The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) strongly condemns Israel’s killing of US peace activist Rachel Corrie in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old US citizen from Olympia, Washington, was attempting to prevent an Israeli army bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in Al-Salam neighbourhood in the southern Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli army bulldozer ran over Rachel Corrie and covered her with sand, thereby crushing her chest and skull.

Like many foreign peace activist in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who have exhibited an unwavering commitment to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people over the past two years, Rachel had placed her own life in danger in a most powerful expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people and protest against Israel’s illegal occupation and human rights violations.

Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continues to be one of the harshest Israeli occupation policies against the Palestinian people, and a grave human rights violation. Since June 1967, Israel has demolished more than 6000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and more than 2,500 in occupied east Jerusalem. It is estimated that, since the first Intifada of 1987, Israel has made more than 16,000 Palestinians completely homeless.

It is for such reasons that people like Rachel feel compelled to risk their lives in order to provide protection to the Palestinians.

The Israeli government must be held accountable for its killing of Rachel Corrie, and for the killing of all innocent civilians, Palestinians and non-Palestinians. The Israeli military institution must not be allowed to behave as an entity above the law, and must be held responsible for its illegal actions in the Palestinian territories.

MIFTAH urges the international community to clearly condemn Israel’s killing of innocent lives, and calls upon the representatives of the international community in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to take immediate action in collectively voicing their protest against Israel’s brutal military measures in the Palestinian territories.

Date sent: Mon, 17 Mar 2003
From: ISM Rafah ismrafah@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents

March 16, 2003

We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip.

We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global community and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are unable to protect themselves.

Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the media her experience in her own words at this time.

Thank you.
Craig and Cindy Corrie,
parents of Rachel Corrie

Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003.

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me, “Ali”--or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago--at least regarding Israel.

Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. 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 US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.

They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military--backed by the world’s only superpower--in it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.

As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine--now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater.

Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and also occasionally waving-- many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away.

In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.

I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza." Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope they will start.

I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.

I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister- community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.

Rachel Corrie

The real terrorist was an Israeli.

His weapon was not a bomb, but an army bulldozer.

And Rachel Corrie of Olympia, just 23, was the victim, run over and killed by bone-crushing steel, made in the USA.

You could certainly sum up Sunday's tragedy in the Gaza Strip that way. That's in sharp contrast to how Israel is often portrayed in this unending Middle East conflict:

As the bigger victim of an inexcusable Palestinian terror.

Try telling that to Rachel's family and friends.

Tell that to her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement, who believe in non-violent opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Tell it to the Palestinians who suffer brutality and injustice at the hands of Israel's government.

People here may not know -- or care -- about Palestinians who suffer a daily barrage of bullets and bulldozers.

Then someone like Rachel -- an activist committed to peaceful protest -- is killed and we all sit up and take notice.

After all, Rachel was American.

Looked like the girl next door, which in fact is what she was.

"It's a shame this is what it takes," Peter Lippman of Jewish Voices Against the Occupation told me.

Lippman spoke Sunday at the University of Washington after a screening of a movie that showed the horrors of Palestinian life.

Of course, there is another side to the sobering story.

Israel has been subject to a reign of terror by Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen.

At least 700 Israelis have died since September 2000, as well as 2,100 Palestinians who've been killed by Israelis over the same period.

Israelis have urged their government to do what it must to protect innocent citizens. And the government has, which explains the ongoing power plays, humiliating confrontations and killings of Palestinians.

Rachel's death, captured on camera, put a local face on the faraway suffering.

"I'm upset," Lippman sighed, "about what happened."

With good reason.

The Israeli military insists Rachel's death was accidental, and that might turn out to be the official ruling.

But it defies the accounts of witnesses and seems to counter common sense.

Rachel was trying to prevent the army from demolishing a Palestinian home in a strip of land near a refugee camp. In broad daylight, she wore a bright-colored orange vest -- with reflective stripes -- that could have been spotted from the moon.

Photos make it clear she was holding a bullhorn and standing in front of the bulldozer. At one point, she began shouting at the driver.

"There's no way he didn't see her, since she was practically looking into the cabin," a fellow activist told Haaretz, a daily newspaper in Israel.

Even if the vehicle had blind spots -- that is a remote possibility -- how does that explain this?

Witnesses say the bulldozer ran over Rachel, and then reversed its path and ran over her again.

Sounds just like the bulldozer stories Palestinians have been talking about for years. Sounds just like murder.

The relative silence of the United States government on Rachel's death is appalling, especially since American tax money cascades into coffers of the Israeli government and allows the military to obtain bullets, and Caterpillar bulldozers.

President Bush, who is preoccupied with war matters, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Israel says it is investigating, and will get to the bottom of it.

Don't hold your breath.

Do, however, take a moment to remember Rachel -- a brave, vocal, impassioned crusader. She was a doer who found her purpose in life.

Her spirit reminds me of Amy Biehl, a young California woman who became so incensed by injustice blacks were suffering under apartheid in South Africa that she picked up and moved there.

Amy wanted to be an agent of positive change -- and paid with her life. In 1993, a group of black youths beat and stabbed her because of something so ridiculous -- the color of her skin. They thought she was an Afrikaner.

Amy's death put the international spotlight on the plight of South Africa's dispossessed. Rachel's death ought to do the same for the Palestinian situation.

Otherwise, her life will have been lost in vain.

Rachel was not naive. She knew the risks of acting as a human shield for Palestinians. She realized the rewards, too.

"I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them," Rachel wrote in an e-mail. "No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it."

Rachel did, and Rachel died. We can only hope the blood she shed on bulldozed soil sows change.

This is an urgent and repeated appeal to the world to immediately intervene, in light of the recent stories of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women by Israeli occupation forces during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Palestinian women are being displaced, tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared, while the world sits idle. Silence and inaction in the wake of these horrifying crimes amount to complicity.

Over the past few days, more horrifying testimonies and stories have emerged from Gaza of sadistic acts by Israeli soldiers, including torture, rape, and mass field executions at hospitals where civilians are seeking shelter, medical treatment and refuge.

Palestinian civil society and UN experts have sounded the alarm multiple times and reported cases of rape and sexual violence before and during this genocide. These reports continue to be deliberately and inexcusably ignored, including by prominent and otherwise vocal feminist organizations and figures.

The deafening silence of “Western” feminists and mainstream media in particular is deliberate and inexcusable, as opposed to their earlier outrage over Israeli allegations and misinformation, used to justify this genocide.

Many Palestinian women and girls who are survivors of rape and sexual violence are hesitant to come forward, due to the social stigma in a conservative society and the belief that Israel will not be held accountable for such crimes.

Israel is committing the most horrific war crimes, and weaponizing rape and sexual violence against Palestinians as part of its genocide in Gaza and assault on the Palestinian people as a whole, throughout all of Palestine. This is the result of decades of impunity, preferential treatment and lack of international accountability by the international community. Words are not enough to describe or stop this horror; action is needed.

We conclude this SOS appeal by reminding our sisters and allies around the world that our rights, our dignity, and our humanity are indivisible. Forsaking Palestinian victims now for political convenience would be an unforgivable betrayal to decades of sacrifice and feminist struggle.

We call for:

• The international community must employ all available tools of international accountability, including political and economic sanctions, to bring an immediate and lasting ceasefire and provision of unconditional humanitarian aid.

• States must immediately impose an arms embargo on Israel and honor their moral and legal obligations, including those pronounced in the Genocide Convention.

• States need to investigate and prosecute Israeli soldiers with dual citizenship implicated in these atrocities.

• The Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict must honor her mandate and launch an immediate investigation into the ongoing atrocities.

• Feminists around the world must sound the alarm globally on the unspeakable human rights violations taking place in Gaza, namely the sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian women and girls.

• Journalists and media outlets must do their due diligence in reporting on these stories through fair and unbiased coverage.

Signatories:

1. American Federation of Ramallah Palestine
2. Association of women’s Action
3. AWMR Italia - Donne della Regione Mediterranea
4. Bisan Center for Research and Development
5. Community Development and Media Center
6. Cultura è libertà una campagna per la Palestina
7. Enjaz Foundation for development
8. Filastiniyat
9. Human Rights and Democracy Media Center SHAMS
10. Institute of Women's Studies
11. Not to forget women society
12. Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)
13. Palestinian Women's Action committee
14. Rete Femminista Marche Molto+di194
15. Rural Women Development Society
16. Sinal do Vale
17. Singola
18. Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice
19. The center for defense of liberties and civil rights “Hurryyat”
20. The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - MIFTAH
21. The Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development-PWWSD
22. The Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in Southwest Asia and North Africa (WHRDMENA)
23. Union of Palestinian Women Committees
24. Wattan media network
25. Women Media and Development
26. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
27. رابطة المرأة العراقية
28. شبكة المستقبل الديمقراطية العراقية

We, at the Palestinian NGO Forum to Combat Violence against Women and all Arab women’s and rights organizations raise our voices loud and clear on the eve of March 8, to say: “Stop the onslaught and crimes against women and children in Gaza. Stop the crime of genocide, the crime of starvation and forced displacement”. So far, this aggression has resulted in the killing of 31,000 Palestinians, over 70% of whom are women and children. Two women are killed every hour , in addition to many others still under the rubble. There are women whose fate is unknown, after being taken away by occupation forces.

Who will restore normalcy for us Palestinian women after these atrocities?

We have always held activities on March 8. We had a long list of rights we demanded and others we were able to achieve. However today, as the women of Gaza are being annihilated, we stand the length and breadth of our homeland and our Arab nations, angry, in a state of revolution and in deep mourning. Our demand today is to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip and to halt the reproductive genocide against our women. We declare this day the day of Palestinian women, as they stand hungry in long queues, waiting for insufficient aid, terrified of the skies above them, filled with missiles of death. This is for the women whose bodies are exhausted, in camps for the displaced and in shelter centers, for those raped in prison and for their naked bodies stripped at checkpoints. It is for the menstruating women who cannot find sanitary products and for those with high-risk pregnancies who are starving, displaced and bombed. It is for the women whose wombs may be removed for the simplest of medical complications and those whose privacy has been violated because of overcrowded tents and displacement. It is for the mothers who could die at any moment and for all women whose Palestinianism has crucified humanity at the altar, amid deafening Arab silence, boundless American support and the complicity of several European countries.

Nevertheless, we continue to appreciate all forms of Arab and international support and solidarity with the Palestinian cause, which shows respect for our people’s dignity. Widening this solidarity will further reaffirm the justness of our cause. Hence, we await more action and movements in solidarity of our right to demand an immediate end to the genocide in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem, to forge our way forward towards freedom, self-determination and the establishment of an independent and fully-sovereign Palestinian state.

Today, we Palestinian and Arab women, reaffirm the following on March 8 and every day forward:

- To put pressure on Israel to immediately halt its aggression and to hold its leaders accountable for their crimes in violation of international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention and all international laws and treaties, towards delegitimizing this occupying entity.

- To open the Rafah Crossing and all crossings to allow aid in and the wounded out for treatment

- To dismantle the land corridor linking Israel with some Arab countries supplying it with goods

Long Live Palestinian Women, who stand steadfast and resistant in the face of the Zionist aggression We speak in the voices of Gaza’s women and say:

Halt the genocide…halt the onslaught immediately!

In a recent statement, nearly five months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, several UN experts confirmed the various reports and testimonies that have been coming from Palestinian women and human rights organizations for months now. In Gaza, women have been kidnapped and forcibly disappeared and placed in dire conditions in undisclosed locations. In the occupied West Bank, released prisoners testified on the horrific realities inside Israeli prisons and the widespread torture and ill-treatment where sexual violence is used as a weapon employed against both women and men. The targeting of women and girls with such atrocious crimes is targeting the most vulnerable, in an attempt to break and degrade the society as a whole.

The inaction and failure of the international community to stop Israeli crimes, namely the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and other heinous crimes all across Palestine for decades now has emboldened Israel to act with impunity. This allows Israel to continue committing horrific crimes against Palestinian women and girls, namely rape and other forms of sexual violence and torture.

The silence of “Western” feminists has also been appalling, given their earlier outrage about unsubstantiated Israeli allegations which were used to justify and commit the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

First and foremost, we demand an immediate ceasefire and the unconditional provision of humanitarian aid. In order to put an end to such heinous crimes and impunity, we reiterate the need for an independent international investigation into all crimes, especially sexual violence, followed by international accountability for the perpetrators.

4/29/04-CFL ALERT:

TALKING POINTS

* UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei will be visiting Israel in July. ElBaradei has repeatedly called for Israel to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Government sources have indicated that they will not allow ElBaradei to visit the Dimona nuclear reactor. Last November ElBaradei said Israel should sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and thus open up its atomic sites to international inspections. ElBaradei has also condemned "this imbalance in the region [with] Israel sitting on nuclear weapons and everybody else trying to stick to the Nonproliferation Treaty."

*Contact your representatives and ask that the U.S. sponsor a UN Resolution that would investigate Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Remind them that we waged war on Iraq because the Bush administration falsely claimed that Saddam had WMD’s. Meanwhile, Washington has repeatedly prevented any discussion of Israel’s nuclear weapons at the UN. These double standards are indicative of the racist double standards in Washington against Arabs and Muslims. Tell your elected officials that you support immediate diplomatic and economic sanctions against Israel for its repeated flouting of international law, U.N. resolutions and its nuclear proliferation.

*Remind your representatives that they have an obligation to promote and protect American interests. Waging war against Arab countries while rewarding Israeli intransigence does not promote our interests in the Middle East and only works to strengthen the argument that a U.S./Israeli plan to redevelop the Middle East is being played out.

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WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111
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WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461

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Citizens for Fair Legislation is a grassroots organization committed to encouraging a fair domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the US/Arab world.
www.cflweb.org

TALKING POINTS:

*The events of the past few weeks have demonstrated to the world what the Palestinian struggle is all about. Israel continues to make halfhearted efforts for peace while working in the shadows to assure such efforts are not successful.

*With every inch of Palestinian land that the Israelis continue to illegally annex, the idea of a two state solution is quickly dying. It is clear that Israel will never allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

*A one state solution is the only legitimate solution to the theft of so much Palestinian land. Palestinians and Jews would have equal rights with equal voting power. All men and women would live free under one democratically elected government.

On 3/16/2003 an American woman in Gaza protesting the occupation was murdered after being run over by an Israeli bulldozer. Witnesses said Rachel Corey, from the state of Washington, was trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in Rafah, Palestine. A witness,Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said: "[Rachel Corey] waved for the bulldozer to stop. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."

CFL calls on all peace groups in the United States and around the world to contact congress and tell them that they must condemn this action and call for an investigation of Israeli policies in the occupied territories.