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26 September 2003: "Digging up the Gaza Strip"

Recently, Jackie D referring to my entry on the death of Rachel Corrie with regards to an entry by Stephen den Beste; Den Beste referred back to my entry in an update, which caused a massive spike in traffic. This had a knock-on effect, since someone whom I presume is one of Den Beste's readers then posted a link to said entry in this thread on the discussion forum of Nonviolence.org. As a result of that, I got some e-mail from one Shauna in Australia, who takes issue with my analysis of the incident.

Exhuming the dead is an unpleasant activity (and believe me, I know), but it can be necessary in order to get at the truth, and lay certain rumours and suspicions to rest. So here we go again; Rachel Corrie redux.

The primary objection Shauna appears to have with my take on the incident is my discounting of the possibility that the driver of the IDF bulldozer may have acted deliberately in causing Corrie's death. Given the possibility of my committing an argumentum ad ignorantiam, this is an issue which does require further examination. I do have to admit I hadn't formulated these thoughts explicitly at the time, but I would like to think they were present implicitly. We do not know for certain that Rachel Corrie was not killed deliberately. I can't refute that. But I can list my arguments why I consider it unlikely that her death was caused deliberately.

Those of you who with a taste for "whodunnits" (I've been re-reading various Lord Peter Wimsey novels lately, not in the least place because my wife loves them) will know that the three key elements in identifying a murderer are means, motive and opportunity. But conversely, in determining whether a death was murder or otherwise, we have to establish that means, motive and opportunity existed, and were acted upon; this is a matter of inquest rather than criminal investigation.

The means clearly existed: one 54-ton Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozer. If someone has the misfortune to get underneath your tracks, crushing them to death should pretty straightforward. But while, according to the pathology report, Rachel Corrie's death was caused by injuries sustained from the dozer blade, she was not crushed beneath the bulldozer's tracks, and lived long enough to be taken to the nearby al-Najar hospital. If the bulldozer driver had intended to kill her, one would expect him to have been more thorough about it. Perversely, if the driver had claimed he didn't see Corrie, this claim would be supported by his behaviour if he had continued to drive forwards, crushing Corrie beneath the bulldozer's tracks.

Much the same applies as regards opportunity. The standoff between the ISM contingent and the IDF had taken up the better part of the afternoon before Corrie was run over. In other words, if it was the intent of the IDF personnel to kill an ISM member—any ISM member—they had ample opportunity to do so; why, then, did they not seize any of these opportunities? The simplest answer is that there was no such intent. That is to say, that there was no intent to kill an ISM member in general, as opposed to Rachel Corrie in particular. This brings us to motive.

Why would an IDF soldier assigned to drive a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip intend specifically to kill a 23 year-old woman from Olympia, WA? Let us consider some hypotheses. It has emerged that shortly after arriving in the Gaza Strip, Corrie became—ahem—"romantically involved" with a fellow ISM member from Sweden named Stefan Villkatt; Villkatt returned to Sweden shortly before Corrie's death. From this, we can draw three possible scenarios:
1. Rachel Corrie had a boyfriend in Olympia, whom she dumped either before going to Israel, or remotely after hooking up with Villkatt; enraged at this slight, the ex-boyfriend arranged to have her killed.
2. Villkatt had a girlfriend in Sweden, whom he dumped either before going to Israel, or remotely after hooking up with Corrie; enraged with jealousy, the ex-grilfriend arranged to have Corrie killed.
3. Villkatt, having become fed up with Corrie, wanted to break off the relationship; for whatever reason, rather than do so openly, he arranged to have her killed.
All three are, obviously, supremely unlikely; not just just because of the pettiness of the motivation, but also due to the sheer scale of the logistics involved. Either the person who desired Corrie dead would have had to know that the IDF was planning a bulldozer sweep in that sector, and been able to find out who the bulldozer drivers would be. Given Israeli operational security, this beggars belief. Alternatively, the person who desired Corrie dead might have contacted Shin Beit or the IDF and told them Corrie was the leading figure in the ISM group in Rafah; the Israelis, keen to break the group's spirit by eliminating its leader, took care of the rest. Actually, the latter scenario—sans jilted lover—has a certain appeal, if one is unfavourably inclined towards the Israeli security forces. The idea that the IDF killed Rachel Corrie in order to break the spirit of the group is a tempting one. But there is a problem with that scenario, which is that, to put it bluntly, a better target was available.

Another incident involving ISM members took place less than a month later, apparently quite close to the site of the bulldozer incident; in this case, a British ISM member named Tom Hurndall was hit by an IDF bullet. In the ISM press statement, one name stands out.

According to Laura, the activists were being shot at while protecting some children from Israeli gunfire. [...] According to Laura, the plan had been to put up a tent where a tank parks itself every night in front of a Mosque. [...] Laura and two Palestinians decided to go assess the situation.

As I remarked at the time, this Laura LNU (Last Name Unknown) seems to have been in charge of the ISM action. The subsequent report by the Rafah group does not mention her by name, presumably in an attempt to shield her identity:

An American international was accompanied by two Palestinians to go closer and get a better look at the area, [...] The tank and tower fired live rounds at the ground and buildings on both sides of her, making her movement difficult.

This lack of co-ordination between the two sources was actually counter-productive, since it actually ended up telling us more about Laura LNU, namely that she's American.

And of course, if you're really concerned about keeping your identity under wraps, the worst thing you can do is talk to the press; open-source information actually plays a very large part in intelligence-gathering. From the article "Was This House Worth Her Life?" in The Stranger, a free weekly newspaper available in the Seattle area, we can glean a fairly extensive list of the ISM Rafah group's membership. Including one Laura Kraftowitz, age 20 (as of last April), from Pittsburgh, PA. Now, if I can work that out, it's a safe bet the combined resources of the Mossad and Shin Beit could as well. So if the IDF were making an effort to eliminate the group's leaders, why would Laura Kraftowitz have still been around to give an interview to Dave Maass of the Tucson Weekly in late May?

Ah. Looking at the ISM's website, I found this account of the incident by ISM member Joseph Smith, accompanied by photographs taken by Smith. Of particular interest is this photo, and the accompanying caption:

Picture taken between 3:00-4:00PM, 16 March 2003 [...] In the instance pictured, [...] Rachel was pinned between the scooped earth and the fence behind her. On this occasion, the driver stopped before seriously injuring her.

Emphasis mine. Ergo, the IDF had the perfect opportunity to kill Corrie at that time, but failed to do so. In fact, Smith's account describes numerous instances of the IDF personnel stopping short of inflicting serious injury on any of the ISM members; this is simply not behaviour consistent with a deliberate intent to inflict lethal injury. In the words of Macbeth, pondering whether to murder King Duncan, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."

Reading Smith's account, the scenario that seems the most plausible to my mind is that Corrie became cocky after her repeated successes in facing down the bulldozers, while the IDF personnel became increasingly frustrated. Ultimately, at 1645 LT, Corrie and the bulldozer driver were each resolved to call the other's bluff, thinking that the other person would flinch in the nick of time. Both were wrong, and simple physics took command: scissors beats paper, 54-ton bulldozer beats human.

If anyone wants to tell me I'm engaging in "hopeful speculation in order to support my biased opinion," as someone did back in March, my response is: "Fine. Present me with a scenario which you consider more plausible, complete with reasoned argumentation to support your case. Otherwise, bite me."

Update: my wife pointed this article in today's Olympian; Corrie's parents want to know the truth. Well, I wish them the best of luck in finding it, but I hope they understand that "truth" is a rather subjective concept in a situation where there is an unwillingness to define the definition of the term "run over."

Further update: some thoughtful soul added my earlier posts on this subject to Wikipedia's page on Rachel Corrie. There's also a link to a column by Dennis Prager on that page. I've expressed my feelings about Prager before, and I really don't want to dirty too many words about the man, but there's one line that just made do a double-take:

It omitted the one photo of Rachel Corrie that USA Today, to its credit, published -- Corrie screaming anti-American invective while burning an American flag in Gaza.

Prager must have some telepathic power that he can tell what someone is screaming just by looking at a photograph. That's quite a remarkable gift, wouldn't you agree?

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