Tag: Rachel Corrie

Rickman & Rachel Juggle Three Wins

From What’s on Stage News

My Name Is Rachel Corrie was the biggest straight play winner in this
year’s Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, triumphing in three categories:
Best New Play, Best Solo Performance and Best Director (See News, 31
Jan 2006). Alan Rickman, Megan Dodds and Katharine Viner – the trio
behind Rachel Corrie – reunited at the Royal Court, where the play
premiered in April 2005, to collect their trophies.

Why did a 23-year-old woman leave her comfortable American life to
stand between a bulldozer and a Palestinian home? My Name Is Rachel
Corrie recounts the real story of “the short life and sudden death of
Rachel Corrie, and the words she left behind.”

Alan Rickman took the idea to the Royal Court after reading an email
written by Corrie and posthumously published in the Guardian. With the
permission of Corrie’s family, he and Guardian journalist Katharine
Viner developed the play based on Corrie’s own writings. Megan Dodds
starred as Corrie in the 80-minute monologue.

Following its sell-out premiere season in the 80-seat Jerwood Theatre
Upstairs, My Name Is Rachel Corrie returned to the Royal Court’s
395-seat Jerwood Theatre Downstairs for a second limited season last
October (See News, 3 May 2005). Next month, it will receive its US
premiere – running from 22 March to 14 May 2006 at the New York
Theatre Workshop – ahead of a planned US tour and further
international dates.

Speaking to Whatsonstage.com over celebratory coffee and croissants at
the Royal Court, Rickman said: “The way I feel about My Name Is Rachel
Corrie winning these awards is, I think, what I felt every night in
the theatre – that the audience somehow owned the play. With the best
kind of work, you always feel like you give it away to the audience.
As an actor or a director, I’m just there to facilitate that.” He
added, with regards to his own personal Best Director win for the
play: “Thank you very much indeed. It’s really not about me, it’s
about Rachel. You have honoured her and her memory with these awards
and now her story goes on.”

Dodds, who collected the award for Best Solo Performance, said: “I
want to say thank you to the people who voted and the people who came
to see the show. It takes a certain level of commitment because it’s
not an easy piece and it’s not a typical play. But so many people
seemed to feel it wasn’t just Rachel’s story, it was their story, too.
Of course, it never would have happened if Alan hadn’t read about
Rachel in the Guardian one day. I’m so grateful to have been a part of
it.”

Rickman’s co-author Viner still seemed taken aback by the play’s
success. “My Name Is Rachel Corrie is the first play I’ve ever been
involved with,” she admitted. “To work with the material of such a
brilliant writer and with such a wonderful team was a dream come true.
I’ve loved doing it, it’s opened up a whole new area of my
imagination. Thank you to everyone who voted for us for honouring
Rachel’s memory in this very special way.”

As for triumphing over premieres by Neil LaBute, Richard Bean, Simon
Stephens, Aaron Sorkin and Helen Edmundson to win the title for Best
New Play, Rickman compared it to being “a bit like Krufts – you know,
when you’ve got a poodle up against a sheep dog. We feel like the
little poodle, but with the muscle of a much bigger dog. It’s for
other people to judge, of course, but I think this piece is so
important because it reminds us that we are part of the world we live
in.”

Bil’in Unbowed; One Year of Non-Violent Resistance to the Apartheid Wall

by Henry and David

The weekly non-violent protests against the Israelis Apartheid wall continued today in Bil’in, when Palestinians from the village displayed their resistance to the ongoing theft of their village’s land. At least one Palestinian was injured by a tear gas canister which was fired directly at a group of three non-violent demonstrators as they stood with their hands raised in the air. One Israeli protester was detained by the Israeli Military, and another Israeli was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister and taken to hospital; many others also suffered from the use of tear gas and force by the soldiers. The one year anniversary of the struggle of Bil’in is fast approaching, on February 20th, and their will to resist the Occupation and the Apartheid Wall has not diminished since then.

Despite heavy rain, the crowd of approximately 150 Palestinian, international and Israeli activists marched to the construction site of the Apartheid Wall, which is gradually cutting off the village from much of its land. The Israeli Army and Border Police were on hand to prevent the unarmed demonstrators from reaching the construction site through the use of force.

At the site, demonstrators chanted slogans and some Palestinian national songs. A decision from one of the local committee against the Wall was made to move to the other side of the village. The Israeli Military attempted to prevent this by the use of force, but the people were able to prevail and remain unmoved.

After half an hour, activists observed the soldiers shooting rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas at the young boys of the village at very close range. The decision was then made to return to the village, however, it was interrupted in order to de-arrest an Israeli activist. This was done successfully by Internationals, Israelis and Palestinians together, but soon after that another Israeli was taken and detained by the Israeli Military.

(Israeli soldier seen aiming his rifle at unarmed Palestinian children)

When the demo was declared over by the Popular Committee, the activists moved towards the village. The Israeli Military then used the activists as cover, so that they could get closer to some of the young Palestinians of Bil’in, which led to more shooting of tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets. From this point on, the army continued to use disproportionate and unnecessary force against unarmed Palestinians, shooting tear gas canisters directly at them and coming very close to the village itself.

Later in the evening, the Palestinians of Bil’in and internationals watched a film, Rachel Corrie An American Conscience, directed by Yahya Barakat. The director was present in Bil’in for the screening of the film, which is about the death of Rachel Corrie, who was killed on March 16 2003 by the IOF in Rafah. The film will be screened again for the Bil’in Conference, which will take place February 20 & 21, 2006, which will be the beginning of a Spring 2006 ISM campaign.

for more information on the film, go to
http://www.palestineonlinestore.com/films/american.htm

Gaza, Elections, and Democracy

by Hannah
January 27, 2006

Finally, after several years of wanting to go to Gaza, Dunya and I managed to spend two days there under the auspices of election observation. It didn’t take very long for Dunya to observe that the elections in Gaza City were far cleaner than those in Ohio in 2004, where she was working at the time. Lack of democracy is not Palestine’s problem.

We stayed in Gaza City with Khaled Nasrallah and his family, one of the two families who had been living in the house in Rafah that Rachel Corrie was killed defending in March 2003. They now live in an apartment in Gaza City while a new house is being built, with the help of the ‘Building Alliance’. Most of the people in Gaza who have been displaced by home demolition have been displaced at least once before – in 1948 – and some of them more than once. They’ve lived in a constant state of terror for the past five years, and according to some, it got worse after the “disengagement”. Israeli shelling is not uncommon, not to mention the sonic booms that only started since the settlers have left. A 9-year-old girl was shot and killed by the Israeli army on Thursday in Gaza, probably just a few miles from where we were.

The Gaza International Airport is really something else, like any other airport, but with more beautiful design. And it is deserted. The control towers have been bombed by Israeli Apaches. The runways have been bulldozed every couple hundred meters. According to security at the airport, the only employees currently working, it was opened in 2000, and was forced by Israel to close early in 2001. Israel still forbids Palestinians from even beginning to reconstruct the runway. Palestinian Airlines only flies now between Egypt and Amman.

And then there’s Rafah. The row of houses along the border of Gaza and Egypt, are shot up thousands and thousands of times. That is, the houses that are still standing. More of them are in rubble. With bullet holes through the windows, doors and walls… it looks more like war than anything I’ve ever seen. Our hosts described to us some of the terror of their last two years in Rafah: never knowing which rooms were safe to be in, Israeli bullets flying through their windows at all hours, the young daughters waking up in the middle of the night and screaming. The girls are still affected, their mother Samah told us. The oldest, now five years old, remembers a story from Rafah. The family had been sleeping in the garden because it was safer than the house. At one point they were all in different places, someone in the garden, someone in the house, someone on the stairs. The shooting started, and young Mariam remembers the bullets flying towards their house, hitting a tree, and watching a guava fall off a tree and hit her father on the head. Her mother told the story laughing, saying “alhamdulillah” – thank god we weren’t hurt any more than we were.

Hope looks different, too, as Dunya pointed out during our visit to the former settlements. At every turn our driver explained that the Israelis used to be here, and here, and here. This is where this person was killed, this is a school that was bombed, this is an old checkpoint. And then we entered the old settlement of Netzarim. The scene looked remarkably similar to me to demolished Palestinian homes. The Israelis are good at destroying things, we joked to each other. They destroy Palestinian homes, and they also destroyed the settlers’ homes. This is hope, I suppose. Can rubble be hopeful?

Gaza City is bustling. We arrived our first evening, met the family, ate dinner, and then Khaled asked, “Do you want to walk around the city?” We were shocked that he would go out at night, especially with two female internationals, but it was completely normal to him. The shops were open, everyone was buying ice cream at the local ice cream parlor, last minute campaigning was subtle (campaigning is banned for 24 hours before election day, but nobody can be prevented from driving their cars, vegetable trucks, or donkeys with party flags on them). Apparently Gaza City is the Ramallah of Gaza, a thriving city where poverty is somewhat less apparent than other parts of Gaza.

Gaza is beautiful. I’ve heard about it being the most crowded place on earth, so I wasn’t prepared for the open space, the parks of palm trees, the plazas with monuments and wide roads that are pedestrian friendly. In contrast, while driving south along the road with the Mediterranean to the right, we could look left and see refugee camps that look more like I expected refugee camps to look before coming to Palestine. The camps in the West Bank have slightly narrower streets than cities and villages, and a few more visible signs of poverty. Some of these camps in Gaza are different, and with their tiny buildings and narrowest of streets they certainly look like they could be described as the most crowded places on earth.

You couldn’t be in Palestine and not be doing some sort of “election observing” during these past couple weeks. In an American context where civic engagement is among the lowest in the world, it excites me to be somewhere where even with such difficulty living under occupation, at least 75% of eligible voters voted. I know too that 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners can’t vote from Israeli prisons, that the Israeli government only permitted 6% of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the Palestinian elections, and that the 2/3 of the Palestinian population that lives outside of Palestine, do not have any say in who will be representing them and potentially negotiating away their right to return to their land. Not that negotiations will be happening any time soon here, since Israel refuses to negotiate with a Hamas that doesn’t disarm. I wish Hamas would refuse to negotiate with an Israel that doesn’t disarm.

The most common joke I’ve heard made in the past couple days, if it can be called a joke, is that I’ll have to start covering myself fully. A man joked today that he’s already starting to grow his beard. I was in Dheisheh refugee camp yesterday where the kids were discussing the election, and the teenage girls unanimously decided they would never wear hijab, even if Hamas legislated for it. We had a vote on the title of the exhibit that we’re putting together with the children about the trips we took them on, with suggestions like “Life Within Two Days,” “New Life”, and “Destroyed Villages”. At the end of the voting one of the kids suggested, “Hamas won!”.

And there is still occupation. I was able to meet my friend Fatima’s mother in Rafah, who hasn’t seen her daughter since 1997 because people in Gaza can’t get out and people in the West Bank can’t get to Gaza. A 20-year-old man we spent some time with in Gaza did not go an hour without saying, “Take me with you to the West Bank.” He’s never been there. Our crossing out of Gaza showed us firsthand for the first time what can only be described as indentured servitude. Thousands of Palestinian workers – those lucky enough to have permits – were standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting for hours to be allowed to cross back home to Gaza after a long day at work in the fields or building construction.

The occupation and injustice goes on in all of Palestine, regardless of its status. In Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel, Palestinians do not have equal rights. Someone tried to convince us yesterday that while Palestinians inside Israel don’t have equal rights, at least they have some rights. Unequal rights are not rights, Dunya pointed out. I know the Gaza “disengagement” caused people around the world to start thinking that occupation is over and everything is okay but Palestine still needs all the support it can get.

Photos from my trip to Gaza: http://community.webshots.com/album/546824389rbKVnd

No Attempt to Kidnap Rachel Corrie’s Parents

From The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 4, 2006

News reports stating that the parents of slain American human rights activist Rachel Corrie were the intended targets of an attempted kidnapping Wednesday in Gaza are incorrect. According to Craig and Cindy Corrie, contrary to news reports, the Corries were never threatened with kidnapping, nor did gunmen burst into the house where the Corries were staying.

In the early morning of January 4, two Palestinian men visited three American members of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project (ORSCP) at the home where the Americans were staying in Rafah, a city on Gazas border with Egypt. The two men reportedly wanted to hold the three foreigners in exchange for the release of a family member who was arrested by Palestinian security forces for an earlier kidnapping. The Corries were staying in a nearby home and helped to talk the men out of going through with the plan.

Cindy and Craig Corrie, who are close friends with the ORSCP participants, were visiting Rafah after attending a Palestinian conference on nonviolence held last week in Bethlehem.

The Corries were visiting the Nasrallah family in Rafah. The Nasrallahs had lived in the house that Rachel died defending. Rachel was killed when she was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in front of the Nasrallahs home in Rafah on March 16, 2003. Rachel, who grew up in Olympia, Washington, envisioned a sister city project between Olympia and Rafah to promote cultural understanding. Five people from Olympia, friends of Rachel, arrived two months ago in Rafah to work toward that goal. Three of them Rochelle Gause, Will Hewitt and Serena Becker were in the apartment when the men arrived at 1:30 am. One of the two men was carrying a weapon. The men arrived in two cars with other passengers who remained inside the vehicles.

ORSCP members had been asked by their Palestinian Rafah sister city counterparts not to travel without Palestinian escorts. Kidnappings have increased in Gaza in the run-up to the January 25 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the first PLC elections that Palestinians in Gaza have been able to plan since 1996 due to the Israeli occupation. The three Americans in the apartment remained inside when the two men knocked on their door at 1:30 am, and called Dr. Nasrallah to tell him what was happening.

Dr. Nasrallah came and talked to the men and invited them to come down to his apartment. He learned that they, and the others in the two vehicles outside, were members of the family of a man from Rafah who had been arrested by the Palestinian police that evening on charges of involvement in a previous kidnapping.

The Corries, who were staying at Dr. Nasrallah’s home, got up and met the two men in the living room where they all drank tea together and discussed what they and the group of ORSCP participants were doing in Rafah. A neighbor, a Palestinian Authority security officer, also came over and joined the group. After a brief conversation with the security officer, the two men shook Craig and Cindy Corrie’s hands, and, according to Cindy Corrie, told the Corries that they had “great respect for our daughter and for us” and then left.

Over the next few hours, ORSCP members from Olympia met with their Rafah partners to discuss the situation. “We weren’t just concerned for our own safety,” the ORSCP group said. “We were also concerned about being a burden on the people here who have put so much work into this project.”

“There is a feeling that things will be calmer after the election,” Cindy Corrie said. “People in the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project say they plan on continuing their work in Rafah and will organize more people return to Rafah. We plan to visit again as well.”

Palestinian authority vehicles and cars driven by ORSCP’s Palestinian participants escorted the Corries and the five Olympia participants to Erez Checkpoint without incident Wednesday morning. “All the Palestinians that we worked with were going out of their way to make sure we all remained safe,” Serena Becker said. “We heard today and yesterday how embarrassed they were that these kinds of things were going on.”

“We will continue to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and human rights, the ORSCP participants said in a group statement. “The Israeli occupation has led to the militarization of a portion of Palestinian society and the continued Israeli occupation undermines the ability of Palestinians to have a free society.”

Cindy Corrie pointed to the upcoming Palestinian Legislative Council elections as a positive sign. “We need to pay attention to these positive things when they happen,” she said.

“The recent abductions of foreigners in Gaza have nothing to do with any political grievance with them or Western countries more generally, unlike the situation in Iraq,” said Steve Niva, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at The Evergreen State College. “These kidnappings are almost all carried out by disgruntled members of the secular ruling Fatah party or its ‘security apparatus’ who use the hostages as leverage to pressure the Palestinian Authority for higher salaries, jobs, higher ranks, or the release from prisons for their relatives suspected of crimes. The kidnappings are best understood as a crude form of political bargaining in a context shaped by the desparate poverty, unemployment and destruction of the basic infrastructure and institutions of Palestinian life that resulted from 40 years of Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip. They are likely to increase in intensity as Palestinians move towards elections in late January, which will threaten the existing patronage and employment networks within the Palestinian Authority that many Palestinians have come to rely upon in order to meet their basic needs.”

Parents speaking out to keep alive memory of child killed in Gaza


Photo by Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette

By Gabrielle Banks
Originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Cindy and Craig Corrie have been doing speaking engagements a few times per month since their daughter Rachel died kneeling in front of an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza nearly three years ago.

The 23-year-old peace activist’s death became such a fulcrum for a debate that President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eventually weighed in on it.

An Israeli military investigation concluded that Rachel’s death on March 16, 2003 was accidental; the Corries have requested that U.S. officials conduct an independent investigation.

But, rather than focus on the details of that unforgettable day at speaking engagements, they try to honor Rachel’s life by continuing the work she hoped to accomplish.

The Corries, who live in Olympia, Wash., will touch on those global issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a discussion tonight at the University of Pittsburgh. Their talk will follow a screening of a documentary about Rachel’s work by Palestinian director Yahya Barakat.

Rachel was a senior at Evergreen State College when she set off for Gaza in January 2003 with the International Solidarity Movement, a group that practices peaceful civil disobedience to prevent demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure.

Her death thrust Ms. Corrie, 58, and Mr. Corrie, 59, who describes his extended family as “average Americans — politically liberal, economically conservative, middle class,” into the heat of a geopolitical struggle that Rachel feared too few Americans understood.

To deepen their understanding of her life and her death, the Corries and Rachel’s two older siblings combed through their memories, trying to absorb details. A journal entry Ms. Corrie made when Rachel was 2 1/2 jumped out: her toddler asked, “Is ‘brave’ part of growing up?”

Rachel rattled off a list of potential careers for her fifth-grade yearbook that included a lawyer, a poet, “an environmental and humanitarian activist” and the first female president.

In a seemingly prophetic e-mail to her mother about two weeks before her death, she wrote: “Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. … I am really scared for the people here.”

They heard machine-gun fire in the background the first time she spoke with Rachel on the phone.

Mr. Corrie had trouble writing to Rachel. Based on what she said and his experience with the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam, he believed the Israeli military at the time was “out of control.”

Rachel was bunking with the children in the first floor of a duplex that belonged to a local pharmacist, Dr. Samir Nasrallah, and his wife. The Nasrallah children were behind her, inside their home, when a 65-ton Caterpillar bulldozer crushed Rachel to death.

“There are many people who are doing what Rachel was doing in Palestine and other parts of the world,” Mr. Corrie said.

He admitted, “I’m not the type of man that would sacrifice his child’s life, I miss her.”

But the Corries clearly admire their daughter for taking a stand.

“Wouldn’t we all like to think we’re the kind of person who, if a child was in front of a bus, we would dive and save them?” he asked.

The film “Rachel: an American Conscience” will be screened at 7:30 tonight at 120 David Lawrence Hall, University of Pittsburgh. Cindy and Craig Corrie will lead a discussion.