The media are eager for body counts in Iraq, but the body counts have already begun in Palestine. Under the cover of world attention riveted on the events leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Israeli army is having its brutal way with the Palestinians. Yesterday, the army shot and killed 11 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – including two teenagers and a 2-year old girl cowering inside her home – and another two in the West Bank. But with all eyes on Bush and Baghdad, is anybody looking at this?
Peace and human rights activists in Israel and Palestine have been looking, and organizing as well. In the past few weeks, 26 Israeli and Palestinian organizations have joined together in the Palestinian-Israeli Emergency Committee, to try to prevent just such events from occurring and worsening. There is no doubt that with the outbreak of war, the army will impose more prolonged curfews and closures resulting in greater starvation among the already malnourished Palestinian population. It is also expected that the army will seek to disrupt telephone lines and electricity in the occupied territories. And a very real danger exists of stepped-up home demolitions, expulsions, and turning a blind eye to settler militias who attack Palestinians. Activists here will be working to prevent such events, to the extent possible, and keeping the public informed.
Sunday’s horrifying death of 23-year old Rachel Corrie, a peace activist from the U.S. with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza, gripped me painfully. Rachel is the brave young woman who stood in front of the bulldozer, asking with her eyes for the driver to have compassion on the home he was about to destroy, but he drove directly onto her. And then backed up to finish the job. I have gone to sleep and awakened with this image in my mind ever since. I did not know Rachel, but I can only imagine that she herself was so compassionate, that she could not envision the force of darkness about to envelop her. I shudder to recall similar acts of nonviolent resistance in recent years, which ended only with injuries and near-misses, and how this killing reveals the hardening hearts of those now giving and carrying out the orders.