(Spectator-UK) Tom Gross - Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002. Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper. Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003 while acting as a human shield during an Israeli anti-terror operation in Gaza, has been widely featured in the British press. She has been written about or referred to on 57 separate occasions in the Guardian alone. Last week the play, "My Name is Rachel Corrie," reopened at the larger downstairs auditorium at the Royal Court Theater (a venue which the New York Times recently described as "the most important theater in Europe"). Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie, Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause celebre in Britain. Unfortunately for those who have sought to portray Corrie as a peaceful protester, photos of her burning a mock American flag and stirring up crowds in Gaza at a pro-Hamas rally were published by the Associated Press and on Yahoo News on 15 February 2003, a month before she died. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the group with which Corrie was affiliated, is routinely described as a "peace group" in the media. Few mention the ISM's meeting with the British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif who, a few days later, blew up Mike's Place, a Tel Aviv pub, killing three and injuring dozens, including British citizens.
2005-10-26 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive