Washington shrugs off Israeli murder of US student in Gaza

[theory]

Washington shrugs off Israeli murder of US student in Gaza
By Bill Vann
18 March 2003

A US citizen, an idealistic young woman who would have graduated from college this spring, was murdered by soldiers in the Middle East Sunday. The crime was cold-blooded. Unarmed, she was killed for standing in the way of a vicious assault on human rights.

One can only imagine the uproar had soldiers in Iraq been responsible for this killing. The cable news networks would have carried continuous coverage of the event, broadcasting repeatedly the tragic images of doctors trying to revive the young woman and her friends weeping in shock and disbelief at the savagery of the military.

Such footage exists, but it received scant airtime because it wasn’t taken in Iraq. The military of that nation, the target of an imminent, devastating American attack, has never killed a single American civilian. It was the military of Washington’s most enthusiastic supporter of war against Iraq—Israel—that murdered Rachel Corrie. The Israeli Defense Forces killed her as she and fellow pacifists tried to stop Israeli troops from demolishing a Palestinian family’s home.

The instrument of her death was a massive D-9 bulldozer, purchased from Caterpillar Inc. with part of the $3 billion that Washington annually supplies to the Israeli state to cover its military expenses. The driver saw the young woman as she stood in front of the earthmover in a bright-colored jacket yelling at him through a bullhorn. Instead of stopping, he dropped a load of debris upon her, pushed her to the ground with the bulldozer’s blade and then drove the 52-ton vehicle over her body, not once, but twice.

The killing was a deliberate act of intimidation aimed at driving out foreign witnesses before Israel, acting under the cover of the impending US war in Iraq, launches a full-blown assault on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The media’s indifference to Rachel Corrie’s death merely echoed that of the Bush administration. At the State Department a spokesman issued a hypocritical plea that the Sharon regime “undertake all possible measures to avoid harm to civilians,” but declined to condemn the murder of the young American woman.

US admonitions about the slaughter of Palestinians—or anyone else who opposes the Israeli occupation—are routinely ignored by the Sharon regime, which knows it has been given carte blanche to carry out whatever form of military aggression or repression it sees fit. Less than two weeks before Rachel Corrie was killed, a Palestinian woman, Nuha Sweidan, nine-months pregnant, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer smashing down a house next door in a Gaza refugee camp. Buried in the rubble of her home, she bled to death holding her 18-month-old daughter in her arms. Her unborn child also perished.

Even as Washington claims military aggression against Iraq is justified because of Baghdad’s alleged failure to live up to United Nations resolutions, it ignores Israeli war crimes and that nation’s flagrant transgressions of UN resolutions and international law. The Israeli regime holds the world record for violating UN measures, rejecting demands that it halt acts of repression in the occupied territories, cease the illegal expulsion of Palestinians from their land, halt Zionist settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and end its illegal 36-year occupation of Palestinian territory. Had Washington not repeatedly used its veto power in the UN Security Council to protect Israel, there would double the number of such unfulfilled resolutions.

Rachel Corrie was murdered on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq. The US president insists that the massive military force assembled in the Persian Gulf is there to “liberate” the Iraqi people from an evil dictatorship, bringing them US-sponsored democracy and freedom. The nature of this “freedom” is on display in Gaza and the West Bank, where Washington’s closest ally subjects more than three-and-a-half million people to a nightmare of death, repression, degradation and poverty.

The connection between the killings in Gaza and the coming bloodshed in Iraq is by no means abstract. The US Army has purchased a dozen of the Caterpillar vehicles that took the young American student’s life. It has sent them to Israel to be fitted out with armor. They will soon see action, crushing Iraqi soldiers and civilians alike and demolishing homes in Baghdad.
http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/palestine/RachelCorriegfx/rachel.jpg http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/palestine/RachelCorriegfx/rachel1.jpg

[cpud]

i heard about this, i bet the dude driving that thing feels like crap now.

and that last little paragraph is outrageous. i'd like to see you give me some evidence of these armored civilian & baby killing machines once we hit Baghdad.

[theory]

Send in the bulldozers: what Israel told marines about urban battles

As troops close on Baghdad, Pentagon takes notes on house-to-house fighting in Jenin

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

Martin van Creveld's advice to the US marines on what lessons to draw from Israel's bloody urban battle in Jenin was precise: Forget the helicopters, invest in armoured bulldozers.
For months now, the Pentagon has been taking notes from the Israelis in preparation for what looks increasingly likely to be an arduous house by house, street by street, fight for Baghdad. Pentagon strategists have pored over videos of the Israeli military's assault on Jenin a year ago, when 150 lightly armed but determined Palestinians kept the army at bay for 11 days and killed 23 soldiers.

US officers watched Israeli tank raids into West Bank cities in February, and American soldiers have learned in the Israeli desert how to blow their way from house to house to avoid booby traps and street fighting. The Israeli insights build on years of exchanges of military technology and intelligence between the deeply intertwined armies. Among other things, the US is using Israeli-manufactured drones to scout across Iraqi lines.

But with the US army faced with fighting through Baghdad's sprawling maze of streets and alleyways, known intimately by its enemy, American technological superiority is probably worth less than the Israelis' bitter experience. And now there is the added factor of suicide bombers.

As the war with Iraq loomed, the US marines called in Mr Van Creveld, a military strategist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University with close ties to the Israeli army. At a briefing in North Carolina in September, he offered some lessons.

"There were three key things," he said. "How to clear streets house by house, particularly using bulldozers. They're very useful in this kind of war to break houses.

"How and when to use helicopters to take out snipers. And when not to, and I'd say Baghdad is one of those situations. And how to avoid civilian casualties."

Condemned


The Israeli army used giant armoured Caterpillar bulldozers and helicopter gunships to crush and rocket a square kilometre of Jenin, killing dozens of Palestinian fighters and civilians and destroying hundreds of homes. The American-made bulldozers - originally used in Vietnam - are in themselves weapons, bringing buildings crashing down on an enemy without having to engage him room by room. It was a widely condemned tactic in Jenin, which the Israelis claim saved civilian lives even though, like bombs, the killing is not selective.

But US forces have also been receiving insights into how to fight room by room if it becomes necessary. Close to 1,000 American soldiers were sent to Israel for joint manoeuvres at the beginning of the year. Some were sent to a mock Arab town in the Negev desert to draw on Israeli experience. Among other things, they were shown how Israeli soldiers avoid having to show themselves on the street by moving from inside one house to another by blowing a hole in the wall without bringing the building down.

In February, residents of Nablus reported seeing English-speaking troops in unfamiliar uniforms accompanying Israeli soldiers during a two-week incursion into the old city, where just such tactics were used. US army officers have observed Israeli units at first hand in Jenin and Bethlehem.

The traffic has been two way. Israeli officers have visited the US marines' thinktank at Quantico, Virginia. Its commander, Colonel Randy Gangle, confirms the visit took place but declines to discuss it other than to say he "appreciated the insights offered by the Israeli experience of the intifada".

Mr Van Creveld told the Americans that for all the lessons learned from the West Bank, the fight for Baghdad was likely to be a lot tougher. "The Americans and Brits are taking measures very similar to the ones we've being using for years in the [occupied] territories," he said. "But whatever resistance we faced in Jenin and Gaza is nothing compared to what the Americans can expect.

"The Palestinians are empty handed compared to the weaponry the Iraqis have. The Americans can expect heavier casualties. Baghdad will be really brutal."

Because the Iraqis are better armed, Mr Van Creveld warned the Americans that the Israeli experience of using helicopters to kill snipers was probably of little use to the US. That is almost certainly a lesson the Pentagon has already taken on board from its disastrous foray into Somalia.

The Israelis say they had another advantage the Americans will not.

"We have built a very robust intelligence structure which Americans don't have in Iraq," said retired Brigadier-General Shlomo Brom of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv.

"On the other hand, I think the Palestini ans are more motivated than the Iraqis."

Israeli officials believe that Saddam Hussein has also learned some of the lessons of Jenin, particularly the use of booby traps and suicide bombers. After just one such bombing the Americans have swiftly adopted Israeli tactics at roadblocks - with tragic consequences for one vehicle full of women and children.

Gen Brom said possibly the best advice the Israelis had offered was to take it slowly until victory, and then get out fast.

"An urban environment is the great equaliser," he said. "You can't utilise your superiority in training and equipment. It's very easy for your adversary to hide and he usually knows the terrain much better than you. There is the need to be cautious and understanding that it takes time.

"But once it's over, the most important lesson is not to stay there any longer than is absolutely necessary. I see the similarity between the situation in Iraq and when we invaded Lebanon. Our mistake was to stay there much too long."

[NextLevel]

yes!!! Israel is the largest terrorist nation in the world! and we allow them to freely do what they want even to us!
Anyone who doubts should look up the incident involving the USS Liberty.

http://ussliberty.org/