By Samia Khoury

March 16, 2024, marks the twenty-first anniversary of the slaughtering of  Rachel  Corrie,  from Olympia,  Washington in the USA,  by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza.  What is happening in Gaza today is not a reaction to the events of October 7,  2023,  but an ongoing genocide that started seventeen years ago when Israel turned the Gaza Strip into an open prison.  Rachel, 23 years old,  was volunteering in Gaza and was trying to stand in the way of a bulldozer to prevent it from demolishing a Palestinian home.  Nobody with any sense of humanity could have believed that the bulldozer driver would not stop at the sight of this young woman waving and blocking the road to deter him from proceeding to demolish that home in Gaza.   But without any compunction and in a most brutal manner, Rachel was no more, swallowed by that monstrous machine.

As we remember that day, we Palestinians are never surprised at what Israel is capable of doing including the genocide that is taking place in Gaza.     My generation who lived through the Nakba has witnessed atrocities of such magnitude, but they were not exposed to the whole world for months on end.  What is sad and unacceptable is that Israel not only has been able to dispossess the Palestinians and violate international law with impunity but furthermore,  it gets rewarded by the USA and its allies for its ongoing plan of dispossession. All this is under the guise of “its right to defend itself,” despite the resounding protests of masses of human beings around the world.   

Please remember Rachel Corrie on this day and here is the Rachel Corrie Foundation site established by her parents after their great loss.  rachelcorriefoundation.org

Bless you, dear Rachel.  You will always be remembered by all the Palestinians and especially the people of Gaza who are going through what you have gone through