re: #142 alexknyc

I’ve never heard that story. Do you have a link I can read?

It ain’t that hard to find. It’s in her wikipedia article, her parents wrote:

“Trying to use this picture to somehow indicate that Rachel deserved to be run over by a bulldozer is an appalling act of demonization that infers that forms of protest which include flag burning are capital offences. In the words of Rachel’s parents: ‘The act, while we may disagree with it, must be put into context. Rachel was partaking in a demonstration in Gaza opposing the War on Iraq. She was working with children who drew two pictures, one of the American flag, and one of the Israeli flag, for burning. Rachel said that she could not bring herself to burn the picture of the Israeli flag with the Star of David on it, but under such circumstances, in protest over a drive towards war and her government’s foreign policy that was responsible for much of the devastation that she was witness to in Gaza, she felt it OK to burn the picture of her own flag. “

She was a complex human being, at worst she strove to be the anti-ugly-American and aimed too high. At least she knew enough not to fuck with her host country’s flag, which speaks to some level of acumen. I regret her death as a matter of basic decency.