November, 16 2012, 03:00pm EDT
Thousands Call on U.S. Government to Investigate Killing of Human Rights Defender Rachel Corrie
Ongoing Attacks in Gaza Underscore Urgent Need for Presence of HRDs in Occupied Palestinian Territory
WASHINGTON
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), CODEPINK, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation delivered to the U.S. Department of State more than 17,000 signatures and an open letter signed by over 50 U.S. organizations asking the State Department to investigate the death of Rachel Corrie and each case involving the death or serious injury of an American citizen by the Israeli military since 2001. The groups also met with State Department officials to discuss the need for accountability in the deaths of human rights defenders like Corrie, a need made more urgent by this week's deadly attacks by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
Said Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie, "We greatly appreciate the efforts of all who have carried this message today to the Department of State about the need for accountability in all cases of human rights observers harmed by the Israeli military. Lack of such accountability has only contributed to the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military and made not only human rights activists, but also Palestinians and Israelis, less safe."
Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in March 16, 2003, as she protested the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, Gaza. She was 23 years old. Since 2001, a number of other cases have been reported involving the death or serious injury of American human rights defenders in Palestine caused by the Israeli military.
The State Department declined to act on previous calls for an investigation into Corrie's death, citing a civil trial in Israel brought by the Corrie family against the Israeli military. In August 2012, however, that case concluded when the presiding judge absolved the State of Israel of any liability and ruling that Corrie's death was "an accident she brought upon herself." U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro called Israel's investigation into the case unsatisfactory and lacking in transparency.
In recent days the Israeli military launched a new major military operation on Gaza. The attack has left 24 dead, including an 11-month-old infant and a woman pregnant with twins, and 270 wounded since Wednesday.
Said CCR's Laura Raymond, "Defending human rights in Gaza should not come at the risk of death. Now more than ever we need human rights defenders on the ground to be able to carry out their work without fearing mortal danger."
Said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, "As American citizens, we are horrified that our taxpayer dollars are funding the military equipment used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes, like the one Rachel Corrie died defending, and the destruction that is being wrought upon Gaza at this very moment. We call upon the State Department to condemn these unjust and inhumane actions, instead of continuing to let Israel act with impunity."
Said Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the U.S. Campaign, "Israel's ongoing attacks against and illegal siege of the Gaza Strip necessitate an end to Israeli impunity for human rights abuses of Palestinians and human rights defenders acting in solidarity with Palestinians living under Israel's brutal military occupation."
Said Nabil Mohamad from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, "Rachel's case is an example of the lack of accountability for Israel's killing of Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike. American citizens and non-violent activists have been, and will continue, to be killed by Israeli forces unless Israel is held responsible. We call upon the U.S. government to launch an independent investigation led by the Department of State and Department of Justice to bring justice and prevent further loss of life."
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
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Violent Arrest of Emory Professor Spotlights Brutality of Police Crackdown on Campus Protests
"To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy," said one foreign policy expert. "And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now."
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Emory University economics professor Caroline Fohlin approached several police officers who were holding a student down on the ground on Thursday and demanded an explanation—but by the end of the day videos of her own arrest became some of the most widely circulated images of the rapidly spreading anti-war movement on college campuses across the U.S.
As she knelt down to ask the university officers, "What are you doing?" another law enforcement agent grabbed her arm and pushed her away before repeatedly ordering her to "get on the ground."
"Stop it!" Fohlin yelled before the officer pushed her to the ground and called for more police to help subdue her.
Fohlin then screamed, "Oh my God!" as the police pushed her down and told the police that she was a professor at the university as they held her on the ground.
Fohlin's arrest—after which she was detained for 11 hours and then charged with "battery of a police officer"—came a week after Columbia University suspended more than 100 students for setting up an encampment in solidarity with Gaza, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by the U.S.-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since October, and allowed police to arrest them. The mass arrests only served to galvanize students and faculty at Columbia and at dozens of other schools, with more than 400 peoplebeing detained so far.
The American Association of University Professors called the arrest "antithetical to the mission of higher education."
"Our institutions exist to foster robust exchanges of ideas and open dialogue in service of knowledge and understanding," said the group. "Sometimes that includes open dissent. Peaceful campus protests should never be met with violence."
Foreign policy expert Trita Parsi suggested that Fohlin's arrest was among the on-campus incidents that have strained the Democratic Party's argument that "democracy is on the ballot in November."
"To sustain this level of blind support for Israel, the U.S. must erode its own democracy. And that is what we see happening on U.S. campuses now," said Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, sharing a video of police tasing an Emory student who was already being held down on the ground.
Emil' Keme, a professor of English and Indigenous studies at Emory, toldDemocracy Now! on Friday that the scene on campus resembled "a war zone," especially after university and Atlanta police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.
"I started feeling the tear gas, and I held arms with some people," he said. "We were being pushed back out of the encampment. And the student I was holding arms with, she was then arrested and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and I was being arrested."
Writer Abdullah Shihipar said Emory president Gregory Fenves—and all university administrators who have allowed the arrest of students who have peacefully protested, including several who have unilaterally altered school codes in order to ban protests—should resign.
"It has been a disgusting and embarrassing week for higher education," said Shihipar.
The crackdown on Emory students and faculty came a day after Texas state troopers descended on the University of Texas at Austin campus, some on horseback, and clamped down on a student walkout there, arresting more than 50 protesters.
Also on Thursday, students at Indiana University and Ohio State University (OSU)—where more than 30 and a dozen students were arrested, respectively—reported seeing snipers stationed on the rooftops of campus buildings, which an Ohio State representative denied.
The Biden administration has not directly addressed the protests or their demands since Monday, when President Joe Biden suggested the nationwide student uprising is "antisemitic."
"The use of state violence against peaceful protestors is unacceptable," said Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War. "Police batons deployed against students calling for peace in Gaza are not a source of safety on campus, nor are they a bulwark against antisemitism. They hurt people, impinge on fundamental liberties, and serve an extreme right-wing agenda that threatens Jews, Muslims, and the right to protest across the country. University leaders and government officials must take steps to protect students exercising their right to protest, not enlist police to attack them."
"Antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry are on the rise and serious issues nationwide, including on college campuses," continued Haghdoosti. "The people endangered by these scourges deserve better than to be the targets of cynical political ploys or to be used as excuses for violent repression. No one is made safer by police violence, and politicians who say otherwise are only attempting to sow division for their own reprehensible ends. What we need from our leaders right now is to de-escalate, permit protests, and not allow state violence against people exercising their fundamental rights."
Irene Khan, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said Thursday that the protests spreading across the U.S. and internationally are a sign that "the Gaza crisis is truly becoming a global crisis of the freedom of expression."
"Legitimate speech must be protected," Khan said Thursday, "but, unfortunately, there is a hysteria that is taking hold in the U.S."
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Such horrors have had devastating physical and psychological consequences for doctors living and volunteering in Gaza, including hundreds of staffers for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders.
On Friday, MSF published unnerving testimony from several members of its staff, including Dr. Ruba Suliman, who works at the Indonesian Field Hospital in Rafah, an overcrowded city in southern Gaza that Israeli forces are preparing to invade.
"There is constant noise from the drones, which never leave us. Sometimes it's really hard to sleep," said Suliman, whose family was displaced by Israel's assault. "I have this moral obligation to help people around me and I have this other obligation to save my kids."
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MSF also published a video Friday featuring an interview with Dr. Audrey McMahon, a psychiatrist who recently returned from Palestine.
The video begins with screenshots of a series of text messages McMahon received from an unnamed colleague in Gaza.
"I feel lost," the messages read. "I don't have a home. My home and my city were destroyed... Our suffering is being live-streamed, but the world watches in silence. We have been failed."
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More than 480 healthcare workers are among the more than 34,000 people who have been killed by Israel's military assault, which has almost completely destroyed Gaza's healthcare system—a major war crime. Not a single hospital in the territory is fully functional, and mass graves were recently discovered at two of the enclave's largest medical complexes, both of which Israeli forces reduced to ruin.
In a briefing to the United Nations earlier this year, MSF secretary-general Christopher Lockyear said that "there is no health system to speak of left in Gaza."
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Amparo Villasmil, an MSF psychologist who worked in Gaza in February and March, said Friday that "when we say that there is no safe place in Gaza today, we are not just talking about the shelling."
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Villasmil described finding a fellow psychologist in Gaza "leaning his head on his knees" and "on the verge of tears," telling her "how exhausted he was."
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"The tent feels like it's on fire," said one young refugee mother. "It's so hot you can't bear it, especially with young children."
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Just a few months ago, Palestinian children exposed to the elements amid Israel's genocidal assault on of Gaza were dying of hypothermia. Now they're facing potentially deadly heat as temperatures soar to over 100°F in the embattled strip, where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people are sweltering in tents and other makeshift shelters.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) warned Friday that "unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave's people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal."
"It is so hard. It's a heat that I can't describe."
Although there was a repsite Friday, temperatures in Gaza have soared as high as 108°F in recent days, and it's not even May yet. During the hotter summer months, the mercury can soar to over 120°F. Even with air conditioning and refrigeration during less trying times, Gazans often struggled with the summertime heat.
Now those luxuries are gone, replaced by suffocating heat, privation, and the ever-present threat of death or injury from Israeli bombs and bullets as the approximately 1.5 million people sheltering in Rafah brace for an impending invasion.
Many refugees are sheltering in structures made from heat-trapping agricultural greenhouses.
"The tent feels like it's on fire," Maryam Arafat, a young mother of three, toldThe New York Times earlier this week as her infant daughter screamed in discomfort. "It's so hot you can't bear it, especially with young children."
Gaza City refugee Mustafa Radwan told U.N. News that "it is like living in a greenhouse, no one can tolerate living inside."
Arafat and Radwan are but two of the approximately 2 million Palestinians forced from their homes by Israel's relentless bombardment and invasion of Gaza following the October 7 attacks.
Day after day, refugees are forced to wait in long lines for water and other necessities. Safe drinking water is particularly hard to find. Ice is nonexistent.
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Arafat said: "Everything has become difficult in this world. There is no water."
The scorching heat only adds to the misery. So do recent decisions—trees that were chopped down in the cold months for heating and cooking fuel are no longer there to provide shade as spring marches into summer.
Warmer temperatures also bring insects, some of which carry diseases.
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