The rise of American activist Rachel Corrie in front of Israeli bulldozers to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home on March 16, 2003, at the age of 24, in Rafah in the besieged Gaza Strip, highlighted a global protest movement in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, known as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The movement is a non-violent protest organization aiming to support the Palestinian cause in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was founded in 2001 by Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian activist, Nita Golan, Howaida Arraf, a Palestinian from the United States, and George N. Rishmawi, a Palestinian activist. American Adam Shapiro joined the movement shortly after its founding, and is often considered one of the founders. The organization calls on civilians from all over the world to participate in violent protests against the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it has played an extensive role in communicating with the United Nations concerned with the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. Because of its continuous reports, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk acknowledged Israeli violations and called for more companies and civil society to join the growing global solidarity movement to resist the long Israeli occupation and the creeping annexation of Palestine.
Rachel’s murder
The name of the movement is usually associated with the American activist Rachel Corrie, the girl who dedicated her life to denouncing the crimes of the Israeli occupation at the beginning of the current millennium. She traveled to the Gaza Strip to witness the crimes of the occupation against the Palestinian people, and succeeded in documenting many violations, for one of which she paid with her life. The circumstances of Rachel’s death are not subject to controversy, as eyewitnesses to the incident, including foreign journalists who were covering the demolition of Palestinian civilian homes, confirmed that the Israeli bulldozer driver deliberately ran over Rachel and passed over her body with the bulldozer twice while she was trying to stop him before he demolished a civilian house. Turkey named one of the Freedom Flotilla ships, Rachel, which was aiming to break the siege on the Gaza Strip by Israel in 2010 and carried activists from Turkey. The Israeli naval forces quickly attacked the ship within the flotilla, which led to the death of 19 people. Rachel wrote in her last letter to her family in the United States: “I believe that any academic work, any reading, any participation in conferences, watching documentaries, or hearing stories and novels would not have allowed me to realize the reality here, and it is not possible to imagine it if you did not see it yourself, and even after that you think all the time whether your experience expresses a real reality.”
