The older the Rachel Corrie story gets, the less of a story it turns out to be. The real story, it would seem, was the rush to hyperbole with which this young nitwit's death was welcomed in certain quarters. Not to mention the deafening silence from those same quarters that's greeted the unravelling of the fabrications.
The latest, via IMRA:
Follow up on ISM and the death of Rachel Corrie
Excerpt from NGO Monitor April 10, 2003 5763 Nisan 8
The IDF has completed an exhaustive investigation of the death of Rachel Corrie, and as the findings hardly matched the original "eyewitness reports" of fellow ISM protestors, NGO Monitor thought it would be beneficial to provide a brief follow up. As one may recall, Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American woman, was serving as an international peace protestor/human shield with the Palestinian International Solidarity Movement when she was allegedly killed by being run over by an IDF bulldozer.
First, it has been determined the "eyewitness report" that the world received following the death of Corrie was fictional. The IDF performed a complete and exhaustive investigation of the death and discovered the following: 1) Corrie was not sitting in front of the bulldozer, but was obstructed from it by a mound of earth; 2) She died not from being hit by the bulldozer - apparently there was no contact between her and the machine - but rather was hit by heavy building debris that the vehicle was moving; 3) the bulldozer was not demolishing homes at all, but was flattening out an area frequently used as a staging ground for terrorism and arms smuggling, in order to increase Israel's ability to maintain security control of the area. Judy Lash Balint of the Jerusalem Diaries prepared an informative article documenting the discrepancies in the account.
Judy Lash Balint's essay (called "Peace Activists in the Middle East: Out of Their Depth") is also well worth reading, as it goes into quite a bit more detail, albeit without the benefit of all the findings listed above. This is one instance in which, it seems, the more we learn, the less there is to know.
