Here are two examples of young people fighting for justice. One gave her life. The other gave up his country.

One Year Later: Rachel Corrie's Critics Fire Blanks

A year has passed since Rachel Corrie, a 23 year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was killed by an Israel army bulldozer while nonviolently trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

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Rachel Corrie fought for world she believed in

Last year on the afternoon of March 16, an Israeli soldier -- intentionally, I believe -- ran over 23-year-old Rachel Corrie in the occupied territories of Palestine with an armored Caterpillar bulldozer. Rachel was trying to prevent the soldier from crashing that bulldozer into the house of a Palestinian family in Rafah. There was good reason to believe the soldier was going to demolish the house, as the Israeli army has destroyed more than 1,000 homes and misplaced nearly 15,000 people in that small town in the past two years.

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AWOL in New York
From Israeli Refusenik to Organizer
By ASAF SHTULL-TRAURING

"A car approached the checkpoint. Probably out of boredom, one of the soldiers on duty ordered the person in the car to start driving around in circles. The Palestinian driver played along with the armed soldier's game and laughed anxiously, unsuccessfully trying to hide his humiliation. What amazed me most about this event wasn't what the soldier did but what I didn't do: I didn't stop him from humiliating the helpless driver." My philosophy teacher, an extraordinary, poetic and gentle man, told me this story a few years ago. This event motivated him to declare his refusal to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, and two weeks and two days before my draft date, I was on a plane leaving Israel to New York, running from what was supposed to be the next step in the natural pattern of my life, predetermined by law before I was born. Israel has a mandatory army service of three years for most eighteen-year-old Israeli citizens; I was defying it by leaving the country. When I was fifteen years old I had decided to refuse to take part in the army's violence, war crimes, self-destruction, hatred and stupidity. And so I did, and three years later I was on my way out.

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