Tag: Rachel Corrie

Rickman Slams ‘Censorship’ of Play about US Gaza Activist

by Julian Borger
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

A New York theatre company has put off plans to stage a play about an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza because of the current “political climate” – a decision the play’s British director, Alan Rickman, denounced yesterday as “censorship”.

James Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, said it had never formally announced it would be staging the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, but it had been considering staging it in March.

“In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon’s illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation,” Mr Nicola said.

“We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn’t want to take.”

He said he had suggested a postponement until next year.

Mr Rickman, best known for his film acting roles in Love, Actually and the Harry Potter series and who directed the play at London’s Royal Court Theatre, denounced the decision.

“I can only guess at the pressures of funding an independent theatre company in New York, but calling this production “postponed” does not disguise the fact that it has been cancelled,” Mr Rickman said in a statement.

“This is censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences – all of us are the losers.”

Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old activist from Washington state crushed in March 2003 when she put herself between an Israeli army bulldozer and a Palestinian home it was about to demolish in Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

The International Solidarity Movement, of which she was a member, claimed the bulldozer driver ran her over deliberately. The Israeli Defence Forces said it was an accident, and that she was killed by falling debris.

The Israeli government said the demolitions were aimed at creating a “security zone” along the border. The Palestinians say they are a form of collective punishment.

“Rachel Corrie lived in nobody’s pocket but her own. Whether one is sympathetic with her or not, her voice is like a clarion in the fog and should be heard,” Mr Rickman said.

My Name is Rachel Corrie consists of her diary entries and emails home, edited by Mr Rickman and Katharine Viner, features editor of The Guardian. It won the best new play prize at this year’s Theatregoers’ Choice Awards in London.

Travelers share tales from Rafah

by Venice Buhain
Originally publsihed in The Olympian

OLYMPIA — For a few hours Sunday, the Olympia Eagles Ballroom was filled with friendly chatter, the enticing smells of Mediterranean food and the delicate handiwork of Palestinian embroidery.

But the main event at the fundraiser for the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project was a presentation by two volunteers from the organization that aims to continue the connection between Olympia and the city where activist Rachel Corrie died.

Corrie, who lived in Olympia, died in 2003 after being run over by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli military as she protested the demolition of a home.

The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project was formed shortly after Corrie’s death, said her friend and volunteer Rochelle Gause. Gause is one of three “delegates” who recently returned from Rafah as part of the sister city project.

Corrie’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, also have traveled on behalf of the project.

Gause said Corrie had sent e-mails about possibly starting a sister city program with Rafah.

“It was one of her visions,” Gause said. “We’ve tried to carry that vision and develop it.”

The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project, which became a recognized nonprofit organization last year, established a women’s center and a cultural center in Rafah, collects medical equipment, and has hosted educational presentations stateside about the volunteers’ experiences in Palestinian areas.

Gause and Serena Becker gave their first presentation after returning several weeks ago from an eventful trip around Gaza and the West Bank. The presentation covers the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the current conditions of life in the Palestinian areas.

Gause and Becker nearly were kidnapped in January, just before the
Palestinian elections, but their Palestinian friends interceded on their behalf, Becker said. Gause and Becker plan to take their slide show lecture on a tour.

The group sends several delegates for months at a time to live in Rafah, and its members hope to bring residents to visit Olympia.

The project already has started one of Corrie’s goals — to bring handcrafted scarves, vests, bracelets, pillows, purses and other goods from Rafah and to pay the artisans a fair wage, said event organizer Rana Shmait.

“It’s a fair livable wage, to the mutual benefit of the people in Rafah and Olympia,” she said.

Locally, the crafts are sold at Traditions Cafe, a store dedicated to fair trade. Having delegates in Rafah is one of the few ways for the goods to reach Olympia, Gause said.

Before her death, Corrie, who was well-known in the local peace activist community, had spoken to Traditions Cafe about selling Palestinian handicrafts there, said cafe manager Jody Tiller. The nonprofit group doesn’t make a lot of money off of the goods, she said.

“They want as much as possible to go toward the women as they can get,” Tiller said.

Though many of the people at Sunday’s fundraiser knew Corrie or were familiar with the group, some were happy to have the chance to learn about the group and its mission.

“I wanted to support the project, and I wanted to learn more about it,”
said Karen Nelson, owner of the Fertile Ground Guest House, which has donated rooms for guest speakers sponsored by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.

“I’m glad that there’s such a turnout, and that people in Olympia are becoming aware of what is happening in other areas.”

Parents continue daughter’s cause

By Jennifer Moody
Originally published in the Albany Democrat-Herald

Cindy Corrie used to think the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians had no beginning, no end and no solution — if she thought about it at all.

That was before her daughter Rachel was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she stood in protest in front of a Palestinian home about to be razed.

Rachel Corrie was a writer who went to the Gaza Strip as a peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement. She died March 16, 2003, about three weeks shy of her 24th birthday.

Since then, her parents, Craig and Cindy of Olympia, Wash., have been accepting invitations to talk about their daughter and the conflict that led to her death.

They spoke Wednesday at Linn-Benton Community College in a talk sponsored by the Institute for Peace and Justice at LBCC, the Albany Peace Seekers, and a student group, Linn-Benton Peace Studies.

Since her death, Rachel has inspired sharply conflicting opinions. Her critics describe her as a misguided defender of Palestinian terrorists and say the house she was protecting may have been used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt.

The parents’ goal, her mother said, is to remind people in the United States to “really pay attention to what’s happening in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and to learn more about our role in it, and to find ways to actively try and take personal action on it … not to tune out on all of this.”

People are beginning to understand, Cindy added, but she thinks more people would take notice if they understood that the need to find a solution to the conflict directly affects this country.

“What the world sees is a very strong U.S. bias in support of the Israeli government. That’s viewed as being unjust,” she said. “That’s very damaging to us, in terms of world opinion.”

About 20 people attended the two-hour presentation, which centered on Rachel’s life and death and on the experiences her parents have had in the region on subsequent visits.

Rachel was in the area for about 10 weeks. She lived in Rafah, a city of about 140,000.

She wrote her parents often about the destruction she witnessed: homes bulldozed to clear the way for roads or walls, wells for drinking water destroyed by the Israeli military, an economy devastated by division and isolation. On one of her first calls home, as Israeli forces fired shells into the night, she held up the telephone and let her parents listen.

The Corries stressed they are horrified by suicide bombs and other Palestinian atrocities and in no way mean to defend them.

At the same time, however, they said they don’t believe such bombs are a threat to the very existence of the Israeli people in the same way that Israel is capable of threatening Palestinian existence.

They also question the solutions Israel has said it needs for security, such as putting walls and checkpoint terminals on Palestinian — not Israeli — property, and demolishing homes to make way for those efforts. American tax dollars, they said, are used to purchase some of the equipment for that work and may have paid for the very bulldozer that killed their daughter.

“We are motivated by Rachel to do what we can to work for a just resolution that will support all the people of this region, and I think before the whole world as well,” Cindy said.

Added her father: “We can’t do anything about Rachel, but we can do something about these children.”

Standing for justice — visiting family tells story of conflict

Presentation on non-violence in Israel-Palestine conflict sparks conversation
By Andrew Miner
Originally published in the Oregon State Daily Barometer

Rachel Corrie sacrificed her life hoping to bring peace through non-violence in the Israeli Palestine conflict. Craig and Cindy Corrie spoke Tuesday in the MU Journey Room about their daughter’s history.

Rachel Corrie was protecting the home of a Palestinian family, the Nasrallahs, when she was crushed to death by Israeli construction workers using an American-made D-9R caterpillar bulldozer in Rafah, Palestine on March 16, 2003. The workers were building an Israeli military wall on the border between Rafah and Gaza Strip.

“I feel it’s a very systematic destruction of the very ability for people to survive,” Rachel said in a video recorded before her death. “I feel it’s obvious that this government (of Ariel Sharon) is perpetuating the cycle of violence.”

Rachel believed that through the process of constructing the walls along Rafah and the Gaza strip the Israeli military destroyed 50 percent of the water supply for those living in the area, affecting the livelihood of 300 Palestinians.

“It’s amazing people are able to hold onto their humanity as much as they have,” said Rachel, whose shaky voice was barely audible over bulldozers which ravaged the homes below.

Human Rights Watch called the obliteration of 1,700 homes, “Razing Rafah,” where the Israeli military dealt “a pattern of destruction acting regardless of whether these homes posed an actual threat,” said Cindy Corrie.

Rafah, a city located on the tip of the Palestinian border with Egypt, has a population of 140,000, 10 percent of whom became refugees from the construction of these walls, Rachel said in the video.

The Corries have since dedicated their lives to fulfilling their daughter’s dream — of bringing permanent peace between Israelis and Palestinians — by telling their daughter’s story.

“Of the six homes we stayed at in Rafah, all but one have been demolished,” said Cindy.

Rachel, 23, was a student at Evergreen State College in the International Solidarity Movement when posted in Rafah to protest the destruction of Palestinian homes.

ISM has focused on two stipulations for the conflict: the right to freedom for Palestinians using only non-violent methods, and the strength in truth for the Palestinian cause.

“Sometimes I sit down and eat with these people (those Palestinians whose homes were being bulldozed) with the Israeli military machine surrounding them … No child should ever have to live like that,” Rachel said on screen.

Rachel and the other students in ISM slept in these Palestinian homes along the border — with efforts to sleep often hindered by tank shelling near them.

“An 8-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here,” Rachel said. “I am really scared for the people here.”

Two men who have participated in this resistance along the border are Ghassan Andoni and Jeff Halper, both of whom have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Israel is the only country in the world to prevent housing based on race,” Cindy said.

The U.S. military supports Israel through U.S. tax dollars to pay for Caterpillars, used as military machines in the destruction of Rafah homes, Cindy said.

“Craig believes we paid for the Caterpillar that killed Rachel,” Cindy said.

“Rachel’s death was a call for action on our part,” said Cindy, “to not simply talk of peace, but to get our hands dirty… and Rachel got her hands dirty.”

As the emotional presentation ended, Dr. Mohamed Mohamed, a physician at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, stood up.

“I have two children of similar age, and my heart bleeds for the both of you,” Mohamed said.

As tears welled up in his eyes, Mohamed became more impassioned. “A country that bases its citizenship on religion is wrong … what is happening in Israel is apartheid,” he said, referring to the crippling racial segregation in South Africa which involved economic, political and legal discrimination against non-whites.

“We are not anti-Jewish, we are anti-Zionist,” said Mohamed.

According to the Zionist Organization of America, one of the oldest pro-Israel organizations in the United States, Zionism was founded in 1897 to support the re-establishment of a Jewish state in Israel.

Activist’s parents recall Palestinian strife

By Tony Lystra
Gazette-Times reporter
Originally published in the Corvallis Gazette-Times

Corvallis crowd hears legacy of nonviolent stance

When Rachel Corrie was 2, she looked up at her mother and asked an unsettling question: “Mom,” she said, “Is brave part of growing up?”

More than two decades later, just before her 24th birthday, Rachel was mowed down by an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to protect a Palestinian home from destruction.

On Tuesday, her parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, of Olympia, Wash., spoke at the First United Methodist Church in Corvallis about their daughter, her legacy of nonviolent protest and a Palestinian people who soldier on in the face of the Israeli occupation.

Rachel, Cindy Corrie said, stood for “the right of Palestinians and Israelis to be secure in their homes, in their restaurants and on their buses.”

The Corries said their daughter was inspired by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to become involved in the international peace movement, and she soon decided to visit the Palestinian territories.

Rachel settled in Rafah, a small town on the Egyptian border, which Cindy Corrie described as “the most forsaken part of the occupied territories.”

On Tuesday, the Corries showed video footage of their daughter standing on a rooftop, talking about what she had seen in Rafah.

“Children have been shot and killed,” she said.

The Israeli forces destroyed more than half of Rafah’s water supply, she continued. And people there were “economically devastated” by the closure of borders.

“What I’m witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of people’s ability to survive,” Rachel said.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel stood in front of a Rafah house, trying to save it and the family inside from an Israeli bulldozer.

The house, the Corries explained, was right on the border with Egypt, where the Israeli government was constructing a large, steel wall.

In the wake of her daughter’s death, Cindy Corrie said she could hear Rachel’s voice: “Get moving, mom.” And so she and her husband have made several trips to the region and begun talking publicly about the plight of people in the Palestinian territories.

In a presentation that was highly critical of Israeli and U.S. policy, the Corries talked of the warm hospitality of Palestinian families. They showed photos of smiling Palestinian children and their grinning grandmothers.

They also showed photos of Israeli bulldozers as they smashed houses.

“Craig and I believe it was our tax dollars that bought the Caterpillar that killed our daughter,” Cindy Corrie said.

Only a small portion of the homes destroyed by Israeli bulldozers are punishment for suicide bombings, she said. Many others are knocked down because, although Palestinians own the land upon which the buildings sit, Palestinian families have had difficulty getting permits to build there.

The couple also showed photos of Israeli checkpoints, walls and chain-link fences.

The Corries made little mention of the reasons Israelis build these walls, including the steel barrier blocking Rafah from Egypt. But a January International Herald Tribune story said that, during the last 25 years, arms smugglers have dug dozens of tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

“Through them have come most of the weapons that fill this narrow Palestinian territory, threatening Israel and Palestinians themselves,” the Tribune reported.

Still, the Corries praised the efforts of nonviolent peace activists in the Occupied Territories, particularly a village called Bi’lin where Jews, Muslims and others from all over the world were gathering to peacefully protest the destruction.

“Something sensational is going on there,” Cindy Corrie said.