Peter Cuthbertson has objected to my use of the term ‘murder’ to describe the actions of an Israeli army bulldozer trampling an American protestor to death in a predictably hysterical post entitled – “Were the 9/11 hijackers murdered too?”In terms of the semantics, I suppose legally it may be more wise to describe her killers as guilty of manslaughter and, of course, there is a bitter dispute over what really happened. But I really don’t buy his idea that this naive 23 year old girl committed suicide as Peter claims. It reminds me of those Italian leftists who kept falling out of windows during police investigations in the 1970’s – the same stink, the same sense of a deluded attempt at a cover-up.
Do I think people like Rachel Corrie get used by dodgy characters in the Palestinian ‘solidarity movement’? Of course I do. But should they be trampled to death by bulldozers due to their youthful misjudgements?
On the question of Middle East peace, Peter shows again how far out of touch he is with mainstream British conservative opinion which, as far as I am aware, is supportive of the road map pushed by Tony Blair and accepted by George Bush. Rather Peter sadly appears to take his cue from the pro-Sharon fanatics on the neo-con hard right in the USA, who are as firmly opposed to a peaceful settlement in the Middle East as Hamas or Osama Bin Laden. As for Peter’s pathetic and insulting 9/11 comparison, well I suspect he is really just trying to impress some of his nutball ultra-right weblogging pals. I hope it won him some links.
