EDITOR:Israeli justice is a sham
Shame on Israel! Shame for murdering Rachel, then for hiding the facts, tailoring the ‘investigation’, and now for producing a legal travesty justifying the murder while removing itself from the realm of responsibilities. Israel has shed blood of tens of thousands, from Beirut to Gaza and beyond, and never considers itself responsible for a single death. Can there be a higher degree of hypocrisy and pretense? History will judge those who cannot judge themselves! The Israeli system of justice exists in order to exonerate war crimes, this is quite clear.
We will not allow Rachel’s name to be forgotten, or her callous murder to be forgiven, like the thousands of Palestinians murdered all the time, which she tried to protect, paying with her life. Damn the murderers, and damn their coverup and corrupt ‘justice’!
Rachel Corrie lawsuit result ‘dangerous precedent’ say human rights groups: Guardian
Concern ruling will allow Israel to exploit ‘legal black hole’ and avoid responsibility for its actions
Human rights organisations have warned of a “dangerous precedent” following an Israeli court’s dismissal of a civil lawsuit over the death of US activist Rachel Corrie, which stated that Israel could not be held responsible because its army was engaged in a combat operation.
Corrie “was accidentally killed in the framework of a ‘war-related activity’ … [and] the state bears no responsibility for the damages inflicted on the plaintiffs resulting from a war-related action,” said Judge Oded Gershon at Haifa district court.
The 23-year-old activist was crushed by a military bulldozer which she believed was intent on demolishing a Palestinian home in Rafah, southern Gaza, in March 2003. Gershon ruled that it was a “regrettable accident” that Corrie had brought upon herself. There had been no fault in the internal Israeli military investigation, which cleared the bulldozer driver of any blame, the court found. “The deceased was in a blind spot – the operator didn’t see her,” said Gershon.
Corrie had “put herself in a dangerous situation” and could have saved herself by moving out of the zone of danger, he said. The area was “the site of daily warfare” and a closed military zone, and the US government had warned its citizens not to go there.
Hussein Abu Hussein, the Corrie family’s lawyer, said the ruling sent “a very dangerous message and precedent that there are no restrictions on Israeli military behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank”. The ruling would “close the doors of justice to civilian victims”, including foreigners, and “expand a legal black hole” in which Israel seeks to evade responsibility for its actions.
The verdict, he said, was “yet another example of where impunity has prevailed over accountability and fairness. We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice, but we are convinced that this verdict distorts the strong evidence presented in court, and contradicts fundamental principles of international law with regard to protection of human rights defenders. In denying justice in Rachel Corrie’s killing, this verdict speaks to the systemic failure to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violations of basic human rights.”
Human Rights Watch said the ruling contravened international law, which is intended to protect non-combatants in war zones, and set “a dangerous precedent”. “The idea that there can be no fault for killing civilians in a combat operation flatly contradicts Israel’s international legal obligations to spare civilians from harm during armed conflict and to credibly investigate and punish violations by its forces,” said Bill van Esveld, a senior Middle East researcher at HRW.
Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights organisation, Al Haq, said: “Israel has claimed that it is not responsible for the death of a civilian in armed conflict. However, this flatly ignores international law, which stipulates that Israel is under an obligation to take all measures to ensure that no civilians will be harmed during hostilities, and must at all times distinguish between military targets and civilians.
“The presence of a civilian in a combat zone does in any way not affect their right to protection. Instead, their protected status applies regardless of their location in a conflict, and international law clearly states that they must be protected against acts of violence in all circumstances.”
Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, of Olympia, Washington State, sued the state of Israel, accusing it of the unlawful or intentional killing of their daughter or of gross negligence.
The family was “deeply saddened and deeply troubled” by the ruling, Cindy Corrie said afterwards. “I believe this was a bad day, not only for our family, but for human rights, humanity, the rule of law and also for the country of Israel.” The state, she said, “has worked extremely hard to make sure that the truth about what happened to my daughter is not known and those responsible will not be held accountable”. The family will appeal to the supreme court.
The Israeli justice ministry described Corrie’s death as “a tragic accident”. The bulldozer driver and his commander were “exonerated of any blame for negligence”, it said in a statement.
At the time of Corrie’s death, house demolitions were common; part of an increasing cycle of violence from both sides. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said the homes it targeted were harbouring militants or weapons or being used to conceal arms-smuggling tunnels under the border. Human rights groups said the demolitions were collective punishment. Between 2000 and 2004, the Israeli military demolished 1,700 homes in Rafah, leaving about 17,000 people homeless, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
Corrie was one of a group of around eight international activists acting as human shields against the demolitions. Fellow activists said she was clearly within the line of sight of the bulldozer driver, who drove straight at her.
Israel promised a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation into her death. Within a month, an IDF internal inquiry had concluded that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen the activist and that no charges would be brought.
During the Corries’ civil lawsuit, which lasted almost two and a half years, the bulldozer driver testified anonymously from behind a screen for “security reasons”. He insisted that the first time he saw the activist was when he “saw people pulling the body out from under the earth”.
His commanding officer, Colonel Pinhas Zuaretz, told the court that Rafah was a war zone in 2003 and said that “reasonable people would not be there unless they had aims of attacking our forces”.
How the US and Israeli justice systems whitewash state crimes: Guardian CiF
Courts are supposed to check the abuse of executive power, not cravenly serve it. But in the US and Israel, that is now the case
The US military announced on Monday that no criminal charges would be brought against the US marines in Afghanistan who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Nor, the military announced, would any criminal charges be filed against the US troops who “tried to burn about 500 copies of the Qur’an as part of a badly bungled security sweep at an Afghan prison in February, despite repeated warnings from Afghan soldiers that they were making a colossal mistake”.
In doing so, the US military, as usual, brushed aside demands of Afghan officials for legal accountability for the destructive acts of foreign soldiers in their country. The US instead imposed “disciplinary measures” in both cases, ones that “could include letters of reprimand, a reduction in rank, forfeit of some pay, physical restriction to a military base, extra duties or some combination of those measures”. Both incidents triggered intense protests and rioting that left dozens dead, back in February this year.
Parallel to that, an Israeli judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against the Israeli government brought by the family of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American student and pro-Palestinian activist who was killed by a military bulldozer in 2003 as she protested the demolition of a house in Gaza whose family she had come to befriend. Upon learning of the suit’s dismissal, Corrie’s mother, Cindy, said:
“I believe this was a bad day, not only for our family, but for human rights, humanity, the rule of law and also for the country of Israel.”
Despite Corrie’s wearing a bright orange vest, Judge Oded Gershon, in a 62-page decision, ruled that the bulldozer driver did not see her and her death was thus an accident. He went on to heap blame on Corrie for her own killing, arguing that, contrary to what “any reasonable person would have done”, she “chose to put herself in danger” by trying to impede “a military activity meant to prevent terrorist activity”.
The commonality in all three of these episodes is self-evident: the perversion of the justice system and rule of law as nothing more than a weapon to legitimize even the most destructive state actions, while severely punishing those who oppose them. The US and its loyal thinktank scholars have long demanded that other states maintain an “independent judiciary” as one of the key ingredients for living under the rule of law. But these latest episodes demonstrate, yet again, that the judiciary in the US, along with the one in its prime Middle East client state, is anything but “independent”: its primary function is to shield government actors from accountability.
The US military has continuously imposed pitifully light “punishments” on its soldiers even for the most heinous atrocities. The wanton slaughter of two dozen civilians in Haditha, Iraq and the severe and even lethal torture of Afghan detainees generated, at worst, shockingly short jail time for the killers and, usually, little more than letters of reprimand.
Contrast this tepid, reluctant wrist-slapping for the brutal crimes of occupying soldiers with what a UN investigation found was the US government’s “cruel and inhuman treatment” of Bradley Manning before he was convicted of anything. Manning has been imprisoned for more than two years now without having been found guilty of any crimes – already longer than any of the perpetrators of these fatal abuses in Iraqand Afghanistan. He faces life in prison at the age of 23 for the alleged “crime” of disclosing to the world overwhelming evidence of corruption, deceit and illegality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions: disclosures that helped thwart the Obama administration’s efforts to keep US troops in Iraq, and which, as even WikiLeaks‘ harshest criticsacknowledge, played some substantial role in helping to spark the Arab spring.
Notably, the first disclosure for which Manning was allegedly responsible – the videotape of an Apache helicopter gunning down unarmed Reuters journalists and then the rescuers who came to help the wounded, including two young children – resulted in zero accountability: the US military exonerated everyone involved. Instead, it is Manning, the person accused of exposing these crimes, who is punished as the real criminal.
And herein lies the real function of the American justice system, clearly revealed time and again. It is to protect high-level actors from accountability even for the most egregious of crimes, while severely punishing those who reveal or take a stand against those crimes, thus deterring and intimidating any future opposition.
That is the mentality that has led the Obama department of justice to aggressively shield all Bush officials from any and all accountability for their torture and surveillance crimes, while launching an unprecedented persecution campaign against whistleblowers. As always in US justice, the “real” criminals are those who alert the world to high-level crimes, not those who commit them. That is why the only person to suffer any repercussions from the Bush NSA eavesdropping scandal was Thomas Tamm: the mid-level DOJ lawyer who learned of the illegal program and alerted the New York Times about it. Those who authorized those crimes have been fully shielded from any form of punishment.
It is this same mentality that has led the US federal judiciary to produce the most disgraceful political fact of the last decade. Not a single victim of America’s “war on terror” abuses – even those now acknowledged by the US government to have been completely innocent – have been allowed even to have their cases heard in an American court on the merits. They’ve all had the courthouse doors slammed shut in the facesby courts that have accepted the US government’s claims that its own secrecy powers and immunity rights bar any such justice. Crimes committed by the state or in advancement of its agenda are simply immune from the rule of law in the US.
The same exploitation of the justice system is glaringly evident in the Rachel Corrie travesty. As the Guardian’s former Israel (and now Washington) correspondent Chris McGreal writes, the dismissal of this suit is simply a by-product of the “virtual impunity for Israeli troops no matter who they killed or in what circumstances”. That’s because Israeli courts, like American courts, have submissively accepted the supreme fiction of both governments: anyone impeding government actions is a terrorist or terrorist-enabler who gets what they deserve, while the actions of the state, no matter how savage, can never be anything other than legitimate.
Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, said after the verdict that Israel “employed a ‘well-heeled system’ to protect its soldiers and provide them with immunity”. Indeed, the Israeli “investigation” into Corrie’s death has been such a laughable whitewash that even the US ambassador to Israel last week told the Corrie family that he “did not believe the Israeli military investigation had been ‘thorough, credible and transparent’, as had been promised by Israel.” All of this, writes McGreal, shows how “covering up the truth about the killings of innocents, including Corrie, became an important part of the survival strategy because of the damage the truth could do to the military’s standing, not only in the rest of the world but also among Israelis.”
As I noted on Sunday, it is expected, inevitable, that those who wield political power will abuse it for corrupt and self-serving ends. That is why there are institutions designed to check and combat that abuse. The rule of law, and an independent judiciary applying it, is ostensibly one of those institutions. But – like establishment media outlets and most academics – this justice system now does the opposite: it is merely another weapon used to legitimize crimes by the powerful and crush those who oppose them.
All three of this week’s travesties, in the US and in Israel, are hardly surprising. To the contrary, they are the inevitable by-products of societies that recruit every institution in service of defending even the most wanton abuses by the state.
Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset: Guardian
Corrie’s parents have not received justice, but their quest reveals the lie of the IDF’s claim to be the world’s ‘most moral army’
Reporters covering Israel are routinely confronted with the question: why not call Hamas a terrorist organisation? It’s a fair point. How else to describe blowing up families on buses but terrorism?
But the difficulty lies in what then to call the Israeli army when it, too, at particular times and places, has used indiscriminate killing and terror as a means of breaking Palestinian civilians. One of those places was Rafah, in the southern tip of the Gaza strip, where Rachel Corrie was crushed by a military bulldozer nine years ago as she tried to stop the Israeli army going about its routine destruction of Palestinian homes.
An Israeli judge on Tuesday perpetuated the fiction that Corrie’s death was a terrible accident and upheld the results of the military’s own investigation, widely regarded as such a whitewash that even the US ambassador to Israel described it as neither thorough nor credible. Corrie’s parents may have failed in their attempt to see some justice for their daughter, but in their struggle they forced a court case that established that her death was not arbitrary but one of a pattern of killings as the Israeli army pursued a daily routine of attacks intended to terrorise the Palestinian population of southern Gaza into submission.
The case laid bare the state of the collective Israeli military mind, which cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the street were legitimate targets if they crossed a red line that was invisible to everyone but the soldiers looking at it on their maps. The military gave itself a blanket protection by declaring southern Gaza a war zone, even though it was heavily populated by ordinary Palestinians, and set rules of engagement so broad that just about anyone was a target.
With that went virtual impunity for Israeli troops no matter who they killed or in what circumstances – an impunity reinforced by Tuesday’s verdict in Haifa.
The Israeli military commander in southern Gaza at the time was Colonel Pinhas “Pinky” Zuaretz. A few weeks after Corrie’s death, I (as the Guardian’s correspondent in Israel) spoke to him about how it was that so many children were shot by Israeli soldiers at times when there was no combat. His explanation was chilling.
At that point, three years into the second intifada, more than 400 children had been killed by the Israeli army. Nearly half were in Rafah and neighbouring Khan Yunis. One in four were under the age of 12.
I focussed on the deaths of six children in a 10-week period, all in circumstances far from combat. The dead included a 12-year-old girl, Haneen Abu Sitta, killed in Rafah as she walked home from school near a security fence around one of the fortified Jewish settlements in Gaza at the time. The army made up an explanation by falsely claiming Haneen was killed during a gun battle between Israeli forces and Palestinians.
Zuaretz conceded to me that there was no battle and that the girl was shot by a soldier who had no business opening fire. It was the same with the killings of some of the other children. The colonel was fleetingly remorseful.
“Every name of a child here, it makes me feel bad because it’s the fault of my soldiers. I need to learn and see the mistakes of my troops,” he said. But Zuaretz was not going to do anything about it; and by the end of the interview, he was casting the killings as an unfortunate part of the struggle for Israel’s very survival.
“I remember the Holocaust. We have a choice, to fight the terrorists or to face being consumed by the flames again,” he said.
In court, Zuaretz said the whole of southern Gaza was a combat zone and anyone who entered parts of it had made themselves a target. But those parts included houses where Palestinians built walls within walls in their homes to protect themselves from Israeli bullets.
In that context, covering up the truth about the killings of innocents, including Corrie, became an important part of the survival strategy because of the damage the truth could do to the military’s standing, not only in the rest of the world but also among Israelis.
The death of Khalil al-Mughrabi two years before Corrie died was telling. The 11-year-old boy was playing football when he was shot dead in Rafah by an Israeli soldier. The respected Israeli human rightsorganisations, B’Tselem, wrote to the army demanding an investigation. Several months later, the judge advocate general’s office wrote back saying that Khalil was killed by soldiers who had acted with “restraint and control” to disperse a riot in the area.
But the judge advocate general’s office made the mistake of attaching a copy of its own confidential investigation, which came to a very different conclusion: that the riot had been much earlier in the day and the soldiers who shot the child should not have opened fire. In the report, the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Einat Ron, then spelled out alternative false scenarios that should be offered to B’Tselem. The official account was a lie and the army knew it.
The message to ordinary soldiers was clear: you have a free hand because the military will protect you to protect itself. It is that immunity from accountability that was the road to Corrie’s death.
She wasn’t the only foreign victim at about that time. In the following months, Israeli soldiers shot dead James Miller, a British television documentary journalist, and Tom Hurndall, a British photographer and pro-Palestinian activist. In November 2002, an Israeli sniper had killed a British United Nations worker, Iain Hook, in Jenin in the West Bank.
British inquests returned verdicts of unlawful killings in all three deaths, but Israel rejected calls for the soldiers who killed Miller and Hook to be held to account. The Israeli military initially whitewashed Hurndall’s killing but after an outcry led by his parents, and British government pressure, the sniper who shot him was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter.
That sentence apparently did nothing to erode a military mindset that sees only enemies.
Three years after Corrie’s death, an Israeli army officer who emptied the magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Iman al-Hams, and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was cleared by a military court.
Iman was shot and wounded after crossing the invisible red line around an Israeli military base in Rafah, but she was never any closer than 100 yards. The officer then left the base in order to “confirm the kill” by pumping the wounded girl full of bullets. An Israeli military investigation concluded he had acted properly.
Tuesday’s court verdict in Haifa will have done nothing to end that climate of impunity. Nor anything that would have us believe that Israel’s repeated proclamation that it has the “most moral army in the world” is any more true than its explanation of so many Palestinian deaths.
Rachel Corrie ruling ‘deeply troubling’, says her family: Guardian
American activist’s family vows to appeal against Israeli court’s ruling that her death was a ‘regrettable accident’
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Harriet Sherwood in Haifa
Cindy and Craig, the parents of Rachel Corrie, said it was a ‘bad day for human rights’ Link to this videoThe death of pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie was a “regrettable accident” for which the state of Israel was not responsible, a judge has ruled, dismissing a civil lawsuit brought by the family.The young American had “put herself in a dangerous situation” and her death was not caused by the negligence of the Israeli state or army, said Judge Oded Gershon at Haifa district court.
The 62-page ruling found no fault in the internal Israeli military investigation which cleared the driver of the bulldozer which crushed Corrie to death in March 2003. The judge said the driver could not have seen the activist from the cab of the bulldozer.
Corrie could have saved herself by moving out of the zone of danger “as any reasonable person would have done”, he said. The area was a combat zone, and the US government had warned its citizens not to go there.
International activists were intent on obstructing the actions of the Israeli military and acting as human shields “to protect terrorists”.
Corrie was killed on 16 March 2003, crushed under an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to obstruct the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border.
The lawsuit, filed by Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, of Olympia, Washington state, accused the Israeli military of either unlawfully or intentionally killing Rachel or of gross negligence. The family had claimed a symbolic $1 (63p) in damages and legal expenses.
The judge said no damages were liable, but the family’s court costs would be waived.
The family was “deeply saddened and deeply troubled” by the ruling, Cindy Corrie said at a press conference after the ruling. “I believe this was a bad day, not only for our family, but for human rights, humanity, the rule of law and also for the country of Israel.”
The state had, she said, employed a “well-heeled system” to protect its soldiers and provide them with immunity. “As a family, we’ve had to push for answers, accountability and justice.”
Rachel’s sister, Sarah Corrie Simpson, said: “I believe without doubt that my sister was seen as the driver approached her.” She hoped that the driver would one day “have the courage” to tell the truth.
Rachel Corrie’s parents attended Haifa district court, where a judge ruled that Israel did not intentionally kill the pro-Palestinian activist in 2003 Link to this videoThe US government believed the military investigation was flawed, she added. Last week, the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told the Corrie family that Washington remained dissatisfied with the the inquiry. Hussein Abu Hussein, the family’s lawyer, said: “This verdict is yet another example of where impunity has prevailed over accountability and fairness. Rachel Corrie was killed while non-violently protesting home demolitions and injustice in Gaza, and today, this court has given its stamp of approval to flawed and illegal practices that failed to protect civilian life.
“We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice, but we are convinced that this verdict distorts the strong evidence presented in court, and contradicts fundamental principles of international law with regard to protection of human rights defenders. In denying justice in Rachel Corrie’s killing, this verdict speaks to the systemic failure to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violations of basic human rights.”
The family would appeal against the ruling to Israel’s supreme court, he added.
Also speaking after the ruling, the state’s attorney said the Israeli soldiers at the scene of Corrie’s death did “everything they could” to prevent harm being caused to any person.
In a statement, the Israeli justice ministry said: “The death of Rachel Corrie is without a doubt a tragic accident. As the verdict states, the driver of the bulldozer and his commander had a very limited field of vision, such that they had no possibility of seeing Ms Corrie and thus are exonerated of any blame for negligence …
“The security forces … were compelled to carry out ‘levelling’ work against explosive devices that posed a tangible danger to life and limb, and were not in any form posing a threat to Palestinian homes. The work was done while exercising maximum caution and prudence, and without the ability to foresee harming anyone.”
According to Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch, the verdict “sets a dangerous precedent in its claim that there was no liability for Corrie’s death because the Israeli forces involved were conducting a ‘combat operation’ … The idea that there can be no fault for killing civilians in a combat operation flatly contradicts Israel’s international legal obligations to spare civilians from harm during armed conflict, and to credibly investigate and punish violations by its forces.”
The judge’s statement that the military inquiry into Corrie’s death had been without fault was “hard to reconcile with the facts”, he said. “Military investigators repeatedly failed to take statements from witnesses, to follow up with the witness’s lawyer, and to re-interview witnesses to clarify discrepancies.”
Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, the activist organisation for which Corrie volunteered, said after the ruling: “The judge’s ruling today is outrageous in so many ways, not least of which is the criticising of Rachel and the maligning of the International Solidarity Movement in an effort to place blame on all but those who killed Rachel and worked to cover it up. These are the same institutions that continue to injure and kill thousands of innocent Palestinians with no accountability. Not only does today’s verdict mean that there is no justice for Rachel Corrie, but it also means that no human rights defender is safe from Israeli state violence.”
At the time of Corrie’s death at the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, house demolitions were common, part of an increasing cycle of violence from both sides. Palestinian suicide bombers were causing death and destruction with terrifying frequency; the Israeli military was using its mighty force and weaponry to crush the uprising.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said the houses it targeted with bulldozers and shells harboured militants or weapons, or were being used to conceal arms smuggling tunnels under the border. Human rights groups said the demolitions were collective punishment. Between 2000 and 2004, the Israeli military demolished around 1,700 homes in Rafah, leaving about 17,000 people homeless, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
Corrie was one of a group of around eight international activists acting as human shields against the demolitions. According to witness statements made at the time and evidence given in court, she clambered atop a pile of earth in the path of an advancing Caterpillar bulldozer. Fellow activists said she was clearly within the line of sight of the bulldozer driver.
The day after Corrie’s death, Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised US president George W Bush that Israel would conduct a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation into the incident.
Within a month, the IDF had completed an internal inquiry, led by its chief of staff. It concluded that its forces were not to blame, that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen the activist, that no charges would be brought and the case was closed.
The Corries launched their civil lawsuit against the state of Israel as an “absolutely last resort”. The case opened at Haifa district court in March 2010.
Among those giving evidence was the driver of the bulldozer, who testified anonymously from behind a screen for “security reasons”. He repeatedly insisted that the first time he saw the activist was when she was already dying. He said: “I didn’t see her before the incident. I saw people pulling the body out from under the earth.”
The hearings ended in July last year.
Rachel Corrie: Court rules Israel not at fault for death: BBC
Corrie was involved in a campaign to stop Palestinian homes in Gaza being demolishedAn Israeli court has ruled that the state of Israel was not at fault for the death of US activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003.
Ms Corrie’s family had brought a civil claim for negligence against the Israeli ministry of defence.
The judge said the 23-year-old’s death was a “regrettable accident” and that the state was not responsible.
She had been trying to stop Palestinian homes being pulled down in Gaza.
Judge Oded Gershon, presiding at the Haifa District Court, said Ms Corrie had been protecting terrorists in a designated combat zone.
He said the bulldozer driver had not seen her, adding the soldiers had done their utmost to keep people away from the site. “She [Corrie] did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done.”
Rachel Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, looked dejected after the verdict was read out. Friends and supporters in court offered hugs and handshakes. But nine years after their daughter was killed, they have failed in their attempt to get the Israeli army to take responsibility for Rachel’s death.
Speaking after the ruling, the family’s lawyer was quick to say they would appeal against the decision in Israel’s supreme court.
For Cindy and Craig Corrie, that will prolong what must have already been an exhausting and expensive process. Their legal fight is believed to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They regarded their daughter as a peace activist, passionately behind the Palestinian cause and trying to protect civilians. On Tuesday, they listened to a judge tell them the activists she was working with were acting as human shields for terrorists.
He ruled the state of Israel did not have to pay any damages. The Corries had requested a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses.
They had accused Israel of intentionally and unlawfully killing their daughter, and failing to conduct a full and credible investigation.
An Israeli army investigation in 2003 concluded its forces were not to blame for Ms Corrie’s death.
Cindy and Craig Corrie travelled to Israel from the US to hear the ruling along with a group of friends and activists.
After the ruling, Mrs Corrie told a news conference they wanted to see more accountability from the state of Israel, saying they had been “deeply troubled by what we heard today”.
“From the beginning it was clear to us that there was… a well-heeled system to protect the Israeli military, the soldiers who conduct actions in that military, to provide them with impunity at the cost of all the civilians who are impacted by what they do,” she said.
She said she believed at least one person in the bulldozer had seen their daughter, and that Rachel’s death “could have been and should have been avoided”.
Rachel Corrie’s mother, Cindy: ”This is a bad day for humanity”
She added: “I believe this is a bad day not only for our family, but a bad day for human rights, for humanity, for the rule of law and also for the country of Israel.”
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says that, according to court evidence, the driver did not see Ms Corrie.
“If you read the seven pages of transcript by the judge after hearing all the evidence for months now, he says that the tractor drivers moved away from the demonstrators on a number of occasions, that the demonstrators took, he says, unreasonable, illogical action, putting themselves in danger.”
“It’s clear by the Corrie family’s own expert – they nominated an expert to come to the court – he himself, their representative, said that it was impossible for the driver to see her.”
The Corrie family’s lawyer has said they will appeal against the ruling to Israel’s supreme court.
The verdict was so close to the state’s attorney’s version of events that it could have been written by him, he said.
The Corrie family has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on bringing the legal action.
Human shields
Ms Corrie was a committed peace activist even before her arrival in the Gaza Strip in 2002.
She had arranged peace events in her home town in Washington State and become a volunteer for the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
In 2003, Ms Corrie was in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as part of a group of ISM protesters.
They were acting as human shields to try to stop the Israeli army demolishing Palestinian homes and clearing land around Rafah.
The Israeli army argued the area was being used by militants and that the protesters should not have been in a closed military zone.
The army’s investigation found that Ms Corrie was not visible and that she was killed by debris falling on her.
But Ms Corrie’s supporters say it is impossible that the bulldozer driver did not see her.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev: ”It was impossible for the driver to see her”
“The bulldozer had a clear line across open ground while it drove towards her, relatively slowly, 20 or 30 metres or so, and even the estimation of the bulldozer’s line of sight… would clearly suggest that during that time the bulldozer driver must have seen Rachel,” activist Tom Dale, who was protesting alongside Rachel Corrie on the day she was killed, told the BBC.
Pictures taken on the day Ms Corrie died show her in an orange high-visibility jacket carrying a megaphone and blocking the path of an Israeli military bulldozer.
A collection of Ms Corrie’s writings was turned into a play – My Name Is Rachel Corrie – which has toured all over the world, including Israel and the Palestinian territories.
An Israeli court has ruled in a civil case that the Israel army was not at fault in the bulldozer death of American pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie nearly 10 years ago.Corrie was 23 years old when she went to the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip as part of a group of activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
They were acting as human shields to try to stop the Israeli army demolishing Palestinian homes and clearing land around Rafah.
“I reached the conclusion that there was no negligence on the part of the bulldozer driver,” Judge Oded Gershon said, reading out his verdict on Tuesday at the Haifa District Court in northern Israel.
Israeli army cleared in Rachel Corrie death: AlJazeera English |
| Cindy Corrie discusses Israeli court’s ruling |
“I reject the suit. There is no justification to demand the state pay any damages.”
The Corries had requested a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses.
Gershon said Israeli soldiers had done their utmost to keep people away from the site.
“The deceased put herself into a dangerous situation, she stood in front of a giant bulldozer in a place where the operator could not see her. She did not distance herself as a reasonable person would have done,” he said.
“Her death is the result of an accident she bought upon herself.”
He also said that a 2003 israeli military police investigation – which found Rachel Corrie had been killed by falling earth as a result of her own irresponsible behaviour and which had been criticised by senior US officials – had been properly conducted.
Family ‘hurt’
The civil case is the latest in a series brought forward by Rachel Corrie’s parents.
Cindy and Craig Corrie, who once again made the trip to Israel from the US to pursue their case, were upset after the ruling was read out.
“I am hurt,” Cindy Corrie said after the verdict was read.
Was a student at Evergreen State College in her local town of Olympia in Washington state.“We are, of course, deeply saddened and deeply troubled by what we heard today from Judge Oded Gershon.”
Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry, reporting from Haifa, said: “The family are disappointed that there was no criticism at all towards the Israeli army.
“Israel is known for not giving an inch in cases like this at all.”
Corrie was a committed peace activist even before her arrival in the Gaza Strip in 2002.
She arranged peace events in her home town in Washington state and became a volunteer for the ISM.
Pictures taken on the day Corrie died – March 16, 2003 – show her in an orange high-visibility jacket carrying a megaphone and blocking the path of an Israeli military bulldozer.
Witnesses said Corrie was hit by a bulldozer which was razing Palestinian homes.
The army said the operation was needed to deny guerrillas cover.
Israel’s far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, heralded the verdict, calling it “vindication after vilification.”
In its inquiry, the army suggested that the fatal blow came from a falling slab of concrete.Corrie’s death made her a symbol of the uprising.
While her family battled through the courts to establish who was responsible for her killing, her story was dramatised on stage in a dozen countries and told in the book Let Me Stand Alone.
An aid ship intercepted by the Israeli military in 2010 while trying to break the blockade of Gaza was named after her
France opens Arafat murder inquiry: AlJazeera English |
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Decision follows allegations that deceased Palestinian leader may have been poisoned before he died in 2004.
Last Modified: 28 Aug 2012 19:55
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Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera that the Palestinian Authority welcomed the inquiry
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| A French court has opened a murder inquiry into the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, prosecutors said, following claims by his wife that he may have been poisoned.French officials on Tuesday said prosecutors had agreed to begin an inquiry, but they have yet to appoint an investigating judge.Tuesday’s announcement comes after Suha Arafat last month asked a court in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre to launch a murder investigation following revelations that a Swiss institute had discovered high levels of the radioactive element polonium-210 on Arafat’s clothing.That substance was found to have killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.Arafat died in a Paris military hospital in November 2004, a month after being airlifted – when his health collapsed – from his battered headquarters in Ramallah, where he had been effectively confined by Israel for more than two and a half years.Allegations of foul play have long surrounded Arafat’s demise after French doctors who treated him in his final days said they could not establish the cause of death.
An investigating magistrate, yet to be named, will lead the French probe into possible premeditated murder, a legal source said. ‘Premeditated murder’ A lawyer for Suha Arafat told Europe 1 radio that the French court was correct in recognising its jurisdiction to investigate the case, since Arafat died in France.
“The tests done in Switzerland showed that Mr Arafat, in all likelihood, died through poisoning,” lawyer Marc Bonnant said. “This hypothesis must be proved, and if that’s the case, then it’s premeditated murder.” Suha Arafat has said her suspicions were raised when the hospital where her husband was treated acknowledged that they had destroyed his blood and urine samples. The Palestinian Authority plans to exhume Arafat’s body from a limestone mausoleum in Ramallah for an autopsy and Tunisia has called for a ministerial meeting of the Arab League to discuss his death. “Speculation around the death has permeated particularly with Palestinians unhappy about the explanation for how he died,” Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Paris, said. “Pressure was put on the French to open their inquiry,” our correspondent said. “And they may well go to Ramallah soon to actually unearth the remains of Arafat and carry out further tests.” “Separate to that, the PA wants an international investigation into Israel’s role.” Yigal Palmor, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry said: “This does not pertain to us. The complaint lodged by Suha Arafat with the French police does not address Israel or anyone in particular. If the French justice system has decided to open an investigation, we hope that it will shed light on this matter.” |