rust ignored everything you posted before. Only result of my post would be Rust saying that my opinion is biased toward Israel, and I'd say anything to show Israel in good light.

As far as ISM goes, i have more respect for Hamas. At least Hamas does not hide who they are.

[Zanchief]

Fact: Sitting 8 feet up in a cab with a 6' tall blade on the front of it, the driver can't always see someone standing there

She was yelling at him with a bullhorn while he was coming at her.

Regardless of the political bullshit, that’s murder where I come from.

[DangerPaul]

Fact: Sitting 8 feet up in a cab with a 6' tall blade on the front of it, the driver can't always see someone standing there

She was yelling at him with a bullhorn while he was coming at her.

Regardless of the political bullshit, that’s murder where I come from.

Actually even her friend said she was climbing up a dirt mound, lost her footing and fell, he didn't murder her, she was just fucking stupid.

[Zanchief]

Fact: Sitting 8 feet up in a cab with a 6' tall blade on the front of it, the driver can't always see someone standing there

She was yelling at him with a bullhorn while he was coming at her.

Regardless of the political bullshit, that’s murder where I come from.

Actually even her friend said she was climbing up a dirt mound, lost her footing and fell, he didn't murder her, she was just fucking stupid.

Maybe...

and maybe I didnt read the thread and just went on what I remembered about this story two years ago.

Maybe I was wrong and she, in fact, didnt have a bullhorn on her.

I do have a hard time beleiving the bulldozer driver didnt know where she was though.

[Langston]

Have a hard time believing, if you like. Like it matters.

[Rust]

Fact: Sitting 8 feet up in a cab with a 6' tall blade on the front of it, the driver can't always see someone standing there

She was yelling at him with a bullhorn while he was coming at her.

Regardless of the political bullshit, that’s murder where I come from.

No, she was using a bullhorn earlier, not, from reports, when she was killed.

As well, the armored bulldozer shown in the photos has thick glass windows. I seriously doubt he could hear her if he didn't have a window open, and she wasn't using a bullhorn, over the engine.


--R.

[Rust]

Have a hard time believing, if you like. Like it matters.

Well it doesn't matter quite the same to us as it matters to her parents. So they're suing for wrongful death, in Washington and Israel.

I hope the truth comes out, and personally I hope it was an accident. But it certainly deserves being looked at by an impartial body.

--R.

[Langston]

In your opinion, maybe.

In MY opinion, she got what she deserved... and they should have just put a gravestone right above where the bulldozer planted her.

[Rust]

In your opinion, maybe.

In MY opinion, she got what she deserved... and they should have just put a gravestone right above where the bulldozer planted her.

I think that's a wrap for this topic.

--R.

[Ginzburgh]

I don't think anyone who is promoting peace "deserves" to be run over and killed by a bulldozer.

But it doesn't surprise me that the comment came from a republican.

[Zanathar]

That wasn't the US and US laws do not apply there.

And I am pretty sure that running a person over with a bulldozer is a no no in israel too. And if it's not, it most certainly falls under the law of general fucking humanity and respect for human life.

If I was manning the bulldozer (which I wouldn't be) and there was a protester standing in front of it, I'd turn the thing off and call my supervisor. If my supervisor said, "run the person over" I'd give my two weeks notice.

Correct.

Of course, if that house is used to build bombs that are killing innocent lives, then it is ok to bulldoze the house, right? Or if it is in a neighborhood known for harboring terrorists, then it is ok too, right? After all, we bomb the fuck out of Irag neighborhoods and kill lots of innocent civilians all the time because "insurgents" may or may not be in that location. But, I guess these are acceptable casualties because we are fighting a war on Terror?

er... wait a sec.

I guess, according to you Ginz, it is ok that we do it, but not ok if Israel does it? Since they too, are fighting a war on terror?

You know Ginz, you werent in the dozer and you are a civilian, I imagine that who was in the dozer was a soldier, following orders. Just like our soldiers are doing in Iraq....

[Harrison]

I don't think anyone who is promoting peace "deserves" to be run over and killed by a bulldozer.

But it doesn't surprise me that the comment came from a republican.

Promoting peace and standing in front of A FUCKING BULLDOZER are two completely different things.

I can't believe you even said that.

[Zanchief]

I don't think anyone who is promoting peace "deserves" to be run over and killed by a bulldozer.

But it doesn't surprise me that the comment came from a republican.

Promoting peace and standing in front of A FUCKING BULLDOZER are two completely different things.

I can't believe you even said that.

She was trying to promote peace, however misguided you might think she was.

[Harrison]

I wonder how much peace she promoted in "retaliation" attacks.

[DangerPaul]

I just stood in front of a bulldozer this morning. I was not protesting for peace, but was pointing out where I wanted my yard to level out at. I lived.

[Ginzburgh]

Shut the fuck up assholes. The whole, "house harboring tunnels filled with WMD's" didn't present itself until the middle of the thread.

If the house was being used to harbor terrorist activities then no fucking duh they should bulldoze it. But...was that the case? Are there that many houses over there harboring terrorist activities that they have to send a fleet of bulldozers, work crews, peace promoters etc over there? If there are then fine. But the way the argument was originally presented was the house belonged to an innocent family, the girl was over there with some hippie organization promoting peace and she was intentionally run over with a bulldozer because she stood between it and the house of an "innocent" family.

I don't know what happened because I wasn't there. I don't know if she fell in the in front of it and the bulldozer driver didn't see her, I don't know if he intentionally ran her over, I don't know if the house was harboring terrorists, I don't know if the house belonged to an innocent family and whoever was doing the bulldozing wanted them out for some bogus, fucked up reason...I don't fucking know.

What I was reacting to was the general delight that others in this thread projected because a 23 year old girl was crushed by a bulldozer. I think it's fucked up to applaud the death of anyone who made it their life work to promote peace, a commitment that seems fairly evident from her letters that were posted by me earlier on in the thread.

[Zanchief]

I just stood in front of a bulldozer this morning. I was not protesting for peace, but was pointing out where I wanted my yard to level out at. I lived.

You should join the ISM, there people are weak against bulldozers.

[Ginzburgh]

Promoting peace and standing in front of A FUCKING BULLDOZER are two completely different things.

I can't believe you even said that.

Err...and why can't you believe I said that? Are you fucking stupid? That's like saying, "protesters NEVER chain themselves to shit to prove their point!" or how about "monks NEVER light themselves on fire and burn to death while meditating to prove their point" or "guys NEVER make mini guillotines and cut their pointer finger off in objection to the gun laws".

[Harrison]

I hate speeders.

I should go jump in front of a speeder going down my street to prove a point!!

All it would prove is that I am a fucking idiot for jumping in front of a speeding car.

Same here when she got her shit flattened.

[Ginzburgh]

I imagine that who was in the dozer was a soldier, following orders. Just like our soldiers are doing in Iraq....

And if I was a solider and I was given the order to run a protester over with a bulldozer, I would not do it. That is total horseshit. And that is why I am not a solider.

And if that was an American solider given and order like that from an American superior, I'm pretty sure the solider could outright refuse and beat a court marshall after he went to the fucking press with the story. It doesn't take much common sense to realize running protesters over with bulldozers is unnecessary. How about a bean bag shot to the chest and drag her out of the way when she is down??? Are there no other ways to remove a 120 pound woman other than running them over?