(Photo: Hot Docs)
Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, the peace activist whose life was cruelly cut short in 2003 by the Israeli military when the IDF crushed her with a bulldozer. Corrie was just 23 years old when killed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza, but her memory continues to inspire many long after her death.
To those who knew her, Corrie was thoughtful, sensitive, and courageous. The ISM remembered Corrie:
It rained on Kufr Qaddoum where attack dogs clenched in their jaws the peaceful freedom fighters of Palestine, an image reminiscent of a segregated America.
It drizzled as the folks of Al Ma’sara demanded the wall to fall, an echoing cry humanity heard from Germany.
Puddles formed along Shuhada Street in Al Khalil where Apartheid still lurked despite South Africa’s continued victories.
And it watered on Gaza, where the dust never seems to settle between the murderous attacks of the Zionist military.
It is fitting to honor Corrie with a poem, as she is known for her letters and emails from Palestine to her family, compiled in a book edited by her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie. So let us remember Corrie with an excerpt from an email sent by Corrie to family and friends, while in Rafah. The email was published in Let Me Stand Alone:
Hi friends and family, and others,
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me – Ali – or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, 'Kaif Sharon?' 'Kaif Bush?' and they laugh when I say, 'Bush Majnoon', 'Sharon Majnoon' back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: “Bush mish Majnoon' … Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, 'Bush is a tool,' but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.
Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it – and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I’m done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.
They know that children in the United States don‚t usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven‚t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you‚ve met people who have never lost anyone˜once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn‚t surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed 'settlements' and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing—just existing—in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world‚s fourth largest military—backed by the world’s only superpower—in it‚s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees – many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine—now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt.
Read more of Corrie’s emails here.
If there is a god, her soul will definitely rest in peace. She was a MLK and Ghandi in an age where MLK and Ghandi are largely forgotten. If the mainstream discourse were not as biased against Palestinian human rights, the picture of her standing before that bulldozer would be just as prominent as the picture where a Chinese student stands in front of a Chinese tank.
I never met Rachel, but her speech as a young kid touches me. Please watch from 05:05 onwards:
link to youtube.com
“I’m here because I care”. R.I.P
Rachel Corrie was an angel. What angers me no end are the zionist trolls who mock her death. Just yesterday I read one in the yahoo comments section where someone sent the message “Rachel Corrie RIP”one commentator replied underneath “I feel like pancakes now”. That is just one example some are too rude to even write on here but there are really nasty evil people out there who deserve retribution.
POETRY FOR RACHEL
by desertpeace
RACHEL IN RAFAH, GAZA
by Antony Johae*
Rachel Corrie (b. 1979) was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She went to occupied Gaza during the Second Intifada and joined protesters there. She died on 16th March, 2003.
*
It is a sunless day
with light harsh on the dog tags of uniformed youths
M16s
tank turrets
lone bulldozer
and young Corrie’s watch-glass – with the sand running out.
It is she who is standing her ground
before a home to be flattened.
Earthmover.
It belches into the blue
into suburban quiet,
and on plated tracks treads to
her on mound, erect, ten thousand miles from mother,
conspicuous from the cab.
She can see his face at the window
young soldier at the gears
hoping for a week-end pass
thinking of the girl in his pocket – the one his mother likes –
and of a larger future
with this woman in the way.
He’ll frighten her to make her move
with time to brake
miscalculate
and in the evening weep at his levity.
Or would he see her die
in duty’s line
all-pliant to Authority
and having served as soldiers must
shrug away responsibility?
Or is his an obscured view?
Now it’s one tread too late
the earth’s moving
and Corrie’s gone
lifted first
then buried without box
on a demolition job.
Storied houses are razed
dust’s thick in the air
and when it’s clear – ground zero:
prostrate concrete, frenzy of wires,
a wilderness without distinction
except that Rachel’s there
raised in insurrection
her spirit risen
from Rafah.
*Antony Johae, Ph.D. is British; he lives in Lebanon where he is writing freelance. Previously, he taught Literature in England, Ghana, Tunisia and Kuwait. “Rachel in Rafah, Gaza” comes from a recently completed collection entitled Poems of the East.
Beautiful post. To think it has been 9 years. What a remarkable young woman Rachel Corrie was. Her compassionate spirit has inspired many. One of the highlights of my attendance at the recent Occupy Aipac conference and protest was walking and talking with Cindy Corrie who attended much of the conference. I am always in awe of people like Hedy Epstein or Cindy Corrie individuals who have suffered such personal losses in such horrific ways and then can go through their own processes and come out extending compassion and understanding . I was able to connect an Aipac attendee (Mark from Columbus who spoke on the speak out stage that Medea and her crew had opened to anyone who wanted to speak at the Move over aipac conference last year) Recognized Mark as he was going into the Aipac conference and asked him if he would like to meet Cindy Corrie before he went in. He politely resisted but I coaxed him into talking with Cindy who was protesting with all of us outside of the Aipac conference. Mark and Cindy talked for quite awhile I did not stay so they could go where ever their conversation went. Was also able to get one of the amazing team members of Occupy Aipac (Gail think that is her name A Code Pink organizer) to join that conversation. Sure Mark learned a thing or two. When you are around Cindy Corrie it is easy to recognize that lovely loving spirit that Rachel was birthed from. May their examples continue to inspire us all
Thanks, Allison.
I created a Youtube Thursday of the November 2005 London performance of The Skies Are Weeping, my memorial to Rachel Corrie. I posted a covering essay about it yesterday evening at firedoglake:
link to my.firedoglake.com
Feel free to re-post the Youtube here at MW.
this is incredible! i am listening now..magnificent!
Rachel Corrie never once criticized the Palestinians for anything they had done or should have been held responsible for, immune from any blame. She took a one sided position and should have been aware of the dangers. Alas the ISM exploits naive youngsters or so called ideologists by encouraging them to enter conflict arenas without giving them the full picture.
It is time to release the Corrie family from the public suffering of their loss. The continual reminders only tear more at their hearts.
gilagd,
Corrie was only in Gaza for 48 days before she was killed, most likely murdered (I’ve followed the civil suit closely. Until it began, I was convinced Corrie’s death was an accident. What has come out, and what has been destroyed or withheld by the Israelis in that trial, have led me to believe it more likely she was intentionally killed). She had little time to do other than try to come to initial terms with what must have been a very challenging situation.
Are you implying the Corrie family should give up their ongoing lawsuit against the IDF and government of Israel?
48 hours? Then why does Mr. Corrie say in the video that Rachel knew the doctor who’s home was knocked down and that he said Rachel felt like a daughter to him? Which one of you got the story wrong? And if Rachel was in the area for 48 hours as you say, how could she possibly have been able to understand the bigger picture unless she was primed beforehand? From the video of the very young Rachel calling for better care of children worldwide, it is clear that her parents have to take some of the responsibility for her being placed in that situation.
The relentless rocket attacks from Gaza on innocent civilian population centers in Israel, including children, required Israel to take action. For naive activists like Corrie, a house is more important than bombing and killing Jews. And if she did not think this, information about what was being perpetrated from area being bulldozed may have been hidden from her. And if this was not hidden from her, then one has to question her judgment even further.
Is English your first language? Or second? I wrote 48 days, not 48 hours.
A clear learning opportunity for the guy…which he won’t accept…that he reacts more than he thinks.
giladg, get lost with your trolling and smearing. Another paid idiotic student in thrall to the propaganda machine?
My apologies on the misread (days/hours). Correction acknowledged.
Forty eight days would be enough time to build a relationship with the doctor. I am sure Rachel wanted the doctor to keep his home and I am sure the doctor was not one of those firing missiles into Israel and was and still is a fine man. That’s the smaller picture.
The bigger picture can easily get distorted when emotions are involved.
Why does a tiny segment of the Palestinian population of Gaza feel aggrieved enough to take aggressive action towards Israel, giladg? Could it possibly be that their families lost land and livelihoods, have never been permitted to reclaim them or been compensated by the thieves? Could it be that because they are victims of crime, the thieving nation has totally imprisoned them and robbed them of any real futures? Or do you think their violence is irrational? It’s not as if negotiations ever got anywhere, now is it? Do they just hate you, or do you not notice your own government deliberately provoking the rocket fire?
The bigger picture drawn by the Zionist monster morons who wouldn’t let the media(even if they wanted to)to cover Cast Lead from a hilltop miles away?Isn’t that the disconnect?That none of this makes our news,unlike Vietnam’s constant idiocy displayed on our boob tubes every night?The monsters have learned that lesson,and that’s why any real coverage of our and Israels inhumanity are not on our MSM,as real evidence of the Gaza and West Bank ghettos (and Iraq and Afghan and everywhere else)would reveal their complete and utter contempt for human life which make Uncle Adolf and histories other bogeymen seem benevolent.
giladg, obviously you did not grow up in USA as Rachel did or you would realize the culture she grew up in praised the Jews (Israelis) to the sky and barely mentioned the natives except to say or infer they were sub-human terrorists. That she was not prepared enough for what happened to her is that she was not there long enough in Gaza to not believe the Jewish Israelis were basically like the Anne Frank she was taught growing up in the USA. She was 23, from the USA midwest.
I lived in the south of France for years, and occasionally I would go by a deserted lot where buildings had been torn down and new ones were to replace them. It was cordoned off by a yellow fence, which was, no doubt, to discourage people from entering the vacant lot. On that fence was spray painted the phrase :
I wasn’t sure what it meant at the time, but I always knew it meant something that I should understand.
giladg, stretch your mind about the US as apparently you don’t live here–Rachel came from here, where she grew up like all of us hearing nothing from our culture or government but good about Israel and nothing but evil about Palestinians. She did not take a one-sided position, rather, she was in process of learning how one-sided her country’s position had been since she was born (and before). That’s why she was murdered by an American-made dozer paid for by Americans, while it was demolishing a native family’s home simply becaue they were born non-Jewish.
@Giladg
OH PISS OFF!!!
“She took a one sided position and should have been aware of the dangers. Alas the ISM exploits naive youngsters or so called ideologists by encouraging them to enter conflict arenas without giving them the full picture.”
ISM should have told them that Israel may commit crimes against those who are not on it’s side, because of the crimes it commits against those who are not on it’s side, because of the crimes it commits against those …
It should have also told them, that the hedonistic IDF wannabee soldiers are to afraid to fight a ground battle and that they compensate their inferiority complex with attacking demonstraters, innocents and defenseless people.
Giladg, you are pathetic, making feeble and stupid excuses for the murder of an innocent girl by your sadistic armed occupation forces. Shame on you, except that is an unknown emotion in Israel, judging by you and your fellow apologists.
Re giladg:
..“She took a one sided position and should have been aware of the dangers.” …
That is an absolutely misplaced and disgusting comment to make. What a despicable, mean and low character you are! Shame on you, giladg! Shame on you a thousand times over. You seem to be classical example for the moral decay that has taken deep roots in brains like yours and yours alike.
Can you tell me / us, please, which two-sided position anyone with a minimum of a moral and ethical standard can or should take in light of Israel’s or IDF’s history of occupation, gross human rights violations of the worst kind, its impudence of contempt for international law……? – and that for decades now.
Do you know what Elie Wiesel said, referring to a similar situation of decision making and defining one’s stand?
“We must always take sides.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel encouraging uncompromising action.
Rachel Corrie who must be regarded a shining example for the youth, her generation and all of us. She cared and did not look away or kept silent. She took the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor and tormentor.
Nine years (SIC!) have already passed now since the killing / murder of Rachel Corrie. The then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised US president George W Bush a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation.
And what has come out of this credible and transparent investigation? First, the internal Israeli military investigation, details of which were never published nor released to the US government nor the Corrie family, concluded that the two soldiers who operated the bulldozer had not seen Rachel and that no charges would be brought. The case was closed.
In March 2010 the Corrie family launched a civil case against the state of Israel in a Haifa Court. Israeli military authorities withheld vital video evidence, and after more than 16 months of hearings (=July 2011), Rachel’s parents commented that they were in much the same place as they had been in the beginning, that is to say up against a wall of Israeli officials determined to protect the state at all costs.
There is still no verdict which is said to be due to be delivered only in April 2013, i.e. more than 10 years after Rachel’s death.
This much for the “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation.
Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof – Justice, Justice you shall pursue ( Deut 16,20)
There is indeed little justice that anybody could reasonably expect from the Israeli judicial system in a court case like that of Rachel Corrie’s. All the more that 10 years have passed during which an erstwhile half-way respectable judiciary has deteriorated visibly into a little more than a whore servicing an increasingly fundamentally undemocratic state and settler clientle.
The latest Migron-Outpost deal even tries to degrade Israel’s Supreme Court to renounce its own ruling!
see also: link to guardian.co.uk
There is no balance in the reporting of the conflict. Mass media has always sided with the Palestinians. So have the universities. I would be okay with the Rachel Corrie’s of the world as long as I felt there was a fair chance to hear both sides. Unfortunately that is not the case. If you are going to take sides, and you are going to put yourself on the front lines, then you need to make sure you understand both sides to a point you can argue for either. We see on the campuses how talks by pro-Israeli speakers are disrupted, often violently. How can you possibly get to understand the other side by not allowing them to speak?
Why don’t you take a look at some factual analyses of just how mass media has “always sided with the Palestinians” by following some of the links on this site:
link to ifamericansknew.org
And perhaps you would link us to instances of “pro-Israeli speakers” being violently disrupted – rather than what we know of, which is pro-Israelis *reacting violently* to verbal disruptions?
LOL. giladg, you are hilarious.
Said you:
You mean like this?
link to youtube.com
Prove it.
You mean like how college professors who speak out against Israeli apartheid and criminality are systematically forced out of their respective institutions?
How often does a Zionist sophist get denied tenure? Whereas a truth-teller like Norman Finkelstein is hounded out of the academic community.
You’re right and that lack of balance is in favor of promoting the pro-Israel mythology.
“Mass media has always sided with the Palestinians.”
-that was one of the stupidest comments I’ve seen in a while.
i think gilad just misspoke, no one is that much of an idiot. he probably meant social media has always sided with the Palestinians and so have the universities. which makes sense given that social media generally favors the truth over lies, unlike the lobby groveling msm.
come to think of it, the trajectory of israel image in the world has sunk with the rise of the internet. it’s synchronized perfectly, harmony in motion.
Do you want to argue in all earnest that the Jewish + Israeli view is suppressed and can not find its way into the public, nor into the back&front -room chambers of the political + economic power elite, nowhere??
I wonder, in which world you must live.
Ludicrous,not stupid,as propaganda has its purpose,and is calculating.
How do you think NPR does in reporting?
10 years on Israel has ratcheted up the inhumanity to a level that nobody working for justice for the Palestinians in 2003 could have expected.
Avi S., the driver of the bear [courtesy of Caterpillar - link to caterpillar.com Giving the world what it needs - {sic}] was busy cleaning the windows of his behemoth when Rachel Corrie jumped in front of his machine…
Is it true?
Of course it is, because I say so!
He couldn’t see her … link to godhaven.org.uk
Beautiful post indeed. It’s difficult to imagine any pain in life more severe than the loss of a child.
May Rachel Corrie’s memory outlive ZIONISM. She was ahead of her time and her peers in confronting Zionist injustice…GOD BLESS HER!
Our dear friend who spent winters for it turns out almost 20 winters with Palestinian shepherds) Art Gish (now deceased) had trained Rachel Corrie in conflict resolution skills over there. He had some very deep and sad sad feelings about Rachel being killed having had trained her in some of her skills. He often talked about what a remarkable young woman she was.
The photograph above with Rachel looking out upon the earthmover machines is notable for the metal wall/fence along the left hand side. The IDF was constructing this wall while Rachel was there and its purpose was to separate the Philadelphi Route which runs alongside the Eqyptian border from the Palestinian controlled area. Israel had full right to the road running between Egypt and Gaza as a military installations/patrol road. This was per Oslo Agreements. The Philadelphi Road is on the other side of the metal wall – not viewable to the reader. Per Oslo, this area where we view the machines working is Palestinian area, thus the homes, – not theIsraeli controlled area known as the Philadelphi Road.
The Final IDF Military Report on the Death of Rachel Corrie, ( overseen by Sharon’s Chief of Staff, Dov Weisglas, if we are to believe Sharon’s statements to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel) attempts to convince the report reader that Rachel was killed on the Philadelphi Road. She was not. She was killed very close to a row of Palestinian homes – in front of the last home standing adjacent to the area where demolished homes had been bulldozed in. The Report also attempts to make the reader believe that per Oslo the IDF was within its rights to be working in this area. Again, per Oslo, the IDF was given the Philadelphi Road. They were not given the land over a hundred and fifty meters from the Road.
As you look at this photo one can well imagine that the IDF would not be pleased that the ISM was doing such a good job at getting this kind of documentation out of Rafah and onto the internet. Anyone looking at this photo can see that the IDF is on the wrong side of the fence – in violation of their commitment to Oslo.
Thanks, Allison, for posting Rachel’s letter.
Every time I read it, it seems she is still alive and serving mankind.
That is something the opposition will never be able to stop.
Her words are immortal…as are the brutal actions of those who thought they could silence her.
In “Overcoming Zionism,” Joel Kovel dedicates the book to his Aunt Betty “And to Rachel Corrie, may her name live in glory”
Yes, may her name live in glory!
I think what Rachel Corrie’s death did for me more than anything was to see just how vitriolic the smears against her were merely because she tried to make a difference for justice with her life for a group of people she chose to care about.
The way her death is mocked is nauseating, and the way she died and the final moments of her too short life are horrific.