Rachel Corrie

Rachel Corrie

Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American peace activist and member of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

She had come to Gaza during the height of the second Palestinian intifada as part of her senior-year college assignment to connect her home town with Rafah in a sister cities project. While there she had engaged with other ISM activists in efforts to non-violently prevent the Israeli army's demolition of the homes of Palestinian people.

Less than two months after her arrival, on March 16, 2003, Corrie was killed after a three hour confrontation between two bulldozers and eight ISM activists. Wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket and, until shortly before her death, using a megaphone, she was killed while standing in the path of a bulldozer that she believed was about to demolish the house of local pharmacist Samir Nasralla's family whom she had befriended. She was run over twice by the bulldozer resulting in a fractured skull, shattered ribs and punctured lungs.

The exact nature of her death and the culpability of the bulldozer operator are disputed, with eyewitnesses saying that the Israeli soldier operating the bulldozer deliberately ran over Corrie, and the Israeli government saying that it was an accident since the bulldozer operator could not see her.

In 2005 Corrie's parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel. The lawsuit charged Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case and with responsibility for her death, contending that she had either been intentionally killed or that the soldiers had acted with reckless neglect. They sued for a symbolic one U.S. dollar in damages to make the point that their case was about justice for their daughter and the Palestinian cause she had been defending.

In August 2012, an Israeli court rejected their suit and upheld the results of Israel's 2003 military investigation, ruling that the Israeli government was not responsible for Corrie's death. The ruling, the Israeli justice system, and the investigation it exonerated have been criticized.

Rachel Corrie's life has been memorialized in several tributes, including the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie and the cantata The Skies are Weeping. Her collected writings were published in 2008 under the title Let Me Stand Alone, opening "a window on the maturation of a young woman seeking to make the world a better place". The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice has been established to continue her work.