Corrie verdict not absurd

Paul Farrell (Letters, Sept 1) writes in praise of the late Rachel Corrie and calls the Israeli court’s verdict on her death ‘absurd but unsurprising’.

I doubt very much that he has ever read the judge’s summary of the case, for if he had he would not have the temerity to call the verdict ‘absurd’.

It was anything but, listing as it did the numerous forms of recklessness that led to her death, the madness of so-called peace activists to go into a war zone and attempt to disrupt military actions, the times when Corrie’s partners had to be snatched out of the path of bulldozers, her own extreme foolishness in climbing onto a mound of earth right in front of a bulldozer with very limited vision, the refusal of the International Solidarity Movement to acknowledge that the bulldozers were used to limit terrorism.

And I’m sure he has not seen a photograph of the saintly Rachel snarling and yelling as she burns an American flag in front of small Palestinian children. She was not a saint whose ‘light still shines’. She was a foolish young woman who was sucked into her actions by an organisation bent on having martyrs to match the suicide bombers of the side they chose to support. Like all of us on the other side of the conflict, I’m truly sorry for her death.

She did not deserve to die. But she was no role model for other young women or men who may find themselves entranced by a cause that encourages terrorism and leads to greater hatred of the people of Israel in their struggle to defend themselves against genocide.

Dr Denis MacEoin

Newcastle upon Tyne

UK