Friends,

Craig and Cindy Corrie

As many of you know, a civil lawsuit in the case of our daughter Rachel Corrie is scheduled for trial in the Haifa District Court beginning March 10, 2010. A human rights observer and activist, Rachel, 23, tried nonviolently to offer protection for a Palestinian family whose home was threatened with demolition by the Israeli military. On March 16, 2003, she was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar D9R bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza.

The lawsuit is one piece of our family’s seven-year effort to pursue justice for our daughter and sister. We hope this trial will illustrate the need for accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by occupation—in a besieged and beleaguered Gaza and throughout Palestine/Israel; bring attention to the assault on nonviolent human rights activists (Palestinian, Israeli, and international); and underscore the fact that so many Palestinian families, harmed as deeply as ours, cannot access Israeli courts.

Download this letter: Call To Action: Corrie Trial in Israel (pdf, 89.03 KB)

In order to deliver these interconnected messages as effectively as possible, we are asking for large-scale participation in the trial itself as well as in the events surrounding it. We hope you will join us for all or some of the events listed below and help us to put the call out to others.

Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

February 23, 2010

Under pressure from the United States, Israel is to grant visas to four activists from the International Solidarity Movement so they can testify in suit brought against the government by the family of Rachel Corrie, an activist killed by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003.

Corrie, a U.S. citizen, was 24 when she was struck and killed by a bulldozer as she and others tried to stop Israel razing homes in Rafah by using their bodies as human shields.

The Interior Ministry informed the family’s attorney, Hussein Abu Hussein, that the British and American witnesses, including a peace activist expelled from Israel in the past, would be allowed entry into to testify in the civil suit agisnt the Defense Ministry.

The case is due to open the Haifa District Court in two weeks.

However, the Defense Ministry blocked the family’s request to allow Dr. Ahmed Abu Nakira from the Al-Najar Hospital in Rafah, who treated Corrie’s injuries and later confirmed her death, to enter Israel.

A request by Abu Hussein to question the physician via video conference was also rejected because “it is difficult to identify the witness and present him with documents”.

Ahead of the court deliberations the Corrie family contacted Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner, who visited Israel several weeks ago in connection with the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead.