PPRC Friday Rally and March to Honor Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and Brian Avery, Internationalists Targeted by the Israeli Military

Event: PPRC Friday Rally and March for Peace
Date: Friday, April 25, 2003
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Pioneer Courthouse Square

The Portland Peaceful Response Coalition regular Friday, 5:00 p.m. peace rally and march at Pioneer Courthouse Square will focus on the Israeli military targeting of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists. The PPRC is urging the local peace community to attend a memorial for Rachel Corrie, a young ISM volunteer from Olympia, Washington, who was recently crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer. The memorial will be taking place at the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 N.W. Everett Street, at 6:30 p.m. Friday evening, after the PPRC peace rally and march.

"Rachel Corrie was brutally killed because she was unwilling to passively observe the crimes of the Israeli occupation that are bankrolled by her government," said William Seaman, a PPRC volunteer. "She was engaged in a compassionate act of nonviolent resistance against Israel�s criminal policy of home demolition, and her tragic death has shown a light on the moral degradation and brutality of the Israeli occupation regime."

Rachel Corrie was killed in the town of Rafah in occupied Gaza as she was confronting an Israeli bulldozer driver who was about to destroy a Palestinian home. Since her death, two other ISM volunteers have been shot by Israeli troops. Tom Hurndall, a British ISM volunteer, was critically injured as he was attempting to protect Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire on April 10th. Brian Avery, another volunteer from the US, was shot in the face while working in Jenin on April 5th.

"The ISM volunteers travel to Israel from all over the world to live and work with the Palestinians, in the hope that their presence will help reduce the violence of the occupation," said Seaman. "With the onset of Bush�s war on Iraq, the Sharon government has felt encouraged to escalate his attack on Palestinian communities, and this attack now includes anyone who dares to show compassion and solidarity with the victims of the terrorism and oppression of the state of Israel."

Seaman said that only a strong solidarity movement in the US has any hope of bringing an end to the Israeli occupation. "Unless we shut off the flow of weapons and tax dollars that fuel Sharon�s brutal colonizing program, Israel will continue its South African-style occupation plan, resistance will continue, and the violence will not end."

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