Rachel Cor­rie, a 23-year-old senior at Ever­green State Col­lege in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton, was killed by Israeli sol­diers in the Rafah Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip on March 16.



Cor­rie was run over — and run over again, when an army bull­doz­er backed up over her a sec­ond time — as she tried to pre­vent sol­diers from demol­ish­ing a Pales­tin­ian home in the camp. She was in Pales­tine as a vol­un­teer with the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment (ISM), the most promi­nent of sev­er­al non­vi­o­lent groups that in the last year have been bring­ing inter­na­tion­al activists — pri­mar­i­ly Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans — to work as peace­keep­ers: wit­ness­ing Israeli treat­ment of Pales­tini­ans, try­ing to pro­vide assis­tance to Pales­tin­ian civil­ians, and after­ward bring­ing the sto­ries of what they see back home to their own countries.



The cir­cum­stances of her death were dis­put­ed by the Israeli mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment, which claim that the bulldozer’s dri­ver was unaware of Cor­rie. This is flat­ly denied by oth­er ISM vol­un­teers who wit­nessed Corrie’s death; in their ver­sion, Cor­rie talked with the dri­ver only a few min­utes before the inci­dent, and was wear­ing a bright, flu­o­res­cent orange jacket.



The Israel-Pales­tine con­flict has large­ly dis­ap­peared from Amer­i­can news reports, but that’s not because the vio­lence has end­ed. Quite the oppo­site: It has become rou­tine, with dai­ly vio­lence and humil­i­a­tion inflict­ed upon many Pales­tini­ans, deaths (often chil­dren) almost every day, and peri­od­ic cycles of sui­cide bomb­ings — all, at least rhetor­i­cal­ly, inflict­ed by each side either to retal­i­ate against the oth­er side or ​“pre­vent” future violence.



It hasn’t; the lev­el of eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion, house and crop demo­li­tions, shoot-to-kill cur­fews, restric­tions on employ­ment and move­ment, ran­dom arrests, beat­ings, tor­ture, and worse inflict­ed by the Israelis have all essen­tial­ly become back­ground noise for most Amer­i­cans. A few, how­ev­er, have been inten­tion­al­ly putting them­selves in harm’s way.



The log­ic behind pro­grams like ISM, which was launched by the Pales­tin­ian Cen­ter for Rap­proach­ment in late 2001, is sim­i­lar to that of ​“human shield” pro­grams in the past. As in many con­flicts where the pro­tag­o­nists are averse to pub­lic­i­ty — espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca — Israelis have often hes­i­tat­ed in inflict­ing their usu­al lev­els of vio­lence when there are West­ern wit­ness­es. Israel itself has tac­it­ly acknowl­edged the effec­tive­ness of such pro­grams; in recent months, the IDF has begun arrest­ing the vol­un­teers, and both depor­ta­tions and denial of entry into Israel (the only way to get into Pales­tine) have also increased.



Corrie’s death was the first among the inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teers. How­ev­er, ISM vol­un­teers and oth­er advo­cates for Pales­tini­ans argue that such vol­un­teers have like­ly saved count­less oth­ers, either by defus­ing con­fronta­tions or, by their mere pres­ence, dis­suad­ing Israeli sol­diers or ​“set­tler” vig­i­lantes from attacks on indi­vid­u­als or families.



Repeat­ed­ly, over the last year, return­ing Amer­i­can vol­un­teers have report­ed the same thing: Ordi­nary Pales­tini­ans and their fam­i­lies both thank the inter­na­tion­als for car­ing enough to come, and beg them to tell their coun­try­men — that’s us — what is being done in our name and with our tax mon­ey. The muni­tions scat­tered like con­fet­ti around Pales­tin­ian streets all have ​“made in USA” on them; like­ly, the bull­doz­er that killed Cor­rie was man­u­fac­tured in her home country.



Had Cor­rie been killed by Sad­dam Hussein’s sol­diers, of course, she’d be an instant nation­al hero, and Amer­i­ca would be enraged. Instead, with the war in Iraq now under­way, it’s like­ly that the death of Rachel Cor­rie will be soon for­got­ten by most. But there are now hun­dreds of oth­er Amer­i­cans serv­ing as non­vi­o­lent peace­keep­ers and wit­ness­es in both Pales­tine and Iraq. It’s worth tak­ing a moment to remem­ber not only Rachel, but all of these brave activists. They’re putting their lives on the line for their beliefs, for the love of human­i­ty, and because they feel a need to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the actions of our elect­ed gov­ern­ment. We should all be so committed.