Haifa, Israel – On Sunday, September 5, 2010, the civil law suit filed by Rachel Corrie’s family against the State of Israel for her unlawful killing in Rafah, Gaza, resumed in the Haifa District Court. In March, the Corrie family called their witnesses to the stand. Today marked the beginning of the State’s testimony.

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Rachel Corrie, an American human rights defender from Olympia, WA, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by a Caterpillar D9R military bulldozer. She had been nonviolently demonstrating against the demolitions of Palestinian homes.

The first state witness, a Military Police investigator known to the court as Oded, was part of a three-person team that investigated Rachel’s killing. Oded corroborated much of the testimony provided by El’ad, an investigator who testified in March, and added additional details about the inadequacy of the investigation.

• Oded confirmed that a commander of the unit involved in Rachel’s killing interrupted the questioning of the bulldozer operator, telling him that Doron Almog, head of the Israeli military’s Southern Command, had ordered that the questioning cease. He also said that, in his experience, interference of this nature from military commanders was not uncommon.
• When asked why he did not challenge the intervention, Oded said that as a junior investigator, it was not his place to do so. He was 20-years-old at the time, with only a high-school education and three-months of training in investigation.

Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz

This is Sarah Corrie Simpson’s first visit to Israel. Her younger sister, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, at the age of 23. Now, the family is suing the state in the Haifa District Court.

“I’m glad the day is finally here, that the eyewitnesses are having a chance to talk in a court of law,” she said in an interview with Haaretz yesterday. “It’s been seven long years.”

The witnesses, who include Rachel’s colleagues in the left-wing International Solidarity Movement, say Rachel climbed atop a mount of dirt to be sure the driver could see her, Simpson said. When he nevertheless kept coming at her, she tried to flee, but tripped and fell. “The bulldozer driver kept driving with the blade down, pushing the dirt over Rachel, and stopped when her body was under the cab.”

“My father served in the military in Vietnam and was responsible for bulldozer operations,” Simpson added. “He said there is no way that what happened to Rachel would have happened on his watch.”

She rejects the IDF’s claim that the area was an active combat zone. The witnesses claim no shots were being fired, she said, so the army could have stopped the operation and removed the demonstrators. But in any case, she added, international law requires soldiers to try to protect civilians even in a war zone.