Idiocy

Rachel Corrie was recently killed when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was demolishing / about to demolish a house in the Gaza strip.  It was not an accident.  She was opposed to the demolition, and apparently in her mind, that made it a good idea to stand in front of an advancing bulldozer.  The news media is reporting her death as a murder by Israel, and even a murder by America.

This is one of the things about the news media that makes me extremely angry.  No one is willing to state the truth of the matter here.  The truth is that Rachel Corrie was killed for acting like an IDIOT.  She did something IDIOTIC, and got herself killed.  That is the only way that an honest person can explain this situation.

Was it wrong for the driver of that bulldozer to intentionally drive over her?  I believe that it was.  Does that make Rachel Corrie’s actions any less idiotic?  Absolutely not.  She made an exceedingly bad decision when she chose to stand in front of that bulldozer.

I understand that the idea was to make the driver stop the demolition.  However Rachel chose an asinine strategy for achieving that goal.  She forfeited her life, and there will be little if any benefit from it.

Some people incorrectly believe that man is "basically good" and tends to "do the right thing" most of the time.  Perhaps Rachel Corrie subscribed to that false concept.  Unless she had a death wish, it’s safe to say that at least in this situation, she expected the driver to do the right thing.

But that is not the real world.  In the real world, you can’t expect anyone to do the right thing.  You can hope for that, and you can believe that people should strive for that, but to expect it is either naive or, more likely, idiotic.

Don’t get me wrong; a person has been killed here, and that is a sad thing.  I’m not trying to minimize that fact.  But my point here is that it’s lamentable that the media will not say that what Rachel did was foolish.

A similarly ridiculous scenario that is all too common is when a girl gets raped while she is drunk, because she was unable to say / enforce "no" to the guy.  Is it wrong for her assailant to rape her?  Of course.  But she made the idiotic decision to get drunk, and that is what prevented her from saying no.  (I’m not talking about a situation where the guy overpowers the girl, but the situation where he takes advantage of her because she’s drunk.)  She deliberately put herself out of control of her own body.  That is a supremely stupid decision that she chose for herself.  She has every right to be upset and hurt and mad about being raped, but she has absolutely no right to be surprised about it.  Because to be surprised about it, she must believe that all people are basically good and therefore no one ever rapes anyone -- indeed, she must believe that we live in a perfect world.  Only in a perfect world would it be anything other than IDIOTIC to put yourself out of control of your own body by getting drunk.

Posted by Anthony on 1 reply

Comments:

01. Mar 24, 2003 at 12:18pm by George:

Wednesday, March 19, 2003
MAKOR RISHON March 21, 2003: Mis-captioned Reuters photo transforms accidental death into homicide.

TO BE PUBLISHED MAKOR RISHON, MARCH 21, 2003
(TRANSLATION TO FOLLOW)
(Reuters pix mentioned below can be e-mailed to you upon request
media@actcom.co.il)

DAVID BEDEIN
BUREAU CHIEF
ISRAEL RESOURCE NEWS AGENCY
BEIT AGRON INTERNATIONAL PRESS CENTER
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
www.israelbehindthenews.com media@actcom.co.il

Mis-captioned Reuters photo transforms accidental death into homicide.

Joe Smith, age 21, came with his college friend Rachel Corrie this past
Sunday, March 16th to Gaza to protest against terrorist home demolitions as
part of his activity with the International Solidarity Movement.

Both Joe and Rachel had studied at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington.

Joe was witness to Rachel’s tragic death late that afternoon, and
described what he saw to my colleague , recounting that "she was sitting on
a mound of earth in front of the bulldozer. The earth started to move under
her when the bulldozer digs in. You have a couple of options you can roll
aside-you have to be very quick to get out of the way. You can fall back,
but she leaned forward to try to climb up on top. She got pulled down, and
the bulldozer lost sight of her.Then, without lifting the blade, he
reversed and she was underneath the blade". Joe Smith did not sound
accusatory nor vindictive against the IDF bulldozer driver.

So why did the world have a different impression of what had happened?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The picture distributed by the Reuters News Agency showed Rachel Corrie
standing in front of the Bulldozer with a megaphone. That is the picture
that appeared on page three of the New York Times on March 17, 2003

The Reuters caption stated what the picture said that this picture was
taken before Rachel Corrie was crushed by this bulldozer, giving the reader the distinct impression that Rachel Corrie had been standing with a
megaphone in clear sight of the bulldozer.

That would have made this act some kind of homicide.

The next photo distributed by Reuters showed Rachel lying in front of the
bulldozer.

And then I began to notice something.

The lighting of the Gaza sky was different in both pictures of what were
supposed to be sequential shots. The landscape in each picture was
different.

I checked with Reuters to find out about the discrepancy of the picture
sequence.. The Reuters photo editor said, however, that , these were NOT
their pictures. They were sent by the International Solidarity Movement.
Indeed, these pictures did appear on the ISM web site at
www.palsolidarity,org. The Reuters photo editor assured me, however, that
the pix were clearly labeled as ISM pictures. A check with the Reuters web
site showed that they were labeled as Reuters pix.

A call back to Joe Smith about the sequence of the pix revealed another
unknown fact. Smith said that no one was on the spot with a camera before
Rachel Corrie was mauled by the bulldozer, and that the picture of Rachel
with the megaphone had been taken many hours earlier...

I placed a call to Tim Heritage, bureau chief of Reuters, and asked him
about Reuters policy in using pictures from political groups that might
manipulate the media...

I gave him a heads up about the fact that Reuters had
issued the photo of Rachel Corrie standing alongside the bulldozer with a
megaphone.

Heritage said that he would look into the matter and asked for a call back.
I called back an hour later. Heritage was not available. However, all of
the Rachel Corrie/bulldozer pix had been wiped off of the Reuters web site.

Yet the damage was done.

The indelible image of a mauled "peace activist standing with a megaphone"
will not leave people’s minds for many years to come.

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