Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie

By Elizabeth Corrie

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Posted 03/02 | Add a Comment

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  1. I’d like to point out that one of the reasons everyone should be wary of MOTHER JONES is because of the abominable way they handled their main Rachel Corrie story last year...handing it over to someone who has a history of being sympathetic to Israel, to say the least.  It was a very disrespectful piece.  Why the double-standard?  Indeed.  It’s high time that people in our so-called movement acknowledge that they’re going to accomplish very little unless they force our government to radically change its relationship w Israel. Neither Kerry, Edward, Sharpton or even Kucinich has said anything nearly enough about how much we need to sever ties and/or cut back on support. Dennis has come closer than the others, but, still, we will go nowhere significant...without taking the extra steps that are required...to stop acting as if genocide of the Palestinians hasn’t been taking place for a long time...under the auspices of both parties.  Ditto regarding Native Americans.  I’d like to see some justice respecting Rachel Corrie and others who have made such sacrifices, but I know we’ll never have it without revolutionary talk...and action.  Loving regards in solidarity, Richard Oxman

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  03/02  at  06:35 PM

  2. Rachel was too good for this world.  In Mark Twain’s two-page short story “The Five Boons of Life,” which had four-hundred pages of meaning, he said of all life’s gifts, death was the one and only that had any value.  When we grieve for the dead, we grieve for our loss, and not the change in the deceased.  For they are in a place better than this one, which is anywhere else.  Even if that is absolute nothingness, as Twain inferred.  Let Rachel’s courage and conscience be an example to us all!

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  03/03  at  05:25 PM

  3. Mar. 1, 2004
    A ‘tribute’ to Rachel Corrie
    By RUHAMA SHATTAN

    March 16 is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.

    Perhaps it was these explosives that in the year since her martyrdom –oops, death – have been strapped around suicide bombers to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem, killing men, women, and schoolchildren (two of them classmates of my daughter and her friend in the February 22, 2004 bombing), and leaving hundreds more widows, orphans, and bereaved parents.

    On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing Palestinian children how to despise America as she snarled, burned an American flag, and led them in chanting slogans, and as she gave “evidence” at a Young Palestinian Parliament mock trial finding President Bush guilty of crimes against humanity.

    Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall.

    ON THE first anniversary of her death, I wanted to thank Rachel Corrie for providing her organization, the Palestinian-sponsored International Solidarity Movement, with the opportunity to release a manipulated photo sequence “showing” an Israeli military bulldozer deliberately crushing her. (I would also like to thank AP and The Christian Science Monitor for taking up the baton and immortalizing this cynical ISM stunt.)

    On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing the way to all those who seek peace in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Corrie’s peace, as anyone familiar with the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, and Hizbullah organizations that she defended with her life knows – or as anyone familiar with the weekly rants of the Friday preachers in the Palestinian mosques is aware – means not peaceful coexistence but the elimination of the State of Israel, and death to those they call “the usurping Jews, the sons of apes and pigs.”

    Thank you, Rachel Corrie, of Evergreen State University, where the profs wear khakis and keffiyehs at graduation ceremonies, for showing us what peace really means.

    My comments.  Palestinian children are raised in a culture that glamorizes terrorism at every turn, encouraging active participation in suicide terror from the youngest age.

    While American kids collect baseball cards, Palestinian kids eagerly collect “terrorist cards.”
    http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2003/12/terrorist_tradi.html

    PA sermons urge children to blow themselves up while “plunging into the midst of the Jews. This through the systematic indoctrination of young Palestinian children ? through official PA schoolbooks, public events, television, and even music videos ? to become suicide terrorists “for the sake of Allah.” MEMRI documents this. http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR2403

    Pictures from 2 weeks ago by Reuters in Gaza, which show how Palestinian terrorists use hundreds of children as human shields.  http://mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=461

    Posted by Dan from  on  03/04  at  06:22 PM

  4. Dear Dan: Perhaps it would have worked better --getting across your feelings-- if you had worked in a little bit of respect in the process of denigrating Rachel’s work. Perhaps you noticed that Elizabeth Corrie wrote the piece?  Are we all to take away the idea that you feel Rachel contributed nothing positve worth acknowledging?
    Work at it, if you will, Dan....
    Richard Oxman

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  03/04  at  08:04 PM

  5. Dan,

    This young woman was killed defending what she believed in. No matter whether you feel it was right or wrong, have some respect. She was not killing anyone or harming anyone, she was peacefully protesting what she felt was the unjust demolition of Palestinian homes. Disregarding her life in such a way as you did, or ANY life, for that matter, is one of the lowest things I think anyone can do. Shame on you.

    Posted by Brendon Constans from  on  03/05  at  04:38 PM

  6. Dan --

    You...are an ass, plain and simple.

    If you were truly concerned about the “flow” of explosives that travel freely from Egypt to Gaza, maybe you’d also express a modicum of concern for the “flow” of weaponry from the U.S. to Israel, which enables the killing of peaceful protesters like Rachel.

    Perhaps you would also like to “thank” the billions in U.S. tax dollars that enable the Israeli military machine to inflict it’s wrath upon the Palestinian people.

    Perhaps it was those Apache helicopter launched missiles at so-called “militants”, and the American-made bulldozers that destroy many Palestinian homes, and the stealing of their land that has been been the reason behind “suicide bombers who try to blow up city buses and restaurants in Israeli cities, particularly in Jerusalem.” Did that ever occur to you?

    >

    Sorry, Dan. Bush will not be president until he is ELECTED. But he is most certainly guilty of crimes against humanity, and many crimes at that. And last time I checked, freedom of speech was still a freedom in this country, despite the likes of Ashcroft. And there are no criminal penalties I’m aware of that require anti-government protesters to be bulldozed for expressing their opinions. I find it interesting that feeble minded people like you seem to think that killing a person for expressing an opinion is somehow justified.

    >

    Manipulated photo my ass, you fucking liar. The only people manipulating photos in this matter were the Israeli military, who released a clearly doctored and excorsised version of the video of the event.

    >

    Me too. Enough said.

    Posted by Michael Henry from  on  03/08  at  02:19 AM

  7. Why did my comment agreeing with ‘Dan’ get deleted?  Anyway, AGAIN, well said Dan!  I couldn’t agree w/you more.

    Posted by Anon. from  on  03/15  at  02:59 PM

  8. I believe Rachel would want us to withhold our money from the U.S. Government --as it is presently structured-- to make it much more difficult for financial support to flow in Israel’s direction...for such abominations.  That’s what we should be doing; acting on something that will make a difference...once the words stop flowing.  Best, Richard Oxman

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  03/15  at  09:09 PM

  9. Rachel’s fight should have been here in the USA...lets deal with OUR problems HERE...there are millions of americans who are NOT lucky enough to own a HOME or even feed themselves...lets get ourselves straight before we go diving into someone else’s business!!
    peacefully yours and Bless the USA----Dave

    Posted by David Smith from  on  03/16  at  11:08 AM

  10. David Smith,

    While I agree in principle with the ‘think globally, act locally’ meme, you seem a little quick to sidestep the issue of an unarmed foreign national’s death at the hands of the Israeli military and the lack of accountability of the Israeli military in this incident.
    Regardless of the what you think of the Palestinian people, the intifada, the activism of Americans overseas, and Israel’s struggles as a nation; running over an unarmed girl with a bulldozer is illegal and immoral on many layers REGARDLESS of her not working soup kitchens and building HFH houses here in the States, which hopefully good citizens such as yourself are doing.
    Oh, and BTW...I strongly suspect Rachel had exponentially bigger cajones than any posters on this board, myself included.

    -- --
    I do not argue Rachel’s heroic aspirations...it is just ashame she could not put that energy to good work here in the US....the problem is that Olympia, WA and evergreen private college is NOT a proper example of America....
    I would rather see this young lion work for America’s poor & immgration ...are things so perfect in the States that we do not need young volunteers like Rachel? We desperatly needed this energy here ...sure she has cajones...but Paul...look where it got her! And the sad thing is most americans have no clue who rachel is....so instead of worrying about the middle east I worry about my own brothers & sisters/ is that wrong?.... You should do the same instead of diverting attention thousands of miles away...My point that her cause was just but her personal fight is over...and things will continue on as they were...and her efforts are lost in vain in another country.

    Posted by David Smith from  on  03/16  at  04:39 PM

  11. For anyone who thinks that Rachel’s work thousands of miles away from these shores was not related to our country’s problems, please note that, for starters, the billions that are spent on propping up Israel could be used here at home.
    That the additional billions that go into our “military investments” thousands of miles from home...could be diverted back home.  Again, that’s just for (financial) starters. Best,Richard Oxman

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  03/17  at  01:04 AM

    12. Next entry: Burn the Maps and Get Lost in the Territory

    Previous entry: Questions and Answers: What Happened to 2/15?

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