Rachel Corrie’s 5th Anniversary: Heroic Death, Adds to Israel’s Criminal Record

Rachel Corrie’s 5th Anniversary: Heroic Death, Adds to Israel’s Criminal Record

These days five years ago, Palestinian occupied territories witnessed the brutal death of the US activist Rachel Corrie, 23, by Israeli bulldozers while they were demolishing a house of a Palestinian family. Rachel Corrie’s death gave another- not a last- proof on the barbarism of Israeli Occupation Forces and to reflect the international community”s recklessness towards the Palestinian cause.
 
Born and raised in the village of Olympia, Washington, Rachel Corrie was about to graduate from Evergreen State College. When she was 10 years old, she wrote a poem that reflects her dissatisfaction of tortured children.
 
In early 2003, Rachel became an activist in the International Solidarity Movement that included UK, US and Canadian youth who traveled to the Palestinians territories facing demolishing in a bid to stop it. She went to Gaza Strip for a peaceful struggle against operations carried out by Israeli army.
 
 
During her presence in Gaza , Rachel lived among a family of a Palestinian doctor in a house where two rooms of it were unused due to Israeli strikes. All family members sleep in the parents’ room. She was sleeping on the floor beside a daughter of this family. She was sad, according to her memoirs and letters to her family, because she felt she was a burden on these affectionate people. “They were dealing with me with love and care. I can come and go at anytime. However, they were blockaded, they scarcely moved. I was denouncing the world’s recklessness towards what is happening against these Palestinians”, she said in her memoirs which were published after her death.
 
In a letter to her mother, she said:” This must come to an end. We must leave everything and dedicate our life to end this situation. I think nothing is more important. I want to master dancing, to have friends and lovers, and to tell stories to my friends. But I want before any of this to end this situation. What I feel is called unbelieving and fear, disappointment, a feeling of sadness for thinking that this is the basic truth in our world and that all of us practically contribute to what is happening. This was not what I wanted when I came to this life. This wasn”t what people was expecting when they came to life. This is not the world which you and my father and me wanted when you decided to bring me to life”.
 
 
In the morning of March, 16th, 2003 in Rafah Refugee Camp, a bulldozer went to destroy a house while Rachel and seven other peace activists stood in front of the bulldozer trying through a megaphone to prevent them from demolishing the house. She managed to delay the work of this bulldozer for two house.
 
However, the driver did not care for her calls and moved towards her trying to crush her with the front scoop of the bulldozer but she managed to climb the bulldozer ignoring warnings of her colleagues who asked her to escape from this driver. However, the driver put her inside the bulldozers scoop and filled it with dust and threw her and the dust on the ground. After that, he moved and crushed her with the fork of the bulldozer and left it dead and her friends brought her out of the dust with fractures in her skull and her rips crushed and her backbone damaged. They sent her to Al Nagar”s hospital in Rafah, but in vain, she died at the age of 23 years.