Five years ago, Rachel Corrie sent out a group email urging Americans to look on her presence in Gaza as a reflection of the U.S. role in creating Palestinian conditions. "I recognize that as a citizen of the United States I have some responsibility for what is happening here." The email went round, and the next night she got an email from Daniel Dworsky, an Israeli sergeant and refusenik telling her the military prisons were filled with soldiers who refused to serve the occupation.
"It is my job to hunt down runaway soldiers and bring them in. I have not reported in for eighteen months. Instead I’ve been using my talents and credentials to document on film and see with my eyes what…my boys have been up to… Please document as much as you can and do not embellish anything with creative writing. The media here serve as a very convincing spin-control agent… There are many soldiers among the ranks of those serving in the occupied territories that are sickened by what they see…
Dworsky offered some Hebrew phrases to Corrie that she could use with Israeli soldiers, including the statement "You are carrying out immoral orders." He said that would shock them.
"Do not make the mistake of objectifying them as they have objectified you. Respect is catchy, as is disrespect…"
Who knows whether Rachel Corrie called out those Hebrew words to the men who attacked her. A month later Israeli soldiers killed Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer when she was protesting house demolitions. Her sister Sarah was watching CNN back home when the crawl on the screen said, "Olympia woman killed in Rafah, Gaza." Sarah’s husband called her parents. They were cleaning the house when they found out the news.
Last night Craig and Cindy Corrie came to New York to celebrate the publication of their daughter’s book, Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie. The Corries are incredibly positive people. Standing in Jean Stein’s apartment, Cindy Corrie marveled at the extraordinary things that have come out of Rachel’s life, including lately a production of her play in Arabic in Haifa–a play censored in New York and Miami. Plus their own recent speaking engagement in West Jerusalem. "The world has remembered Rachel in a lot of different ways," Cindy said. "I think she would be so amazed that on this day this wonderful group of people is gathered not just because of her story, but because of her writings."
Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights spoke; his organization has courageously sued Caterpillar on behalf of the Corries and several Palestinian families. So far the courts have said Caterpillar was merely serving U.S. foreign policy–no tort. Norton editor Jill Bialosky spoke of Rachel Corrie’s literary talents. "We are hoping this book will last for a long time. Every young person should have it in their backpacks, and on their book shelves. Let’s toast Rachel and her memory."
Those literary talents are evident on every page. "Imaginary Lives," Rachel Corrie titled a journal entry in 2000, at a time that she was working with the mentally ill:
"I would be a supermodel. I would look gorgeous and smell good all the time and have interesting hair and flamboyant clothes…
"I would be a shaman/healer. I would always be doing mysterious things in the woods. I would do marvelous symbolic rituals that would change the course of events…
"I would be a beat poet, hitchhiker, and dharma bum. I would be a dharma bum.
"I would be a UN translator. I would be fluent in six languages.
"I would be a Ph.D. scholar. I would know everything there is to know about some old German guy who no one else had heard of. I would wear a funny hat.
"I would be that lady on National Public Radio who interviews all the really cool people in the world and never seems nervous and always asks insightful questions and has read everything ever.
"I would be an activist who works side by side with people diagnosed with mental illness to make things better for them."
Rachel Corrie’s tremendous imagination lived right next to a very grounded idea of what she was doing with her life. Grounded: what a savage word in this context. But it expresses her commitment, her ability to put aside all the airy glamorous stuff most 23-year-olds think they should be doing. And in the long run it is her imagination that will live on. Her father said last night that he was grateful for the book because it demonstrates that his daughter’s life was not just her famous death.
Then tearing up, he toasted the people trapped in Gaza. "My heart goes out to them too, and their children."
Disrespect is catchy, respect moreso. The American media has largely suppressed Rachel Corrie’s story for five years, or yielded to the smears of her character, and yet her story and writing seep out into the capillaries of our culture, to the places that Pete Seeger says change happens. Yesterday the New York Times dedicated its front page to a huge story on the Chinese effort to rewrite the history of Tibet and an accompanying profile of a female Chinese student at Duke whose mild resistance to that occupation has caused her to be smeared in her own country and her family to be threatened. How easy it is to speak of faraway monsters and heroines! One day my country will sing the bravery of an Olympia woman.
