A tribute written by Starhawk for Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, two young volunteer activists working for freedom and justice with the International Solidarity Movement who were killed by Israeli soldiers.
- I am writing this as we approach the anniversary of two murders. And I find myself thinking about an orange, a ghost orange, growing on a branch on a ghost tree that no longer stands in the courtyard of a home crushed to bloodstained rubble. In Rafah, the border town that lies on the dusty frontier where Gaza meets Egypt. A place of cement tenements pockmarked with bullet holes, streets choking in dust and smashed concrete, barbed wire and fences and sniper towers, where Rachel and Tom died, like so many of the Palestinians they had come to stand with in solidarity.
In March of 2003 Rachel Corrie was killed as she was trying to stop an Israeli soldier from demolishing a home. The bulldozer driver saw her, and deliberately ran over her. She was twenty-three years old.
Just a few weeks later, an Israeli soldier firing from a sniper tower shot Tom as he was trying to save some children who were under fire … read more