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This story about Rachel Corrie and her parents reminds me in a way of Amy Beale. She was the young woman who had gone to South Africa to...I don't know what. Work for racial harmony? Anyway, she was with some of her black companions (she was white), when she was seized by a group of black men and beaten to death. The perpetrators were put in jail. They are free now. Amy Beale's parents have gone to South African and have befriended these men that beat their daughter to death. They are promoting the "harmony and healing" thing. I am appalled that they could do this. These men beating their daughter to death was a hate crime if ever there was one. I'm sure I wouldn't become best buddies with the thugs that had beaten my child to death. Koombaya, I guess.

I found this at a website called "Witness for Justice".

"Then there are the peacemakers like Amy Beale who made the ultimate sacrifice for her beliefs. Amy Beale was a Stanford University graduate, whose Fulbright scholarship took her to South Africa, where she was studying and working with those trying to put back together a nation torn asunder by decades of apartheid. While driving in Capetown, her car was surrounded and she was beaten and stabbed by a group of outsiders who did not know her or what she had done on behalf of that community. The story of this amazing beacon of hope named Amy did not end with her death, however. Her equally amazing parents, Peter and Linda Beale, visited Capetown to see the community where their daughter had been killed and saw the conditions she was trying to change. Instead of being filled with anger and hate, they chose to be filled with love and hope and started the Amy Beale Foundation which continues to work in that community, including running AmyÕs Bread, which provides jobs and food for the very community where she was killed. When do we honor Amy Beale for her contribution to freedom in the world?

And this year, when do we honor Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old young American killed by an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer driver as she stood non-violently in front of the home of a Palestinian family? Even those who might not agree with her position, must acknowledge that she was a young woman committed to peace in one of the most violent places of a war-torn world. As she stood there in an orange fluorescent vest, she practiced what all non-violent protestors have been taught ø to try to look at your attacker in the eye with love and find that personÕs humanity. When do we honor Rachel Corrie and others, like the Christian Peacemaker Teams sent by the historic peace churches to that place to observe and stand between Palestinians and Israelis on behalf of peace?"