Twenty-one years ago today, an Israeli soldier drove an 80,000-pound (26,287kg) bulldozer over a 23-year-old woman from Olympia, Washington. Her name was Rachel Corrie, and she was part of an international team of peace activists who had volunteered to protect Palestinian homes from demolition by Israeli settlers. The US magazine, Mother Jones, gave this account of her final hours:
“At two o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, March 16, Rachel Corrie received a cell-phone call from a comrade in the International Solidarity Movement. ‘The Israelis are back,’ she told Corrie. ‘Get over here right away. I think they’re heading for Dr. Samir’s house.’ The news alarmed Corrie. Samir Nasrallah was a Palestinian pharmacist who lived with his wife and three children a few hundred yards from the battle-scarred Egyptian border in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. Corrie and other pro-Palestinian activists based in Rafah had frequently spent the night in Nasrallah’s house, acting as human shields against the Israeli tanks and bulldozers, clearing a security zone around the border. Almost every other structure in the area had been knocked down in recent months; Nasrallah’s abode now stood alone in a sea of sand and debris.
