Letter: Corrie not 1st American casualty in Israeli conflict

I was surprised to read the caption below the picture of the candlelight vigil held in memory of Rachel Corrie, which stated that she was "the first American casualty in the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Perhaps my definition of "American casualty" or "recent" differs from the person who wrote the caption.

For those who may not know, other American citizens have been killed in this conflict. For the sake of space, I will define "recent" as only those that have occurred in the past few months. Gila Sara Kessler, 19, a college student, gymnast and swimmer was killed by a suicide bomber at a bus stop in Jerusalem last summer. Dr. Moshe Gottlieb, 70, was killed along with 19 others when his bus exploded in June of last year. He was on the way to his clinic where he treated patients with Down's syndrome for free. Marla Bennett, 24, Ben Blutstein, 25, Dina Carter, 37, Janis Coulter, 35, and David Gritz, 24, were all killed when Hebrew University was bombed in July of last year. The most recent American casualty occurred March 5, less than a month ago. Abigail Leitel, 14, was killed along with 14 others (nine of whom were also teenagers), when the bus she was riding was targeted by a suicide bomber.

While the death of Rachel Corrie was tragic, if she deserves a candlelight vigil, surely these other Americans also deserve to be remembered.