Ten years ago today, mere days before we began our $2 trillion criminal war of aggression against the Iraqi people, American college senior, Rachel Corrie, was murdered near Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.

I’ve never before written that the courageous young woman was murdered. However, having considered the testimony given during the civil trial against the Israel Defense Forces regarding her death, which concluded last August, her demise was indeed murder, to wit: an unlawful killing of a human being, with malice.

Next Saturday, March 16th, will mark the tenth anniversary of the death in Gaza, of Rachel Corrie. Rachel, then a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, had gone to Gaza at the beginning of 2003, to fulfill aspects of her senior thesis. While there, she became active in efforts by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), to protect Palestinians from outrages of the Israeli occupation forces.

March 16th, less than two months away, will mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Evergreen College senior, Rachel Corrie, in Rafah, near the Egyptian border of the Gaza Strip, as she sought to and succeeded in keeping an Israeli military armored Caterpiller bulldozer from destroying the house of a large Palestinian family.

Now I hate to rain on anyone’s parade following the excellent news of the vote taking Palestine from being classified as a “non-member observer entity” to a “non-member observer state”. It’s very good news as it means that Palestine can sign treaties and join such bodies as the International Criminal Court (ICC). But perhaps some parade ground raining is in order before people make unwarranted assumptions and statements about what the court is and what it can and cannot do.

I’ve caught a few YouTube clips from her show, Breaking the Set, and from her short feature, Brainwash Update. She’s sort of like Alyona Minkovsky on steroids.

The music of Tariq Shadid, a Palestinian surgeon, who goes by the nom de web of Doc Jazz, is quite varied. A self-taught musician, his unique take on aspects of the Palestinian diaspora is gaining traction on the web, and in the Low Countries. Although recently primarily based in the Netherlands, Doc Jazz has worked in the Gulf States, and was in the USA this fall, performing benefits. Here is what Doc Jazz wrote about a benefit in Anaheim on October 18, 2012, for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

The wake of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is getting turbulent.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr announced ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. There was no signed agreement. The ceasefire is essentially “quiet in exchange for quiet,” as one Israeli diplomatic source put it.

In the announcement, Clinton reiterated the US’s position that “all rocket attacks must end” and said the US would be working with Egypt in the coming days on the next steps in the process. She said improvement of conditions for the people of Gaza and providing security for the people of Israel would be sought in any long-term agreement and there was “no substitute for a just and lasting peace.”

A bus explosion occurred in Tel Aviv, Israel, wounding at least twenty-seven people. None were reported killed, although one was seriously injured. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian nationalist militia in the West Bank that is considered a terrorist organization to Israel and the United States, claimed responsibility.

Kirkpatrick could have added a paragraph here about the siege or blockade of Gaza. He could have described the occupation, but he did not and proceeded to note that the anonymous Egyptian official had compared “leaders of Hamas to George Washington in America or Charles de Gaulle in France” because they had “resisted foreign occupation by armed force.”