"The verdict by a court Tuesday in the case of Rachel Corrie, an American activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, may have captured international attention and touched on a range of ethical issues at the center of Israel's military operations.
"But at its core, the ruling on whether Israel was responsible for Corrie's death nine years ago hinged on one simple question: Did the bulldozer driver who ran her over see her, or not? The court ruled that he did not. Corrie's family maintains that he did.
"Larger issues were part of the proceedings and their surroundings: What are the responsibilities of civilian activists in an armed conflict? Does a civilian area with terrorist activity count as a war zone? What distinguishes between an organization that peacefully opposed the Israeli occupation of Gaza and one that aided terrorists? However, those matters took a back seat to the actual reasoning of the legal ruling."
Who put "those matters" into that back seat? The answer is simple: "those matters" have already been decided by the people who carry the biggest guns and the exclusive means to deceive the public into believing that those "biggest guns" are protecting "the sacred Zionist narrative."
"Those matters," however, still remain in that "back seat," waiting for the chance to break out into the open and challenge the Israeli narrative. It is not the Palestinian people that Israel fears. It is the threat of losing control of a carefully honed Israeli version of truth.
After the verdict was handed down, the Corrie family, including her parents and her sister Sarah, who were in the courtroom for the trial (pictured here) vowed to continue to seek justice for Rachel. They will continue to rescue "these matters" from their confinement to that back seat.
Thanks to the Corrie family, Rachel, as JTA admits, "has become a symbol for some American and other groups that oppose Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its policies toward Gaza."
She is certainly by far not the only victim of Israel's occupation. She is, however, one of the few Americans who has died on Palestinian soil in a peaceful effort to oppose the occupation of the Palestinian people. A much larger number of Americans have died on other battlefields in Iraq and Afganastan in U.S. military invasions promoted by the same Israeli narrative that led to Rachel Corrie's death.
It is this narrative that is being assumed in the background of all foreign policy discussions in the Republican party's national convention, and will most certainly be the dominant narrative during next week's Democratic party's national convention.
Engaging in peaceful actions against that narrative can be dangerous, as Rachel and her family discovered. What makes their actions dangerous is that they are a threat to unrestrained military-enforced power structures that manage to remain in power through gullible American and Israeli publics easily pacified by the Zionist narrative.
The court's ruling did not rest solely on the simple question of who was telling the truth about Rachel's death. The British-based newspaper , Guardian, offered this summary of the court's finding:
"In clearing the state of all charges, Judge Oded Gershon of Haifa's district court said that Corrie voluntarily risked her life by entering a place where there was daily live fire. Moreover, Gershon said that the bulldozer driver did not see Corrie as she was standing behind a pile of dirt, and that Corrie did not move out of the way when she saw the bulldozer moving toward her -- instead climbing on the pile of dirt.
"Corrie 'put herself in a dangerous situation opposite a bulldozer when he couldn't see her,' Gershon said, reading the verdict. 'She didn't move away like anyone of sound mind would. She found her death even after all of the IDF's efforts to move her from the place.'
"Gershon also dismissed charges that the state tampered with the evidence in an investigation into Corrie's death. The judge added that the IDF's operations on the day of her death were an 'act of war' and that the area was a closed military zone.
"He reserved some of his harshest words, however, for Corrie's organization, calling ISM 'mixed up in terror' and accusing it of hiding aid to terrorists behind a facade of human rights activism.
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