I’ll confess: I’m pro-Israel. I tend to think that if 85% of Palestinians aged 18-25 think that Israel has no right to exist, the IDF more or less has to occupy the West Bank and Gaza. But I know that, at least sometimes, the IDF has done some pretty detestable stuff. I’ll buy that something fishy was going on at Sabra-Shatila, for example.
Where can I find hard information on Rachel Corrie? Some say that the drivers murdered her intentionally, while others say that the drivers couldn’t see her. I don’t know anything about the organization that she was part of (International Solidarity Movement). What were Israeli bulldozers doing at the time?
I may be biased against her, but if I see proof that she was murdered defending a good cause, I’ll believe it.
I do not know whether the driver showed gross negligence or whether Ms. Corrie showed terminal dumbness. Perhaps a bit of both. I will say, having worked on construction sites around very large machinery where the driver had no armor or windows obscuring his view, that it was generally held among the work crews that it was our responsibility to not get hurt as the very construction of the machinery obscures vision and an operator has too much to do to simply get the job done without looking out for other distractions.
The one claim I would tend to reject without a lot better evidence than that provided by the ISM would be murder. Even if negligence did play a part, (possible, but arguable), there is no reason to believe that anything the operator did was intended to inflict harm.
I can’t imagine that there’s a factual answer to this, but the accounts I tend to believe the most suggest it was juts an unfortunate accident. Human body vs. heavy construction equipment very often = dead person. Construction sites are incredibly dangerous areas for people who don’t take the proper precautions. A construction site in an area where regular military hostilities break out, with equipment covered in armor to protect the driver? Even more dangerous.
The accounts I’ve read heavily suggest that Corrie was behind a depression or a mound of some sort that meant she was completely obscured from the operator’s field of vision.
In lieu of videotape, all we have are eyewitness accounts of varying bias. I expect it’ll never be possible to prove whether her death was accidental or malicious, but she put herself in harm’s way so I’m not especially sympathetic.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it a destruction site? Not trying to be flip or get into a debate - it’s just that from that account, the bulldozers were there solely to demolish.
I do agree with the general consensus - I’m all for protest, even risky protest, but you’ve got to know the risks. When you fuck with the bull(dozer,) you might get the horns.
Sure. I’m usually in the habit of calling areas swarming with big machinery and hard-hat wearing manual laborers “construction sites” even in the case when they’re clearly tearing down an office building or something.
If anything everything I said in reference to a “construction site” is more true at a demolition site.