It is hard to believe that we lost Rachel Corrie in March 2003. Our pain makes it feel like only yesterday especially now that a consistently biased lying Israeli judge justified exonerating her killers by vilifying the International Solidarity Movement (ISM – see links below). As a Palestinian who happens to also hold a US passport and most importantly as a human being, I
found the silence of the Obama administration on the murder of a US citizen particularly revealing. Such occasions make us cry but also because we start to remember others: the first three that came to my mind were Vittorio Arrigoni, Bassem and Jawaher Aburahma, then to be followed by a flood of faces and names. When will this injustice end and the murders
stop?

As for hundreds of years, colossal injustices must be and are answered by people. Not just in the case of Rachel but the tens of thousands of civilians murdered since the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Palestine. In a short while we commemorate the massacres of Sabra and Shatila where over 1300 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese were brutally murdered by mercenaries of the Israeli state in 1982 (see http://qumsiyeh.org/sabraandshatila/ ). In the subsequent 30 years, with US direct and indirect support, the killing spree continues and the ethnic cleansing continues. 7 million of us are now refugees or displaced people. In the middle of this darkness always come bright lights like Rachel and thousands of others.

Rachel lived her ideals and taught us to live based on these ideals. In our last fleeting thought before we die, we never consider that we should have worked for more money or more power but we do think that the good that we do in life must have meant something. Rachel reminded us of this. Rachel’s good deeds and memory of her will live long after her killers and the Israeli judge die in obscurity. Her memory will live long after apartheid ends in Palestine and we have return and freedom. In that future, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others will join hands and hearts to remember this young girl and all the other martyrs along the way to equality and justice.

Our job is to work harder to make sure the inevitable future arrives
sooner.

A poem I wrote March 16, 2008

Of humanity

People get shot, Rachel spoke
I am afraid, she wrote
Want to Dance
I can’t believe
and so many of her remain
in the world
in her words
in our hearts
But today, with a lump in my throat
what paces in my thought
That strange phrase from a holy book
“they plan but God is the best of planners”
Nervously I ask it to slow down
explain yourself to a refugee spirit
what do you plan for the wretched souls
Why Rachel
Or Hurndall
Why Hiam and Marwa?
Why Faris and Al-Durra?
And who is this divine?
In us all?
Do I learn something on this fifth anniversary
of death of another innocent
Is it misery and pain?
Love and action?
Questions or answers?
Or will all I am left with be that smell of the air of Palestine
and the soil, that soaked soil
that Rachel’s last breath took in
to give us the Spring
of our understanding.

Rachel’s mother: Clearing the Israeli army in this murder is a bad day for
“my family, for human rights, and for humanity”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/9503207/Rachel-Corrie-ruling-a-bad-day-for-humanity-says-her-mother.html

Video shows it was cold blooded murder

Jewish Voices for Peace deplores verdict
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/jvp-deplores-rachel-corrie-verdict

ISM response
http://palsolidarity.org/2012/08/isms-response-to-the-rachel-corrie-verdict-bds/

Worthewhile rereading Rachel’s letters
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/rachel/emails

Commentary by Michael Gillespie
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rachel-Corrie-Presente-by-Michael-Gillespie-120829-487.html

What has become of our nation? Netanyahu regime has destroyed our
livelihood, dreams, values and future; turned Israel into racist, violent
state, by Yael Gvirtz
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4270498,00.html

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org

Additionally:

The photo of graffiti in Gaza was taken by British activist Tom Hurndall, who was killed by an Israeli sniper soon after Rachel’s death.

Tom was 21 years old when he was shot. A photography student, he had left the UK to volunteer as a ‘human shield’ in Iraq. Here he heard about the ISM, one of whose volunteers, Rachel Corrie, had just been killed by a bulldozer whilst protesting house demolitions in Rafah. He headed there himself, arriving on the 6th April.

On the day of his shooting, Tom was with other ISM activists walking through Rafah when Israeli sniper fire started. Almost everyone ran for safety, but Tom noticed that three children, aged between four and seven, had remained motionless, paralysed with fear. Tom went back for them. He got the little boy to safety, and then went back for the two girls. He was wearing a fluorescent vest, and was clearly unarmed. An Israeli sniper shot him in the head.

Tom’s shooting followed the murder of Rachel Corrie, run over by a bulldozer on the 16th March, and the near fatal shooting of Brian Avery, shot in the face in Jenin on April 5th. Later that month, another Brit, filmmaker James Miller, was also killed by a sniper in Rafah. The Israeli military have refused to accept any responsibility for what they did to Rachel, Brian or James.

http://www.tomhurndall.co.uk/