Labels: Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, Rachel Corrie, terror tunnels
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:34 PM
2 comments
The civil trial before Haifa District Court Judge Oded Gershon began March 10, 2010, and 23 witnesses testified in 15 hearings, spread over 16 months. Each session was attended by the Corrie family,American Embassy officials, and numerous legal and human rights observers.
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On August 28, 2012, Judge Gershon ruled against the Corrie family, handing down a verdict stating the Israeli military was not to blame for Rachel’s death and that she alone was responsible for her demise. The Judge lauded the military police investigation and dismissed the case, adopting the Israeli Government’s position that the military should be fully absolved of civil liability, because soldiers were engaged in operational activities in a war zone.
If these morons have a correct theory of the case, any time 'activists' show up in a war zone, all military activity would have to stop. Even the Israeli Supreme Court isn't dumb enough to adopt that view. Leftist, yes, suicidal, no.Seating in the courtroom is limited, and members of the press are advised to arrive early with press credentials. Proceedings will be in Hebrew. The family is seeking permission from the Court to provide simultaneous translation for court observers. However, pending the Court’s decision, journalists should make plans to bring their own translator. Cameras and audio recording equipment will not be permitted once proceedings begin. Photos may be taken before the judges enter the room.
Labels: Rachel Corrie, Supreme Court
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:23 PM
3 comments
[Quoting from al-Guardian]:
Three women who were part of an aid convoy passing through Libya on the way to Gaza have been sexually assaulted in Benghazi, after a group of five British nationals were briefly kidnapped.
The three women, two of whom are sisters, were part of a large aid convoy travelling to the Gaza Strip. It is thought that they were part of a group of five people who were briefly kidnapped near Benghazi in the early hours of Tuesday and they were released some hours later. The group is currently safe in the Turkish consul in Benghazi and is expected to return to the UK.
Libyan security officials said the attacks happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Abdul Barghathi, commander of preventative security in the Libyan defence ministry, said the women had been sexually assaulted, but not raped. "There was no rape, just touching (sexual assault)," he said. "Because there is no British consulate here they were handed to the Turkish consulate." The three women are not badly wounded and are being attended to by consular staff from the UK, he added.
The women were part of a large convoy taking vehicles and aid to the Gaza Strip on a journey that had taken them through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and then Libya. It had intended to cross the border with Egypt but was prevented from doing so by Egyptian authorities. The 10-vehicle convoy is still stuck at the border but the five British nationals returned to Benghazi in eastern Libya late on Monday night in order to return home.I wonder whether these do-gooders will try to make their way back to Gaza again, or maybe this will finally be a wake-up call about the 'respect' that Arab Muslims give women.
Labels: Egypt, Gaza, Gaza blockade, Libya, Rachel Corrie, sexual assault
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:06 PM
1 comments
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, August 31. 1) Whose problem is it?
The New York Times reports Report on Iran Nuclear Work Puts Israel in a Box:For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday offered findings validating his longstanding position that while harsh economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation may have hurt Iran, they have failed to slow Tehran’s nuclear program. If anything, the program is speeding up.In other words PM Netanyahu, whom the New York Times has been portraying as eager to to war regardless of the cost, was right about Iran. Now the New York Times tells us, Netanyahu and Israel have a problem.
But the agency’s report has also put Israel in a corner, documenting that Iran is close to crossing what Israel has long said is its red line: the capability to produce nuclear weapons in a location invulnerable to Israeli attack.
With the report that the country has already installed more than 2,100 centrifuges inside a virtually impenetrable underground laboratory, and that it has ramped up production of nuclear fuel, officials and experts here say the conclusions may force Israel to strike Iran or concede it is not prepared to act on its own.
In contrast an editorial in the Washington Post, Iran at the brink, concludes:Tehran’s refusal to negotiate seriously and its continuing buildup of nuclear capacity is nevertheless steadily increasing the danger that the Middle East will be engulfed by a new war — one that could interrupt oil supplies, damage the global economy and exacerbate the sectarian conflict already underway in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. An optimistic view would be that Iran is playing a familiar game of brinkmanship. If so, there may not be much more time to step back.Both the New York Times news story and the Washington Post editorial present substantially the same information. The difference is in how they portray the actors. In the simplest terms, the Times portrays the problem of nuclear Iran as Israel's problem whereas the Post portrays it as a threat to the world.
David Horovitz in an article about the considerations being weighed by Israel regarding Iran (and which seems generally unsympathetic towards Netanyahu) writes (via Shmuel Rosner):Everything you have heard about the personal hostility between Obama and Netanyahu is true, and then some, according to the insiders from both the pro- and anti-strike camps. The prime minister thinks the president is unreliable and misguided on matters Israeli, Middle Eastern and Islamist. Holding to “a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” as Obama put it in his AIPAC speech in March, is not the same as vowing explicitly to use whatever tools are needed, up to and including force, in order to guarantee that Iran does not gain a nuclear weapons capability.It strikes me that if President Obama now views Netanyahu as reckless regarding Iran, part of the problem is that he unnecessarily antagonized Netanyahu over the past three and a half years. If Israel needs to trust the United States regarding Iran, it seems that President Obama has recklessly frittered away that trust.
In another attempt to confuse the issue, VOA reports, Experts: Tightening Iran Sanctions Hurts Ordinary Iranians (h/t Omri Ceren):But Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, says U.S. policy toward Iran is doing more harm than good.What the article doesn't say is that the NIAC is an apologist for the current regime in Iran. Needless to say, its first priority is not the welfare of "ordinary" Iranians. Yet the VOA presents this not disinterested party as an "expert."
"We've gone from a policy that was supposed to be smart sanctions or targeted sanctions instead to ones that are designed to cripple the entire Iranian economy, and this is a counterproductive approach," he said. "This hurts ordinary people. It obstructs rather than facilitates diplomacy. And at the end of the day, I think it's going to put us on a collision course for a military confrontation with Iran."
2) Eye on the prize
Radical professor Judith Butler has been awarded the Theodor Adorno prize from the city of Frankfurt, Germany. Given her support for Hamas and Hezbollah and her hatred of the state of Israel, giving her any award should be controversial.
Richard Landes, Petra Marquardt-Bigman, Edward Alexander, Dovid Efune and others have critiqued Butler's work.
Apparently in an effort to defend her, Columbia University Press has excerpted a selection from her recent book.Let us reflect first on what it means to derive a set of principles from a cultural tradition and then move to the larger political issues at hand. As I noted, to say that principles are “derived” from Jewish resources raises the question of whether these principles remain Jewish once they are developed within a contemporary situation, assuming new historical forms? Or are they principles that can and must be, always have been, derived from various cultural and historical resources, thus “belonging” exclusively to none of them? In fact, does the generalizability of theprinciples in question depend fundamentally on their finally not belonging to any one cultural location or tradition from which they may have emerged? Does this nonbelonging, this exile, help to constitute the generalizability and transposability of the principles of justice and equality?This is so much gibberish. Using terms such "generalizability," "transposability," "alterity" and "relationality," (all four are flagged by my spell checker) sound impressive but do they mean anything? Or are these just concepts that Butler conceived for the sole purpose of making her argument? There is no clarity in her argument, just obfuscation.
If such principles are derived from Jewish sources, others might conclude that they are Jewish values originally, fundamentally, even finally. It follows from that argument that one must look to that religious, secular, or historical set of traditions to understand those values, at which point Jewishness becomes a privileged cultural resource, and the Jewish framework remains the only or at least the privileged one by which to think the problem of cohabitation and even binationalism. We thus fail to depart from the exclusive cultural framework of Jewishness. And this has especially contradictory and unacceptable conclusions of we are trying to think about equality and justice in Israel/Palestine.
Even as such a conclusion is unacceptable, there seems to be no easy way around this paradox. One point, however, already seems clear: equality, justice, cohabitation, and the critique of state violence can only remain Jewish values if they are not exclusively Jewish values. This means that the articulation of such values must negate the primacy and exclusivity of the Jewish framework, must undergo its own dispersion. Indeed, as I hope to show, that dispersion is a condition of possibility for thinking justice, a condition we would do well to remember during these times. One might say, “ah, dispersion—a Jewish value! Derived from messianic scattering and other theological figures for diaspora! You attempt to depart from Jewishness, but you cannot!” If, however, the question of the ethical relation to the non-Jew has become definitive of what is Jewish, then we cannot capture or consolidate what is Jewish in this relation. Relationality displaces ontology, and it is a good thing, too. The point is not to stabilize the ontology of the Jew or of Jewishness, but rather to understand the ethical and political implications of a relation to alterity that is irreversible and defining and without which we cannot make sense of such fundamental terms as equality or justice. Such a relation, which is surely not singular, will be the obligatory passage beyond identity and nation as defining frameworks. It establishes the relation to alterity as constitutive of identity, which is to say that the relation to alterity interrupts identity, and this interruption is the condition of ethical relationality. Is this a Jewish notion? Yes and no.
If I understand the third paragraph quoted here, she's saying that since Israel doesn't adhere to Jewish values (according to her judgment) and since Jews have survived in exile, Israel doesn't deserve to exist as a Jewish state.
Given her explicit support for Hamas and Hezbollah (which she denies though the audio is quite clear) which are committed to destroying Israel and have acted on those commitments, how does she find Israel's resorting to "state violence" unacceptable? Terrorists targeting civilians is implicitly acceptable to her, but Israel fighting to protect its citizens is objectionable. It's not only hypocritical, it's illogical. She bases her appeal on Jewish culture, but a culture that abjures self-defense won't last very long.
3) A measured response
Irish pro-Israel activist Tom Carew wrote a letter to the Guardian:I am a life-long reader and I measured the extent of today's Guardian *coverage* on the Rachel Corrie case - and it is really astounding.
Well over 20,000 Syrians have been slaughtered by the Assad regime in recent months, and 400 bodies were found yesterday in Darraya, but that horrendous massacre gets- [a] no Cartoon,
[b] no Editorial and
[c] no Comment piece,plus only
[d] 28.44 Sq Ins of a News story,along with a headline of *Claims of 400 dead* And also placed along the lower inside corner column of Page 19, where it could readily be overlooked.
In contrast the Corrie story gets -
[a] a large and vicious Cartoon, on Page 31, covering 61.88 Sq Ins, with an Israeli Bulldozer with the Star of David ploughing into the blindfolded figure of Justice,
[b] an Editorial, covering 39.84 sq Ins, on Page 32,
[c] a Comment piece below that, on Page 32, covering 43.45 Sq Ins, along with
[d] a News story, taking over the whole top half of Page 18, and covering 86.26 Sq InsTheir overall coverage for Corrie totals 231.43 Sq Ins, which is 8.14 times that given to SyriaSometimes bias can be measured.
Labels: al-Guardian, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Hamas, Hezbullah, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Middle East Media Sampler, Rachel Corrie, Soccer Dad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:52 PM
0 comments
Shurat HaDin has suggested to the Corrie family that they sue the 'Palestinian Authority' and the International Solidarity Movement for their daughter's death. Too bad they're most unlikely to take the advice. “Rachel Corrie’s parents should sue the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) for being responsible for their daughter’s death” – this according to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center. The Tel Aviv-based counter-terror organization further noted on Wednesday that both the PA and ISM were the ones that provided support to Rachel Corrie while she was obstructing an IDF military operation aimed at uncovering terrorist-planted explosive devices.Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. This isn't about justice for Rachel Corrie; it's about bashing Israel.
Yesterday, the Haifa District Court ruled the 2003 incident a “regrettable accident,” rejecting completely claims made by the Corrie family’s that the IDF bulldozer intentionally ran over the ISM activist. In his verdict, the judge underlined that Rachel Corrie knowingly placed herself in a dangerous war zone, particularly an area which just hours before was the site of an attack against IDF forces. The judge moreover held that the bulldozer’s driver, as well as its commander, had not and could not have noticed Corrie due to an obstructed view. The ruling made point that the ISM had been found to be indirectly aiding terrorists in some cases.
“We applaud the district court’s decision. It has been undoubtedly evidenced that both the PA and ISM continue to associate with the scourge of terrorism directed against the Israeli democracy, even making use of foreign citizens to serve as human shields for militant activity. The Corrie family should point their fingers at the real culprits,” stressed Darshan-Leitner.
Labels: Rachel Corrie, Shurat HaDin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:03 PM
1 comments
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Thursday, August 30. 1) Why Jeffrey Goldberg is so frustrating
I would prefer to ignore Jeffrey Goldberg. He, in many ways, is simply just another leftist writing about the Middle East. It took him a while before he took issue with J-Street. He believes that "settlers" represent the undoing of Israel. But every once in a while he writes an important column.
The focus of his latest is a Ron Rosenbaum essay, "Holocaust obsessed" It's the new Antisemitic slur. The central question of Rosenbaum's argument is:Demonstrating that it has become a widely recognized shibboleth on both sides of the discourse over American Israeli relations, Jonathan Rosen, in his astute New York Times Book Review critique of Peter Beinart's Crisis in Zion offered a caustic assessment of those self-proclaimed enlightened moralists who accuse others of a "Holocaust-obsessed" mentality.(I don't agree with Rosenbaum's assessment of "American exceptionalism," but that doesn't detract too much from the overall essay.)
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Much of the recent use of the phrase has been prompted by people comparing Iran today to Hitler’s Germany. I should mention that I am not necessarily in favor of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear capacity. I think the issue is insoluble and either way I see a catastrophe coming. But I just don't have patience with those who try to exclude the real historical catastrophe from relevance by denigrating any concern with it as "obsession."
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Is it better, then, to be “somewhat interested” in the holocaust, rather than “holocaust-obsessed”? Moderately interested? Temperately troubled? How much is the correct amount of interest one should devote to rapidly receding history? How much should the charge of obsession affect the way we look at the victims of collective hate murders in the present: 9/11, the Oslo slayings and the Sikhs, for instance. Do they qualify for a heightened degree of concern since the killers obviously—had they the means—would have wanted to murder many, many more? How should it affect the way we view exterminationist threats not yet realized?
Goldberg applies Rosenbaum's argument to current events in greater detail, Are Jews who fear Iran obsessed with the Holocaust? (h/t Yaacov Lozowick):Regime apologists will note that Iranian leaders talk about the elimination not of “Israel” -- a word they generally refuse to utter -- but of the “Zionist regime,” which, to the naive and the cynical, implies the replacement of one government with another. This is a pernicious euphemism. Without the “Zionist regime” -- which is to say, the democratically elected government of Israel, its armed forces and security services, and the courts and structures of state -- the Jews who survived the onslaught that “dismantled” their government would face immediate dispossession, and perhaps much worse.In essence, Rosenbaum's arguing (and Goldberg agrees) that Iran's belligerence isn't simply hyperbole, but a threat with possibly immediate consequences. This week an editorial in the New York Times, Iran's Nuclear Quest argued:
Rosenbaum, an expert on Hitlerian euphemism, told me that one difference between Nazi rhetoric and that of the Iranian regime is that the Iranians’ words are blunter, especially when compared with pre-Kristallnacht Nazi language. Rosenbaum notes, in particular, the Iranian reliance on epidemiological metaphor when describing Israel: This year, the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel is “a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off.”
Which returns us to Rosenbaum’s central question: Is it obsessive for a group of people who not long ago saw a third of their number slaughtered to worry when the leaders of Iran call Israel a cancerous tumor? Or is it the natural and appropriate response of a people who, conditioned by history, choose to err on the side of caution?Iran’s continuing activity violates United Nations Security Council demands to halt enrichment, but as one official said, it is “not a game-changer.” The disclosure about the centrifuges is in a report expected soon from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are clearly dangerous to Israel and the region. But the administration argues that Iran is not on the verge of producing a weapon and that the United Nations inspectors will provide warning before it gets to that point.Note how dismissive the editors of the New York Times are towards Netanyahu's concerns. To them the invocation of the Holocaust is simply a cover for Netanyahu's unbridled aggression.
Washington’s caution is well-placed, especially when set against the overheated statements of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that time is running out. He has never warmed to the idea of negotiations between Iran and the United States and other major powers. The speculation now is that he is escalating his warnings before the United States election in a cynical gambit to get President Obama’s agreement to act against Iran soon.
A few months ago, Shmuel Rosner wrote Playing the Holocaust Card. Despite the unfortunate title, Rosner concluded:Netanyahu’s “uncomfortable truth” that Iran intends to launch another Holocaust may, or may not, be correct. But this other disquieting notion surely is: the memory of the Holocaust is too fresh and the price of over-optimism too well known for any Israeli to disregard even the most preposterous scenario.Though I wish his conclusion were more universal (applied not only to Israel) this is in line with Rosenbaum and Goldberg. And it is also the point that the New York Times ignores.
2) The sound of one hand clapping
A few months ago, Thomas Friedman wrote Watching Elephants Fly, his paean to the victorious Islamists in Egypt:
Here are some quotes from Egyptian women on why they voted Islamist: “I love the Muslim Brotherhood; they are the only honest ones. ... I want good education and clean air to breathe. ... We need proper medical care. ... I want my kids to be properly educated. They can’t find any jobs. ... The Muslim Brotherhood is not just an Islamist party. It is going to help solve all the problems of the country. ... We have to get the youth working and to raise salaries. Education here is only getting worse. ... My biggest fear is lack of security. We sit in our homes — afraid. You are afraid your son won’t be able to go back and forth to school without being kidnapped.”
...
And there you have Egypt today — a four-way power struggle between the army, the rising Islamist parties, the smaller liberal parties and the secular youth of Tahrir Square. All of them will have a say in how this story plays out. “We want to see a new Egyptian government with new thoughts,” said Hassan. “I am ready to go back into Tahrir Square if I have to.”
Indeed, everyone feels more empowered now. The army has its guns and now runs the country; both the Islamists and the liberals have won electoral mandates; and the secular youth from Tahrir feel empowered by the street — by their now proven ability to mobilize and to fight whenever they see things going awry. Even the silent majority here, called “The Party of the Couch,” feels more empowered, having just voted in high numbers in an election where the votes actually got counted. His point was that though the Islamists won the parliamentary elections they would honor their mandate and not impose their views on the electorate. In response, Barry Rubin wrote, Friedman cheers as Egyptians are enslaved:Isn’t Friedman aware that real Egyptian democrats are rushing to get visas and leave the country? That many Christians are getting out and the rest are trembling?Yesterday, things finally got out of hand and, in response, Friedman wrote Morsi's wrong turn:
Within hours of the Friedman statement, the Free Egyptians Party — the most “authentic” liberal party in Egypt — declared a boycott of the remaining elections, claiming electoral fraud. Personally, I don’t think electoral fraud was a major factor but, rather, the party is reacting out of hopelessness, knowing that an open democratic society has no chance now in Egypt and that it cannot depend on any help from Western governments, which support its enemies.
The real moderates and democrats are in despair, knowing what they will be living under. And Friedman cheers their oppressors and says there is nothing to worry about. How is this better than becoming a booster for some Latin American military dictator or African tyrant or ruthless Communist oligarchy?I find it very disturbing that one of the first trips by Egypt’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, will be to attend the Nonaligned Movement’s summit meeting in Tehran this week. Excuse me, President Morsi, but there is only one reason the Iranian regime wants to hold the meeting in Tehran and have heads of state like you attend, and that is to signal to Iran’s people that the world approves of their country’s clerical leadership and therefore they should never, ever, ever again think about launching a democracy movement — the exact same kind of democracy movement that brought you, Mr. Morsi, to power in Egypt.This is a good reason to criticize Morsi (and Ban Ki Moon, which Friedman does later in the column). John McCain is impressed:I always knew if I waited long enough, I'd agree with a Tom Friedman column... "Morsi’s Wrong Turn"I'm not impressed with the column. It's not that the sentiment is wrong; it's misplaced. Two weeks ago Eric Trager wrote Egypt's New President Moves Against Democracy:On Sunday, having purged top military officials, Muslim Brotherhood veteran and new President Mohammed Morsi issued a sweeping constitutional declaration. It grants him complete executive and legislative power, plus the authority to select the writers of Egypt's new constitution. Eighteen months after Hosni Mubarak's ouster, Egypt has a new dictator -- and the way in which Mr. Morsi grabbed power says much about what he will do with it.In the past month Morsi has fired those who could have challenged his authority, seized more political power for himself and took greater control over Egypt's media. But none of these actions elicited a complaint from Friedman. Only Morsi's trip to Iran - which in contrast to the concrete steps Morsi took to increase his own power is just atmospherics - brought about Friedman's disapproval. Friedman missed the real story and focused on mere imagery.
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More important, Mr. Morsi used the Sinai crisis to assume the powers that the junta had undemocratically asserted for itself in a March 2011 constitutional declaration. He thus claimed unprecedented executive power, including complete authority over legislation, public budgets, foreign affairs, pardons, and political and military appointments.
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Consider the editors he appointed to lead Egypt's two largest state-run newspapers. The new editor of Al-Ahram is an old Mubarak regime hack who called last year's uprising "foreign funded" and lost his column in 2010 for writing anti-Christian articles. The new editor of Gomhoriya shut down a conference on religious freedoms in 2008 and called for the murder of a well-known Bahai activist in 2009. The new editor of Al-Akhbar recently censored an article that criticized the Brotherhood.
3) Mistakes I've made a few
In writing about the Corrie verdict I made a few mistakes. The picture in this article was not photoshopped as I wrote. It was misleading as it didn't reflect the conditions immediately prior to Corrie death.
It's a point worth emphasizing regarding Robert Mackey's ode to Rachel Corrie, Witness to Rachel Corrie’s Death Responds to Israeli Court Ruling Absolving Soldier. If you pay attention, Mackey refers to the photograph of Corrie standing in front of a bulldozer but doesn't reproduce it. Even he must have realized that the picture was inconsistent with the story he wanted to tell. Needless to say, Mackey, an anti-Israel activist takes everything told him by ISM members as the truth.
In addition to making a mistake about the picture, I missed a more important point. Yesterday's New York Times reported:Ms. Corrie, a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., joined the International Solidarity Movement in January, 2003, and spent the last weeks of her life in Rafah, the Gaza town that borders Egypt. In a Feb. 27, 2003, e-mail home, she wrote that 600 homes had been destroyed there since the start of the intifada. On March 16 she and seven other American and British activists acted as human shields, dropping to their knees between the bulldozers and a home they believed were marked for destruction. The verdict came more than a year after the last of 15 sessions of oral testimony, which began in March 2010. Some of the witnesses, including the drivers and commanders of two bulldozers that were operating in the area that day, testified from behind a screen to protect their identities. Ms. Corrie’s parents or sister attended every session of the trial, spending about $200,000 on travel, translating about 2,000 pages of documents, and other expenses.(Emphasis mine)
The judge's decision noted in part:The two bulldozers and the armored personnel carrier were occupied with the clear military operational task of clearing the land in a dangerous area which posed a significant risk. The force’s action was designed to eliminate the danger of terrorists hiding and to expose hidden explosive devices, both of which were intended to kill IDF soldiers. The act of clearing the land was “a war-related action.”(Emphasis mine)
The items in bold - that the activists dropped to their knees and that the IDF was seeking to clear explosives from the area - show the degree to which the ISM activists put their lives at risk. (Whether the did so knowingly or not is another question. It is clear that having their activists killed is something that ISM's founders saw as a positive outcome.) I missed the implication of this information.
Lenny Ben David has similar thoughts.
Labels: Egypt, Holocaust, Iranian nuclear threat, Jeffrey Goldberg, Middle East Media Sampler, Rachel Corrie, Soccer Dad, Tom Friedman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:41 PM
0 comments
Lenny Ben David asks some tough questions about Rachel Corrie's death.We’re all shocked by the horrifying pictures of Corrie lying on the ground, broken and bleeding. But has anyone ever asked what kind of ghoul would snap pictures rather than rush to her aid or run to get help?But Smith/Carr may not have been the only culprit.
Numerous pictures of Corrie standing defiantly in front of an Israeli bulldozer appeared in the media, but upon investigation it transpired that not a single one was from the incident that killed her. Some were taken hours before the fatal incident with a different bulldozer; others were sloppy photoshopped forgeries. Why were there photos after she was injured and not before?
Corrie was not the only member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who was nearly crushed beneath the bulldozer’s maw that day. Indeed, at least two – “Will and Jenny” – were pulled away by their colleagues at the last second.
Immediately after Corrie’s death, several leaders of ISM were interviewed. They didn’t express horror or even sorrow. They spoke of peace soldiers’ sacrifices in battle and the PR benefits of an American woman dying at hands of Israel’s army.
The ghoulish photographer was an ISM member who went by the name of “Joe Smith.” His real name: Joseph Carr, a self-proclaimed anarchist who apparently used aliases to travel in and out of Israel and anti-American hotspots like Fallujah, Iraq. His March 17 affidavit immediately after Corrie’s death suggests a narcissist who speaks more about his trauma than Corrie’s death, and an agitprop specialist who had all of the press contacts and numbers readily at hand to launch a press campaign just 30 minutes after her death.
Why would the “internationals” risk their lives in such a way? And was Corrie a partner to this treacherous game? Reporter Joshua Hammer explained that on that fateful day the ISM members decided to take their confrontation with the IDF up a notch. They needed to prove themselves to the local population:Read the whole thing. Related thoughts here.An anonymous letter was circulating which referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as “nasty foreign bitches” whom “our Palestinian young men are following around.”One of the ISM founders, Thom Saffold, admitted to The Washington Post the day after Corrie’s death that “it’s possible they [the protesters] were not as disciplined as we would have liked.”
That morning [of Corrie’s death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. “We all had a feeling that our role was too passive,” said one ISM member. “We talked about how to engage the Israeli military.” That morning, team members made a number of proposals that seemed designed only to aggravate the problem. …“The idea was to more directly challenge the Israeli military dominance using our international status,” said the ISMer.
Saffold continued with astounding callousness: “But we’re like a peace army. Generals send young men and women off to operations, and some die.”
That wasn’t the only statement indicating that Corrie was cannon fodder for the ISM. Another of ISM’s founders, George Rishmawi, told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2004:When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore. But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.Another ISMer in Gaza committed to writing similar sentiments in a letter home in February 2003:You just can’t imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen.” (emphasis added)The author was Rachel Corrie, one month before she died. Did she believe that she should be that unarmed US citizen? Did the Gaza ISM cadre believe that they had to prove to the Palestinian locals that they were as committed to the cause as the Palestinian shihads blowing themselves up on Israeli buses?
Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Rachel Corrie, Rafah, religion of rape, sexual assault
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:43 PM
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Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, August 29. The Corrie Verdict
The New York Times reported in Court Rules Israel Is Not at Fault in Death of American Activist:Ms. Corrie, a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., joined the International Solidarity Movement in January, 2003, and spent the last weeks of her life in Rafah, the Gaza town that borders Egypt. In a Feb. 27, 2003, e-mail home, she wrote that 600 homes had been destroyed there since the start of the intifada. On March 16 she and seven other American and British activists acted as human shields, dropping to their knees between the bulldozers and a home they believed were marked for destruction. The verdict came more than a year after the last of 15 sessions of oral testimony, which began in March 2010. Some of the witnesses, including the drivers and commanders of two bulldozers that were operating in the area that day, testified from behind a screen to protect their identities. Ms. Corrie’s parents or sister attended every session of the trial, spending about $200,000 on travel, translating about 2,000 pages of documents, and other expenses.Much of the article is devoted to Corrie's posthumous fame and the grief of her family and supporters and little to the evidence or the legal reasoning of the court. In Context has a comparison between two points reported in the New York Times and what actually was presented in the report. Though not related to the New York Times story, CiF Watch looks at a photograph of Rachel Corrie and concludes that it was photoshopped.
“A lawsuit is not a substitute for a legal investigation, which we never had,” Ms. Corrie’s mother, Cindy Corrie, said at Tuesday’s news conference. “The diplomatic process between the United States and Israel failed us.” The United States Embassy, which sent a representative to the oral-testimony sessions, declined to comment on the verdict. In June 2004, a representative of the secretary of state wrote to the Corrie family saying the United States agreed with them that the military’s investigation was not “thorough, credible and transparent.”
In Washington, the State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said, “We understand the family’s disappointment with the outcome of the trial,” and noted that American diplomats “have worked with the family all through this process” and that they would continue to do so. She declined to discuss the remarks that Ms. Corrie’s family attributed to the American ambassador that the Israeli investigation had not been transparent. But on Tuesday, Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said in a statement that the United States government “has been noticeably absent, and its silence is deafening,” calling Washington “complicit in compounding the crime.” She also said that the trial had revealed “overwhelming proof that Rachel was deliberately murdered” and said that “Palestinians as a whole will continue to love Rachel and cherish her memory.”
And while this has nothing to do with what was reported, the New York Times chose a picture of Corrie with a reflective pose. But a different picture, specifically the news photo used by Front Page, would tell a much different story. Certainly, it tells a different story from the narrative that the New York Times presents here.
David Bernstein writes at the Volokh Conspiracy about Poor coverage of the Rachel Corrie verdict:I’ve been reading different accounts of an Israeli court’s decision to deny a judgment for Rachel Corrie’s parents. Corrie, you may remember, was the young American activist who was struck by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza while(See In Context, cited above, regarding the house. Still Bernstein's critique is well worth reading in its entirety.)protestingtrying to prevent housing demolitions during the first intifada [UPDATE: more precisely, she intentionally went to a closed military zone and put herself in between a military bulldozer and a house it was trying to demolish; see how easy it is to make a pretty reckless action on her part sound like she was just quietly protesting on the sidelines; and I didn't even do it on purpose.]. I’ve come up with a pretty clear dividing line for sound coverage and poor coverage. Sound coverage at the very least mentions that Corrie was working for the International Solidarity Movement. Even if the story doesn’t give any further details, a bit of Googling would quickly reveal that the ISM is a far-leftist organization that supports Palestinian terrorism, has served as cover for terrorists, and encourages its participants to insert themselves as dangerous situations where they may suffer “martyrdom.” Consider this: “Less than two weeks after Corrie’s death, ISM members allegedly tried to prevent Israeli troops from searching their office in Jenin in the West Bank. When the soldiers forced their way in, they discovered Shadi Sukia, a leading member of Islamic Jihad.”
Brendan O'Neill writes at the Telegraph in the Secular Beatification of Rachel Corrie ...:The transformation of Corrie’s life and death into a black-and-white morality tale – featuring a well-off white American who was pure of heart, poor little brown people who have no hope, and a Zionist entity that is supremely evil – sums up the boneheadedness of modern-day Palestinian solidarity. There was a time when supporting Palestine meant looking upon Palestinians as a people capable of governing their own lives, even of running their own state, free from the meddling or bossing-about of outsiders. Now, Palestinian solidarity is all about treating Palestinians as the ultimate victims, as helpless, hapless, sad-eyed creatures who need decent Westerners, ideally well-educated ones brought up in Amnesty-supporting households, to come over and “save” them, in a not dissimilar way to how Bible-wielding white folk once tried to saved the savages of Africa.Tom Gross recalls the forgotten Rachels:
Palestinian solidarity has become creepily anthropological. It increasingly treats Palestinians, not as a people who simply need more political independence, but as a threatened tribe that must be protected from further harm by “human shields” from the enlightened west. Decked out in Arafat-style keffiyehs (a PC form of blacking up), and possessed of a conviction that it falls to white-skinned, iPhone-armed westerners to expose Israel’s “genocidal” crimes to the world media, solidarity activists who travel to Palestinian territories are becoming more and more like secular versions of the crusaders of old. They are effectively going to Palestine to find themselves, to try to give meaning to their potentially shallow lives through imagining that they can “save” an entire people and halt a “genocide” by standing in front of a tank or writing some blog posts about how tragic are the lives of cute Palestinian children. It is a peculiar form of solidarity that reduces an entire foreign people to the level of child-like victims who need the likes of St Rachel to save them.But other Rachels have lost their lives as well – Jewish victims of the Intifada. Does anyone remember them? In Britain, where the play is being staged, how many people even know the name of Rachel Thaler, a British citizen who was murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in an Israeli shopping mall at the age of 16?So has the Muqata.
“Not a single British journalist has ever interviewed me or mentioned Rachel’s death,” her mother Ginette Thaler told me three and a half years after her murder. Below, an article of mine published in the weekly British magazine, The Spectator, explores these phenomena and also marks the first time Rachel Thaler’s name has been mentioned in the mainstream British media. Earlier, in April 2005, I wrote another piece on “The Forgotten Rachels” for The Jerusalem Post, to mark the play’s initial staging.
Other roundups of material are at Honest Reporting, Meryl Yourish and Elder of Ziyon.
Labels: Middle East Media Sampler, Rachel Corrie, Soccer Dad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:51 AM
0 comments
Labels: Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, Nazis, Rachel Corrie
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:45 PM
1 comments
Invoking an exception for combatants, a court in Haifa found on Tuesday found that the State of Israel was not responsible for the death of ISM terrorist Rachel Corrie (and yes, that first sentence and the title of this post were quite blunt and inflammatory, and deservedly so). Corrie turned herself into a combatant. In the verdict, Judge Oded Gershon invoked the principle of the combatant activities exception, noting that IDF forces had been attacked in the same area Corrie was killed just hours earlier.No, Mrs. Corrie. We have a real court system in Israel, just like the United States. When our soldiers commit war crimes (which is rare) they pay a price. There was no war crime this time.
Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, died in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003, when an IDF bulldozer struck her during a protest by pro-Palestinian group the International Solidarity Movement.
Reading a summary of his 62-page decision, the judge described Israel's investigation into the incident as appropriate and said it had no mistakes.
Asserting that Corrie could have avoided danger, he dismissed claims that the IDF was negligent in the incident and denied the family's suit for symbolic damages. The IDF did not violate Corrie's right to life, he continued, asserting that she inserted herself into a dangerous situation.
The state, he continued, was not responsible for any "damages caused" due to the combat situation but nonetheless called Corrie's death a "regrettable accident."
...
Rachel's mother Cindy said she was deeply saddened by the verdict.
"From the beginning it was clear that there is a system to protect soldiers and provide them with impunity at the cost of civilians," she told reporters outside the court. "Now we now that the protection for soldiers extends to the court."
Saying that US diplomacy and the Israeli court system failed her family, Cindy Corrie added that there was never a credible investigation into her daughter's death.'Palestinians' have access to a court system in Israel. They don't have access to one worth its name in the 'Palestinian Authority' or in Hamastan.
However, she continued, "At least we have had access to a court system, which most Palestinians are denied."
Labels: Gaza, International Solidarity Movement, Palestinian terrorism, Rachel Corrie
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:31 PM
7 comments
Is there a pancake party set for Tuesday? On Tuesday, the Haifa district court will render its decision in the case of Rachel Corrie, who threw herself under an IDF bulldozer in Rafah ten years ago. The case will attempt to determine whether the IDF was responsible for Corrie's death. In a wide-ranging interview with The Jerusalem Post, [Rachel's mother] Cindy described herself as “naive” when the trial started two years ago about what it would look like and its ability to reveal more about what led to her daughter’s death and how the investigation was conducted.Bottom line: Trials like this one impede the IDF's fight against terrorism by making matters depend upon how a court may view them in the future. No other army in the world operates with this type of impediment.
The Corries said that while they remained “optimistic” about the result, they also knew from the start that suing the Defense Ministry would be an “uphill battle.”
While they did not want to prejudge the outcome of the case, Craig appeared to make it clear that they were ready to go to the Supreme Court if the Defense Ministry was not found liable.
Cindy said that while she found various decisions the judge made about the admissibility of evidence troubling, she also felt that she had “bonded” on some level with the judge.
“We sat in court with him for two-and-a-half years,” she said, and he tried to convey messages to them turning in their direction and speaking to them through their lawyer (the Corries do not speak Hebrew). The family highlighted several of the points that have emerged in dispute over the course of the trial.
Sarah, Rachel’s sister, said that bilingual observers who attended the hearings disputed the translations made by the court translator relating to the testimony of some of the key eye witnesses’ who testified in English.
Labels: IDF, International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:19 AM
2 comments
The city council of Tehran has announced that it will name a street in Tehran after American 'peace activist' Rachel Corrie. The City Council of Tehran has announced that a street in the Iranian capital will be named after the American activist, Rachel Corrie, Press TV reported with reference to Fars news agency.There was no confirmation that the street will actually be called "Pancake Alley." Heh.
During a session on Tuesday, the council ratified a proposal to name a street after the activist, who is viewed by many as an epitome of resistance against Israel.
According to the proposal, the 27th street of Tehran's municipal District Six will be named after Rachel Corrie.
Labels: Iran, Rachel Corrie, Tehran
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:25 PM
1 comments
So is this where the flytilla group will be spending Sunday and Monday? Former Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade Commander, Colonel Pinhas (Pinky) Zuaretz – the final witness in the case – is scheduled to testify Sunday, July 10, in the Corrie civil trial against the State of Israel.It's a pity that the Corrie's are so ideologically obtuse that they won't even consider the possibility that someone else is responsible for their daughter's death.
Colonel Zuaretz was the commanding officer of the Israeli military’s Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade in 2003, when American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed.
...
Craig and Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s parents, will hold a press conference on Monday, July 11, at 11:00 AM at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem to discuss the conclusion of this phase of the case, as well as next steps in their efforts to seek accountability for their daughter’s killing. They will be joined by their other daughter, Sarah Corrie Simpson and Attorney Hussein Abu Hussein. The press conference will be held in English, with attorneys available at the conclusion for brief interviews in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Labels: International Solidarity Movement, Islamic treatment of women, Palestinian fly-in, Rachel Corrie, religion of rape
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:30 PM
2 comments
Maan reports that a 'Palestinian' man was run over and killed by a bulldozer on Wednesday morning near Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Local sources identified the man as Muhammad Ramadan Sha’ban, 22, from Beit Lahia, who was sleeping when the bulldozer ran over him.I wonder if the State Department will be calling for an investigation into the Sha'ban's death. Oops - sorry. No one cares when 'Palestinians' kill 'Palestinians.'
Medics said he died instantly, and police said the death was ruled an accident.
The young tunnel worker’s body was taken to the Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital.
Labels: bulldozer, Rachel Corrie, Rafah
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:36 PM
0 comments
Sarah Corrie Simpson, Ms. Corrie’s older sister, who is here with her mother and father, Craig, has taken a leading role in bringing attention to the case. Asked what she thought of how her sister was viewed, she said her family did not consider itself anti-Israel and was not responsible for the way in which Ms. Corrie’s name had been used by groups and causes.
To the contrary, she said, the family was using Israel’s court system to get its army to stand up to the standards it professes, a vote of confidence in the society.
“I don’t see this as about Israel’s legitimacy,” she said in an interview. “My family is not anti-Israel. What Rachel saw when she went to Gaza was extremely troubling and because of what happened to her we are now connected to the Palestinian issue. But Israeli peace activists shared her concern and are helping us with our case. From our family’s perspective, this is about human rights for all people and holding governments accountable.”
This from the sister of a woman who was killed acting as a human shield for weapons smuggling tunnels operated by a terror organization. What about the human rights of the people of Sderot (and at that time, the people in the Jewish towns of Gaza)?Labels: bulldozer, Rachel Corrie, weapons tunnels, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:50 PM
2 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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