Posted on 03/15/2004 7:50:09 AM PST by presidio9
A year ago, on March 15, 2003, about 120 people gathered in the rain at Sharon Amity and Randolph roads to protest the war in Iraq. Among them were Craig and Cindy Corrie, then of Charlotte.
The next morning, the Corries received a call from their son-in-law in Washington state, telling them that their 23-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been killed in the Gaza Strip, the long-disputed Palestinian territory in the Middle East. Rachel Corrie, an activist and "human shield," had been crushed by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to keep a Palestinian pharmacist's house from being razed.
The Corries have since moved to Olympia, Wash., where their daughter was a college student. But Cindy Corrie, 56, returned to Charlotte to deliver the keynote address Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte's fifth annual Social Justice Conference -- just up the street from the site of last year's protest.
"It's certainly bittersweet for me to arrive in Charlotte," she told a crowd of about 70. "Spring in Charlotte does have some different associations for me since a year ago."
The Corries have garnered international attention for their continued calls for peace in the Middle East -- in particular, an end to Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes Israel claims are linked to terrorists -- and for a full U.S. investigation into the circumstances surrounding their daughter's death.
A proposed resolution urging such an investigation remains in a U.S. House subcommittee. "I won't give up hope that will happen," Cindy Corrie said Saturday. "I think if people raise their voices, it can still happen."
Rachel Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent group protesting Israel's policy of bulldozing Palestinian homes in Gaza. The ISM claims the Israelis bulldoze the homes of innocent Palestinians; the Israelis say they destroy only homes of those with established links to terrorism.
It's still unclear exactly what happened and why: whether the bulldozer driver saw Rachel Corrie, whether he ran her over on purpose or whether it was merely an accident, as the Israeli government claims.
Cindy Corrie said she's seen part of the official Israeli report on the incident; the report has not been released to the U.S. government. She said it does not reconcile inconsistencies between Israeli accounts and those of other eyewitnesses, and it raises more questions than it answers.
"It leads us to believe," she said in her speech, "that only a U.S. investigation can lead to a result that we and others can accept."
In September, she said, she and Craig took a 2 1/2-week trip to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to see for themselves what their daughter had seen.
They spent six days in Rafah, the city bordering Egypt where she died, and met the Palestinian pharmacist whose home she died protecting. The Corries ate and slept in the house, she said, getting to know the man, his wife and their three children.
"We went to sleep almost every night to the sound of shelling," Cindy Corrie said. "We saw destruction wherever we turned."
In January, she said, the Corries received another piece of news from Gaza: The Israelis had razed the man's home.
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