Friday, June 04, 2010

History About Who Rachel Corrie Was and What Happened

Nadene Goldfoot
One fact I have uncovered is the one about Rachel Corrie and her friend Joe Smith where Rachel was killed by a bulldozer run by an Israeli. My information comes from http://jewishworldreview.com/0303/corrie.asp and is reported by David Bedein, my friend from Safed, Israel who was a social worker at the time I lived there. He is now with the Beit Agron International Press and is the Bureau Chief of Israel Resource News Agency in Jerusalem.

The story was painted as if the Israeli had killed her on purpose. This was reported by Reuters as well as by others. It was not true. As it turns out, both these young people were members of the International Solidarity Movement. They came to the Gaza to protest against terrorist home demolitions.

The picture distributed by the Reuters News Agency showed Rachel Corrie standing in front of the bulldozer with a megaphone. It appeared on page 3 of the New York Times on March 17, 2003. The caption stated that the picture was taken before Rachel Corrie was crushed by this bulldozer, giving the reader the distinct impression that Rachel Corrie had been standing with a megaphone in clear sight of the bulldozer. This would have shown that this act was a kind of homicide. The next photo showed Rachel lying in front of the bulldozer.

Then the author, David Bedein, my friend from Israel who I mention in my book, says that he began to notice something. The lighting of the Gaza sky was different in both pictures of what were supposed to be sequential shots. The landscape in each picture was different. He checked with Reuters who said the photos were not their pictures but were sent by the International Solidarity Movement. A check with the Reuters web site showed that they were labeled as Reuters pix. In checking with Joe Smith, David found out another unknown fact. Smith said that no one was on the spot with a camera before Rachel Corrie was fatally wounded by the bulldozer, and that the picture of her with the megaphone had been taken many hours earlier.

To make this short, this was an accidental death that was pictured as a homicide and act of cruelty. As it turns out, The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian group dedicated, in its own words, to "armed struggle" against Israel. I was more shocked than anyone when I had read this report, and was very much relieved to find out that once again, the reporting was slanted against Israel and was not true.

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