Remembering Rachel Corrie and Aaron Bushnell
Rachel Corrie and Aaron Bushnell were responding to a political system which is invested in the genocide of Palestinians, and they stated their objection to that relationship with their bodies.
From Double Down News:
Let me tell you a story about a 10-year-old girl who wanted to make the world a better place.
“I’m here because I care. I’m here because children everywhere are suffering, and because 40,000 people die each day from hunger. I’m here because those people are mostly children.”
- Rachel Corrie, 5th Grade Speech
Rachel Corrie died as a U.S. citizen defending Palestinian homes in Gaza. They were being demolished, and Rachel Corrie refused to let it happen.
This took place on March 16, 2003—22 years ago. This did not begin on October 7, 2023.
“On the 30th of January, the Israeli Military bulldozed the two largest water wells, destroying over half of Rafah’s water supply. In the time that I’ve been here, children have been shot and killed every few days, if not every day. Houses are demolished. What I’m witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of people’s ability to survive. And that is incredibly horrifying.”
- Rachel Corrie, Gaza, 2003
Rachel Corrie represented the conscience of humanity.
“Sometimes I’m sitting down to dinner with people, and I just realize that there is a massive military machine surrounding them and trying to kill these people that I’m having dinner with, and who are being very generous and kind to me—and their children here are incredibly threatened.”
- Rachel Corrie, Gaza, 2003
Through her, that basic aversion to watching human suffering was channeled. And she gave her life for the Palestinian cause.
Her body was crushed so extensively that her organs stopped functioning. Israelis mocked her death, producing pictures of Rachel Corrie as a pancake. Her grieving parents organized a campaign to fight for justice.
Caterpillar, the company which made the bulldozer which crushed her body, hired the private intelligence company C2I to infiltrate the campaign for justice and to spy on Rachel’s parents.
C2I International was founded by former helicopter pilot in British Special Forces Justin King. His company illegally garnered information about the Corries’ legal strategy, and infiltrated meetings with the Corrie parents.
At the same time, the organization Rachel Corrie had been part of, the International Solidarity Movement, was being infiltrated by the British state.
The Special Demonstration Squad, known as Spy Cops, dispatched somebody who went by the name of Rob Harrison. His early mobilizations had been as part of the ISM’s response to the killing of Rachel Corrie. He’s remembered for insinuating himself into many different pro-Palestinian activities. He even deceived politically active women in the campaign into sexual relationships. And it has been revealed that these officers were either permitted or encouraged to form sexual relationships with the women they were spying on. Several of those Spy Cops’ cases led to the births of children. And in those cases, both the woman giving birth and the child did not know the true identities of the fathers, who disappeared before the births of those children.
The important thing to remember about the Spy Cops campaign is that over 1,000 political groups were infiltrated by them. But it wasn’t just political groups. It was even Nottingham’s Vegan Society. It was an organization that rescued hedgehogs. It was Housmans Bookshop. It was the National Union of Students. It was the National Union of Teachers. The organization Rachel Corrie belonged to was just one small part of a larger picture.
While most of the world was horrified at the fate the befell Rachel Corrie, it seems that the British state and Caterpillar went to great lengths to protect the killers. But that call of humanity that Rachel Corrie represented did not die with her.
As Latin American revolutionary Túpac Katari said: “I will die as one, but as millions I will return.”
Just last year, U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell walked outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and self-immolated in protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the role of the United States in it.
His last words that he called several times: “Free Palestine!”
And much in the same way that Rachel Corrie was mocked after her death, we saw an outpouring of fake posts produced who knows where. So, in his death, Aaron Bushnell was smeared. But who was he?
Well, we can see a representation of that in his will, in which he said: “Once Palestine is liberated, and if the people of the land would so permit, I want my ashes to be scattered across a free Palestine.”
It is claimed by Bushnell’s friend that he had access to intelligence which showed the involvement of the U.S. Military on the ground and involvement in the genocide and killings in Gaza.
We also know the U.S. Air Force sent officers to assist with targeting. We also know Joe Biden was pictured in October with members of the U.S. Delta Force on the ground in Palestine, and he referenced their efforts to fight in Gaza. The United States has sent tens of thousands of tons of military hardware, and has had 100 secret arms deals with Israel throughout this period.
What Aaron Bushnell and Rachel Corrie were responding to was a political system which is invested in the genocide of Palestinians, and they stated their objection to that relationship with their bodies. These are wounds of humanity. These are a testament to the universality of the Palestinian cause.
The holding of the picture of Aaron Bushnell from Gaza to Yemen pays tribute to the fact that the Palestinian cause is not a cause for one group of people only. It is for all of humanity.
“We have got to understand that the poor are all around us, and we are ignoring them. We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable. We have got to understand that people in third-world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they are us. We are them. My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000. My dream is to give the poor a chance. My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day. My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.”
- Rachel Corrie, 5th Grade Speech
