Rachel Aliene Corrie ( April 10, 1979 - March 16, 2003 ) was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement who was murdered by the Israel Defense Forces while bravely acting as a human shield while attempting to prevent IDF forces from demolishing the home of a local Palestinian pharmacist named Samir Nasrallah. This week marks 7 years since she was killed ironically by American funded Israeli bulldozers.
The Palestinian people have not forgotten her bravery. This week Ramallah residents honoured her by naming a street after her. Their was a dedication ceremony to her on Tuesday where family, friends and supporters gathered to pay there respects.
Ms Corrie's mother Cindy is visiting Israel and the Occupied Territories at themoment to take part in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Israeli government, thanked the Palestinian people for continuing to provide her family with unfailing support.
Addressing a crowd of about 50 Palestinians, including the mayor of Ramallah, Ms Corrie said: " I just wanted you to know that you do not stand alone - people are stepping up, we will not be silent. Meanwhile the killing continues, let us try not to forget this, and the occupation continues and grows with recent news that Israel's Interior Ministry's has approved of new housing for Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. Unfortunately for some there will never be any peace.
SOURCES - foreigneditor@peoples-press.com
POEM TO RACHEL CORRIE
by Hilda Silverman, USA
March 18, 2003
Whatever words might have been adequate
have become a high fluting cry
like the keening whit-tu-tu
of the unseen bird outside
my window. Allday I have been trying
to break free from the bulldozer's
blade, piled earth, steel treads fracturing
skull and chest, that moment of resistance
and protest, stilled frame reverberating
beyond the moment, like the kid
in Tiananmen Square before the tank.
Her bright orange jacket
and megaphone.
Her kind and tired eyes.
All day I have been pierced
by the high note of helplesness,
the ragged beat of despair.
Shrouded body with its blur of blood.
The quiet hands of mourners
bearing her, flag-sheathed, across the town.
*
And why was she there?
Ask the ones whose truth she saw
and sought to speak. Ask the child
sitting atop slanting slabs
of concrete, debris of his demolished home.
Ask the husband of the pregnant woman
trapped beneath crushing rubble,
the neighbor's bulldozed house
bringing their own walls down,
who cradled her toddler as she died
Ask the families - hundreds
huddled in wind-ripped tents
homes wrecked without warning
to make way for the seperation wall.
Ask the ones who aren't American
and don't make the morning news.
*
Whatever words we have are useless
against this cruel weight. The bird's cry
Keens from every crack in the edifice
of history. Before she died, Rachel Corrie wrote
of the privilege granted her, an outsider,
but denied to those under occupation.
"I have a home.
I am allowed to go see the ocean."
Hilda Silverman is a writer and member of Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine (VOPJ), an association of Jews in Greater Boston working to promote a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
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