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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Looks like St. Pancake's case fell flat...

Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Washington burning a paper U.S. Flag in Gaza
Eugene Volokh points Israeli court rules against Rachel Corrie's family in their civil suit.  Volokh notes that the coverage has been poor.  Pro Palestinian groups (not surprisingly) are calling the decision "shameful."

Corrie protesting IDF bulldozers
But really this whole lawsuit came down to whether the Israeli Defense Force personnel at the scene were reckless (there was really no evidence she was intentionally run over) in Corrie's death:  
By all accounts, Rachel Corrie was one of a group of protesters attempting to disrupt the work of two IDF bulldozers leveling ground to detonate explosives in an area rife with terrorist activity. The bulldozers moved to a different area to avoid the protesters, and Corrie became separated from the group. Some of the agitators stood with a banner, while Corrie picked up a bullhorn and yelled slogans at the driver encased in the small cabin of the dozer. This went on for several hours on the afternoon of March 16. It's the kind of activity favored by the young pro-Palestinian types who make up the ISM. 
There wasn't enough action for Corrie. According to fellow Evergreen State College student, Joseph Smith, 21, who was at the site, Corrie dropped her bullhorn and sat down in front of one of the bulldozers. She fully expected that the driver would stop just in front of her. "We were horribly surprised," Smith told me by phone from Rafah the day after the incident. "They had been careful not to hurt us. They'd always stopped before," he said. 
As the dozer plowed forward heaping up a pile of dirt and sand, Corrie scrambled up the pile to sit on the top. Smith says she lost her footing as the bulldozer made the earth move beneath her feet. She got pulled down, he says. "The driver lost sight of her and continued forward. Then, without lifting the blade he reversed and Rachel was underneath the mid-section of the dozer, she wasn't run over by the tread."
I recognize I am being callous to Corrie's parents.  I am sorry she was killed and their loss is horrible.  But the blame for this goes to those that encouraged a girl from Olympia, Washington to get involved in a dispute she did not understand that resulted in her putting herself in harms way.  And the left's attempts to make her into some heroic martyr only encourages other misguided youth from doing the same thing.

Update:
Back when LGF and Charles Johnson used to call Rachel Corrie St. Pancake.
The Blogmocracy has more on why Ms. Corrie was in Gaza.  

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