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A planned candlelight vigil in Olympia to protest a possible war in Iraq became a memorial to Rachel Corrie.

Olympia activist killed in Gaza Strip

by STEFANO ESPOSITO; The News Tribune

When Rachel Corrie wrote to friends in Olympia recently about the daily fears gnawing at Palestinians along the Gaza Strip, she was quick to say that, as a privileged American, it was not her reality. But Sunday, that changed. The 23-year-old Evergreen State College peace activist died in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah while trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer from crushing a Palestinian physician's home.

Witnesses said Corrie fell in front of the machine, which ran over her and then backed up.

And late Sunday, an antiwar rally in Olympia turned into an impromptu celebration of the life of a woman whose activism seemed to know no bounds.

"Rachel always stood up for what she believed in and she wasn't afraid of anything," said Kirsten Dicicco, 30, a friend of Corrie's and an Evergreen graduate.

But while Corrie could be forceful, she was not irresponsible, friends said.

Other protesters who were with Corrie in Gaza on Sunday said she was wearing a brightly colored jacket when the bulldozers hit her.

"Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," said Greg Schnabel, 28, of Chicago. "She waved for the bulldozers to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled, 'Stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all."

An Israeli military spokesman said Corrie's death was an accident. State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said the U.S. government had asked Israeli officials for a full investigation.

"We've tried to bring up our children to have a sense of community, a sense of community that everybody in the world belonged to," a tearful Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, said from his home in Charlotte, N.C.

Friends recalled Corrie, a graduate of Olympia's Capital High School, as having a disarming, sometimes mischievous sense of humor and a formidable will.

Corrie was small and slim, but it wasn't a good idea to assume she was fragile, said Dicicco, recalling the time Corrie was doing conservation work in Mount Rainier National Park. Dicicco's boyfriend was supervising Corrie and was hesitant to let her use a chainsaw.

"She said, '(expletive), I'm going to learn to run that chainsaw,'" Dicicco said. "And she did. She was good at it."

Corrie was already a committed peace activist when she arrived at Evergreen, where she was studying social studies, said Larry Mosqueda, a professor at the college and a fellow activist.

Therese Saliba, another Evergreen professor, spoke of Corrie's reasons for traveling to the Gaza Strip.

"She was a very bright, clear-thinking activist and she was concerned that Israelis were going to increase their assaults on the Palestinians if there was a war with Iraq," Saliba said. "And she wanted to use her privileges as an American to be part of the International Solidarity Movement."

Through a local group called the Olympians for Peace in the Middle East, Corrie joined the ISM, a Palestinian-led group that uses nonviolent methods to challenge Israeli occupation. Among their methods is standing in front of the bulldozers Israel sends into the area almost daily to destroy buildings.

In poignant letters to friends back home, Corrie wrote about Palestinian suffering and children for whom a tank's cannon fire is a routine occurrence.

In a letter dated Feb. 7, she tried to put distance between the Palestinian existence along the Gaza Strip and her own: "You just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality, what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face (if) they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen, ... and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stefano Esposito: 253-597-8644
stefano.esposito@mail.tribnet.com