Tag: Rachel Corrie

No solace for family in Haifa court's verdict on investigation into Rachel Corrie's death

There was no solace in a Haifa District Court on Tuesday morning for the family of American activist Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by an enormous Israeli military D9 bulldozer as she sought to protect a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza Strip in 2003.

The verdict called the 23-year-old activist’s death a “regrettable accident”, just as the Israeli Army did after its own military investigation into Rachel’s death.

The Haifa District Court judge noted that the area was then designated as a “combat zone”, and that Rachel herself was therefore responsible for having taken the risk of being there.

At a press conference after the verdict, Rachel’s mother Cindy said that it had been clear to the family from the beginning that the military’s process of investigation was flawed and that it was in fact “a well-fueled system to protect the Israeli military and soldiers … and to provide them with impunity”. The family filed their civil case in 2005, and hearings began in 2010.

The Israeli State Prosecutor’s office [Tel Aviv District] issued a statement later saying that “the bulldozer and its commander had a very limited field of vision, such that they had no possibility of seeing Ms. Corrie and thus are exonerated of any blame for negligence”. According to the State Prosecutor, three different investigations had reached the same conclusion.

The D9 is a huge bulldozer, manufactured by Caterpiller Corporation and specially adapted in Israel for Israeli military with the addition of amoured plating for use in combat situations.

Israeli Attorney Yohanna Lerman, based in Tel Aviv, who has represented Palestinian clients against the Israeli military in other wrongful killing cases, said today that “even in a state of war, there is an obligation on an army and on all those who are working for the army or following army orders, according to international law, they have to check if their actions are reasonable, and if they are needed to protect lives, including their own” – and this is not what happened in this case, she said.

Although Lerman said she had not yet seen the full details of the 130-page ruling online, she indicated that a look at the full picture shows that Rachel was in front of the bulldozer, she was with a group who the driver had seen in the area, and he knew there were civilians in that place. “Rachel was not in military clothes, and she was not holding a weapon”.

“Civilians need to be treated totally different from terrorist groups”, Lerman said.

Continue reading No solace for family in Haifa court's verdict on investigation into Rachel Corrie's death

Tributes to Vittorio Arrigonio

Jeff Halper, the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) wrote a tribute to Vittorio Arrigoni, murdered in Gaza yesterday, and with whom Jeff apparently sailed to Gaza on the first Free Gaza expedition by sea from Cyprus in August 2008.

Jeff wrote that: “Less than two weeks after losing another friend and comrade, Juliano Mer-Khamis, I have to mourn and remember my fellow Free Gaza shipmate Vittorio (Vik) Arrigoni, who was brutally murdered last night by religious extremists in Gaza (and who actually resembled Juliano, physically, in his buoyant personality and in his insistence on “being there” when the oppressed needed him).

Vik was truly a person greater than life. He was so filled with energy, a mixture of joy, camaraderie and impatience with the confines of boats and prisons like Gaza, that he would suddenly lift you into the air, or wrestle with you – he was a big, strong, handsome guy, ebullient and smiling even in the most oppressive and dangerous situations – as if to tell you: Yaala! These Israel naval ships shooting at us and the Palestinian fisherman cannot prevail over our solidarity, outrage and the justice of our cause! (Vik was wounded in one of those confrontations).

He would come up behind you and say: The Occupation will fall just like this! (and he would wrestle you to the ground, laughing and playing with you as he did).

Vik, who like me received Palestinian citizenship and a passport when we broke the siege of Gaza and sailed into Gaza port in August, 2008, was a peace-maker exemplar.

Continue reading Tributes to Vittorio Arrigonio

Olive oil, security considerations, and the Rachel Corrie trial in Haifa

This is humor. But, like all the best humor, this has a firm basis in reality.

It is also brilliant writing.

It is uniquely insightful reporting.

Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh, a retired doctor from the Galilee in northern Israel, an Arab-Palestinian citizen of Israel, has been covering the Rachel Corrie trial in Haifa, Israel’s northern port.

Rachel Corrie’s parents are suing Israel for a symbolic one dollar for a careless military investigation into the death of their daughter who was crushed by an IDF D-9 bulldozer as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Gazan home in 2003.

This post, dated 9 November, and entitled “Obsessed with Fear”, is a perfect description of the security anxieties that attend the most mundane daily activities.

All sorts of things enter into consideration of how best to go about getting from Point A to Point B, as Dr. Kanaaneh documents:
“This year the crop is good. A friend from Jerusalem had asked us for two jerry cans of fresh olive oil direct from the press. Raja Shehadeh was scheduled to have a book launch in Jerusalem and we decided to kill two birds. That morning, the next session of the Rachel Corrie case was being held in Haifa. We loaded the olive oil and headed to Haifa to start the day with this third bird. Knowing our friends in Jerusalem to be olive oil connoisseurs we loaded the new fifty-liter Italian-made stainless steel special container that we had purchased for our own use in the trunk of the car and headed out for a day of adventure and Palestinian camaraderie.

“But there was a hitch: how much hassle will the security guards at the entrance to the parking area under the Haifa court building give us? Will they insist on opening our overnight bags? How alarming will the empty container seem to them? Will they insist on verifying the nature of the liquid contents of the two jerry cans? Will they alert the special explosive experts in the Haifa police department? Will they hold me till the end of the proceedings? Will I miss the Corrie case session altogether? Might chemical analysis of the oil reveal traces of fertilizer, perhaps the explosive type? And what if the sneaky farmer who sold me the olive oil at the press had tampered with the olive oil? Recently there has been some friction between the youth of our two clans in the village. What if he decided to take revenge on me? And I had let him load the two oil containers in the trunk of my car in my absence. Who knows what he could have thrown in the trunk while I was busy sipping coffee with the press owner and talking nonsense about the year’s olive crop? I worried myself sick. That sneaky son of a bitch!

Continue reading Olive oil, security considerations, and the Rachel Corrie trial in Haifa

"Allah Yerhamu" – the link between Rachel Corrie's death and the Kufr Qassim massacre

Allah Yerhamu – May God have mercy on him.

Thia is an Arabic phrase spoken after the news of someone’s death.

A communication over military radio between D-9 bulldozers operating in Gaza when American activist Rachel Corrie was trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home in the spring of 2003. Corrie had just been crushed to death.

Rachel Corrie was, of course, female, a point the good doctor makes below in discussing a significant part of the military radio communications which were somehow missing from the transcript, and which only emerged when the audio was recently played in court. Rachel, an American student, was 23 years old on the day she was killed.

A trial in Haifa district court last week heard testimony from the D-9 bulldozer driver and his military commanders this week about what happened from their point of view.

Several fascinating and bitterly witty blog posts have been written about the trial, which opened last March in Haifa, by Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh, a retired physician from Arrabeh village in the Galilee, who has been attending the trial as a public witness. Dr. Kanaaneh wrote his report of the long-awaited Israeli military testimony in the court in Haifa last week, and posted on his own blog on Monday 18 October, here and then picked up on the Mondoweiss blog.

Rachel Corrie’s parents and her sister have been attending every session of the trial — as, apparently, have U.S. Consulate officials.

In his post, Dr. Kanaaneh makes a chilling link between Rachel Corrie’s death in Gaza seven years ago, and the Kufr Qassim massacre 54 years ago — and explains that the expression “Allah Yerhamu” is the connection:

“Hussain Abu-Hussain, the Corries’ lawyer … spent the whole day trying in vain to trick witnesses of the murder of the late ISM volunteer into telling the truth. But the relevant portions of those witnesses’ memory were hermetically sealed behind an impermeable wall of forgetfulness. Limited in my scope of knowledge and understanding to the field of medicine, I am intrigued by the mystery of what effective mind-altering drugs the Israeli Defense Forces have at their disposal to wipe out selective segments of their soldiers’ recall and to effect such precise lacuna of brain damage. Hussain and his fellow international human rights legal expert, Jamil Dakwar, spent the morning interrogating the young and aggressive head of the Military Police unit that had investigated and dismissed as incidental and irrelevant the fact of Rachel’s death in close proximity to two IDF D-9R Caterpillars operating in the Gaza Strep. Despite his striking alertness and wide-eyed combative demeanor on the witness stand, he still lapsed into a state of amnesia when a question crept to within touching distance of the prohibited black hole of truth. On more than one occasion he would throw up his hands in a dismissive private gesture of exasperation to the judge as if in intimate private conversation with him. He seemed to do that every time he felt that he had succeeded in debunking a clever ploy by Abu-Hussain or in adequately deflecting another of the latter’s attempts at reminding him of details he had consciously forgotten. He confirmed, albeit indirectly, the statement previously made in court by one of his colleagues to the effect that “in war there are no civilians.” But he did so in such a circumspect and disconnected manner that the judge seemed to miss the point, for He (and the capital here is intentional, for that is how He seems to consider His position in the domain of His court of judgment) did not display any sign of distress or aggravation in line with what I have come to expect neurologically. Abu-Hussain grilled this witness on the specific point of what rules and regulations there existed on the subject of operating a D-9 in the presence of civilians in the area. The witness, whose name, Shalom, said it all, wavered between the written prohibition of operating the Caterpillar as a battle implement in close vicinity of civilians and the definition of what constituted a war arena and who were civilians and who were not and under what circumstances, etc. etc. ad infinitum. All that Abu-Hussain could prove was that it is very difficult to trick a man who is intent on forgetting to remember.
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Continue reading "Allah Yerhamu" – the link between Rachel Corrie's death and the Kufr Qassim massacre

Israel lining up options to deal with Freedom Flotilla

The Freedom Flotilla says its rendez-vous in international waters offshore Gaza will be on Saturday, there are reports of Turkish-Israeli contacts, and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls this big operation a “publicity stunt”.

(Do you use military force against a publicity stunt?)

Israel is lining up its options to deal with the situation.

Continue reading Israel lining up options to deal with Freedom Flotilla

More on Israel's use of D-9 bulldozers

I overlooked this story, about a month ago, by Bradley Burston in Haaretz on Friday, 17 March, entitled: “Who remembers the name Rachel Corrie?”

Burston answers his own question: “In Israel, hardly anyone. But to many a pro-Palestinian American or Briton – and to many of their pro-Israeli antagonists – the mere mention of the name is enough to make the blood boil”.

The article was written on or about the third anniversary of her being crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer while attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house in the southern Gaza Strip. But, Burston’s article is as much if not more about the instrument of her death — as he wrote, “a mammoth IDF armored bulldozer”, a “behemoth” — than about Rachel Corrie herself.

Continue reading More on Israel's use of D-9 bulldozers