Rachel Corrie

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (robert)]

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From: "Jennifer Shepherd" <http://www.earthlink.net/~jenithea>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 21:08:09 -0800

As you may already have heard, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old senior at the
Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA (my hometown and my college), was
crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer near the Gaza/Egypt border
yesterday, as she attempted to protect a Palestinian home from being
destroyed.

Below is a letter she wrote to her parents just a few weeks before her
death.  Her observations and comments are especially affecting in light of
what ended up happening to her.  

Here also is an article on her in the Olympian:
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/newsupdate/story4.shtml  

--js

-----------------------------
Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents:

March 16, 2003

"We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details behind
the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip. We have raised all our children to
appreciate the beauty of the global community and family and are proud that
Rachel was able to live her convictions.  Rachel was filled with love and a
sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived.  And, she gave her
life trying to protect those that are unable to protect themselves.  Rachel
wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the media
her experience in her own words at this time.

Thank you.
Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
---------------------

Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003.

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--at least regarding
Israel.

Nevertheless, I think about the fact that 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 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, of course, the fact 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 half way between Mud Bay and downtown
Olympia at a checkpoint-a soldier 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 percent 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. Currently, the Israeli
army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and
the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border.  Six
hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah
Popular Refugee Committee.  The number of homes that have been partially
destroyed is greater.

Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian
soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go!
Go!" because a tank was coming.  Followed by waving and "what's your name?".
There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity.  It reminded me
of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids:
Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks.
Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peek out from behind walls to
see what's going on.  International kids standing in front of tanks with
banners.  Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and
also occasionally waving--many forced to be here, many just aggressive,
shooting into the houses as we wander away.

 In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the
western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more
IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon, at the end of streets.
Some just army green metal.  Others these strange spiral staircases draped
in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous.  Some
hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings.  A new one went up the other
day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang
banners.  Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the
original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a
century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian
controlled areas under Oslo.  But as far as I can tell, there are few if any
places that are not within the sights of some tower or another.  Certainly
there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of
invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.

I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I
hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable.  There is a great deal of
concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza."  Gaza is reoccupied every day
to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all
the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and
then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the
edges of the communities.  If people aren't already thinking about the
consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope
they will start.

I also hope you'll come here.  We've been wavering between five and six
internationals.  The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of
presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and
Block O.  There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on
the outskirts of Rafah  since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest
wells.  According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last
week provided half of Rafah's water supply. Many of the communities have
requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses
from further demolition.  After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move
at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance
and shoots at them.  So clearly we are too few.

I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a
lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-
community relationship.  Some teachers and children's groups have expressed
interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of
solidarity work that might be done.  Many people want their voices to be
heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to
get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of
well-meaning internationals such as myself.  I am just beginning to learn,
from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of
people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.

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