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Posted on 03/16/2003 1:50:03 PM PST by scocha
Women From Washington State Shine for ISM Monday, 3 March 2003, 9:56 am Press Release: International Solidarity Movement
Women From Washington State Shine for ISM
Today's update focuses on two remarkable women from the US state of Washington. Rachel Corrie from Olympia writes an update on the Gaza Strip's hottest hot spot, while Susan Barclay writes a note of thanks to her supporters (yet still we wonder, is there a conspiracy of silence in the American press?).
Items 1-4 are from Rachel, and item 5 is given over to Susan.
Updates on the major projects ISM Activists in Rafah, Gaza Strip have been pursuing
1. Human shield work with the Rafah Municipal Water Authority (Leading to ISM activists coming under fire).
2. Direct action work aimed at stopping or hindering the destruction of houses by Israeli occupation force bulldozers along the border strip in Rafah. 3. Demonstrations in conjunction with community groups and individuals living in Rafah.
4. Investigation into human rights violations at the Mowasi-Tufah checkpoint, and in the case of men killed in tunnels near Salah El Dinn gate in Rafah, and in the case of the invasion of the agricultural El Hash-Ash area of Rafah on Sunday the 23rd.
These updates are followed by a brief calendar of events recorded since the tenth of February. Sorry, everybody, for the stress on your inboxes.
(Skipping ahead to Point Two)
2. Internationals continue to take direct action aimed at hindering the demolition of civilian homes by Occupation Forces
Rafah continues to witness the destruction of homes and agriculture on a daily basis. The activists confront barriers to direct action work in most of these cases. These barriers manifest themselves in several ways.
First, limited numbers of internationals are attempting to respond to demolition which occurs without warning allover the edges of Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people. The most recent house demolitions witnessed were accompanied by the amassment of 20 tanks nearby in the border strip. There are currently seven international ISM activists working in Rafah.
Secondly, with a few exceptions, house demolitions in Rafah are carried out by bulldozers and tanks—which fire into the houses or begin to demolish them as notification to the inhabitants of their arrival. Many of the homes destroyed are empty, because the inhabitants have fled with their belongings after experiencing gunfire through windows and walls and the partial bulldozing of their houses. The homes here are not targeted because of any connection with suicide bombings, but because of their existence along an area which the Israeli army finds strategically useful. Thus there is little predictability about which homes will be destroyed next, and no opportunity for direct contact with the army in order to negotiate or notify them of the presence of internationals in the homes.
Much of the destruction occurs at night. Many of the streets of Rafah are impassable in the dark due to sniper towers positioned along the perimeters of Rafah. In the dark, internationals attempting to carry out non-violent direct action rely on battery-charged lights, banners, and the accuracy of unknown local collaborators to make the Israeli military aware of their location.
Another factor in attempting to stop the destruction of a home is a variable factor: the question of whether the driver of a particular tank cares about injuring internationals in the process of destroying the welfare of the Palestinians living here.
On the afternoon of Friday 14th February, seven internationals responded to reports of house demolitions in the block O area, with support from Palestinian organizers. They encountered two bulldozers and a tank, which fired shots around the internationals that seemed directed at Palestinians in nearby alleys. The internationals stood in the path of the bulldozer and were physically pushed with the shovel backwards, taking shelter in a house. The bulldozer then proceeded on its course, demolishing one side of the house with the internationals inside. The driver then dropped a sound grenade out of the cab of the bulldozer, and continued to demolish the house, at which point the activists were able to escape, amid gunfire from the tank.
The next day activists responded to reports of house-demolition in the same area and approached a bulldozer while identifying themselves by megaphone and banners. They were unable to position themselves between the bulldozer and nearby structures, and were beckoned away from the frontline by Palestinians in the area.
On the 11th and 12th and from the 21st till 23rd, internationals arrived on the scene of demolitions (homes, greenhouses and a mosque) too late to respond. This is in addition to house demolitions which the internationals discovered several days after the event.
On the afternoon of 23rd February, six internationals achieved some success in interrupting the work of a bulldozer and a tank demolishing houses in the vicinity of Salah El Dinn gate.
The internationals arrived in the "Sha'ar" area near Salah El Dinn gate in the late afternoon, and found the bulldozer completing the demolition of a house and chicken-coop near the border strip. Palestinians in the area requested the internationals to do whatever they could to try to stop further destruction. The group approached the bulldozer and tank from the side, carrying banners and announcing their presence by megaphone. Although the tank moved into their path, the internationals were able to manoeuvre into the path of the bulldozer, at which point it moved to a nearby house and began to demolish a garden wall.
The tank again moved between the internationals and the bulldozer. The group split briefly while one member of the group moved onto the porch of the house from the back. The remaining internationals stood within several metres of the tank, which began to fire machine guns near them, close enough that one international was pelted with small brick fragments when bullets hit the wall next to her. The international on the porch led the way for the others to climb over the wall and into the house. They then proceeded to the roof. The bulldozer moved back to its previous work destroying a chicken coop and hitting the edges of other small civilian structures.
Two internationals remained on the roof, while the remaining four proceeded back toward the bulldozer. The tank again fired a stream of bullets in their path, but desisted as the internationals continued to walk forward, reminding the tank by megaphone of the clear absence of any threat to the vehicles, of international law, and of the right of human beings to housing and livelihoods.
As the internationals positioned themselves in the bulldozer's path, the tank and the bulldozer turned eastward and withdrew behind walls into the border strip some distance away. The four internationals followed the tank and bulldozer to the edge of the border strip, fearful for the homes of friends in the direction the vehicles headed.
The internationals returned to the partially demolished house and helped the family living there carry their belongings—bedding, furniture, family portraits, dishes, vases, all the elements of a family home—into a house nearby. Four internationals remained overnight with the family in the house where the furniture was relocated.
The activists involved felt they had some success in this action, as they were at least able to delay the work of the bulldozers in demolishing houses.
On 24th February at approximately 9 pm, on their way back to the Sha'ar area for another night, ISM activists received notification that the bulldozers had returned. Despite sprinting to the location, the internationals arrived in time only to see the last of this family's house completely churned into the earth, as the mother of the family wept, looking on.
Internationals continue homestays in the Sha'ar area.
Immediately adjacent to the Israeli military's Salah Eh Dinn sniper tower, from which two teenage boys were shot and injured today while playing in the street. The families in the area believe that they may be the target of house demolitions very soon, as collective punishment for their proximity to tunnels which run from Rafah into Egypt.
All of the homes which the internationals sleep in have bullet or shell holes in the walls. From the kitchen window of one apartment where a woman prepared tea for the group, the most immediate object in view is the eastern window of the sniper tower, about 100 metres away. The internationals observed several holes in the kitchen wall—apparently from shots fired into the kitchen window. The internationals have attached banners and stood on the roofs of some of the buildings with megaphones in order to make their continuing presence known to Israeli occupation forces in the sniper tower, as there is a recent history of houses demolished in Rafah by rockets fired from towers at a distance.
Sleeping in houses such as these on the front line, with the constant sound of machinery moving outside in the border strip and frequent gunfire from tanks, internationals report seeing small children get out of bed in the night in terror to come sit close to their parents, and report experiencing nightmares of their own homes being demolished. Internationals here, who can walk in front of tanks on Palestinian land without being killed, feel some degree of impotence in the face of this massive destruction of civilian homes. We can only imagine what it is like for Palestinians living here, most of them already once-or-twice refugees already, for whom this is not a nightmare, but a continuous reality from which international privilege cannot protect them, and from which they have no economic means to escape.
The Palestinians and internationals in ISM-Rafah are still discussing strategy about how to use their members most effectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at scoop.co.nz ...
She became the answer to her own question?
Humm...what about the violation of the human rights of people sitting in restaurants and buses and suddenly blasted by a terrorist bomb? ... Just like there are good bombs and bad bombs, there are okay human rights violations and not-ok human rights violations.
Yeah, they all do. Unfortunately, Rachel is going to become the new poster child for the left. She may even start a martyrdom trend for American Leftists. The threshold for idiocy has now been raised. For my own say, I personally don't feel sorry for Rachel, except that the vast "sustainable-justice-humanrights" deception she got sucked into cost her her life. But really, common sense tells us that we should not jump in front of moving vehicles and expect those vehicles to stop in time for us. Technically her death should be considered suicide, not murder.
Yeah, they all do. Unfortunately, Rachel is going to become the new poster child for the left. She may even start a martyrdom trend for American Leftists. The threshold for idiocy has now been raised. For my own say, I personally don't feel sorry for Rachel, except that the vast "sustainable-justice-humanrights" deception she got sucked into cost her her life. But really, common sense tells us that we should not jump in front of moving vehicles and expect those vehicles to stop in time for us. Technically her death should be considered suicide, not murder.
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They ought to change the name of their group to "Solidarity with Satan". That photo sure says a lot.
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