She Fought a Caterpillar and the Caterpillar Won

I can’t imagine being run over by a 60-ton, armor-plated Caterpillar D9 bulldozer while trying to do what’s right.

Olympia, Washington native Rachel Corrie was just 23 when she died this most gruesome death on March 16, 2003, in the Gaza Strip. A member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – a controversial, pro-Palestinian group whose members protest nonviolently against the Israeli military – she was crushed while acting as a human shield to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian’s home by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Almost eight years later, the questions are still being asked: did the bulldozer operator intentionally kill Rachel? Did she deserve to die for being a radical, ill-informed liberal? Does the ISM knowingly put its activists at risk? Why did an American’s death garner so much international publicity when Palestinians die daily as a result of IDF actions? (On the night of Rachel’s death, nine Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, among them a four-year-old girl and a 90-year-old man.) Was the home she was protecting a guerilla hideout and entrance to a smuggling tunnel? Was US District Court Judge Franklin Burgess correct in throwing out a lawsuit filed against the IDF and Caterpillar by Rachel’s parents? Will definitively answering any of these questions bring Rachel Corrie back? I know the answer to that last one.

Regardless of your views on the Israel-Palestine conflict or on young, idealistic Americans traveling to the Middle East to stand up for threatened, oppressed people, you’ve got to admit Rachel died a noble death. Many individuals and organizations, including the United Nations, deemed the IDF demolitions violations of international humanitarian law. (They were stopped in 2005.) In an interview two days before she died, Rachel explained, “I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive. Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with."

When my kids ask me who my heroes are, Rachel is always one of those I mention. Such a principled life she led. Such a needless death she suffered.



Visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice.


The Peace Education Center of Greater Lansing will present the Midwest premier of the documentary, “Rachel,” about the life and death of American activist Rachel Corrie, on Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00 pm. The documentary by award-winning French director Simone Bitton will be shown in Room 107 of South Kedzie Hall on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing. It’s free and open to the public. For more information, call (517) 515-5634.