***OMFG!!...Ireland's Rachel Corrie Aid Ship about Break through Israel Blockcade!!

The ships wont pass through Isr waters.

It's not a matter of you calling me "tough guy"

It's a matter of Israel being provoked, and tested to the point of international bullying at this point.

Israel will NOT sit idly by allowing this to go on. It will NOT allow Turkey to humiliate them as it hides it's jihad behind NATO.

If Turkish vessels are sent, they are making their final voyage. It's just a fact. Nothing more.

leave her alone!

..she's mentally disturbed!

Like I said before. Don't fuck with the Irish...

I don't know. But, then, I don't know the names of all of the Americans they murdered on the USS Liberty, either. I just know they murder for fun.

It's not random piracy you idiot. The flotilla intended to enter ISRAEL. Don't you get that?

Israel had all right to board those ships because of international laws, but that dosent justify urder in anyway.

'Gods Speed' Ireland

They aren't the only ones who hate the jews. The party grows bigger by the day.

Rachael Corrie burning a home made paper US flag in Gaza.

The Myth of Rachel Corrie
By: Judy Lash Balint
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 20, 2008



Jerusalem: The news that a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, was captured by an elite anti-terror unit of the Israel Defense Forces while hiding out in the Jenin offices of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) did not make a ripple in the flood of coverage from the Iraqi front in late March 2003.

Just eleven days earlier, on March 16, the ISM did make world headlines when Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old ISM member, was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah and died of her injuries.

Maybe the fact that a "peace organization" was found to be defending terrorists twice in a two-week period will factor into the inquiry called by several Washington state congressional representatives into the circumstances of Rachel Corrie's death.


With the fifth anniversary of Corrie's death having just passed us, only one thing remains certain about the events of March 16: Corrie died in Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, under very questionable circumstances.

The questions remain: Is Israel responsible for Corrie's death, or do the doctors at the Arab hospital where she was taken still alive after the accident bear any responsibility? What about the ISM that organizes protests in a closed military zone and encourages its members to play cat and mouse among the tanks and bulldozers? Or the Arabs who invite the "internationals" to risk their lives in a war zone? How she died, exactly where she passed her last moments and who should take the blame for Rachel Corrie's death are questions that demand answers.

The inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony raise doubts about the simplistic conclusions drawn ever since the event.

By all accounts, Rachel Corrie was one of a group of protesters attempting to disrupt the work of two IDF bulldozers leveling ground to detonate explosives in an area rife with terrorist activity. The bulldozers moved to a different area to avoid the protesters, and Corrie became separated from the group. Some of the agitators stood with a banner, while Corrie picked up a bullhorn and yelled slogans at the driver encased in the small cabin of the dozer. This went on for several hours on the afternoon of March 16. It's the kind of activity favored by the young pro-Palestinian types who make up the ISM.

There wasn't enough action for Corrie. According to fellow Evergreen State College student, Joseph Smith, 21, who was at the site, Corrie dropped her bullhorn and sat down in front of one of the bulldozers. She fully expected that the driver would stop just in front of her. "We were horribly surprised," Smith told me by phone from Rafah the day after the incident. "They had been careful not to hurt us. They'd always stopped before," he said.

As the dozer plowed forward heaping up a pile of dirt and sand, Corrie scrambled up the pile to sit on the top. Smith says she lost her footing as the bulldozer made the earth move beneath her feet. She got pulled down, he says. "The driver lost sight of her and continued forward. Then, without lifting the blade he reversed and Rachel was underneath the mid-section of the dozer, she wasn't run over by the tread."

Capt. Jacob Dellal of the IDF spokespersons office confirms what Smith says about the driver: he lost sight of Rachel. Inside the cab, some six feet off the ground, visibility is very restricted. The protesters should have known that and kept within the driver's line of sight to avoid getting hurt, Dellal asserts.

The strange thing about this part of the story is the discrepancy over the photos given to the press and posted on several pro-Arab websites.

As Smith describes to me his version of events, I ask about the series of photos printed in an Arab newspaper I picked up the morning after the incident, in Jerusalem's Old City. "They aren't of the actual incident," he states firmly. "We'd been there for three hours already, we were tired, we already had a lot of pictures."

Yet these are the pictures used on the ISM website to document the before and after of Rachel's interaction with the bulldozer. The same pictures are featured as a photo-essay on the site of Electronic Intifada, where they're even attributed to Joseph Smith.

There are several shots of the back of a woman with a blond ponytail facing a bulldozer. She's standing in an open field, wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, holding a megaphone.

Even Michael Shaik, the ISM media coordinator at the time, wouldn't confirm that these are pictures of Corrie taken the day she died. "I'm fairly sure they're of the incident," he tells me by phone from his Bethlehem office. In the same conversation, Shaik asks me not to contact Joe, Greg or Tom, the Rafah ISM eyewitnesses again directly: "They're still in trauma."

The pictures should have raised all kinds of questions to photo editors, but all the major newspapers and wire services chose to run the photos regardless. If there are pictures of Rachel before and after, why didn't the same photographer consider it important to document the act of the bulldozer running her down?

Where is the mound of earth Rachel clambered up and was buried in? The woman shown lying bleeding from her nose and mouth is lying on a flat piece of ground.

So, Corrie was either knocked down by the dozer, or fell in front of it. ISMers assume that she was intentionally run over, but there's no proof that was the driver's intent.

The real issue is, was Rachel alive when she was taken by Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance to Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital? In other words, where did she die? Were adequate efforts made to save her in the hospital?

Again, there are conflicting stories. Joseph Smith tells me in a telephone interview the day after the tragedy, "She died in the hospital or on the way to the hospital." CNN also reported that Rachel died there. (Israeli bulldozer runs over 23-year-old woman. CNN, Monday, March 17, 2003)

In his account posted on www.arabia.com, ISMer Tom Dale has a slightly different story. On March 17 he writes: "I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing signs of brain hemorrhaging. She died in the ambulance a few minutes later of massive internal injuries."

But Dr. Ali Mussa, director of Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital where Corrie was taken, seems confused. On the day of the event, Dr. Mussa tells AP Gaza reporter Ibrahim Barzak that Rachel died in the hospital. (American Killed in Gaza. AP. March 16, 2003)

One week later, in a telephone interview, Dr. Mussa states definitively to me that Rachel died at the scene, "in the soil," as he puts it. The main cause of death was suffocation, Mussa asserts. There were no signs of life, no heartbeat or pulse when she arrived at the hospital, he says. Mussa states that Rachel's ribs were fractured, a fact determined by X-rays.

Doesn't quite jive with the photo essay on the pages of the Electronic Intifada website for March 16, 2003. (Photo story: Israeli bulldozer driver murders American peace activist by Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 16 March 2003.)

A caption under one photo of doctors leaning over a female patient reads: Rachel arrived in the Emergency Room at 5:05 p.m and doctors scrambled to save her. By 5:20 p.m, she was gone. Ha'aretz newspaper reported that Dr. Ali Mussa, a doctor at Al Najar, stated that the cause of death was skull and chest fractures. Dr. Mussa told me he was one of the treating physicians, yet he alone maintains that Rachel was dead before she was put into the ambulance.

To further complicate matters, on that same website, a report from the Palestine Monitor is cited. Here, the writer says that Rachel fractured her arms, legs and skull. She was transferred to hospital, where she later died, says this report.

Just who is Dr. Ali Mussa? Clearly a man in favor with the Palestine Authority hierarchy. Dr. Mussa's views are aired on the official website of the PA's Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation: (January 27, 2003)

There, Dr. Mussa accuses Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "terrorist government" of deliberately killing Palestinian children in Rafah.

A few days after the incident, ISM Media Coordinator Shaik tells me by phone from Rafah that three ISMers, Tom, Alice and Greg were in the ambulance with Rachel. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, says Michael.

But Greg Schnabel, 28, who is quoted in numerous wire service and newspaper stories, never says he witnessed the death of his comrade in the ambulance. In his account published a few days later on the ISM website, he carefully states that she died twenty minutes after arriving at the hospital.

What happened to Rachel's body after her death? Depends whom you ask. Dr. Mussa says it was kept for 24 hours at the hospital before a Red Crescent ambulance transported it to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, via the border where an Israeli ambulance took over. l Shaik says "we lost track of it (her body) after she died." Three ISMers tried to escort the body, but only one was permitted on the ambulance on the Israeli side. According to his account, the ambulance drove straight to the Israeli Forensic Institute at Abu Kabir, where an autopsy was performed. The Israelis are trying to say she died from a blow to the head by a rock, Shaik recounts.

Speaking about the autopsy, one of Rachel's ISM trainers, Iowa native LeAnne Clausen, a fieldworker for the Christian Peacemaker Team based in Beit Sahour, tells me: "The general sentiment within ISM is that the Israelis are trying to suggest perhaps Rachel was on drugs."

In reality, IDF spokesperson Dellal says that initial Israeli investigation results indicate that the cause of death was most likely a blow to the head and chest by a blunt object, possibly a chunk of cement dug up by the bulldozer.

In keeping with ISM sympathies, Rachel received a shaheed (martyr) procession in Rafah, the day after her death. But here again, there's confusion between reality and photo op. Some accounts noted that her coffin draped in an American flag was paraded through the streets. Yet a picture on the site of her college town's peace movement, the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, shows Arab women holding a coffin covered by a Palestinian flag with the caption: Palestinian funeral for Rachel.

Confusion and obfuscation seem to be a trademark of the ISM. In May 2002, a number of ISMers raced past Israeli soldiers into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian terrorists had holed up to evade capture by the IDF outside. After an agreement was reached, the ISM members refused to leave the church, holding up the solution. Then they charged that they were mistreated by clergy, who claimed the ISMers desecrated the church by smoking and drinking alcohol.

Another revealing ISM action took place shortly before the Bethlehem incident, when a number of protesters managed to make their way past IDF barricades into Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound to protect the terrorist leader.

Strange, given the fact that most ISMers are avowed anarchists decrying any kind of governmental authority. Corrie's Swedish boyfriend and fellow ISMer told a reporter for Seattle's The Stranger newspaper, (April 4, 2003) that Corrie could be described as an anarchist.

Still, the politics of the Ismers are predictable. Another Evergreen student who arrived in Israel around the same time as Corrie says he has "been at war with the multinational corporations for some time now." His "baptism of fire" took place at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, he proclaims.

Joe Smith, recounts his motivation to join forces with the ISM . "Because I felt it was one of the best ways for me to use my privilege as a white middle class American male to directly serve impoverished people of color who are under-privileged due to the Israeli and other Western governments, especially mine.

I have dedicated my life to serving such people (ed. Arabs), as I believe my over-privilege is a direct result of their under-privilege. I have benefited from their suffering, and this must stop."

ISM activity in Rafah has more to do with being used to defend terrorists than preventing suffering of the masses. IDF efforts in Rafah were concentrated on preventing the flow of arms and explosives over the border from Egypt into the terrorist's dens that riddled the area. Less than a week after Rachel died defending terrorists, Israeli tanks moved into Rafah , surrounded several houses, and arrested two Hamas members. IDF spokesperson, Dellal calls Rafah, "the most dangerous area in the West Bank and Gaza," and decries the provocative protests of ISM. "There's nothing wrong with civil disobedience, but these people crossed the line of what was safe for everyone," Dellal says.

So, while the memorial services laud and remember Rachel Corrie as a peace activist murdered by Israeli occupation forces, the truth lies elsewhere.

An Israeli bulldozer injured Corrie as she tried to prevent it doing its job of protecting Israeli civilians, but she was alive when she was taken to An Najar Hospital, according to at least three eyewitnesses. Only Dr. Mussa, a man intent on accusing Israel of child killing, claims otherwise. None of Rachel's comrades have stated they were with her in the hospital when she died. No one has commented on the extent of efforts to preserve Corrie's life at An Najar.

And all the while, the ISM continues to encourage misguided young people from around the world,like Rachel Corrie, to spend time in the Middle East providing cover for terrorists.

:jsdliahg::IETw:

there are some Real Ugly americans here..freakin rednecks of the planet.

YES
in Iraq in Afghanistan in Columbia in Gaza in Africa
YES

Exactly. Like Shepard Smith said, Israel isn't the daddy of everyone, nor do they own the Mediterranian.

This man speaks the truth.

He doesn't believe Turks are sending a warship to protect the Rachel corrie ship. WTF!!!

"
can you blame them? if it was your wife what would you do? "

terrible family members - they raised a dolt

i would say "well, honey, i don;t like the system in Russia, but i don;t think i should - as a foregner- go over there and stand in front of heavy equipment"

and if she said "Isreal is wrong! palestineans are good!"

i would say - "oh another chick that is on her "white horse" stage that alot of chics go through"

then i would look for a coffin about 2 inches in depth

for the flattened fool

whos hating? i see no evidence of that statement of yours, what i do see is discontent of the iraeli government. thats a difference.

No cause you dont know anything about what you talk apparently, 150km from Israel coasts is international waters, isrrael cant use their army on international waters civilians ship less to use commando forces on them less to kill them and less to kidnapp them and their ships afterward-

This is piracy

Uh, no, they were going to Gaza, which is not Israel

OMG, a bunch of civilian ships "armed" with pipes, clubs, hammers and humanitarian aid are bullying the region's nuclear-armed (illegally) Bully State No.1 Israel that dislikes having its illegal blockade disturbed.....

Leave Israel, alone!

Why not just bomb Israel ourselves?

No they didnt had any authority to do it until the boat crossed their territorial waters. It's not like these boatd where military navy vessels they where civilian cruise ships..

Give me the red button.

lol

europeans sure hate jews

no wonder israel just goes ahead and says #%^&$ the europeans. they stood by and watched babies burn

but europe is defunct

they have american bases on their land. lol

wimps

When will it arrive?? When should we expect confrontation?

yes! I am proud to be friends with loyal, American Jews. I love their culture, their food, their closeness, their unity, but those extremist Israelis who have infiltrated our government and the right-wing, genocidal freaks who run the Israeli government can take a fucking hike.

That too

tho personally i find it that they did that so cold hearted, monsters. why dont the residents of israel make a regime change?


but it all seems as an excuse to kill people ad nothing more.

Israel is spawn of Great Britian, the biggest pirates the world ever saw. They're an offshoot of the empire.