Palestinians remember the death of a U.S. activist
Rachel Corrie in Gaza: A Palestinian Activist’s Journey in the Shadows of the Israeli Demolishing of a House in the Neighborhood
AMMAN, Jordan — Twenty-one years ago this month, Rachel Corrie, a young American activist, was protesting the Israeli demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip. On March 16, 2003 bulldozers came for the Nasrallah family home, which had already been destroyed by bulldozers in the neighborhood she was based in.
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 she believes that someone in the bulldozer knew that Rachel 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.
The driver of the bulldozer and his spotter were cleared of blame in an internal military investigation, so they launched a civil suit for $1 compensation. The case came to an Israeli court two years later but the Corries weren’t allowed to hear the testimony of the soldiers or watch the video they said proved contradictions in the military account.
Cindy and Craig have traveled to Israel and the West Bank several times since their daughter was killed. On their first visit to Rafah, in the fall of 2003, they peered through the same crack in the garden wall where the Nasrallah children had watched Rachel being crushed to death. Israeli armored vehicles surrounded the house as they sat down to lunch with the family.
An Israeli army investigation concluded the soldiers in the bulldozer’s armored cab hadn’t seen or heard her — and that she was responsible for her own death by not moving out of its path.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
She’s a Hero, a Dreamer for Peace and Justice – Rachel Corrie Shared with Khaled Nasrallah of Rafah
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 that legacy is about more people engaging with this, learning, understanding and knowing what a huge, enormous responsibility we have to try to impact it.”
Cindy said that it was every parent’s worst nightmare. If people had told me before Rachel was killed, that we would find a way to carry on, and that she would not be missed, I would not have taken that stance. I don’t plan on drawing another breath.
He says that after a little time, he realized that many Palestinians and Israelis have suffered the same type of loss and want no one else to suffer that.
Nasrallah claimed that Corrie used to join the maintenance teams from the Rafah Municipality to try to deter the Israeli army from attacking them.
“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.
“She was a child who slept peacefully at the end of the day among our children, telling them sweet stories to help them sleep safely without fear from the sound of tank shootings,” he wrote from Gaza via WhatsApp in response to NPR’s questions about Corrie.
Staying with the Nasrallah family in Rafah, Corrie would tell the young children stories to distract them from explosions before they went to sleep, recalls Khaled Nasrallah.
She wrote that it was difficult to hold on to what was happening here and that no child should have to live. She wrote of the children sleeping in their parents’ room in the back because it was less likely to be shot at.
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.
“We have got to understand that people in third-world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. 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 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 age 10, Corrie wrote a statement and delivered it at the Washington state capitol, saying her dream was to stop children around the world 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. My Name is Rachel Carrie is one of the books used to turn her journals and emails home into.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
The Nasrallah family’s home in Gaza: Refugees from a U.N. activist’s attempt to save their lives
He says that a lot of that goes in his mind. They are us. We are them, and we are here. They dream our dreams. We dream of theirs. That, to me, is totally true, and it needs to be repeated.”
“In the time I’ve been here, children have been shot and killed,” she said. I feel like what I’m seeing is a systematic destruction of people’s ability to survive. And that is incredibly horrifying.”
Nour says the family worries about the lack of medication for her dad who has chronic diseases, and a cousin who is eight months pregnant.
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 fearful that their current home might be destroyed in an invasion of the city by Israel.
Khaled Nasrallah, one of Samir’s sons and Nour’s father, works for a U.N. organization in Gaza, where most of the population is reliant on aid. Like other families, they have to spend most of their time trying to obtain food, water and medication.
Source: 21 years after her death in Gaza, Palestinians remember U.S. activist Rachel Corrie
The Nasrallah-Israel Bulldozer During the Oct. 7 Hamas Attack: The Story of How Gaza Has Been Revisited
The woman in an orange vest, speaking with a bullhorn, was determined to stop them. When confronted by international protesters, other bulldozers had stopped when they saw them, but she expected the Israeli bulldozer to come to a halt alone on the mound of earth.
The college student from Olympia was crushed to death when her fellow activists tried to stop it. 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. The Israeli military, saying it needs to destroy the militant group, has killed more than 32,000 Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children, since then, according to Gaza health authorities.
The war between Israel and Egypt in 1967 resulted in the seizure of Gaza. The United Nations still considers it an occupying power even though it disengaged from it in 2005.
Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, the amount of aid to Gaza has plummeted. Gazans unable to escape the war are facing a looming famine as months of bombs and street fighting have devastated entire neighborhoods.
One granddaughter of a Gaza host family says they are hoping for a million Rachel Corries to help save them. “We really need that kind of support right now.”
In a phone message from Gaza, Nasrallah tells NPR that he was just two years old when his mother died. My dad is always talking about her. how she was this brave soul and fearlessly stood up for the truth.”
Doctor Without Borders: Delivering Health Care to the Devastated Enclave of Gaza During a World Wide Relief Campaign and a UN High Court Decision
When Christopher Lockyear, the secretary general of the aid group Doctors Without Borders, visited the Gaza Strip for five days earlier this month, he took note of the miles of trucks waiting to deliver aid into the devastated enclave despite mounting international pressure to increase shipments.
In its ruling on Thursday, the I.C.J., the United Nations’ highest court, called on Israel to increase the number of land crossings for aid and demanded that it ensure its military doesn’t violate Palestinians’ rights under the Genocide Convention, “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”
“It’s not just about the number of trucks coming in the border,” Mr. Lockyear said in an interview on Saturday. It is about what happens after that point. It is about the delivery. It’s about long-term health care. The water is clean.
Israel has previously said that it prevents or restricts entry of what it calls “dual-use” items — materials or items that it says Hamas could use for military purposes.
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.
While visiting a hospital the morning after the area experienced another heavy bombardment, he said that the effects of the humanitarian disaster and military operations came into focus.
The wards and corridors were full of wounded victims with burns, shrapnel wounds and crushed limbs, including some in need of amputation. Meanwhile, a steady stream of weak and bony children suffering from malnutrition were being brought in.
One of the most shocking decisions that the medical team had to make was whether or not to give beds to trauma patients or children who are not well nourished. he said.
On Saturday, the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for increased evacuations out of 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.”
Twenty-one years ago, US activist Rachel Corrie was protesting against Israel’s demolition of a house in the Gaza Strip when she was shot dead. The house was later demolished after Corrie’s death. Corrie had written a statement at the time saying that her dream was to stop children around the world from dying of hunger.