Saturday, June 05, 2010

The Forgotten Rachels

Everyone's heard of Rachel Corrie, the flag burner killed by an IDF bulldozer.

Tom Gross writes about some of the forgotten Rachels:

...other Rachels have lost their lives as well – Jewish victims of the Intifada. Does anyone remember them? In Britain, where the play is being staged, how many people even know the name of Rachel Thaler, a British citizen who was murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in an Israeli shopping mall at the age of 16?

“Not a single British journalist has ever interviewed me or mentioned Rachel’s death,” her mother Ginette Thaler told me three and a half years after her murder. Below, an article of mine published in the weekly British magazine, The Spectator, explores these phenomena and also marks the first time Rachel Thaler’s name has been mentioned in the mainstream British media. Earlier, in April 2005, I wrote another piece on “The Forgotten Rachels” for The Jerusalem Post, to mark the play’s initial staging.
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002.
....
Other victims of the Intifada include Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children), Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel Ben Abu (16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall) and Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and was killed with her husband in a Palestinian terrorist attack in July a few days after the London bombs.

Corrie’s death was undoubtedly tragic but, unlike the death of these other Rachels, it was almost certainly an accident. She was killed when she was hit by an Israeli army bulldozer she was trying to stop from demolishing a structure suspected of concealing tunnels used for smuggling weapons.

Has any British paper yet reported on Rachel Thayer? Why are deaths only newsworthy when they occur at the hands of Jews?

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