Cindy, Sarah, and Craig Corrie in the Haifa District Court for the second round of hearings in their civil suit against the Israeli government
In a small courtroom in Haifa's District Court, a colonel in the Israeli engineering corps who wrote a manual for the bulldozer units that razed the Rafah Refugee Camp in 2003 offered his opinion on the killing of the American activist Rachel Corrie.
"There are no civilians during wartime," Yossi declared under oath.
Yossi made his remarkable statement under withering cross examination by Hussein Abu Hussein, the lawyer for the family of Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah on March 17, 2003. In the back of the courtroom were Rachel's parents, Craig and Cindy, and her sister, Sarah, back in Israel for the second round of hearings in their civil suit against the state of Israel. They were joined by supporters, friends and a handful of reporters, including me. No reporters from the Israeli media were present -- the case has been virtually ignored inside Israel.
In the immediate wake of Corrie's killing, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, then the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, instructed Corrie's parents to demand a "thorough, fair and transparent investigation" from the Israeli government. Since then, the Israelis have stonewalled them, refusing to provide key details of their investigation, which was corrupted from the start by the investigators' apparent attempts to find evidence that a bulldozer did not in fact kill Rachel.
A 2003 bill introduced in the House International Relations Committee calling for a thorough Israeli investigation in Corrie's killing and for American efforts to prevent such killings from happening again garnered 78 signatures in support (Rahm Emanuel was the only Jewish signer). However, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the Israel lobby's closest allies in Congress, prevented the bill from getting out of the committee. President George W. Bush could have pressed for a full floor vote on the bill but he did nothing. The bill died as a result.
Having been obstructed by the Israelis' opaque investigation and betrayed by their own government (with notable exceptions like former Rep. Brian Baird), the Corries have been forced to take matters into their own hands. And so they have filed suit against the Israeli government for criminal negligence. Whether or not they will be able to secure the ruling they seek, Rachel Corrie's family has already elicited a number of damning revelations about the Israeli army's abuses in Gaza in 2003 and the machinations it has relied on to obscure evidence of its criminal conduct.
"I think we are in a situation similar to South Africa. What we are trying to make clear is that the truth has to be pursued diligently or we won't make it to the point of reconciliation," Craig Corrie told me, referring to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that enabled South Africa to peacefully transition from an apartheid system to representative democracy. "We need to understand and acknowledge the truth first."
So far, the truth has not been easy to come by. The Corries are saddled with a judge who is said to have never ruled in favor of any plaintiff in a civil rights-related suit. And the defense has claimed unspecified state security concerns in its successful bid to avoid revealing the full contents of the investigation into Rachel Corrie's killing -- the family's lawyers have only been allowed to view a summary. But the Corries' legal efforts have not been in vain.
On the first day of hearings, the Corries' lawyers were able to confirm through testimony from "Oded," one of the investigators of Rachel Corrie's killing, that Major General Doron Almog, then the head of the Israeli army's Southern Command, had attempted to stop the military investigators from questioning the bulldozer operators who killed Rachel. When asked why he did not challenge Almog's apparently illegal intervention, Oded stated that he was only 20-years-old at the time, with no college education and only a few months of training as an investigator. He was intimidated by the high-ranking officer who stormed into the room and menaced him and the other investigators. (Almog once canceled a trip to Britain after being warned that he would be arrested on arrival for ordering the destruction of 59 homes in the Rafah refugee camp in 2002).
Among the most disturbing aspects of Corrie's case is the abuse of her body by Israeli authorities after she was killed. Craig Corrie recalled to me a panicked phone conversation he had with Will Hewitt, a friend and former classmate of Rachel Corrie who had just witnessed her killing.
"It's getting dark over here and there are no refrigeration units for her body in Gaza," Hewitt told Craig Corrie.
"Just leave it until tomorrow," Craig replied. "We don't want you or anyone else to get killed."
"But her body is starting to smell," Hewitt pleaded.
Somehow Hewitt and his fellow activists from the International Solidarity Movement were able to get Rachel Corrie's body out of Gaza. But first Hewitt was ordered by Israeli troops to remove the body from the casket and carry it across a border checkpoint. Only Hewitt was allowed to escort Corrie's body in the ambulance; the rest of the activists who witnessed her death were forced to hitchhike home in the desert. Finally, Corrie's body was transported to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv where the notorious Dr. Yehuda Hiss autopsied her.
Who is Dr. Hiss? The chief pathologist of Israel for a decade and a half, Hiss was implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries from bodies without permission from family members then selling them to research institutes. Bodies plundered by Hiss included those of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. He was finally removed from his post in 2004 when the body of a teenage boy killed in a traffic accident was discovered to have been thoroughly gnawed on by a rat in Hiss's laboratory. In an interview with researcher Nancy Schepper-Hughes, Hiss admitted that he harvested organs if he was confident relatives would not discover that they were missing. He added that he often used glue to close eyelids to hide missing corneas.
When Craig and Cindy Corrie learned that Hiss would perform an autopsy on their daughter, they stipulated that they would only allow the doctor to go forward if an official from the American consulate was present throughout the entire procedure. An Israeli military police report stated that an American official did indeed witness the autopsy. However, when the Corries asked American diplomatic officials including former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzner if the report was true, they were informed that no American was present at all. The Israelis had lied to them, and apparently fixed their own report to deceive the American government.
On March 14, during the first round of hearings in the Corries' civil suit, Hiss admitted under oath that he had lied about the presence of an American official during the autopsy of Rachel Corrie. He also conceded to taking "samples" from Corrie's body for "histological testing" without informing her family. Just which parts of Corrie's body Hiss took remains unclear; despite Hiss's claim that he "buried" the samples, her family has not confirmed the whereabouts of her missing body parts.
"It's so hard to know that Rachel's body wasn't respected," Rachel's sister, Sarah, told me. "Doctor Hiss and the Israeli government knew what our family's wishes were. The fact that our wishes were disregarded and a judge hasn't done anything is absolutely horrifying."
The treatment of Rachel Corrie's body is peripheral to her family's lawsuit. But it demonstrates the degree to which she and those whose homes she died defending have been dehumanized -- "there are no civilians during wartime," as Colonel Yossi declared. Rachel Corrie's family is seeking only one dollar in symbolic punitive damages from the Israeli government. Their real goal is to force a country in a perpetual state of warfare to treat its innocent victims as human beings, and to be held accountable if it does not.
"It is incredibly expensive for us to carry this case on both emotionally and financially," Craig Corrie remarked. "It is a whole lot to ask of a private citizen. But as a family we still have the ability to do a lot, so we are going to carry this cause on for everyone who cannot."
Follow Max Blumenthal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal
Consequently, Yossi has given his approval for killing Israelis.
''The chief pathologist (Dr. Hiss) of Israel for a decade and a half, Hiss was implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries from bodies without permission from family members then selling them to research institutes. ''
Organ harvesting has occurred in Israel.
Dr. Hiss continues to practice medicine.
link abusive?
go figure....
Israeli civilians......worded a bit differently, but Hamas claimed "attacks against civilians were justified
and lawful"
The HRW rejected those claims.
Just recently, theMurder of 4 Israeli civilians, one of them a pregnant woman, in her ninth month of pregnancy, was declared "justified" by Palestinians as well as the ProPal crowd here.
Once again, a double standard.
Either the attacks on both the settlers and the killing of Corrie were illegitimate, or they were both legitimate. Which do you choose?
Personally I think they were both wrong.
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
MATTHEW-7(3-5)"
The above in response to a legitimate complaint I had circulated. I never met the man. It said nothing else.
Ironically, this is the motto of the palestinians and their apologists. It's how they excuse the murder of thousands of Israeli civilians. Hypocrits to the left of me, fools to the right.
"1,441 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000 and 124 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians."
"At least 6,348 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000 and 1,072 Israelis have been killed."
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
8 Sept 2001 – The baby of Amneh Abdel-Karim Safadi (aged 19), who died when the mother was stopped for five hours at the Huwwara checkpoint, en route to Alitihad hospital in Nablus.
24 Sept 2001 - Omaya Hmad allahOmrran (25) suffered a hemorrhage and died on the way to hospital in Nablus. Her journey of 20km took five hours because of delays at Israeli checkpoints.
19 Oct 2001 - Rihab Noufal (30) was refused permission to pass through Al-Khader checkpoint to reach hospital in Bethlehem, even though she was in labor. Mother and baby died at checkpoint.
25 May 2002 – Aadleh Abdeljabar Saify delivered her baby at a checkpoint in Nablus, because the soldiers manning the checkpoint refused to allow her ambulance to pass. Baby died.
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2009/03/one-shot-two-kills-its-not-just-a-slogan-on-a-tshirt-2.html
But the bottom line is that there would be no casualties on either side if the Arabs would stop their relentless attacks on the Jewish nation.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/HumanrightsIsrael.html#o9
So what is it then maestro - splendid isolation? LOL.
misidentified them......as for the rest...there are counters for those as well.
A little insight on the case.
is anyone surprised here...
So what we're left with is the Israeli media ignoring it and right wing Israel firsters on the Internet offering the weakest imaginable rejoinders. Corrie was "duped:"...end of story. No proof. No evidence. No address to the facts and concerns such as those laid out in this article. Just "change the subject please because we don't like looking bad." Excellent.
It goes without saying that US corporate media are ignoring it, or, as here, just burying it.
http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=187216
"The body, known as the National Information Directorate, was set up eight months ago following recommendations from an Israeli inquiry into the 2006 Lebanon war. Its role is to deal with hasbara - meaning, in Hebrew, "explanation", and referring variously to information, spin, and propaganda."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/02/israel-palestine-pr-spin
The Zionists have had this body of propaganda and solicitation, before the self declaration of statehood, they apparently needed to step up their efforts recently as the world has come to recognize the truth behind their actions.
I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. . I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. ” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside. When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.
The truth is very easy to come by for those who have the guts to read it:
http://lennybendavid.com/2010/09/rachel-corrie-trial-restarts-key.html
Afterward, Craig Corrie despaired at how easily the contradictions were coming.
"It was really depressing, because my impression was the people were making statements that indicated they never expected to be questioned," Rachel's father told TIME. "The lies were like the lies of a 7-year-old."' --Time
We have come to expect nothing but lies from Israel, but they usually at least attempt to attach some veneer of believability, however thin.