rachel corrie's family file lawsuit!

[tandem]

against the state of israel and (gasp!) caterpiller. ching ching!

Rachel Corrie's family sues Israel, IDF
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

The family of Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Rafah two years ago, sued the State of Israel and the IDF for damages in the Haifa District Court on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003 when she tried to block an IDF bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian house near the Philadelphi Route, the strip of land in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt.

An IDF investigation ruled the incident was an accident and that the driver did not see Corrie, and the military prosecutor's office decided not to press charges in connection with Corrie's death.

Corrie's parents, brother, and sister, who are represented by Umm al-Fahm attorney Hussein Abu-Hussein, argue Corrie was killed despite the fact that she was wearing bright clothing and had identified herself as an activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.

Corrie's family argues that the bulldozer driver intentionally used unreasonable force. According to the family, there was no fighting in the area at the time and there was no threat to soldiers' lives.

The family has asked for roughly $324 thousand in direct damages, as well as punitive damages. They also said they have yet to receive all of the material from the IDF investigation into the matter.

Family of Slain Protester Sues Caterpillar

U.S. National - AP

By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE, Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE - The parents of a 23-year-old activist killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home is suing Caterpillar Inc., the company that made the bulldozer that ran over her.

The federal lawsuit, which lawyers said would be filed here Tuesday, alleges that Caterpillar violated international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger people.

Rachel Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, was standing in front of a home in a refugee camp in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, in March of 2003 when a bulldozer plowed over her.

"The brutal death of my daughter should never have happened," Corrie's mother, Cindy Corrie, said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a law firm handling the case. "We believe Caterpillar and the (Israeli Defense Forces) must be held accountable for their role in the attack."

Caterpillar spokeswoman Linda Fairbanks said the company had no comment on the lawsuit.

However, the company released a general statement Tuesday that said: "Caterpillar shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East and we certainly have compassion for all those affected by political strife.

"However, more than 2 million Caterpillar machines and engines are at work in virtually every region of the world each day. We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment."

The statement did not refer to the lawsuit.

The Corries have filed separate claims in Israel against the state of Israel, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Israeli military classified Corrie's death as an accident.


i really like how the associated press puts it, that corrie was just hanging around an ordinary house when out of nowhere came a big mean D9 and just plowed her along with the house. f--king IDIOTS!

[KettleWhistle]

I guess the parents took on the daughter's anti-Semitic plight. I wonder if they would've been doing the same, has it happened in Mexico. Something tells me, that would've been a no.

[defari]

The bitch was an idiot, it was her own fault. She stood in front a bulldozer just to save a stupid house? Yep yep, she was an idiot. No hero. Heros saves lives, not stupid houses that can be rebuild. What did she accomplish by that? . Nothing.

[Semsem]

What a bloody nerve. Any idiot who puts herself in front of a bulldozer can expect to be run over. Duuuuuuuh.

[Semsem]

>>We believe Caterpillar <<

LOOOL. It's Caterpillar's fault. Nutcases like their daughter.

[Ophra]

Well damn ..... I say we sue her parents for allowing her to burn our flag

http://newjersey.indymedia.org/userm...ag-burner1.jpg

Feel the love

"... do you know how much damage this bulldozer will take if I let it run over you Mr. Dent?....None at all."

Wisdom from the...
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Laughable = http://www.catdestroyshomes.org/

From a "friend" : .......

Rachel Corrie, the Olympia, Wash., college student killed trying to protect a Palestinian house -- a house, remember, not even a human being -- against an Israeli bulldozer, will probably not merit a footnote in history books. That's too bad, because her life and death, the way she has been portrayed in some media, and the reactions of her college are powerful examples of an America with many morally confused individuals.

Anyone with a heart must extend the deepest condolences to Rachel Corrie's parents. But anyone with a conscience must regard Rachel Corrie's activities with contempt. One hopes that it is not asking too much of people to entertain simultaneously two conflicting emotions -- grief for the parents and contempt for the daughter.

Rachel Corrie chose to side with a society that breeds some of the cruelest murderers of innocent people in the world. Rachel Corrie gave her life trying to protect people whose declared aim is to annihilate another country. In the name of saving children's lives, Rachel Corrie chose to defend a society that teaches its young children to blow themselves up and which deliberately targets children for death. And Rachel Corrie went to America's enemies to burn her country's flag.

She was one of the many fools our colleges annually produce. Evergreen State College is reputed to excel in such production. Is anyone aware of a single student or faculty member who repudiated her activities?

We are told repeatedly that Rachel was idealistic -- as if that matters. Virtually every person who commits great evil -- the Nazi, the Communist, the Islamic terrorist -- is idealistic. Idealism is morally neutral. It is good only when directed to good ends. But in young people, idealism is at least as likely to lead to bad as to good because few young people are wise -- and idealism without wisdom is very dangerous.

We are told ad nauseam that Rachel Corrie was a "peace activist." So let it be said once and for all that most of these people are moral frauds. Why? Because "peace activists" routinely protest only against peaceful countries. Has there been one Evergreen State or other "peace activist" in Sudan during its Islamic government's slaughter and enslavement of millions of blacks? Are there any "peace activists" in Tibet to protect its unique culture from being eradicated by the Communist Chinese? Did you notice any "peace activists" trying to save the millions of North Koreans dying at the hands of their lunatic government? Of course not. Rachel Corrie and other "peace activists" only target peace-loving Israel and America.

Why do they do so?

Here is one answer.

The world is filled with evil, and young idealists like Rachel Corrie don't like it. Which is lovely. But they don't confront real evil because they know they will get hurt. That's one reason there are no "peace activists" or "human shields" confronting Islamic terror, North Korean totalitarianism, or Chinese Communist despotism.

So, what's an idealist to do if she refuses to confront real evil but wants to feel good about herself? Ironically, confront those who fight real evil. That's why Rachel Corrie and the millions marching to protect Saddam Hussein's Iraq have never uttered a peep against Palestinian terror, Iraqi totalitarianism, or North Korean gulags. Instead, they focus their animosity at the countries that confront these evils -- the United States and Israel.

So, Olympia, grieve for Rachel Corrie's parents, but spare us the hagiography. Rachel Corrie died fighting for the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian group dedicated, in its own words, to "armed struggle" against Israel. She ended up being a useful idiot for, and one more victim of, Palestinian terror.

[Reffo]

This guy has got some interesting theories on human nature:

http://humphrys.humanists.net/laws.html

Mark Humphrys - Politics - Laws



Paradox No.1: The most criticised societies will be the least criminal societies.

Followup: Problems with the western media

Paradox No.2: The greater the hatred and cruelty, the less the reason.

The Law of Protests: Protests and demos do not represent public opinion.




Some universal laws and paradoxes of human nature
by Mark Humphrys


Introduction
The common thread in my atheism and my politics is the sad, tragic sense that humans are irrational. Throughout the world, hundreds of millions of people - family men, loving mothers and idealistic youth - believe in nonsensical religions and support hateful political positions. Their heads are filled with powerful memes that are good at reproducing, independent of truth and reason.
It is not so widely recognised that people's political beliefs, as well as their religious beliefs, are dominated by meme competition, rather than by reason and logic. Here's a couple of laws that I see as holding true on this planet.
:
:
:
Moynihan's Law
This is really Moynihan's Law, which points out that the worst societies have the least domestic criticism. I am just pointing out that a free foreign press does not make up for this. The worst societies still have the least criticism.

Consequence
Finally, what is the effect on people of this imbalance?
In the closed society, the regime (happily) reprints the free society's criticisms of itself. No criticisms are printed of the closed society. Many people in the closed society, not knowing anything else, may even come to believe that the free society is more flawed than the closed society. For example, in the Arab Middle East, most criticism seems to be of Israel and America, rather than of their own societies, which are far more flawed.

And in the free society, naive young people read the criticisms of the free society, and don't read the (small) criticisms of (uninteresting) foreign closed societies. They too may even come to believe that the free societies are the worst societies. And so we see a thousand marches and protests against America, Israel and Britain in the west, while I personally cannot ever remember a single major protest against the Soviet Union, China, Iraq, North Korea, North Vietnam, Serbia, the Sudan or any of recent history's serious criminals.

Similarly, I have seen in my life an endless series of posters, banners, graffiti and cartoons comparing the free countries of America, Israel and Britain to Nazi Germany, and their leaders to Hitler. I'm not sure I have ever seen this about an unfree country.

By definition, the countries people protest about are the best countries. They get this abuse because they are not ruthless enough. If they really were imperialists and mass killers (like the Soviet Union), no one would protest about them.

http://humphrys.humanists.net/laws.html

[Womble]

I can understand why they've filed the lawsuits- they're parents, after all, and they need to blame someone when their child dies. It is extremely difficult to accept the death of your child if you cannot even vent your grief by achieving some kind of vindication, justified or not.

This, however, in no way makes them right when they accuse Israel. Ophra's link notes that she died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian house- but I recall the reports that things were much more bizzare. She was protesting at the ruins of an already demolished house, which the buldozer came to pillage to the ground so they would not make too good a firing position for the terrorists. And after seeing an army model of the D9 dozer up close, I seriously doubt that the driver could see Corrie if she was sitting on the ground two-three meters in front of him.

[Leon]

The bitch was an idiot, it was her own fault. She stood in front a bulldozer just to save a stupid house? Yep yep, she was an idiot. No hero. Heros saves lives, not stupid houses that can be rebuild. What did she accomplish by that? . Nothing.

useful to note that that biatch was protecting the house or ruins of a house of a terrorist and cold blooded murderer.

The Islamist fanatics declared her "martyered", so does she get 72 male virgins?

[Ophra]

I can understand why they've filed the lawsuits- they're parents, after all, and they need to blame someone when their child dies. It is extremely difficult to accept the death of your child if you cannot even vent your grief by achieving some kind of vindication, justified or not.

This, however, in no way makes them right when they accuse Israel. Ophra's link notes that she died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian house- but I recall the reports that things were much more bizzare. She was protesting at the ruins of an already demolished house, which the buldozer came to pillage to the ground so they would not make too good a firing position for the terrorists. And after seeing an army model of the D9 dozer up close, I seriously doubt that the driver could see Corrie if she was sitting on the ground two-three meters in front of him.

I remember when it happened Womble ... my son was in Gaza at the time and he was mad at all the lies being spread by the International media... I asked him this morning if he still had info on the story and he just sent me this link :
http://www.honestreporting.com/artic..._Continued.asp
If you Google her name you get such false propoganda ........ just goes to show that every story has 2(00) sides

[Mediocrates]

$324,000 in direct damages + punitive damages? That's it? I would simply create a $500,000 annuity and use it to build Palestinian homes deep inside 'Palestine'. Call it the Rachel Corrie foundation or something like that. Model it after Habitat for Humanity, get volunteers to do the labor, use the funds to improve lots and purchase the materials.

[KettleWhistle]

I remember when it happened Womble ... my son was in Gaza at the time and he was mad at all the lies being spread by the International media... I asked him this morning if he still had info on the story and he just sent me this link :
http://www.honestreporting.com/artic..._Continued.asp
If you Google her name you get such false propoganda ........ just goes to show that every story has 2(00) sides

What? "Peace"Now, aka Let's Help Arabs Kill the Jews Now, isn't building her a memorial?

[KettleWhistle]

This, however, in no way makes them right when they accuse Israel. Ophra's link notes that she died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian house- but I recall the reports that things were much more bizzare. She was protesting at the ruins of an already demolished house, which the buldozer came to pillage to the ground so they would not make too good a firing position for the terrorists. And after seeing an army model of the D9 dozer up close, I seriously doubt that the driver could see Corrie if she was sitting on the ground two-three meters in front of him.

What difference do these particulars make? Considering all the provocation, it would've been manslaughter at worst. And either way the state of Israel is not responsible for it, only the person driving the bulldozer is.

[Ophra]

What? "Peace"Now, aka Let's Help Arabs Kill the Jews Now, isn't building her a memorial?

That's a nonsensical statement KW..... there is a HUGE difference between the Israeli Peace Now movement and the International Solidarity Movement...if you can't tell the difference then it's your problem.

[KettleWhistle]

I CAN tell the difference. Both have the same goals. Only ISM isn't overt in stating what these are. That's the difference.