Exile and the Prophetic: Rachel Corrie, righteous gentile

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Now Hurricane Isaac and, unbelievably so, it is heading straight for Katrina(ed) New Orleans.  Not like Haiti but still not rebuilt.  That’s amazing, too, isn’t it?

Walkers are back on the beach [here in Florida].  Fishing resumed.  And the older gentleman who seems unable to see too far in front of him and who golfs on the beach – with real golf balls – well, he was back and gave me a wave of his club after striking the ball that whizzed by me at a far too close an angle.

And, to be reported on later, I’ve been asked to lecture at a Body Worlds symposium, you know the exhibits where real bodies are featured on display and have caused a boat-load of controversy.  Like where the bodies come from and under what circumstances are they obtained.  The patented process of preserving the bodies is called “plastination.” It was developed by Gunther von Hagens, yet another German, birth year 1945.  Continuing on the Nazi front, his father was a cook for the Nazi SS. 

Touring corpses. The idea is that the more we know about the internal workings of our bodies, the more we’ll pay attention to our health and well-being.  Shall I start my lecture with a rendition of the corpses at Auschwitz?  Or I could begin with Rachel Corrie’s corpse, yesterday rendered as a nobody who didn’t make the right decisions.  Perhaps I’ll start with both.

Yes, the Rachel Corrie verdict is in.  The state of Israel: not guilty.  As Haaretz reports, the judge rejected the civil suitagainst the government with these words “There is no justification to demand the state pay any damages.”Noting that the soldiers had done their utmost to keep people away from the site, the judge continued: “She (Corrie) did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done.” . . .

“As any thinking person would have done” – to allow state power to have its day unimpeded by action guided by conscience?  What kind of judge, a Jewish one at that, who in post-Holocaust Israel has no time for the “We didn’t see/We were just following orders” routine of the not so recent past.  What “thinking person” would have helped Jews?  Those Righteous Gentiles, who did not distance themselves from the (danger) area, we have honored them for committing civil disobedience on behalf of Jews. 

Rachel Corrie. Righteous Gentile. In the Nakba Memorial Museum. When it is built.  Also in the Jewish historical museums of the future, a separate part of the museum that honors those non-Jews who cried out in the Golden Age of Constantinian Judaism that no human being, let alone a Jew, should displace another human people, let alone a people.

Yes, to the Corrie family, your loss is immeasurable.  But, if I might say, Rachel is remembered in the history of Jews and Palestinians of Conscience, now and always.  A victim of state power, in this case Jewish, and a stain on Jewish history, including this verdict, Rachel Corrie is a light unto the nations. A light unto the Jewish people.

As the saying goes, we deserve the leaders we have.  And the judges.  What should we expect from an Israeli legal system that endorses apartheid in the present but also accepts historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a given? The trite statements from an Israeli judge are reflective of Jewish history as it is presented to us in its dumb-downed, trivialized way.

This verdict only deepens my sense that we must think a future that isn’t happening and already has begun.

On the one hand, it might seem slightly off kilter to speak about lessons learned on the Israel/Palestine front when the lesson isn’t even thinkable because the suffering continues.  On the other hand, that is what exile in diasporas are about.  They reflect on what happened and didn’t happen when choices were made.  The verdict in the Rachel Corrie case only illustrates the dead-end we’ve reached.  Our need to think ahead is pressing.

So some more reflections below – in honor of Rachel.  What say us about her life and this verdict?  Rachel is part of a history in the making.  Along with others who have committed themselves to justice. 

Most people in the various exile diasporas of our world aren’t powerful.  Like others, residents of diasporas live vicariously through the decisions made above their pay grade.  Diaspora folks live the consequences.  There are those who make decisions because they have power or made decisions when power was being used unjustly against them.  Too, there are those in exile diaspora communities who haven’t learned any lesson save one – take care of yourself, get what you can.

If we think about the exile diaspora folks who exercise conscience then or now, does it matter when they’ve come to the conscience/justice table?  Since there aren’t enough people who survive exile to practice conscience another day, diaspora junkies can’t be picky.  And besides, when did the ones judging learn their lessons?  We don’t want a “When did you learn your lesson’” metric applied. 

Diaspora metrics are endless.  Besides, we’d probably all fall short on the conscience scale.  If not one particular scale, there is always one we’d fall short on.  Measuring a person’s interior life is different than measuring their actions. If you’ve been awakened to the complexity of life you might have noticed that actions are difficult to measure, too. 

When you judge someone else know in a similar situation you might have done what was done to you.  Once you let the ego down, it’s easier to let the strange and complicit one in your tent.  When conscience is involved, there’s a need for numbers and some kind of leeway. 

Hannah Arendt wrote beautifully about forgiveness. In the end, though, she couldn’t forgive Adolf Eichmann. Arendt concluded that there are some actions that cannot be forgiven.  I agree. 

Shall we now include in these unforgivable actions what happened to Rachel Corrie?

In the circle of the bereaved there’s another level of mutuality which balances the unforgivable.  Losing a child changes everything.  Sharing that loss across enemy lines highlights the absurdity of conflict.  Winning loses meaning.  Loosing enters another realm.  The (un)thinkable can also bring people together.

Sure there is abuse of power, collusion, empty suits, paid informants/witnesses and holier than thou types.  No doubt the Rachel Corrie case was full of that.  There are those who answer the master’s bell to (re)assure themselves of their self-righteousness.  All of this is real whether on the corporate level, university,military and state levels. There’s no use minimizing these evils.  I’m suggesting that at the end of the day we give over to the master and their enablers only what cannot be taken away from us – our integrity. 

Simply stated. Difficult to live.  So it is with those of us in protected diasporas.  Easy to discern lessons because we are safe and sound? You object?  Tell me another way. 

Diaspora is the place where exiles gather.  It is where culture, religion and life in general get a second chance at getting things right.  Possibly this is because the power to define is given up.  Possibly this is because the power to be defined is absent.  Or perhaps the power to define and be defined shifts and is newly experienced. 

The diaspora is a situational change that allows or forces another look at life – from a different point of view.  This doesn’t mean that life is hunky dory or that the existential questions of identity are answered.  No way. In exile diasporas, life and identity become existential necessities.  Everything of the old remains and is heightened since the world is turned upside down and around.

I’m belaboring the point because exile diasporas are the strategic depth of nationalities, states, religions and ideologies gone awry.  First being in exile, the practice of which ensures that almost nothing will ever be the same,Jewish identity forms in the diaspora.  Jews have been in a diaspora situation for so long that documentation and interpretation are plentiful.  Palestinian identity forming in the diaspora is so new that documentation and commentary is minimal.  On that subject, think Edward Said, the Palestinian who had to learn Palestinian history in America. This as he spoke for a homeland that he lived in in only brief and marginal way.  Would Said have been possible inside Palestine?

Think Edward Said without the Palestinian Diaspora. Now think the Palestinian Diaspora without Edward Said.

Think Palestine without Edward Said.  Now think the Jewish Diaspora without Edward Said. 

Many narratives were and are possible within Palestine.  Many narratives were and are possible within Israel.  They simply don’t add up to what we need without the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas.  So much the better if the diaspora is thought Jewish and Palestine together.  There I’ve said it, the Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora.

Lessons learned in the Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora:  As in, Jews and Palestinians know now that nationalism is a dead end;  As in, the friends of your nationalism are as destructive as they come and sooner or later, and often at the beginning, your nationalist friends are more interested in themselves than they are in you.  This means Map Makeover whenever your powerful friends, which also breed powerful enemies, decide they need something to do.

The Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora knows the details.  The Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora connects the dots.

So Israel has used the colonial template for its own devices but also check out the circle of the bereaved and ask them how things look from their vantage point.  Palestinians have been abused by the colonial template outside and inside the Arab world.  Talk to Palestinians about how the rhetoric of support from their friends has helped them out of their ongoing Nakba jam.  You can also research how they’ve been actively betrayed on all sides.This is part of the discussion that the After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine book is generating. Betrayal of everything. On all sides.

Strange twists in the Jewish/Palestinian Diapsora: both Jews and Palestinians are safer the more distant they are from home ground. 

I am open to correction but it seems to be the case that Jews and Palestinians are better off in current and former empires that support Israel almost without qualification.  Of course, these same empires are a pox on Jews of Conscience, and decry Palestinians almost without qualification, hence a pox on the entire Palestinian nation.  Weird world.

Better to whisper these lessons in this new and fascinating Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora.  To be overheard is to risk a demotion from the Diaspora powers that be.  Which there are, you know.  Like the powers that be, they’re watching every move you make.

They’re also watching the Rachel Corrie verdict I’m sure.  But be wary of superficial understandings.  What happened to Rachel Corrie was an injustice like any other.  And, from my perspective, something more.  That “more” has to do with Jewish and Palestinian history in the land and the history of Jews and Palestinians far from the land. 

The question before us is the lessons we have learned.  What is the Jewish/Palestinian Diaspora to make of Rachel Corrie’s life and death?  Of the verdict which claims that Israel is innocent?

Here’s one take that plays history against itself while projecting a just future.  Rachel Corrie as a  Righteous Gentile.

Righteous Gentiles, then saving Jews from the Nazis, now saving Jews from ourselves.

In a teacher’s guide to the Holocaust a simple definition of Righteous Gentiles:  “Non-Jewish people who, during the Holocaust, risked their lives to save Jewish people from Nazi persecution. Today, a field of trees planted in their honor at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, commemorates their courage and compassion.”

One day in a teacher’s guide to Jewish and Palestinian life after the Holocaust and Israel an expanded definition of Righteous Gentiles will appear.  It will read like this:“Non-Jewish people who, during the Golden Age of Constantinian Judaism when Israel’s empire expanded at the expense of Palestinians and Jewish dissent was crushed, risked their lives to save Jewish people from their own abuse of power. Today, a field of trees planted in their honor at the YadVaShem Holocaust and Nakba Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine, commemorates their warning, courage, sacrifice and compassion.”

Write it down.  Pass it along to your children.  One day.