Rachel Corrie
Based on Wikipedia: Rachel Corrie
The Girl Who Stood in Front of the Bulldozer
On March 16, 2003, a twenty-three-year-old American woman in an orange fluorescent vest climbed onto a mound of dirt being pushed by a sixty-ton military bulldozer. According to witnesses, she rose high enough that her head was level with the driver's cabin—close enough, they said, to look directly into his eyes.
The bulldozer didn't stop.
Rachel Corrie had traveled halfway around the world to stand between the Israeli military and Palestinian homes marked for demolition. She was a college student from Olympia, Washington, who had spent her childhood writing in diaries and her adolescence organizing peace rallies. She died in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip, crushed beneath the blade of a Caterpillar D9R—an armored bulldozer the size of a small house, designed to withstand anti-tank mines and rocket-propelled grenades.
Her death became one of the most contested events of the Second Intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that had been raging since 2000. It also became a symbol—though what that symbol means depends entirely on who you ask.
The Making of an Activist
Rachel Aliene Corrie was born on April 10, 1979, the youngest of three children in what her mother Cindy described as an "average American" family—"politically liberal, economically conservative, middle class." Her father Craig worked as an insurance executive. They lived in Olympia, the capital of Washington State, a small city known for its progressive politics and proximity to dense Pacific Northwest forests.
After graduating from Capital High School, Corrie enrolled at Evergreen State College, an unconventional public university famous for its lack of grades and its emphasis on independent study. Evergreen has long attracted a particular type of student—idealistic, artistically inclined, politically engaged. Its alumni include the cartoonist Matt Groening, who created "The Simpsons," and the members of several influential rock bands. It was exactly the kind of place where a young woman interested in both art and activism could find her footing.
At Evergreen, Corrie became what one account called a "committed peace activist." She organized events through a local group called Olympians for Peace and Solidarity, part of a network connected to the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM. The ISM was founded in 2001 by Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists who believed in using nonviolent direct action—human shields, peaceful obstruction, bearing witness—to resist what they viewed as Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories.
Corrie also took a year off from college to work with the Washington State Conservation Corps, a service program modeled on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. According to the ISM, she spent three years making weekly visits to mental health patients. This detail—often overlooked in accounts of her life—suggests someone drawn not just to grand political gestures but to the quieter work of human connection.
The Sister City Project
For her senior-year independent study, Corrie proposed something ambitious: she would travel to Gaza, join the ISM, and try to establish a "sister city" relationship between Olympia and Rafah. Sister city programs—formal partnerships between municipalities in different countries—had been around since the 1950s, originally designed to promote cultural exchange and international understanding in the aftermath of World War II. The idea of connecting a small American state capital with a Palestinian refugee city on the Egyptian border was, to put it mildly, unusual.
Before leaving, she organized a pen-pal program between children in Olympia and children in Rafah. It was a characteristically personal approach to an impersonal conflict—instead of arguing about borders and politics, connect actual kids who might write to each other about their lives.
She arrived in Gaza in January 2003, two months before the United States would invade Iraq. The region was in chaos. The Second Intifada had been grinding on for over two years, killing thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinian militant groups were launching suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. The Israeli military was conducting raids, arrests, and assassinations throughout the occupied territories. And in Rafah, along the border between Gaza and Egypt, bulldozers were demolishing Palestinian homes.
The Demolitions
Why was Israel demolishing houses in Rafah? The answer depends on which account you believe.
Israeli authorities said the demolitions were a military necessity. Palestinian gunmen, they argued, used the structures along the border as cover to shoot at Israeli patrols. More importantly, the buildings concealed smuggling tunnels—underground passages used to move weapons, ammunition, and other contraband from Egypt into Gaza. To stop the tunnels, Israel needed clear sightlines along the border. That meant the buildings had to go.
Human rights organizations saw it differently. They called the demolitions "collective punishment"—destroying the homes of innocent families to punish the broader Palestinian population for the actions of militants. Under international humanitarian law, collective punishment is a war crime. The distinction between military necessity and collective punishment would become central to how people understood not just the demolitions, but Corrie's death.
Whatever the motivation, the scale was enormous. By some estimates, Israel demolished over 2,500 Palestinian homes in Gaza between 2000 and 2004, displacing tens of thousands of people. The border zone in Rafah became a moonscape of rubble and flattened earth.
Life in the Pink Zone
On Corrie's first night in Rafah, she and two other ISM activists set up camp in Block J, a densely populated neighborhood along what was called the "Pink Line"—the boundary area frequently targeted by Israeli snipers in watchtowers. The activists' plan was simple, if terrifying: by placing themselves visibly between the Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian residents, displaying banners identifying themselves as "internationals," they hoped to discourage shooting. The theory was that the Israeli military would be more reluctant to fire if it meant potentially killing American or European civilians.
It didn't quite work. When Israeli soldiers fired warning shots, Corrie and her colleagues dismantled their tent and left.
A Palestinian interpreter named Qishta, who worked with the activists, later offered a blunt assessment: "They were not only brave; they were crazy." Late January and February 2003, he noted, was "a very crazy time. There were house demolitions taking place all over the border strip and the activists had no time to do anything else."
The ISM activists faced danger from multiple directions. A British participant was wounded by shrapnel while trying to retrieve the body of a Palestinian man killed by a sniper. An Irish activist had a close encounter with an armored bulldozer. Palestinian militants worried that the internationals, camping in tents between the watchtowers and residential areas, would get caught in crossfire. Some Palestinian residents suspected the activists might be spies.
To overcome this suspicion, Corrie learned a few words of Arabic. She participated in a mock trial denouncing "the crimes of the Bush Administration"—a performance that would seem absurd in other contexts but made sense in a place where American foreign policy wasn't an abstraction but a daily presence in the form of American-made weapons and American-funded military operations.
Despite these efforts, a letter circulated in Rafah that cast suspicion on the foreign activists. "Who are they? Why are they here? Who asked them to come here?" On the morning of March 16, Corrie and her fellow activists planned to counteract the letter's effects. According to one of them, "We all had a feeling that our role was too passive. We talked about how to engage the Israeli military."
The Water Wells
In the last month of her life, Corrie spent much of her time at a place called Canada Well, trying to protect Palestinian municipal workers who were attempting to repair damage done by Israeli bulldozers. The well had been built in 1999 with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, and along with another facility called El Iskan Well, it had supplied more than half of Rafah's drinking water.
Since the damage, the city had been under strict rationing—running water only a few hours every other day. The ISM activists maintained a presence at the well because, according to fellow activist Gordon Murray, "Israeli snipers and tanks routinely shot at civilian workers trying to repair the wells."
In one of her reports, Corrie described an incident where she and other activists, carrying banners and megaphones and having received permission from the Israeli District Command Office, accompanied water workers to the site. Despite all this, they were fired upon several times over about an hour. "One of the bullets came within two metres of three internationals and a municipal water worker," she wrote, "close enough to spray bits of debris in their faces as it landed at their feet."
The Flag
On February 15, 2003, millions of people around the world marched against the impending American invasion of Iraq—possibly the largest coordinated protest in human history. In Gaza, Corrie took part in a small demonstration. She was photographed burning a makeshift American flag.
After her death, this image circulated widely, used by some to discredit her as anti-American. Her parents offered context that both acknowledged their disagreement with the act and asked for understanding:
Rachel was working with children who drew two pictures, one of the American flag, and one of the Israeli flag, for burning. Rachel said that she could not bring herself to burn the picture of the Israeli flag with the Star of David on it, but under such circumstances, in protest over a drive towards war and her government's foreign policy that was responsible for much of the devastation that she was witness to in Gaza, she felt it OK to burn the picture of her own flag.
They added a poignant observation: after Rachel's death, Palestinians held memorials where children and adults carried a mock coffin draped with the American flag. "We have been told that our flag has never been treated so respectfully in Gaza in recent years. We believe Rachel brought a different face of the United States to the Palestinian people, a face of compassion."
March 16, 2003
The events of that day remain disputed, two decades later.
What everyone agrees on: The Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, was conducting demolition operations in Rafah. Rachel Corrie, wearing a fluorescent orange vest, was part of a group of seven ISM activists—three British, four American—attempting to disrupt the operation. She placed herself in the path of a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer. She was run over. She was transported by Red Crescent ambulance to the Palestinian Najar hospital, arriving at the emergency room at 5:05 in the afternoon, still alive but in critical condition. At 5:20 pm, she was declared dead.
Everything else is contested.
The Activists' Account
Fellow ISM members said Corrie was acting as a human shield to prevent the demolition of the home of a local pharmacist named Samir Nasrallah—a house where ISM activists had spent several nights. They said she was standing between the bulldozer and a wall near the home when she was deliberately run over.
An activist using the name "Richard" told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
There's no way he didn't see her, since she was practically looking into the cabin. At one stage, he turned around toward the building. The bulldozer kept moving, and she slipped and fell off the plow. But the bulldozer kept moving, the shovel above her. I guess it was about 10 or 15 meters that it dragged her and for some reason didn't stop. We shouted like crazy to the operator through loudspeakers that he should stop, but he just kept going and didn't lift the shovel. Then it stopped and backed up. We ran to Rachel. She was still breathing.
Joe Carr, an American activist who went by "Joseph Smith" while in Gaza, provided a detailed account to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights:
Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she sat down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day. The bulldozer continued driving forward headed straight for Rachel. When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer. She got so high onto it that she was at eye-level with the cab of the bulldozer. Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer driver and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, he continued forward, which pulled her legs into the pile of rubble, and pulled her down out of view of the driver. If he'd stopped at this point, he may have only broken her legs, but he continued forward, which pulled her underneath the bulldozer.
Two days later, Carr gave a television interview in which he appeared less certain: "It was either a really gross mistake or a really brutal murder." He later acknowledged that after Corrie fell down the dirt pile, the bulldozer operator could well have lost sight of her.
The Israeli Account
The IDF said it was an accident. An officer testified in court that the bulldozer operator simply didn't see Corrie due to the vehicle's obstructed view. Moreover, the military claimed that on that day they were only clearing vegetation and rubble from previously demolished houses—not demolishing any new structures.
The bulldozer operator himself was interviewed on Israeli television:
You can't hear, you can't see well. You can go over something and you'll never know. I scooped up some earth, I couldn't see anything. I pushed the earth, and I didn't see her at all. Maybe she was hiding in there.
The IDF produced a video about Corrie's death that included footage shot from inside the cockpit of a D9 bulldozer. Journalist Joshua Hammer, writing in Mother Jones magazine, called it a "credible case" that the operators, "peering out through narrow, double-glazed, bulletproof windows, their view obscured behind pistons and the giant scooper, might not have seen Corrie kneeling in front of them."
An IDF spokesman acknowledged that Israeli army regulations normally require operators of armored personnel carriers accompanying bulldozers to direct the bulldozer operators toward their targets, precisely because the Caterpillar D9 has restricted visibility with several blind spots.
The Core Questions
The dispute essentially comes down to two questions. First: Did the bulldozer operator see Corrie? The activists say yes—she was in plain view, wearing bright orange, at eye level with the cabin. The operator says no—the machine's design made it impossible to see her.
Second: What actually killed her? Was she crushed directly under the blade, or was she killed by the mound of debris the bulldozer was pushing? The distinction matters legally and morally, though it hardly mattered to Corrie.
The Investigations
The Israeli military conducted its own investigation and concluded that Corrie's death was an accident. The ruling satisfied almost no one outside of Israel.
Amnesty International criticized it. So did Human Rights Watch, which said the ruling represented a broader "pattern of impunity for Israeli forces." B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, and Yesh Din, another Israeli group focused on rule of law in the occupied territories, also objected.
In 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro stated that the American government found the Israeli investigation "unsatisfactory, lacking thoroughness, credibility and transparency." The U.S., he said, remained unsatisfied with how the investigation had been closed.
Corrie's parents sued the Israeli government in Israeli civil court. In 2012, after years of litigation, the court ruled in favor of the government, finding that Corrie's death was a "regrettable accident" and that she had put herself in danger by choosing to protest in an active military zone. The ruling prompted fresh outrage from human rights groups and Corrie's supporters.
The Aftermath
While Corrie was in Gaza, she sent a series of emails to her mother. Four of them were later published by The Guardian newspaper. In 2008, Norton published a book of her writings called "Let Me Stand Alone," which included these emails along with diaries and other documents. A Yale professor named David Bromwich called them "letters of great interest."
Corrie's words took on other forms as well. A play titled "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," compiled from her writings and edited by the British actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, premiered in London in 2005. It drew controversy when a New York theater postponed its planned American premiere, citing concerns about the political climate. The play eventually ran in New York in 2006 and has been performed around the world. A cantata called "The Skies Are Weeping" was also based on her letters.
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
What are we to make of Rachel Corrie?
To her supporters, she was a martyr—a young idealist who gave her life trying to protect innocent people from a military occupation. They see her death as emblematic of Israeli brutality and American complicity, a story of a conscience-driven woman crushed by the machinery of state violence.
To her critics, she was naive at best, a useful idiot for Palestinian militants at worst. They argue that she chose to insert herself into an active conflict zone, that she sided with people who harbored terrorists and built smuggling tunnels, that her death—while tragic—was entirely foreseeable and largely her own fault.
The truth, as usual, is messier than either narrative allows.
Corrie was twenty-three years old. She had never been to the Middle East before. She arrived in one of the most complex, violent, and historically fraught conflicts on Earth with a few weeks of ISM training and the conviction that standing in front of bulldozers could make a difference. She was earnest in a way that can seem almost unbearable to read about—organizing pen-pal programs, learning Arabic phrases, writing long emails to her mother about the suffering she witnessed.
She was also, by any measure, reckless. Playing human shield against armored military vehicles is not a strategy with a high survival rate. The ISM's approach—putting unarmed civilians in the path of armed soldiers conducting military operations—relies entirely on the assumption that those soldiers will stop. Sometimes they didn't.
Whether the bulldozer operator saw her or not, whether her death was murder or accident, Corrie made a choice that most people would consider foolhardy. She knew the risks. In one email, she wrote about the constant sound of gunfire, about how normalized it had become. She understood she might die.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Rachel Corrie is how ordinary she was—not a trained activist or a radical theorist, but a college student from a middle-class family who decided that she couldn't just watch the news and do nothing. She was idealistic and probably somewhat naive. She believed that bearing witness mattered, that putting her body between a bulldozer and a house could somehow change things.
It didn't save the house. It didn't stop the demolitions. It didn't end the occupation or bring peace to the Middle East.
But twenty years later, people are still arguing about what her death means. For better or worse, that's a kind of legacy too.