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The Times Argus, March 26, 2003

The Murder of Rachel Corrie

By James Brooks

I had almost become used to this newspaper's avoidance of the daily slaughter in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I'm no longer surprised when eight or ten Palestinians are killed by Israeli troops and settlers without notice on your pages. Infants are shot in their mothers' arms, malnourished children are cut down in the street, but your readers are spared.

Almost every day, Israel is bulldozing Palestinian houses in the West Bank. The numbers are steadily increasing. The demolitions are not about terrorism; they are terrorism. Troops give families five minutes to gather up belongings before flattening their homes to rubble. The wire services carry a few demolition stories each week. They scarcely ever appear in these pages.

But today you didn't even tell your readers about the murder of Rachel Corrie. Rachel was a student at Evergreen State College in Washington. She was in the West Bank working with the International Solidarity Movement to protect Palestinians and their homes from Israeli troops and settlers. And Sunday, March 16, Rachel was deliberately crushed to death with an Israeli army bulldozer.

Apparently Elizabeth Smart (page two) was more important than the calculated murder of an American peace activist with a US-supplied Caterpillar D-9. Readers of today's world news know that Rachel's death marks a new phase in Israel's escalating tactics against these non-violent peace activists, who were first arrested, then beaten, deported, shot, and now killed. But your readers are in the dark.

I understand; the wire services do not feed you stories that put the situation in context. They seldom explain that Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign ("occupation") is getting increasingly brutal and widespread, or that the Israeli government now openly debates proposals to "transfer" all the Palestinians into Jordan. The wire does, however, report the loss of life, every day. How bad does it have to get, before you begin to clue your readers in to the reality of the situation?

James Brooks
Worcester, VT