46 Facts About Rachel Corrie

Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American activist and diarist.

Rachel Corrie had gone to Gaza as part of her college senior-year independent-study proposal to connect her home town and Rafah as sister cities.

In 2005, Rachel Corrie's parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel.

Rachel Corrie was born on April 10,1979, and raised in Olympia, Washington, United States.

Rachel Corrie was the youngest of three children of Craig Corrie, an insurance executive, and Cindy Corrie.

Rachel Corrie took a year off from her studies to work as a volunteer in the Washington State Conservation Corps.

Rachel Corrie later joined the International Solidarity Movement organisation in order to protest the policies of the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Rachel Corrie was partaking in a demonstration in Gaza opposing the War on Iraq.

Rachel Corrie was working with children who drew two pictures, one of the American flag, and one of the Israeli flag, for burning.

Rachel Corrie said that she could not bring herself to burn the picture of the Israeli flag with the Star of David on it, but under such circumstances, in protest over a drive towards war and her government's foreign policy that was responsible for much of the devastation that she was witness to in Gaza, she felt it OK to burn the picture of her own flag.

We believe Rachel Corrie brought a different face of the United States to the Palestinian people, a face of compassion.

Rachel Corrie sent a series of emails to her mother while she was in Gaza, four of which were later published by The Guardian.

In January 2008, Norton published a book titled Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie, which included the e-mails along with some of her other writings.

Yale Professor David Bromwich said that Rachel Corrie left "letters of great interest".

Rachel Corrie was part of a group of three British and four American ISM activists attempting to disrupt the IDF operation.

Rachel Corrie placed herself in the path of a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer in the area and was run over by the bulldozer and fatally injured.

Furthermore, Israeli witnesses maintain that Rachel Corrie was not defending a house from being demolished and was instead inhibiting a military operation to find contraband weapons and smuggling tunnels in Gaza.

Suddenly, we saw they turned to a house they had started to demolish before, and I saw Rachel Corrie standing in the way of the front bulldozer.

An ISM activist using the name "Richard", saying he had witnessed Rachel Corrie's death, told Haaretz:.

Rachel Corrie said the operator scooped her up with a pile of earth, dumped her on the ground and ran over her twice.

However, "Smith" later acknowledged that after Rachel Corrie fell down the dirt pile, the bulldozer operator could well have lost sight of Rachel Corrie.

The video makes a "credible case", wrote Joshua Hammer in Mother Jones, that "the operators, peering out through narrow, double-glazed, bulletproof windows, their view obscured behind pistons and the giant scooper, might not have seen Rachel Corrie kneeling in front of them".

Rachel Corrie went on to say that it was a war zone "where Palestinian militants used abandoned homes as firing positions and exploited foreign activists for cover".

Rachel Corrie shouted over a megaphone for the activists to leave, tried to use tear gas to disperse them and moved his troops several times.

The judge in the Rachel Corrie case asserted that between September 2000 and the date of Rachel Corrie's death, Israeli forces in the area had been subjected to 1,400 attacks involving gunfire, 150 involving explosive devices, 200 involving anti-tank rockets, and 6,000 involving hand grenades or mortar fire.

Rachel Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.

The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved.

On June 26,2003, The Jerusalem Post quoted an Israeli military spokesman as saying that Rachel Corrie had not been run over and that the operator had not seen her:.

Rachel Corrie was standing behind debris which obstructed the view of the driver and the driver had a very limited field of vision due to the protective cage he was working in.

An autopsy of Rachel Corrie's body revealed that the cause of death was from falling debris and not from the tractor physically rolling over her.

Rachel Corrie was not run over by the bulldozer," he added, IDF claimed she was possibly "in a blindspot for the bulldozer operators and "behind an earth mound", so they did not see that she was in harm's way.

Rachel Corrie's death sparked controversy and led to international media coverage.

The Rachel Corrie family joined Representative Baird in calling for a US investigation.

Yasser Arafat, the first President of the Palestinian Authority, offered his condolences and gave the "blessings of the Palestinian people" to Rachel Corrie, promising to name a street in Gaza after her.

Rachel Corrie's parents have visited the region several times since their daughter's death and have twice visited Gaza.

The Nasrallahs, whose home Rachel Corrie allegedly believed she was preventing from destruction, toured with the Corries across the United States in June 2005.

Cindy Rachel Corrie called dead Mavi Marmara activists "martyrs" and compared them to her daughter.

The Rachel Corrie family appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In 2010, Rachel Corrie's parents, represented by Attorney Hussein Abu Hussein, filed a lawsuit against the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Defense Ministry in the Haifa District Court, seeking US$324,000 in compensation.

Rachel Corrie [Corrie] did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done.

In 2008, Rachel Corrie's parents commemorated the fifth anniversary of her death at an event held in the West Bank town of Nablus.

In 2004, Alaska composer Philip Munger wrote a cantata about Rachel Corrie called The Skies are Weeping, which was scheduled to premiere on April 27 at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where Munger teaches.

Singer Billy Bragg recounted Corrie's death in the song "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie", composed to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll".

In 2003, Pittsburgh singer Mike Stout wrote and composed a song about Rachel Corrie, which was included with other anti-war songs in his album "War and Resistance".

Also in 2003, David Rovics wrote the song The Death of Rachel Corrie, included in the album "return".

The flotilla was intercepted; however, the MV Rachel Corrie had not reached the other ships and continued towards Gaza by itself.