Coming almost a decade after her death beneath the tracks of an
armored Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, the verdict in the Rachel
Corrie case was the farthest thing from a surprise. By the time Israeli
judge Oded Gershon gathered his robes about him and took his seat in an
airy Haifa courtroom Tuesday morning, the trajectory of the proceedings
had emerged across 15 court sessions stretched over two and a half
years. On the day of judgment, as during the trial, His Honor stood with
the Israel Defense Forces. Israelis overwhelmingly do.
“I reject the suit,” Gerhson said. “There is no justification the state pay any damages.”
What followed in the hallway outside moments later was more
illuminating than most of what transpired in almost all of the
testimony. As camera operators jostled for position, attorneys for the
state spoke first — but only in Hebrew. The Corries’ lawyer followed in
English, then Arabic, and finally in Hebrew. Everyone knew their
audience, and where they could get a hearing.
The wonder is that the Corries sought theirs in Israel. The family
began with Israel’s promise to Washington to conduct a “thorough,
credible and transparent investigation,” something U.S. diplomats say
has not occurred. But filing suit in Israel in hopes of producing firm
facts meant squaring off against the IDF, the most admired institution
in the country, routinely ranked far above any elected official or
organ. Among Israel’s Jewish majority, identification with the military
is almost total, and not only because young Jewish men are obligated to
three years service in it (two years for women). The force operates
under a motto that translates roughly as “purity of arms,” often put as
“the most moral army in the world.” Others may note the challenge of
squaring the motto with the coarsening that inevitably flows from 45
years as an army of occupation in the Palestinian territories of the
West Bank and Gaza, which were afire with the Second Intifada at the
time of Corrie’s death. But the ideal remains so firmly fixed in the
Israeli mind that when an unambiguous instance of brutality emerges –
like the video of a lieutenant colonel rifle-butting a Danish activist – shocked dismay occupied the public discourse for most of a week.
The Corrie lawsuit, however, challenged no one’s preconceptions.
Rather it extended Rachel Corrie’s mission in life – using the
privileges afforded the holder of a U.S. passport to assert rights into
the courts where Palestinians rarely have standing (and from which a proposed regulation would bar them altogether).
The case took more than six years to complete, and with Gershon’s
verdict, appeared to end about where it began: The district court judge
articulated the widespread Israeli assumption that a misguided young
foreigner flirted with death, and lost. “The state did not risk the
defendant,” he said. “The defendant risked herself.” Gershon described
the group Corrie was with, the International Solidarity Movement,
as pro-terrorist – also a common view in Israel — and insisted that
“under no circumstances” were the IDF bulldozers that day aiming to
demolish the Palestinian homes the nonviolent activists were aiming to
protect.
The Corries (whom, for the record, my wife volunteered to assist)
replied at a news conference as they had in court – with specifics that
the state had called beside the point. Cindy Corrie quoted a Human
Rights Watch tally of 16,000 Palestinians whose 2,500 homes were
destroyed between 2000 and 2004, most of them in the area near the
Egyptian border where her daughter would die. Israeli officials argued
that the properties provided cover for attacks. The Corries held aloft a
photo of the family whose house stood in the area behind where Rachel
Corrie stood facing the bulldozer, in a fluorescent orange vest.
“We believe that Rachel was seen,” Cindy Corrie said. The heavily
armored Caterpillar bulldozer may have had limited sight lines, the
Corries acknowledge, but in addition to a driver, a second soldier was
also in the cab, and conflicts in their assorted statements have never
been reconciled. In fact, a pair of IDF investigations produced
strikingly inconsistent accounts of the incident. The first was cursory
at best: Investigators failed to interview any eyewitnesses except
Israeli soldiers, and appeared to misidentify which of two bulldozers on
the scene that day was involved. A second investigation, reached into
by senior officers, strained to avoid contradicting the first, producing
a muddle that the trial did little to sort through.
“I reject the idea that making these things known is somehow an
attack on Israel,” said Craig Corrie, who left his job as an insurance
actuary to work full time on understanding his daughter’s March 16, 2003
death. He noted the deaths of two other foreigners in the same area
within weeks of Rachel’s. In a seven month period, Cindy Corrie said,
the Israeli human rights advocacy group B’Tselem counted 100 civilian deaths, including 40 children.
“I’m an army veteran,” said Craig Corrie. “In 11 months in Vietnam, I
was given nine medals. I think I can talk on some of this. I think
that in controlling a military you have to start that before these
incidents happen, and we have seen that that’s not the case. We have
seen from the highest levels of this military that they thought they
could kill people on that border with impunity.”
By the time Rachel was killed, around 5 p.m. the activists and the
crews had been sparring on the rubble field since noon. During the
trial the Corries said that, as much as anything, filing suit was a way
to finally look into the eyes of the driver of the bulldozer. But he was
allowed to testify from behind a screen. “I can say without a doubt
that I believe my sister was seen as that bulldozer approached her,”
Sarah Corrie Simpson said. “As for the intent of the driver, I hope
some day he will have the courage to sit down in front of me and tell me
what he saw and what he feels.”
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