Tag: Rachel Corrie

Seattle Post Intelligencer: Corrie personified Northwest idealism

Activist Corrie personified Northwest idealism
by Joe Copeland, 28 April 2007

Rachel Corrie’s beautiful life and sad story echo with the Northwest: idealism, independence and adventure. It’s fitting the inspiring play, “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” will be back in Seattle after a weekend trip to her hometown, Olympia.

As to how much of America gets to see the play, it’s tempting to ask who cares? But that would be to give into censoring theaters, or convincing them that the play isn’t adequately balanced. As if plays ever were balanced. The standard ought to be whether they are engaging, true to their subject and have a worthy subject.

For all the dissuasion (recently, a Florida theater cut and ran), this play meets the mark, especially on the subject: Rachel Corrie — the real person. She also happened to engage in political activism that ended with her death.

Yes, the play is set partly in Palestine — the real place, even if its statehood is contested and strangled. And, like a lot of activists in Israel and elsewhere, Corrie had views about Palestinian suffering, particularly and most appropriately on what her government’s expenditures support.

When she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she sought to stop the destruction of homes, Corrie was working with a non-violent campaign, the International Solidarity Movement. Aren’t Americans always hearing how Palestinians ought to engage in non-violent protest? All sorts of accusations have been made, ranging from an allegation that ISM was in ideological cahoots with terrorism to the idea that Corrie was plain naïve to put herself anywhere near a seemingly intractable conflict. Well, excuse her, and excuse Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Maguire, who earned her 1976 prize for opposing violence in Northern Ireland, says she was in a non-violent protest outside Ramallah earlier this month when Israeli forces intervened. She had just given a speech on non-violence, in which she singled out Corrie for praise. In an account distributed by the Institute for Public Accuracy (consumer advisory: IPA is leftist), Maguire said she was “invited to participate in a nonviolent demonstration with some of the Palestinian members of parliament and Israeli peace activists and local villagers and international visitors.

“We walked along to try to walk up toward the separation wall, and it was a totally non-violent protest. And we were viciously attacked by the Israeli military. They threw gas canisters into the peace walkers, and they also fired rubber-covered steel bullets.

“As I tried to move back and help a French lady, I was shot in the leg with a rubber-covered steel bullet … I was stunned by it, and then later on, after having some treatment by the ambulance medics, I went back down to the front line with the peace activists, and we were again showered with gas. I was overcome and had a severe nosebleed and had to be taken by stretcher to the ambulance and treated. …

“These were over 25 unarmed peace people who had been viciously attacked by the Israeli military. And it was a completely peaceful protest. It was absolutely unbelievable. I never in all my years of activism witnessed anything so vicious as from the Israeli military.”

Maybe Maguire, too, is naïve. But it’s interesting that an activist with a certain standing and experience found herself feeling so shocked by governmental force, much like Corrie. Perhaps we will hear more about Maguire’s experiences, including some news balancing. We can only wish that, someday, an older Rachel Corrie might have shared her similarly matured, experienced views on any number of issues.

When I contacted Maguire by e-mail, she sent a copy of her speech. “It is the Rachels of this world,” she said, “who remind us that we are responsible for each other and we are interconnected in a mysteriously spiritual and beautiful way.”

Was Corrie necessarily right about how she viewed an intractable conflict in which Palestinians (like Americans) have plenty of cause for regret about their leadership at times? I wouldn’t say so. Was she a victim of overaggressive or reckless actions? We may eventually know, as her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, are admirably pursuing answers.

More than anything, the Seattle Rep’s brave presentation tells us this: From an early age, when Rachel Corrie spoke against hunger in a good speech caught on a video shown at the end of the play, she was meeting the world with compassion, intelligence and spirit that her region can always value. With any luck, the play’s use of her writings will only be a step toward further exploration of a remarkable young woman.

Joe Copeland is an editorial writer and member of the P-I Editorial Board. E-mail: joecopeland@seattlepi.com.

My Name is Rachel on Al Jazeera

My name is Rachel on Al Jazeera
by Martinez, 20 April 2007


Rachel Corrie’s parent

Rachel Corrie’s parents and Braden Abraham, the director of My Name is Rachel Corrie, were interviewed last night on Al Jazeera. Several cities, including one of the most recent in Florida, have censored the play.

Director Abraham said that Rachel was not only a humanitarian, but that she was also an artist, two things that make the play a wonderful experience.

When a man called in to the station during question and answer from Israel, he stated that “Rachel Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement.” The caller claimed that the ISM supports suicide bombers because he said that on the website, the ISM says that Palestinians have the right to use “any means to resist Israel.”

Cindy Corrie answered this. She said she met ISMers all over the world, including the seven that were present when Rachel was murdered. Mrs. Corrie said that none of them condoned violence, let alone suicide bombers. She said that the ISM believes in rights granted by international law and that ISM works with non-violent resistance. Corrie said that she stood side by side with Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals, resisting non-violently in villages such as Bil’in, where 60% of the land is being confiscated by the Apartheid Wall.

“They come together to do non-violent resistance– these are their principles,” said Mrs. Corrie.

Mrs. Corrie mentioned that international law recognizes the right of Palestinians to resists– and that it is not limited to non-violent resistance.

ZNet: Rachel’s Words Silenced Again

Rachel’s Words Silenced Again
by Tom Wallace 12 April 2007

Once again the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” has been cancelled, this time in South Florida.

In New York and Toronto the play was cancelled due to pressure from the Jewish community or those that claim to speak for the Jewish Community. The play was successfully staged in NYC at the Minetta Lane theater. It is currently enjoying an extraordinary run at the Seattle Repertory Theater and many more are planned.

Wherever it has been staged, there has been support from the Jewish community as well as criticism. The Jewish community is not monolithic and no-one speaks for “it,” though many claim to.

Much has been written about the play and though theater critics have mostly given glowing reviews, some have been luke warm, and a scant few have even been negative. That is how theater works.

Unfortunately, the power behind the movement to silence Rachel remains nameless and faceless.

They work in the background by using blackmail and other forms of pressure on theater managers and owners. They do not have to justify their stance and we never get to know who “they” are.

I experienced this silencing first hand while volunteering in Bethlehem as the media coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement immediately after Rachel’s death, and as British activist Tom Hurndall was mortally wounded, and as American activist Brian Avery was seriously injured. I saw that US journalists, under extraordinary pressure, pulled their punches while the British media helped push for the truth.

As a result, the Israeli soldier who shot Tom Hurndall was tried and found guilty of manslaughter. In contrast, there has been no pressure from US media or politicians for a thorough and transparent investigation into Rachel Corrie’s killing, though Israeli Prime Minister Sharon promised one to President Bush.

Censorship however, can create a backlash. A small group of people created Rachel’s Words in response to the popular anger over the New York Theater Workshop’s cancellation of the play last year. We ultimately helped bring Rachel’s message to an even wider audience.

“My Name is Rachel Corrie” is a play based on the writings of a twenty three year old American woman from Olympia Washington , who was committed to making a difference. Editors Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner culled the best of Rachel’s writings from the time she was very young until her death. Her life ended tragically while trying to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist from demolition by a Caterpilar bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier.

The play is not about the death of Rachel Corrie, it is about her life – her dreams, her beliefs, her desires, her experiences, her faults and all of her humanness.

It was her humanity which prompted her to travel to Gaza and see for herself what was happening.

She quickly learned some ugly truths about another side of humanity, a little more about US foreign policy, and a lot about people’s ability to survive under obscene circumstances.

She noticed that the weapons carried by Israeli soldiers which kill Palestinian children are “made in USA .” So are the bulldozers that illegally destroy Palestinian homes, the helicopter gun ships and the f16 fighter jets that drop 1 ton bombs on apartment buildings full of Palestinian families.

Of this Rachel wrote “This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop.”

Her writings are based on what she saw. This was her experience and she died for it. The resulting play about her life prompts valuable discussion.

If we had more uncensored discussion on the issue of Israel and Palestine in general, Rachel might be alive today dancing to Pat Benatar.

Rachel represents much of what is best about who we are or like to think we are as Americans.

Those who want to silence her have a right to criticize. They have a right to produce their own play. They even have a right to lie and cheat.

They do not have a right to silence anyone. No one in this country has that right. Some of the gravest errors in US history have resulted from efforts to silence dissenting viewpoints.

By caving to their demands, the Mosaic theater has committed the ultimate crime in the world of theater and arts; that of censorship. They should reconsider their decision lest they lose the right to be called a theater.

Tom Wallace is the editor of American Hummus

Seattle Post: Israel’s apologists distort the truth

by Steve Niva

The fairy-tale view of Israel as eternally besieged and completely faultless in its conflict with the Palestinians, as presented by David Brumer in the March 18 Focus (“Play shines light on conflict”), has certainly taken a hit this past year.

A growing number of Americans who deeply sympathize with Israel, including former President Jimmy Carter, have spoken eloquently of the need to recognize that Israel has committed severe human rights violations against the Palestinian people through its nearly 40-year military occupation and theft of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. While extremely critical of Palestinian terrorism, they conclude that peace with security is not possible until Israel ends the injustices.

Perhaps that is why Israel’s more fervent apologists are resorting to distortion and defamation as their preferred method to discredit anyone who dares acknowledge Palestinian grievances or Israel’s grave and well-documented human rights abuses. Carter is facing an onslaught of malicious charges that range from intentionally lying to anti-Semitism. They want to silence an emerging debate over the United States’ one-sided embrace of Israel.

This method of attacking the messenger is clearly on display in Brumer’s article as well as in the flurry of protest against the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. The play tells the story of the 23-year-old woman from Olympia crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer demolishing Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip.

Instead of joining with Carter, Rachel Corrie and countless others, many Israeli and Jewish, who recognize Israel’s occupation and settlements are unjustified and prevent peace, Brumer peddles defamation and falsehoods about Corrie masquerading as reasonable criticism.

Claiming that Corrie was even “unwittingly” supporting terrorists is contradicted by the fact that the Israeli army has never claimed or provided any evidence that the homes in the neighborhood of Gaza that Corrie was defending when she was killed were concealing tunnels or were involved in attacks on Israelis.

Claiming Corrie was in any way providing cover for suicide bombers is easily proved false by the fact that no Palestinian suicide bombers had come from Gaza three years before or during the time Corrie was there.

Claiming that Corrie was working with an “extremist” organization is contradicted by the fact that the International Solidarity Movement to End the Occupation is composed of leading Palestinian voices of non-violence and supported by numerous Israeli peace groups.

Legitimate questions can be raised about Corrie’s risky decision to enter into a very dangerous conflict zone. But that zone was dangerous precisely because Israel has imposed a merciless military occupation over a largely defenseless population and was wantonly demolishing homes to steal land for Israeli settlements.

One can certainly and rightly blame, as Brumer does, Palestinian extremists for damaging the moral justness of the Palestinian cause through murderous and strategically worthless suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of innocent Israelis.

But none of that justifies Israel continuing to steal Palestinian land and building a wall deep within Palestinian lands to annex those settlements. Nor does it prevent Israel from taking unilateral steps to vacate completely the land that it has illegally occupied since 1967.

Brumer’s complete silence regarding Israel’s occupation and settlements implies that it does.

Brumer’s implicit justification for Israel’s occupation and settlements is the continually recycled myth that Israel has always extended its hand of peace while Palestinians have always rejected it. This myth conveniently ignores the fact Israel’s “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000 was based on Israel annexing the bulk of its settlements, cutting any Palestinian state into five tiny enclaves surrounded by Israel. Brumer touts Israel’s recent withdrawal from Gaza, but ignores Israel’s withering siege upon its imprisoned population.

Brumer also justifies the status quo by emphasizing the immutable extremism of Hamas. But the fact is that Hamas has not conducted a single suicide bombing in nearly two years and has endorsed a reciprocal truce with Israel if it were to withdraw completely to its 1967 borders. But Israel completely rejects those terms, missing a historic opportunity to undercut Hamas extremism.

Those who truly support a balanced and just peace in the Middle East should honestly debate Corrie’s life and legacy. Her very act of acknowledging legitimate Palestinians grievances and her promotion of alternatives to violence was a message of hope and peace sorely lacking today.

By attacking the messenger, Corrie’s detractors are sending a clear message opposed to hope and peace.

Steve Niva teaches international politics and Middle East studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia.

Starhawk: Four Years Ago Today

Starhawk
March 16, 2007

Four years ago today, I was in Nablus in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement that supports the nonviolent movement among the Palestinians. I was also supporting my friend Neta Golan, an Israeli woman and one of the founders of ISM, now married to a Palestinian, who was about to give birth. I had spent a strangely idyllic day in a small village outside Nablus, where a group of ISM volunteers had gone because we’d received a report that the Israeli army was harassing villagers. When we got there, the army had left, the cyclamen and blood-red anemones were in bloom underneath ancient olive trees, and the villagers insisted we stay for a barbecue.

We were just passing through the checkpoint on our way back to Nablus when we got a call from Rafah, in the Gaza strip. Rachel Corrie, a young ISM volunteer, had trying to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a home near the border. The bulldozer operator saw her, and went forward anyway, crushing her to death.

Rachel’s death was a small preview of the horrific violence that the U.S. unleashed, three days later, with the invasion of Iraq. In Nablus, we were gearing up for a possible Israeli invasion when the war began. I was working with another volunteer, Brian Avery, to coordinate the team that would maintain a human rights witness in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus. I was also praying that Neta would not go into labor at some moment when the whole town would be under siege and we could not get to a hospital, and boning up on such midwifery knowledge as I possess. Perhaps I prayed too hard—she showed no signs of going into labor at all, and finally, in an act of great unselfishness, sent me down to Rafah to support the team there that had been with Rachel. I offered such comfort as I could to volunteers who were young enough that most had never before experienced the death of someone close to them.

It was a strange spring. I made it back to Nablus to support Neta’s birth—but the joy of that event was tinged with horror, for the night before, Brian was shot in the face in Jenin by the Israeli military in an unprovoked attack on a group of international volunteers. All during Neta’s labor, the nurses (yes, thank Goddess, we made it to the hospital!) kept turning on Al Jazeerah which was showing scenes of the U.S. bombardment of Iraq. I kept turning it off. Even in a world full of war, I wanted her child to be born in a small island of peace.

I went to Jenin to support the team that had been with Brian, and then to Haifa to visit him where he was awaiting surgery. I spent much of the next weeks traveling frenetically, often alone, through the one piece of ground on earth most difficult to travel in, where checkpoints truncate every route. The olive trees broke into leaf, and the almonds swelled into fuzzy green pods which the Palestinians eat young. They taste lemony, sharp and poignant, like the moment itself.

I visited with the Israeli Women in Black in Jerusalem, and trained ISM volunteers in Beit Sahour. A young British volunteer, Tom Hurndall, went down to Rafah straight from the training. Walking on the border, near where Rachel was killed, he saw a group of children under fire from an Israeli sniper tower. He ran beneath the rain of bullets, pulled a young boy to safety, went back again for another child. The sniper targeted him, shooting him in the head. So I went back to Rafah, that surreal town of rubble and barbed wire, ripe oranges and bullet holes, to support the team that had been with Tom

Everywhere I went, the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, and the army seemed to melt away, as if I carried some magic circle of protection. I was a long distance witness to death, a support for grief without suffering the searing personal pain that comes with the loss of a child, a parent, a lover. My own grief hit later, when I was home, and safe, and cried for weeks.

I cry now, every spring, here in California as the daffodils bloom and the plum trees flower. The beauty of spring is forever tinged, for me, with the grief and wonder and horror of that time: Neta sweating in labor while the TV news shows images of war, blood staining the wildflowers a deeper red.

I cry, and then I get I mad. Four years have gone by, and the killing still goes on—in Palestine, in Iraq, and if Bush has his way, in Iran. Ghosts haunt the green hills, shimmering like heat waves under an unnaturally hot sun: all the uncounted dead of this uncalled-for war, all those yet to die.

I’ve got a garden to plant, and a thousand things I’d rather do, but once again this spring, I’m gearing up for action. The peace marches have become boring, strident and predictable. To be absolutely honest, I hate marching around in the street chanting the same slogans I’ve been chanting for forty years. I’m going, anyway. I’m so tired of die-ins and sit-ins and predictable speeches shouted over bullhorns that I could scream if I weren’t hearing in my ears the far more bitter screams of the dying. I’m even tired of trying to drum and sing and make the protest into a creative act of magic. It’s not creative—it’s a damn protest, and I have real creative work to do: books to write, courses to teach, and rituals to plan. Nonetheless, Sunday will find me trudging along on the peace march and Monday will find me lying down on Market Street in some picturesque fashion with a group of friends and our requisite banners.

Why? So I can look myself in the mirror without flinching, and answer to those hundred thousand ghosts. But more than that, because it’s time, friends. Public opinion has turned—now we must make it mean something real. It’s time to send the Democrats back to their committee meetings saying, “Hell, I can’t even get into my office—the halls are blocked and the streets are choked with people angry about this war.” Time to send the Republicans off to their caucuses murmuring quietly “If we continue to support this disaster we’re going to lose every semblance of power or popular support we once possessed.” Time to let the rest of the world know that dissent is alive and well here in the U.S.A. Time to regenerate a movement as nature regenerates life in the spring, with the rising energy that alone can turn our interminable trudging into a dance of defiance.

You come, too. You can skip out on the boring speeches and make cynical remarks—but get your feet out on the street this weekend, somewhere. There’s a thousand different actions planned around the country—and if you don’t know where to go or what to do, check the websites below.

Act because hundreds of thousands who are now alive are marked for death if this war goes on or expands into Iran. Act because every perfumed flower and every bud that breaks into leaf this calls to us to cherish and safeguard life.