Free Republic

Last week, as Palestinian psychopaths murdered three more innocent Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv in an escalating campaign of terror, activist students at two American universities voted on repulsive resolutions to urge their respective universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel. On April 5th, the undergraduate student government at Ohio State University passed what it categorized as an “emergency resolution,” asking the university to divest from Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar, Inc., and claiming that “by investing in such companies, The Ohio State University implicitly condones and profits from the decisions and actions of these companies, and, as...

Video description: Bakersfield Police released a statement on the death of Robert Forbes, the man who was hit and killed by a car during Wednesday night's protests.

A car drove onto a closed freeway early Saturday and struck two people in a crowd protesting against police brutality, killing one and critically injuring the other, authorities said. Summer Taylor, 24, of Seattle died in the evening at Harborview Medical Center, spokesperson Susan Gregg said. SNIP Dawit Kelete of Seattle drove the car around vehicles that were blocking I-5 and sped into the crowd about 1:40 a.m., according to a police report released by the Washington State Patrol. Video taken at the scene by protesters showed people shouting “Car! Car!” before fleeing the roadway. Love is in serious condition...

Monday, The New York Times published the Palestinian response to an alleged Saudi peace plan. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly presented it to PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas last month. According to the Times’ report, Mohammed told Abbas he has two months to either accept the Saudi proposal or leave office to make way for a new Palestinian leader who will accept it. The Palestinians and their European supporters are up in arms about the content of Mohammed’s plan. It reportedly proposes the establishment of limited Palestinian sovereignty over small portions of Judea and Samaria....

Drama about death of anti-Israel activist Rachel Corrie ‘promotes futile hatred’ A leading theatre’s planned staging of a controversial anti-Israel play has angered Jewish organisations, with one group saying it would support protests against the production. My Name is Rachel Corrie, based on the emails and diary entries of a pro-Palestinian activist in Gaza, will be performed at the Young Vic in London from September 29 — the night of Kol Nidrei. Communal leaders have called the play “unapologetically anti-Israel” and described it as a polemic, with one questioning why an organisation receiving public funding was not offering a balanced...

Almost two years after a Haifa court ruled that Israel was not negligent in the 2003 death of American activist Rachel Corrie during a protest against IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, the Supreme Court heard her family’s appeal of the verdict Wednesday afternoon. Speaking before the hearing in Jerusalem, Craig Corrie, the activist’s father, said the lower court’s ruling had given the army “immunity and impunity.” “I think that’s very dangerous,” he said. “I hope the Israeli high court will change the findings, but if they don’t, I hope the world and the world press will bring it into...

A former congressman who represented Rachel Corrie's district said on Thursday he was unsurprised by an Israeli court verdict to dismiss a civil suit filed by the family. Speaking to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency, Democrat Brian Baird of Washington said the trial was undermined by Israel's failure to conduct a transparent investigation into Corrie’s death in 2003. “The verdict was not a great surprise” because the outcome resulted from “a process that seemed designed to obfuscate the facts rather than clarify,” the ex-lawmaker said. “Sadly, as I've come to understand, this is standard operating procedure” for many complaints alleging...

JERUSALEM — Nine years after their daughter was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, the parents of American activist Rachel Corrie lost their legal bid Tuesday to hold Israel responsible for her death and force authorities to reopen the investigation. A Haifa judge rejected the parent's negligence lawsuit, calling Corrie's death an accident that she brought upon herself by refusing to leave what had been declared a closed military zone. "It was a very regrettable accident and not a deliberate act," said Judge Oded Gershon.

Saint Pancake The widely publicized death-by-IDF-bulldozer of American activist Rachel Corrie in 2003 has been found to be accidental by a Haifa court in a verdict read early this morning. The civil lawsuit had been brought by Corrie's damages-seeking family, yet the judge found 'no mistakes' in the way the IDF had conducted it's activities in Gaza that day. The Corries had accused the Jewish state and Israeli military of intentionally and unlawfully killing their daughter, then failing to conduct 'a full and credible investigation'. But it's hard to not see financial opportunism in the case, considering that they also...

The bulldozer driver who crushed to death American activist Rachel Corrie seven years ago struggled Thursday just to recall her name. "It's Rachel-something," he testified in a Haifa courtroom. "Carrie?" The former Israeli reservist's courtroom appearance, his first public comments since the college student's 2003 death, was expected to be the dramatic climax of the Corrie family's long-running civil lawsuit against the Israeli government. But during more than four hours of testimony, the 38-year-old Russian immigrant, speaking from behind a screen to hide his identity, said he remembered little about that day and the young woman he ran over. ***...

JERUSALEM – The parents of an American protester crushed to death seven years ago by an Israeli bulldozer are getting their first chance to confront the man who drove the vehicle that killed her. But the contact in an Israeli courtroom is indirect: The unidentified bulldozer driver is being shielded behind a wood-and-plastic partition, his voice floating into the hall over a microphone. Rachel Corrie's parents were seated about 15 feet (five meters) away as he testified publicly for the first time Thursday in their civil lawsuit against the Israeli government.

The parents of a pro-Palestinian activist who died during a protest in Gaza 2003 have arrived in Haifa to pursue a civil court case against the state of Israel. The second stage of the Rachel Corrie case opened yesterday in Haifa’s district court. The American activist died aged 23 in March 2003 after being crushed by an IDF bulldozer. She had come to Rafah at the height of the Palestinian intifada with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, to demonstrate against the demolition of houses. An Israeli military investigation into what happened said that Ms Corrie had died during an armed conflict...

We live in an imperfect world, where reason and insanity do constant battle. Lately, insanity has had the upper hand. Last weekend Israel enforced her legal blockade of a territory (Gaza Strip) run by a government that threatens to destroy Israel and backs up that threat with rocket fire at civilians and kidnapping of soldiers across international borders. Would any rational nation allow these filthy 14th century Hamas troglodytes the means to kill them? No, and Israel is rational. Who is not rational? Apparently the governments of Europe (especially back-sliding Turkey), the UN and the Obama Administration, are not rational....

DUBLIN: An Irish aid boat steaming towards Gaza still plans to break the Israeli blockade, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is on board vowed today, saying its passengers and crew "are not afraid". The MV Rachel Corrie should be within 40 kilometres of the coast of the Palestinian territory by early tomorrow, Mairead Maguire told Ireland's RTE state radio. "We don't have contact with the Israelis and the Israelis haven't contacted anyone on board this boat, but we are all fully committed to sailing the boat to Gaza," she said by satellite phone. "We do know that one of...

A group of pro-Palestinian activists, including a Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland, are aboard an aid ship heading for the Gaza Strip, and they expect to arrive there late Friday or early Saturday despite Israel's insistence that it will not allow any vessel to breach its blockade, according to multiple reports. The MV Rachel Corrie, a 1,200-ton converted merchant ship purchased by pro-Palestinian activists, set off Monday from Malta, Reuters reports. The vessel is named after an American woman killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

God, sometimes we Israelis are idiots. Leave aside the colossal fashla (you call it a snafu) of the ill-timed announcement of the expansion of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that sent the Obama administration into a hissy fit. What we’re doing with the latest “lawfare” case against Israel, the trial brought by Rachel Corrie’s parents, is another beaut. Read more: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/rachel-corrie-wasnt-the-only-ism-member-playing-chicken-with-a-bulldozer-that-day-pjm-exclusive/

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday named a street after activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in a 2003 protest against house demolitions in Gaza. The dedication ceremony was held on the seventh anniversary of Corrie's death. Corrie's mother, Cindy, said her daughter stood for many other foreign activists who have come to the West Bank and Gaza in recent years to serve as a buffer between Palestinians and Israeli troops.

A news release from the Corrie family after yesterday's court session in Haifa notes testimony that Rachel Corrie "arrived dead at the hospital." If she was already dead, why were doctors at An Najah Hospital "treating" her ? [Photos of Corrie at An Najar are posted on the blog] As I have reported before, ISM Media Coordinator in 2003, Michael Shaik stated definitively both to me and in other media:" An ambulance rushed her to A-Najar hospital where she died." So--let's get this straight. Your daughter repeatedly kneels in front of an Israeli military bulldozer on a demolition mission; she...

HAIFA, Israel — Shortly before Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003, she said in a video interview that she marveled at Palestinians’ ability to “hold onto their humanity as much as they have.” Seven years later, Corrie’s friends in the Gaza Strip are planning a remembrance ceremony in her honor. They are also following news of the civil court trial under way in Israel. Although events surrounding Corrie's death are still disputed, she was killed by a bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces while seeking to defend a Palestinian home from...

This is Sarah Corrie Simpson's first visit to Israel. Her younger sister, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, at the age of 23. Now, the family is suing the state in the Haifa District Court. "I'm glad the day is finally here, that the eyewitnesses are having a chance to talk in a court of law," she said in an interview with Haaretz on Thursday. "It's been seven long years." The witnesses, who include Rachel's colleagues in the left-wing International Solidarity Movement, say Rachel climbed atop a mount of dirt to be...