I'll bet it was Palestinian "children" like these yoots, who were only throwing stones:
Posted on 01/26/2004 4:49:51 AM PST by PeaceCorpsGuy
Still No Justice for Rachel Corrie - Smith --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, January 23 2004 @ 12:57 PM EST
"It is an insult to the human heart to have to force government officials to do their jobs properly while digesting the fact your child has been brutally killed .."
By WENDY SMITH
Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old British peace activist, died last week in a London hospital. He was shot in the head by Israeli sniper fire nine months ago while shepherding Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip out of the line of fire. He had been in a coma since his injury. Hours before Hurndall died, the soldier who shot him was charged with aggravated assault. The charge is now likely to be revised to manslaughter or murder; British police are participating in an official investigation of his death.
Rachel Corrie from Olympia was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Rafah refugee camp about a month before Hurndall was shot there. Like Hurndall, Corrie was a volunteer with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to End the Occupation of Palestine (ISM). Like Hurndall, she was killed by an identifiable Israeli soldier. As in Hurndall's case, the Israeli government initially released a report on Corrie's killing, stating that nobody connected with the Israeli military was culpable and that further investigation was not required.
So, why has Hurndall's killer been charged when nothing has happened to Corrie's killer?
According to the Hurndall family, the only reason the soldier who shot him has been charged is because of pressure applied by the family. Hurndall's father is an attorney. He went to Rafah shortly after the shooting and compiled an extensive dossier of eyewitness affidavits, forensics reports, photographs and other relevant information. This dossier was put before the British foreign secretary in a way that made it very difficult to ignore. Ultimately, the British government went to bat for Hurndall, an unarmed British civilian killed by an Israeli soldier under the impression that he could shoot with impunity.
Indeed, the soldier had good reason to believe this. More than 2,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians, many of them children, have been killed in the occupied territories since the current intifada began in September 2000. Only 10 Israeli soldiers have been indicted and none has been convicted. A culture of impunity permeates the Israeli military, which is well known for its non-investigations of itself. For this reason, the Hurndall family would like to see the investigation of his death extend all the way up the chain of command.
Corrie's parents are not lawyers. In addition, they were told by members of the Washington state congressional delegation and State Department officials that if they quietly played along, justice for their daughter would ultimately be achieved. So far, all that has emerged is a non-credible Israeli military report claiming that 1) Corrie was not run over by a bulldozer and 2) even if she had been, the driver could not have seen her. These statements are contradicted respectively by the autopsy report and multiple eyewitness reports.
It is an insult to the human heart to have to force government officials to do their jobs properly while digesting the fact your child has been brutally killed.
Somehow the Hurndall family was able to take the necessary steps in the timeframe required. Believing what their congressman, senators and State Department officials told them, the Corries have been left to swallow lies.
Is this the best our members of Congress can do for a citizen killed abroad? Plenty of them made pretty speeches but real action is a question of political will.
About the author: Wendy Smith of Seattle is an activist with the Seattle Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Source: The Seattle PI
I'll bet it was Palestinian "children" like these yoots, who were only throwing stones:
Sorry, but I figure that somewhere on this earth, there are still parents who teach their kids not to run directly into moving earthmoving equipment. If they would have caught her smoking a pack of Marlboros, her parents would probably have grounded her...
As it was, the bulldozer got first nibs.
Geez. Did I say that? I was just wondering what kind of fuss would have been raised if it was a Jewish kid in Seattle that ran into a *righteous* palestinian?
VROOOOOM VROOOOOM
She was killed because her ideas told her she could stop a bulldozer. She was an idiot and if the bulldozer didn't get her she would have made sure something else would have. A real superthinker that one.
This woman’s death is regrettable.
It is regrettable that she was idiotic enough to stand in front of a moving bulldozer.
It is regrettable that she was naive enough to believe the PLO propaganda.
It is regrettable that her parents were not able to dissuade her from going to Israel, a place well known for violent people just aching to get Americans killed in order to get there cause front page coverage.
It is also regrettable that the American press has people like the author who are more willing to blame soldiers doing their job than to hold individuals responsible for their own foolish and suicidal behavior.
For the record, she wasn't purposefully "bulldozed." Even her peacenik cohorts-in-crime say the bulldozer driver didn't kill her on purpose.
Now . . . using your logic, it's okay for a demonstrator, any demonstrator -- regardless of their cause or beliefs -- to protest with impunity. Have I got that about right?
Okay, let's say protestors don't like taxis. So they can block every taxi in New York City while society is to treat them like pampered, endangered creatures?
Airplanes? No problem, the anti-airplane goons can stand in front of every prop in the U.S. and the pilots are expected to turn their engines off and sit idly by.
Civil protests carries responsibilities and costs. If you're not willing to pay the price for your actions, especially when the slightest of accidents might kill you, then perhaps you'd be better served writing a Letter to the Editor instead of playing chicken with a bulldozer.
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