Self-defense a misnomer

I am saddened by Joseph Harari’s mean-spirited attitude (“Suing Israel senseless,” Letters, March 16).

Rachel Corrie, a 22-year old student from Olympia, went to that “foreign, restricted war zone” because she was disturbed not only by the sheer injustice of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian people, but because our tax dollars are paying for it.

On March 16, 2003, she stood in front of the home of a family in Gaza because she saw the bulldozer outside, about to demolish the house where she knew children still were, hoping to make the driver stop. Instead, he drove over her twice and killed her.

She was one of a few courageous Americans willing to stand up to such injustice and say “Enough!” to risk her life to end such crimes and horrors.

Litigation senseless as a solution to conflict? Tell that to those who used it as a tool to end slavery, segregation and at Nuremburg to condemn Nazi atrocities.

Self-defense? Certainly the asymmetry of death in this conflict, since September 2000, of 1,075 Israelis and 6,276 Palestinians should suggest that something other than “self-defense” is happening here. This is not about “self-defense.” This is ethnic cleansing.

And Rachel Corrie lost her life trying to stop it.

Marianne Torres

Spokane