International Solidarity Movement Activist Killed in Gaza by Israeli Forces
by Starhawk

Today a young woman was killed in Gaza. Young women, but more often young men, get killed in Gaza and the West Bank every day, and the world pays no attention. What was different today is that Rachel Corrie was an American, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the group that I’m here with in occupied Palestine. And her death is a particularly horrifying example of the cold blooded dehumanization that characterizes this occupation. Rachel was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza According to the other activists who were with her, she was in dialogue with the operator in the spirit of nonviolence that is a guiding principle of the ISM, which provides support for Palestinian civilians and for nonviolent efforts to bring about justice for Palestine. She climbed up on the bulldozer, to talk to the soldier in the cockpit. She climbed down. She sat in front of the bulldozer. The soldier in control of the huge machine drove it deliberately over her.


Rachel was twenty three years old. I am trying to fathom the mind that could pull the levers and gun the motor to crush the life out of her young body. That choice, that deliberate act of murder that ended her sweet life, seems incomprehensible. But here in occupied Palestine, that murder seems a logical outgrowth of the system of total dehumanization that controls every aspect of life, that cannot see the human being in the Palestinian, that claims to be fighting terror by institutionalizing it.


Please register your outrage—at Rachel’s murder, at the home demolitions that she was trying to stop, at the illegal occupation that can only be defended by brutalizing a whole people.

Call the Ministry of Defense
972 3 6955476
(011972 3 6955476) from the US

972 3 69 75 220
(011972) 3 69 75 220 from the US

Fax the Foreign Office
972 2 5303506
011972 530 3506
General Director: Phone
972 2 530 7704
011972 2 530 3506 (from the US)

Call or demonstrate or shut down the Israeli Embassy or you local consulate.
If you are from the US, call or write your Senators and Congressional Representative.