Twenty years after her death, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corriegaza-palestiniansaid Israel-hamas-war
Twenty years ago this month, a young American activist stood up for her beliefs and protested against the demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip. In the area of Rafah where she lived, bulldozers wrecked the surrounding houses on March 16, 2003 in order to get to the Nasrallah family home.
Under the Israeli law to which she referred, which has been upheld by the country’s Supreme Court, Israel cannot be held liable for its actions in war – and Israel says its own law overrides international law in such cases.
Cindy says that at least one person in the bulldozer knew thatRachel was in front of it. “I mean, the most obvious thing to do is say, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t see her and we’re so sorry.’ They never said that.”
They launched a civil suit in 2010, seeking a symbolic $1 compensation, after an internal military investigation cleared the bulldozer’s driver and spotter of any blame. The Israeli court allowed the soldiers’ testimony to be heard but not the video that they claim proves discrepancies in the military account.
Her parents Cindy and Craig spent years pursuing the case in Israel and the US, accusing the military of either deliberately killing their daughter or grossNegligence in her death.
She was responsible for her own death because the soldiers in the armored cab hadn’t heard her or seen her, an Israeli army investigation concluded.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
Living with the Light in Rafah: Rachel’s Legacy and a Community of Action for Peace, Justice, and the Rights of Palestinians
She said her daughter’s legacy is creating a community of people working toward peace and justice. “I think Rachel … knowing what a really critical observer she was, just transformed our understanding of what was happening 21 years ago in Gaza and throughout that region,” she says. “So I think the legacy is what more people engage with, learning, understanding, and knowing what a huge, enormous responsibility we have to try to impact it.”
Cindy said that it’s every parent’s worst nightmare. I would have said ‘No,’ if people had told me that Rachel’s death would lead to the creation of a way to carry on. I won’t draw another breath.'”
“After a little while,” he says, “you realize we’ve met many Palestinians and Israelis that feel the same way, have suffered the same sort of loss and want no one else to suffer that.”
Nasrallah said Corrie used to join maintenance teams from the Rafah municipality to try to deter the Israeli army from attacking them when they were fixing broken water lines or repairing the electricity grid after Israeli attacks.
“She was a leader when she chose to use her pen and words to fight for leading change, to educate the world about the lost human rights and the urgent need for peace and justice in this area,” he wrote.
He wrote from Gaza saying that he knew of a child who would sleep peacefully at the end of the day and tell sweet stories to help them sleep safely.
The Nasrallah family is located in Rafah and staying with the family is what Corrie would do when she was there.
“It’s hard to hold in your mind what’s happening here – living lives that no child should have to live,” she wrote them. There was less risk of being shot in the parents’ room, she wrote, since the bullet holes were in the walls.
After arriving in Gaza as a college student with the activist group the International Solidarity Movement, Corrie told her parents she was confronted with a reality she could never have imagined.
People in third-world countries feel the same way we do. We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us. We are the same as them.
“We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we’re ignoring them,” she read, a pony-tailed girl delivering the message with the passion and determination of a seasoned politician.
At the Washington state capitol, at 10 years old, Corrie wrote a statement and said she wanted to stop children from dying of hunger.
Corrie wrote stories almost as soon as she learned how to write, her mother tells NPR. Her creativity and a passion for social justice were nurtured by an alternative public school, founded by parents including hers, that she attended in Olympia.
But Corrie’s own words have perhaps had the widest reach. Her journals and emails home were turned into books, including My Name is Rachel Corrie, and a play by the same name.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
Nasrallah’s family lives in Rafah — a Gaza village where militants often hide in the middle of israel’s war
“Some of that just continually goes in my mind, talking about the others,” he says. They are who we are. We are indeed them. They dream our dreams. We wish they were ours. That is true for me, and it needs to be repeated.
In the last few years, children have been shot and killed in this area. “I feel like what I’m witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of people’s ability to survive. That’s incredibly frightening.
Nour says the family worries about the lack of medication for her father, who has chronic diseases, and a cousin who is eight months pregnant and unable to get adequate protein.
The Nasrallah home was left standing on the day Corrie was killed, but eventually was demolished after Corrie’s death — part of an operation in which Israel said it needed to clear the area of hiding places for militants. They are currently living in a new home in Rafah, and are worried that their current home could be destroyed by an invasion of Israel.
In many ways, the Nasrallah family were typical of middle-class Gaza life. Samir Nasrallah, the patriarch, was a pharmacist. He and his wife lived with their children near the Israeli border.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
The Israeli-Israeli War on Gaza: Rachel Corries, 23, and the Nasrallah Family of a Gazan Bulldozer
Corrie, wearing an orange fluorescent vest and speaking through a bullhorn, was determined to stop them. Standing alone on a mound of earth in the path of the armored vehicle, she expected the Israeli bulldozer approaching her to come to a halt, as other bulldozers had done when faced with international protesters.
But it kept going, and, as her fellow activists screamed and tried to stop it, the 23-year-old college student from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death. The Nasrallah family’s children watched in horror through a crack in their garden wall.
While the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war have galvanized the world, Gaza’s isolation and deprivation amid ongoing attacks have lasted for as long as many Palestinians — including some of the Nasrallah children — have been alive.
Israel says about 1,200 Israelis and other citizens were killed in the Hamas attack. According to the health authorities in Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 30,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza since it said it needed to destroy the militant group.
The 1967 war with Egypt resulted in Israel taking control of Gaza. It disengaged from it in 2005 but because of the blockade it imposed on the Palestinian territory, the United Nations still considers it an occupying power.
The amount of aid reaching Gaza has fallen sharply since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas. Months of bombs and street fighting have devastated entire neighborhoods; and experts continue to warn that Gazans unable to escape the war are facing a looming famine.
One granddaughter of a host family who lost someone in the conflict says they hope for one million Rachel Corries to save them. We really need that type of support right now.
“I was just two, but the memories and the stories about her have been passed down through my family from one generation to the next,” Nasrallah tells NPR in voice messages from Gaza. My dad talks about her. how she was this brave soul and fearlessly stood up for the truth.”
Doctors Without Borders and Israel: The Israeli Embassy in Gaza has resisted the pressure to resume government in Tel-Aviv after a demonstration last week
Christopher Lockyear, the secretary general of Doctors Without Borders, took notice of the miles of trucks waiting to deliver aid into the devastated enclave despite mounting international pressure to increase shipments.
On Thursday, the International Court of Justice in The Hague reacted to the continuing problems by ordering Israel to ensure the “provision of unhindered aid” into Gaza, using some of its strongest language yet. Israel has rejected accusations that it is responsible for delays in delivering aid, and it did so again this week.
Mr. Lockyear said that there is more to it than the number of trucks crossing the border. It is about what happens after that point. It is about the delivery. It is about providing long term health care. It’s about clean water.
This week, Mr. Lockyear said, an M.S.F. truck carrying medical supplies and equipment was prevented from entering Gaza because it was carrying metal devices that are used to help set broken bones. “These items, which were formerly approved to go in, we have got them into Gaza previously,” Mr. Lockyear said. This time, he said, “the whole truck was turned around because these items were there, and we don’t know why.”
A spokeswoman for the Israeli authority responsible for allowing aid into Gaza said the authority could find no record or information about an M.S.F. truck being rejected or refused.
Source: Truce Talks Expected to Resume in Egypt
On humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis: A human rights activist’s view of the treatment of the wounded after the devastating Deir al Qaedah attack
He visited the hospital on March 19 after another heavy bombardment of Deir al Qaedah, which caused the compounding effects of the humanitarian disaster.
There were many victims with injuries, including burn and bomb wounds, which required amputation. There was a steady stream of weak and thin children being brought in.
“One of the most shocking things there is the decision that the medical teams there were having to make, in terms of: Do they give beds to trauma patients, or do they give beds to malnourished kids?” he said.
The director general of the World Health Organization called for an increase in the number of people evacuated from Gaza. With battered hospitals struggling to care for the sick and injured, he wrote in a post on X, “around 9,000 patients urgently need to be evacuated abroad for lifesaving health services, including treatment for cancer, injuries from bombardments, kidneys dialysis and other chronic conditions.”