Summary
American peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah while trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home; Falk, in his November 29, 2012 Cairo speech in Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, remembers her alongside the Free Gaza Movement and Freedom Flotilla as the civil-society actors who challenged Israel where the UN and states did not.
Details
- “We should also remember Rachel Corrie in this connection, an American peace activist who was brazenly killed by an Israeli bulldozer almost ten years ago while trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah.” (PDF p.217)
- Corrie is quoted from a letter to her mother in Olympia, Washington, days before her death: “I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside.” Falk presents her as one of the “brave persons who bear witness to the daily ordeal being experienced by Palestinians, not just for days or months or even years, but for decades and generations”, and holds that “it should not have been necessary for Rachel Corrie to sacrifice her life in this manner if the world system had done its job of enforcing the rights of the long-oppressed Palestinian people” (PDF p.218).