Rachel Corrie was a Useful Idiot
In March 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist and supporter of the so-called Palestinians, was crushed to death by a military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip which was leveling the ground and clearing it of brush in order to expose hiding places used by terrorists.
Today, nine years later, an Israeli civil court ruled that this idiot's death was an accident (1).
Among the various news media regarding this case you will see this photo, with this caption: "U.S. citizen Rachel Corrie, 23, speaks through a megaphone to an Israeli army bulldozer before she was killed in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003. (NBC News / Reuters)
Shraga Simmons, author of David & Goliath: The explosive inside story of media bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has this to say about the image:
David & Goliath, Resurrected: The Rachel Corrie Libel
Objectively speaking, this photo makes it difficult to believe that the Israeli driver did not see Rachel Corrie. Indeed, the wording of the caption – “before she was killed in Rafah” – emphasizes the idea that at the moment she was crushed, Corrie was clearly visible, standing with a megaphone.
But that is one huge pack of lies.
The truth is that this photo was taken hours before the incident. At the time of the accident, Rachel Corrie was without a megaphone and was in a hidden position.
This second photo, taken minutes after the accident, shows Corrie bleeding on the ground:
Any honest journalist can see that the second photo shows a different bulldozer. Note the large rust stain on the right side of the bulldozer’s blade, in contrast to the megaphone photo. Additionally, this second bulldozer has more narrow, double-glazed windows and an 8-foot-tall bulldozer blade that greatly obscures driver visibility.
This cannot be passed off as merely an honest mistake. The exact same “mistake” was made nine years ago and the media was called out on it. CNN’s original 2003 report used the “creative chronology” – and I got them to issue a retraction. The Christian Science Monitor took the false chronology one step further by distributing the earlier photo of Corrie with the megaphone, claiming that the photo was taken “moments before it ran her over.”
So while this photo fraud has been well-documented in David & Goliath, the media – due either to anti-Israel bias, or to pure sloppiness – continues to promote the blood libel of Israel intentionally murdering Americans.
Now some of my readers may think it mean-spirited to call a dead person an idiot; however, Rachel would have been alive today had she not been an idiot. She placed herself in a dangerous area, where the driver of the bulldozer had a very limited field of vision; she was in closed military area forbidden to civilians; the area was rife with gunfire by snipers, missile fire and explosions; she ignored travel warnings issued by The United States government against American citizens visiting the Gaza Strip. Only an idiot would have placed herself in that area.
I want to say Rachel brought this upon herself but actually I blame her parents, who are well-known Israel-bashers. I also blame the International Solidarity Movement who used her as cannon-fodder, hoping she would be killed in order to generate anti-Israeli hatred. Don't believe it?
David & Goliath, ibid
Pro-Palestinian activists seized the opportunity to promote Corrie’s death as a blood libel, accusing Israel of intentional murder. As George Rishmawi, director of the group that sponsored Corrie’s stay in Gaza, told the San Francisco Chronicle (July 14, 2004): Placing American students in danger is good for the Palestinian cause because “if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.”
Rachel Corrie - useful idiot.
ENDNOTES
(1):
Elder of Ziyon, Summary of the verdict in the Corrie case
f. On March 16, 2003, the decedent and her fellow ISM activists arrived at the location where the IDF force was working to clear the land. They did so, they claim, in order to prevent the IDF force from demolishing Palestinian houses. They did so illegally and in contradiction of the military directive declaring the area a "closed military area". They held signs, stood in front of the bulldozers and did not allow them to carry out their mission. The IDF soldiers informed the activists that they had to distance themselves from the area, threw stun grenades towards them, fired warning shots towards them and used methods to disperse demonstrations. All without avail.
The IDF force was very careful not to harm the Organization's activists. Because of the activists' interference, the force repeatedly relocated to continue carrying out their mission.
g. Based on the evidence presented to me, including the testimony of the expert for the prosecution, Mr. Osben, I hereby determine that at approximately 17:00, the decedent stood roughly 15 to 20 meters from the relevant bulldozer and knelt down. The bulldozer to which I refer was a large, clumsy and shielded vehicle of the DR9 model. The field of view the bulldozer's operator had inside the bulldozer was limited. At a certain point, the bulldozer turned and moved toward the decedent. The bulldozer pushed a tall pile of dirt. With regard to the field of view that the bulldozer's operator had, the decedent was in the "blind spot". The decedent was behind the bulldozer's blade and behind a pile of dirt and therefore the bulldozer's operator could not have seen her.
The bulldozer moved very slowly, at a speed of one kilometer per hour.
When the decedent saw the pile of dirt moving towards her, she did not move, as any reasonable person would have. She began to climb the pile of dirt. Therefore, both because the pile of dirt continued to move as a result of the pushing of the bulldozer, and because the dirt was loose, the decedent was trapped in the pile of dirt and fell.
At this stage, the decedent's legs were buried in the pile of dirt, and when her colleagues saw from where they stood that the decedent was trapped in the pile of dirt, they ran towards the bulldozer and gestured towards its operator and yelled at him to stop. By the time the bulldozer's operator and his commander noticed the decedent's colleagues and stopped the bulldozer, a significant portion of the decedent's body was already covered in dirt.
The decedent's entire body was not covered in dirt. In fact, when the bulldozer backed up, the decedent's body was seen to free itself from the pile of dirt and the decedent was still alive.
The decedent was evacuated to the hospital and after 20 minutes, her death was declared.
I hereby determine unequivocally that there is no foundation to the plaintiffs' claim that the bulldozer struck the decedent intentionally. This was a very unfortunate accident and was not intentional. No one wished to harm the decedent. I was convinced that the bulldozer's operator would not have continued to work if he had seen the decedent standing in front of the bulldozer, as he and his colleagues acted in similar circumstances earlier that day, when they moved from location to location because of the disturbances caused by the members of the Organization.
h. Because I find, as aforementioned, that the decedent was accidentally killed in the framework of a "war-related activity" as defined in The Civil Wrongs Ordinance, and in light of the instructions laid out in Article 5 of the aforementioned ordinance, the State bears no responsibility for the damages inflicted on the plaintiffs resulting from a war-related action.
This makes superfluous the need to discuss the cause of action made by the plaintiffs because legally their demand should be rejected.
