So the Israeli army should always cease and desist every activity they’re carrying out if they can’t see a human shield who is deliberately putting themselves and their lives on the line?
That’s quite the unreasonable expectation. It makes sense to me that the military doesn’t stop its operations because someone who decides to act as a human shield for their enemy stands in the way. I see death in war as tragic, and I see it as expected. If it were Arthur Dent protecting his house from the bypass, it’d be a little different than two people on opposite sides of a war playing chicken.
She entered a war, she took a gamble, and she lost it. She could’ve done more good, as gobear said, by living for a cause instead of dying for it.
Yes, the willful negligence of Rachel Corrie. She very foolishly put herself, the other protestors, the IDF and the heavy equipment in danger by her childish behavior.
We had a lovely OP encouraging us to think of this tragedy in terms of what we can learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the American role in it, and instead we are spatting over whether she deserved it, or whether she should have seen it coming, or whether the driver saw her, or whatever. These questions will never be resolved in this thread (or perhaps anywhere else) and have very little to do with the OP, with the Israel/Palestine issue, or with what Rachel (and other peace protesters) are working for. Can’t we look at this with a bit of maturity and the intent of broadening our minds, and get out of this petty argument?
Who the hell cares whether the driver saw her or not? Have we already accepted that it was perfectly okay for him to be bulldozing a Palestinian house in the first place? Is it acceptable that thousands of people die in the region every month? Now all that’s left for us to decide is how peace activists should behave themselves, or the sightlines from a bulldozer?
I never knew Rachel but I know a lot of people who share her passions, and I believe it’s not out of line for me to say that she would have been pretty pissed off that we’re exchanging barbs about the circumstances of her death, while (willfully) ignoring the context in which her death came about. She died trying to make a point about the conflict. This point appears to have been lost in some people’s burning need to find someone to blame - it had to be either Rachel or the bulldozer driver, right? There’s nothing else to be learned?
I bring your attention to the comment from the OP (from the movie “Under Fire”) :
also
Please help me resore my fading faith in the world’s sensitive and appropriate ability to make sense of tragedy.
I hadn’t intended to reply to this thread until this:
errata said: “However when people are having a direct confrontation and with the operator and the operator cannot ascertain where they are, the operator should stop trying to use the equipment.”
See this is the flaw in your logic. In your little world and I am sure this young woman’s also the operator should have stopped henceforth this young womans tactics would have worked and been justified. Well I hate to tell you this, but you might as well use this incident as an example of what happens when you try your best to get your way and a person or people will not be detered. I have no sympathy whatsoever for her or anyone like her. Her death while some might see as tragic is nothing more than to be expected under the circumstances. Use this opprotunity to keep yourself alive.
From Jewish World Review: " . . . the Justice Department has not returned a single indictment involving any of the 36 Americans killed in Israel* since the 1993 Oslo agreement. In the past two years alone, as the intifada has raged, 19 U.S. citizens were killed prior to the Hebrew University bombing . . . "
But, of course, those Americans were killed by Palestinian terrorists, so it seems they don’t count.
So you see demolishing a civilian house as an act of war? This is a very interesting turn. IIRC directly attacking civilians is a violation of the geneva convention. If he was demolishing a military bunker I might see your point.
If the mission was really vital to national security (and I doubt it was) he could have called for backup to easily remove a few non-violent protestors.
Cowgirl,
You’re right I think we could have a better discussion here. However I do think the culpability of the Israeli military is directly related to the sort of behavior she was trying to draw attention to and is therefore worthy of discussion.
I am going to bow out now however, before my closeness to the situation leads me to say something that could get me banned.
People are dying every day. This young woman had some ideals she felt particularly strongly about and was willing to go into harm’s way to demonstrate her devotion. Whether her death was the fault of the bulldozer driver (while someone else will lay the blame on Sharon) or because of her own stupidity (due to visions of Tianemen Square dancing through her brain) she died doing something she believed in, I have to give her credit for that. Better to go down fighting for what you believe in than choking on your third helping of KFC with the remote control in your bloated grasp.
SOB, that had to hurt like hell though. Probably sent all the blood to her brain and blew out her lights pretty quick, one would hope.
Not like this, but the government at the time was perfectly willing to accuse them of being communists, terrorists, running a roadblock, exchanging fire with the men who killed them. (Jean Kirkpatrick and Alexander Haig, IIRC).
Yeah, I know tons of pistol packing nuns. Talk about ridiculous.
Which I take as a not too veiled comparison of my attitude with Nazism and:
“May the strong survive and dominate the weak and foolish”
Which I am sure of both your and my own respective positions, I expect you to be at my house tommow morning ready to work. I have a basement that needs to be excavated and you can expect harsh treatment should my demands not be met.
I’ve been trying to find the number, but quite a few American citizens (mostly of Palestinian orgin, as the US is where many of the refugees fled to) have been killed by the IDF, none of these were deemed newsworthy too.
Catsix, the rason why they wanted to demolish the houses was to give them a clear line of view to stop smugling from the Egyptian border, there was no suggestion that the Doctor had done anything wrong.
Why should this women’s nationality make any difference?
I feel sorry for the people who have no choice but to deal with the violence (considerably less, btw, than “thousands every month” die in the region) – whether they be Palistinians or Israelis.
I quite fail to understand why an American, who chose to be there and chose to put herself in harm’s way, is deserving of such greater sympathy as to transform people’s thinking about the region (transform it into what?).
Or that her death is somehow more “relevant” than an inhabitant of the area, just because she was an American.
This seems to me to be pandering to sympathy based purely on nationality.
As I said on another thread in GQ, I have been in contact with someone who saw the actual bulldozer ‘manevouring’ and it certainly did appear to have “Good visibilty”.