With friends like Rachel Corrie's, she didn't need enemies

An Israeli court today ruled that the death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American who was killed by a military bulldozer in 2003 was a regrettable accident for which Corrie was responsible and that there was no proof that the driver of the bulldozer acted with intent to harm her.

While focusing on the role of the IDF, the media has largely ignored the role played by International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the organisation with which Rachel Corrie was involved, with her tragic death.

Adam Levick, the Managing Editor of CiF Watch and a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism has posted a blistering attack on ISM, showing their connection to Palestinian terror groups and their cynical disregard for Rachel Corrie’s safety.

Levick shows that the ISM, a group of young, extreme Left Americans, intentionally hindered IDFanti-terror activities by serving as human shields for terrorist operatives and providing Palestinian terrorist operatives with financial, logistical and moral support, hindering the razing and sealing of houses of suicide bombers.

In a 2002 article, ISM co-founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf wrote:  ‘The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent,’ adding that ‘[i]n actuality, nonviolence is not enough . . . Yes, people will get killed and injured.’ 

Shapiro and Arraf regard such deaths as ‘no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah.’

In 2003, the year Rachel Corrie died, ISM activist Susan Barclay admitted in an interview http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Activist-s-death-focuses-spotlight-on-Mideast-1110154.php#page-2 that she worked with representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who murdered three people at Mike’s bar in Tel Aviv.

Rachel Corrie died in the ‘Military Installations Area,’ along the Egyptian border, at the Philadelphi Route, which was considered a hostile battlefield because of the large number of attacks carried out by terrorists. The IDF mission on the day in question, which Corrie and her fellow activists were obstructing, was not to bulldoze houses but to level terrain and clear debris near the border to remove cover for future terrorist attacks.

Corrie and the other ISM activists ignored IDF warnings and refused to leave the area, deliberately putting themselves in physical danger. Corrie’s ISM colleague Joseph Smith justified her death as a sacrifice for the cause:

The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. And many, many, many Palestinians give their lives for it all the time. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression.

Apart from the falsehood of the claim that ‘many, many, many Palestinians give their lives’ resisting so-called Israeli brutality, Smith callously views Rachel Corrie’s death as a price worth paying. And of course, the ISM will never face serious critical scrutiny for their recklessness, despite their well-documented record of terror-abetting extremism, which ultimately took the life of Rachel Corrie.

Read the full article here.