Comments on Flickr Photo of the Day

Whatever.

Rachel Corrie at best was best a tremendously naive child who had no business inserting herself into a war zone.

I would've liked to have been there last night to see this. Sacco's work is tremendous.

@1: It's every sane person's duty to fight injustice. Rachel did more than her fair share.

truth teller: if gaza is a war zone, does that mean the israeli military can do whatever it wants to civilians who aren't taking up arms? like bulldoze their homes? rachel was no threat to anyone. the fact that she was killed is a tragedy, but the fact that there are people like you who try to justify her death as if she deserved it or brought it on herself is appalling, a sign of real moral bankruptcy.

Of course she brought it on herself. See, if there's a bulldozer bearing down on you, odds are you're going to get hurt, most likely killed. Someone who doesn't get out of the way in this situation is not a hero, but a fool. And a dead fool at that.

Rachel Corrie was more than happy to serve a lie, until it got her killed. Sorry, not a hero, and not fighting tyranny either. Working for tyranny, in fact.

Jason Josephes....asshole.

Jason Josephs: man of reason.

Mr. Poe = immature boy that has no life offline. Believes himself to be witty, but in actually...isn't.

"p", do you believe Rachel was a hero?

Mr. Poe...I believe she's dead, unfortunately for her and her family. What joy do you or anyone else get from judging her?

Rachel Corrie died defending a slogan, very unfortunate. There is no joy in her demise, but she's not a martyr, she was just on one side of a long-standing conflict.
[and not the right side, either]. Of course, as a parent myself, I have sympathy for her parents.

The question of whether Rachel Corrie was a hero or martyr, fool or dupe is irrelevent.

The REAL question is: were the people whose house the Israeli Army destroyed, the one she died defending, active insurgents or innocent victims? How you answer this question will obviously color your perception of Rachel and her actions.

But, the facts, at least as they have been presented thusfar, would seem to favor the latter, rather than the former.

The poor girl was naive and lost her life in no good cause.
In the minds of the Hamas leadership- the only good Jew is a dead Jew.
Hamas imprisons, tortures and murders Palestians in Gaza who oppose their political power.
I guess the bottom line is how many of the pro palestinian activists here in the US would want a large palestian arab refugee family living in their house or next door to them. How many in the US would be willing to finance their cost of living for several decades with their taxes and donations?
The Kuwaitis were big supporters of the Palestinians and their cause until they betrayed them and helped Sadaam's troops loot their country back in 1991.
Many Catholic filipino houseboys died protecting the homes and families of their employers. The Palestinians working there instead turned on their patrons and employers.
The Catholics in Kuwait now have their own church and priests quietly, indirectly supported by the Kuwaitis.
Palestinian Arab Christians have almost all left the West Bank and Gaza because of Muslim persecution.
Those are simply the facts.

I don't understand what made this a "cool moment."

Kelly O sez so

@11, is there a right side?

Yes, there is.

The International Solidarity Movement, which Rachel Corrie belonged to and acted on behalf of, is a PLO front and an advocate of terrorism. Rachel herself performed a military function, acting as a human shield for arms caches and snipers. That's WHY THEY WERE THERE. Most of the "civilian homes" they guard are arsenals or tunnel entrances, conduits for guns, rockets, and explosives.

Corrie was an incompetent, ahistorical, blind proagandist meddling in matters she could only see one side of, like a polarizing filter. She was a classic example of a kind of young Western radical, unable to speak or think except in chilled cliches, the same words wherever they are repeated. She dug Saddam Hussein, too.

The bulldozer that killed her was clearing brush that provided cover for rocket launchers. Her death was a tragedy, but was immediately and deliberately used as a propaganda victory for the ISM. They knew, and Rachel knew, that young innocents were going to be killed; it was part of their strategy. Corrie herself wrote in her diary about the usefulness of young internationals as martyrs.

Yes, she was a victim, a willing victim, of a cynical Palestinian leadership. Their strategy of intifada, carried out by thousands of rocket attacks, snipers, suicide bombs, the deliberate exposure of children, the school and television indocrination in the beauty of martyrdom aimed at children as young as five, is a wall of unreasoning violence. Tragedy, yes. Hero, no.

I'm sorry Fnarf, but no.
Corrie wanted to stop injustice in the world and she chose the Palestinian conflict. You can call her naive. You can paint her organization, the local people she worked with, or the entire region in whatever shades of hidden terrorist agenda you want. But I find it difficult to accept how anyone can deny she had the best intentions.
Furthermore, what Israel did in the occupied territories during the time of Corrie's death was a war crime. [in truth, Israel commits war crimes in the occupied territories every day, but that large-scale operation was just outright horrifying.] To label someone (a Palestinian family) a terrorist or even a supporter of terrorism simply because of their ethnicity is unconscionable.
The history of modern Israel is a tragedy of crimes and suffering, and the blame falls squarely on the Zionists. The Palestinian terrorist groups are the inevitable product of the injustices carried out by the founders of modern Israel. The Zionists engaged in ethnic cleansing when they displaced the Palestinians; decades of death and suffering on both sides has been the result. Extremism breeds extremism in a tragic downward spiral. See, for another example, the sectarian violence in Iraq.
To label Palestinian NGO supporters terrorists or pro-terrorists is disingenuous. It is analogous to labeling NGOs working in Iraq as pro-insurgent.

The whole world is filled with "terrorists" on both sides of everything. It's a drag.

The End.

You're completely and utterly full of shit, grumpypants.

Do the Palestinians have legitimate grievances? Yes, of course they do. But that doesn't have anything to do with the ISM, the specific organization that Corrie belonged to. They are, quite simply, a front for the PLO. And they serve a MILITARY function, by acting as human shields for the movement of rocket launchers and the like. Protecting people and houses? Not hardly; that's what it says on the press release. Rachel Corrie knew perfectly well what they were REALLY up to, and she supported it.

As do you, apparently. Drive the Jews into the sea and give the land back to the Arabs who are the only rightful residents of that part of the world, right? It's all the Jews' fault, isn't it?

Corrie's tragedy started in the brain-dead lefty groups at Evergreen, and carried on to her pointless death.

Fnarf I doubt you have one shred of evidence to suggest that the home Corrie was protecting had weapons in it, or that any of the people who owned it had served as snipers. Not that that matters. All you need is innuendo and some kind of government lie to bolster your case that Palestinians should be caged like animals and shot at will since they're all complicit in terrorism. You're positively rabid whenever the discussion turns to Israel or the Middle East.

So it's no surprise that you take the IDF side, and say the bulldozer was merely "clearing brush", discounting any eyewitness accounts that disagree. Even that you botch, as you insert a complete fiction, about rocket launchers supposedly used in the brush, rather than noting that the IDF report said they were supposedly searching for explosives, which of course they weren't. You're better writing about King County parks or posing in gold jumpsuits.

For the record, I did not say Jews. I said Zionists, and it's an important distinction.

American Jews: please stop conflating attacks on the Israeli government with attacks on Judaism. Israel is not Judaism. It's just another militant country behaving badly.

Fnarf, you make me queasy. Yes, please stick to your gold suits and stuffing quarters up your nose.

I'm glad SLOG agrees that Rachel Corrie was an idiot who deserved to die. The Stranger article was right when it said "Rachel Corrie died to save a dentist's home".

Israel has a right to kill as many Palestinians as necessary to prevent the murder of one Jew. The Torah doesn't say "Thou shall not kill" it says "Thou shall not murder." Killing Palestinians is righteous because they are not human beings.

Issur,

Learh your Torah. It really is quite clear that you are either not Jewish, are a disturbed escapee from yeshiva or have a third grade Jewish education. Learn some Maimonides, learn some Talmud and then you will know that what you are saying is ussur.

I know and love my Torah. Maimonides can be interpreted many ways because their is no dogma in Judaism. There is no one "right" way to be a Jew.

Many Jews believe that Rachel Corrie was an idiot. By defending Palestinians, who are non-beings, Rachel Corrie chose her own death. Learn your own Torah! It doesn't say "thou shalt not kill" it say s "thou shalt not murder." Killing a terrorist like Rachel Corrie prevented the murder of many Jews. Therefore Israel was rightous in killing Rachel Corrie.

Even amalek would not be considered a non-being. We are obligated to destroy amalek, but Rachel Corrie was not amalek. Naive? Yes.

And still, her parents grieve for her and that is something HaShem always wants us to acknowledge. We were admonished by HaShem for celebrating as Pharoh's troops were drowning.

I know my Torah.

When the enemies of Israel are destroyed I will celebrate. I will celebrate the large-scale revolt and death of many Gentiles when Mattathias, a Jewish priest, and his five sons Jochanan, Simeon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Judah led a rebellion against Antiochus.

The joyous celebration of the death of these non-being gentiles is known as Hanukkah. As Jews we must know our Torah enough to kill all enemies of Israel. Maybe you need to visit Israel again and kindle the sparks in your Jewish soul.

David waged a sacred war of extermination against the Amalekites," who subsequently disappeared from history. Long after, in the time of Hezekiah, five hundred Simeonites annihilated the last remnant "of the Amalekites that had escaped".

As Jews we must be willing to resort to genocide when our enemies will not submit. That is the righteousness of Judaism. As soon as someone opposes Israel they become a non-being. Killing them and all their family, and their children's children is a duty of all Jews.

I. Love. Issur.