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Action Alert: Protest Wall Street Journal's libels against Rachel Corrie

ISM and PMWATCH | 17.03.2004 20:33 | Anti-militarism | World

The Wall Street Journal's libels against Rachel Corrie

 http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/mediocrity/displayCall.asp?essayID=237

- March 17, 2004 --


BACKGROUND: On March 16 2004, the one year anniversary of the crushing to death of non-violent International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah by a 50 ton Israeli bulldozer, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published TWO shocking attacks on Rachel Corrie: one by Ruhama Shattan and the other by the WSJ's own OpinionJournal.com Editor, James Taranto.

By any standard, these attacks are actionable libels. In Shattan's attack piece, the author directly blamed Rachel Corrie for suicide bombings and claimed that she fomented anti-American feelings and supported the elimination of the state of Israel: "I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.... I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing Palestinian children how to despise America...." (This op-ed was first published in the Jerusalem Post on March 2, 2004.)

In the second attack piece, the author there goes even further and refers to Rachel as a "terror advocate": "A year ago today, terror advocate Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Wash., died in a bulldozer accident while trying to obstruct an Israeli operation against Palestinian weapons-smuggling tunnels."

In a letter to the editor published by the Jerusalem Post responding to Shattan's op-ed for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, US Embassy spokesperson Paul Patin wrote:

This article is nothing less than hateful incitement. The author's
disgusting abuse of the anniversary of the death of this American
citizen is inexcusable. The article reflects a level of discourse
unbefitting any serious newspaper. We're disappointed that you chose
to publish this article.

The op-ed was so disgraceful, that the Jerusalem Post was forced to run a counter op-ed on March 15 by Huwaida Arraf of ISM (see below).

The Wall Street Journal has clearly crossed more than one line here:

(1) A line decency, by giving generous space to op-ed pieces that viciously attacked a dead person. In the words of the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv, the piece was "hateful incitement", "disgusting abuse", and "inexcusable".

(2) A legal line of libel: providing space for someone to directly slander someone else and accuse them of being a "terror advocate" -- something that not even the Israeli government has dared to do -- with no factual basis, is an actionable libel that should not go unanswered.


ACTION: Here is what YOU can do: contact the WSJ and demand that they:

(1) Issue an explicit erratum correcting the basic falsehoods stated as fact
in the pieces.

(2) Issue a public apology for publishing such vicious and slanderous attacks
on the one-year anniversary of Rachel's killing.

(3) Provide immediate op-ed space for the International Solidarity Movement to
counter the attacks. It is worth noting that that the WSJ received many, many
op-eds sympathetic to Rachel Corrie, and yet the WSJ chose to publish not one,
but TWO pieces insulting and degrading Rachel Corrie's memory.

(4) IMMEDIATELY remove from the WSJ's online web site the clearly actionable
piece by James Taranto at:  http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110004826

Here is contact information for the WSJ:

* Op-ed page Fax (212) 416 - 2255
* Deputy Editor, Editorial Page, Daniel Henniger (212) 416 - 2558
* OpinionJournal.com Editor, James Taranto: (212) 416 2144
* OpinionJournal.com Assistant Editor, Brendan Miniter: (212) 416 3698
* Letters editor, Ned Crabb: (212) 416 - 2576
* Letters:  wsj.ltrs@wsj.com

* US embassy in Tel Aviv:  amctelaviv@state.gov

You can send a quick letter via:  http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/mediocrity/sendemail.asp?callID=237

After you call and/or send a letter, please keep us in the loop by sending a note to:  pmw-wsj@yahoogroups.com

If you talk to them, let us know what kind of an exchange you had -- verbatim quotes from them would be ideal. If you send a letter, just bcc it to  pmw-wsj@yahoogroups.com

A previous libelous attack on the ISM can be found at:  http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/mediocrity/displayCall.asp?essayID=220


This action call is a joint effort by The International Solidarity Movement and Palestine Media Watch.

ISM
 http://www.palsolidarity.org/
011 - 972-2-277-4602

PMWATCH
 http://www.pmwatch.org
(610) 993 - 0608

=================

Ruhama Shattan,
"<<img src="/img/extlink.gif" border="0"/> http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110004796

Thanks for showing us what 'peace' really means",

Wall Street Journal Online
Opinion Journal, 16 March 2004:

(Editor's note: On March 16, 2003, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie died in
a bulldozer accident in the Gaza town of Rafah.)

Today is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. I want to
thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza,
via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died
defending.

Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her
martyrdom--oops, death--have been strapped around suicide bombers to
blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in
Jerusalem, killing men, women and schoolchildren (two of them
classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004
bombing) and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans and bereaved
parents.

On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie
for showing Palestinian children how to despise America as she
snarled, burned an American flag, and led them in chanting slogans,
and as she gave "evidence" at a Young Palestinian Parliament mock
trial finding President Bush guilty of crimes against humanity.

Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American
sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation
to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There
will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall.


On the first anniversary of her death, I wanted to thank Rachel
Corrie for providing her organization, the Palestinian-sponsored
International Solidarity Movement, with the opportunity to release a
manipulated photo sequence "showing" an Israeli military bulldozer
deliberately crushing her. (I would also like to thank the Associated
Press and the Christian Science Monitor for taking up the baton and
immortalizing this cynical ISM stunt.)

On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie
for showing the way to all those who seek peace in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, Corrie's peace, as anyone familiar with the Palestine
Liberation Organization, Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah organizations
that she defended with her life knows--or as anyone familiar with the
weekly rants of the Friday preachers in the Palestinian mosques is
aware--means not peaceful coexistence but the elimination of the
state of Israel, and death to those they call "the usurping Jews, the
sons of apes and pigs."

Thank you, Rachel Corrie, of Evergreen State University, where the
profs wear khakis and kaffiyehs at graduation ceremonies, for showing
us what peace really means.

Ms. Shattan is a translator, editor and writer who has lived in
Israel since 1976. This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

===============================
 http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110004826
BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 4:09 p.m. EST

Rachel Corrie and the Boy Bomb

A year ago today, terror advocate Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Wash., died in a bulldozer accident while trying to obstruct an Israeli operation against Palestinian weapons-smuggling tunnels. Corrie didn't deserve to die any more than any other accident victim does, but neither does she deserve to be lionized as a martyr for peace--as she is, predictably, in her home state's two big papers, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Intelligent as a post!"). In contrast, Ruhama Shattan has a clearheaded tribute to Corrie, which our friends at the Jerusalem Post generously allowed us to reprint.

Here's a sample of the Post-Intelligencer's tribute, written by one Molly McClain, who works for an outfit called the Palestine Solidarity Committee:

Some people blamed Rachel, a student at Evergreen State College, for her own murder; they accused her of everything from being an impressionable, idealistic kid who had been brainwashed to a defender of terrorists.

It is hard to imagine what life is like for people in Palestine, and I cling to the hope that it is this lack of imagination that leads so many to believe that all Palestinians are terrorists or that Rachel was either brainless or evil.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this photo of Corrie burning the American flag a month before her death. A look of utter hatred is on her face, as a crowd of Palestinian children look on.

Here's an example of what this culture of hate produces: "Fatah Tanzim activists in Nablus attempted to use an 11-year-old boy to smuggle a bomb through an IDF roadblock on Monday, and tried to detonate the bomb when soldiers stopped him," the Jerusalem Post reports:

The men gave the boy a bag containing a seven-to-10 kilogram bomb stuffed with bolts. They promised him a large sum of money if he would carry it through the roadblock and hand it to a woman waiting on the other side.

Israeli soldiers rescued the boy, whom Yasser Arafat's men were preparing to murder. Ha'aretz, meanwhile, reports that Arafat yesterday "refused his cabinet's call to use the Palestinian security forces against terror organizations."

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.


===============================
Mar. 15, 2004
The price of nonviolent resistance
By HUWAIDA ARRAF
 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1079325338373&p=1006953079865

Today, March 16, marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of our friend and colleague Rachel Corrie. Rachel, a 23-year-old American volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [Rafiah], was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in Rafah while trying to nonviolently block the demolition of yet another Palestinian home.

The home belonged to Dr. Samir Nasrallah, a physician, and his family; it was a home that Rachel had spent many nights at hoping her presence might deter the horrific violence that the family was consistently exposed to by the Israeli military.

Rachel was wearing a fluorescent orange reflector jacket and, along with seven other volunteers from the ISM, was attempting to appeal to the conscience of the bulldozer driver – getting in his way and speaking to him through a bullhorn. She kept repeating, "These actions are a violation of international law. Demolishing homes is a war crime. Please stop."

And right before she was run over Rachel asked the driver, "What would your mother think?"
Since Rachel's killing, the Israeli media has been complicit in attempts by the Israeli military and government to blame Rachel for her own death.

According to such reports, Rachel was at best a na ve young lady whose irresponsible behavior cost her her life and put the lives of others at risk; but more commonly Rachel merely got what she deserved for trying to protect terrorists.

Only two weeks ago The Jerusalem Post published a piece by Ruhama Shattan in which the author wrote: "I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending."

Perhaps Shattan is unaware that neither the military nor the press ever found tunnels under Samir's home. Rachel's parents went to visit Samir, accompanied by reporters in September 2003, and also did not find tunnels.

The very fact that Samir's home was not bulldozed for nine months following Rachel's death is testament to the frivolity of the charge. But this is not surprising, since the Israeli media (without a single journalist in the Gaza Strip) repeatedly reports exactly what the Israeli army says without question.

IT IS quite normal to pick up an Israeli newspaper or listen to Israeli television broadcasts about Palestinians and inevitably hear the word "terrorist" used to describe those being killed, injured or attacked.

According to these reports, the IDF is engaged with people who are terrorists, there are terrorists in the area, or suspected terrorists were there. This goes unchallenged in the Israeli media, even in left-wing newspapers. So it is not surprising, though disturbing, that Shattan would believe that Rachel must have been helping terrorists in Gaza, since that is what her media, government officials and military are telling her.

Since the beginning of this intifada thousands of international civilians have come to witness and stand for peace and freedom in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They engage and interact with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom are actively working to end the occupation and generate freedom for all people living in this region.

ISM activists work with Palestinian activists promoting and utilizing the strategies and tactics of nonviolent resistance. In this way international and Israeli activists are an asset and a resource for nonviolence.

From reading the Israeli news one would think these foreigners must only find terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. In the past three years over 2,800 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, over 40,000 injured and over 3 million put under random house arrest. Are they all terrorists?

On March 16, 2003 Rachel was trying to prevent a family from being made homeless by using the only resources she had – her body and her courage.

According to an October 2003 Amnesty International report: "In the past three years the Israeli army has destroyed some 4,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as vast areas of cultivated land, hundreds of factories and other commercial properties, roads and public buildings... The Israeli army says it has uncovered 70 smuggling tunnels in Rafah in the past three years and in the same period it has destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the area."

Rachel's was an act of humanity and decency that is dangerous, for it forces all of us to question what we are doing to end the oppression of others. It seems, however, that many Israelis hope to silence voices of humanity and prefer instead to perpetuate hatred and vileness.

I hope Shattan will consider one day going to Gaza – not as an occupier, soldier or settler, but as an equal with the Palestinians living there. I am certain she will then start to understand what Rachel was hoping to convey in her question to the bulldozer driver.

The writer is a founder and coordinator of the International Solidarity Movement.

ISM and PMWATCH
- Homepage: http://www.palsolidarity.org