page_title: Rachel Corrie
section_title: Memorial events
hierarchical_section_title: Rachel Corrie / Subsequent events / Memorial events
context_page_description: Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American activist and diarist. She was a member of a pro-Palestinian group called the International Solidarity Movement. She was killed by an Israel Defense Forces armored bulldozer in a combat zone in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, under contested circumstances during the height of the second Palestinian intifada.
  She had gone to Gaza as part of her senior-year college assignment to connect her home town with Rafah in a sister cities project. While there, she had engaged with other International Solidarity Movement activists in efforts to prevent the Israeli army's demolition of Palestinian houses. According to the Israeli authorities the demolitions were carried out to eliminate weapons-smuggling tunnels. According to human rights groups the demolitions were used as collective punishment.
  Less than two months after her arrival, on March 16, 2003, Corrie was killed during an Israeli military operation after a three-hour confrontation between Israeli soldiers operating two bulldozers and eight ISM activists.
context_section_description: Immediately after her death, posters and graffiti praising Corrie were posted in Rafah, with one graffiti tag reading, "Rachel was an American citizen with Palestinian blood." According to the ISM's official publications, the day after Corrie died, about thirty American and European ISM activists with 300 Palestinians began protests during the public memorial service over the spot where she was fatally injured in Rafah. Gordon Murray, an ISM activist who attended the memorial, states that the IDF sent a representative to the event who intimidated the mourners into dispersing, allegedly using non-lethal weapons.
  In 2008, Corrie's parents commemorated the fifth anniversary of her death at an event held in the West Bank town of Nablus. About 150 Palestinians and foreigners joined them to dedicate a memorial to Corrie on one of the city's streets.
  In 2011, Iran named a street in Tehran after Corrie.
caption: Vigil in Olympia, WA
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