Rachel Corrie was a naïve young woman from Washington state who fell in with the International Solidarity Movement, an extreme left-wing group that has documented ties to Palestinian organizations the State Dept calls terrorist groups. The ISM deliberately uses people like Corrie for maximum propaganda effect — they admit this openly. They stage them in dangerous places, and if they get hurt or killed they immediately begin building anti-Israel agitprop around them. In this case, they sent Corrie to Hamas-dominated Gaza, right into the middle of a military operation clearing houses used to hide smuggling tunnels.

Corrie certainly didn’t deserve to die in the accident that killed her, but she doesn’t deserve to become a hero, either. It’s a tragic story but not a heroic one. She was used by anti-Israel ideologues in her life, and they’re still using her.