posted March 16, 2005 08:59 PM            

On April 7, the play "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," based on Rachel's diaries and e-mails to her family during her stay in Rafah, will open at the London Royal Court Theatre. While in Madison last fall, Rachel's parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, received a plaque indicating that a tree had been planted in Rachel's memory in Vietnam. Again this year, her memory will be honored by people all over the world.

And yet, while searching the Internet for information about Rachel, I was stunned at the cruel campaign of vilification and blaming-the-victim that abounds there.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Wash., was crushed to death in 2003 while standing her ground to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist, Dr. Samir Nassrallah.

A volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel lived with the Nassrallah family in Rafah while she worked to prevent the army from demolishing houses to clear a strip of land several hundred meters wide between Rafah's city edge and the nearby Egyptian border. Since 2000, more than 3,600 houses have been destroyed in Gaza; two-thirds of them were in Rafah. Human Rights Watch statistics for the whole Gaza Strip reveal that 22,963 people are homeless, 16,000 of them from Rafah.

Rachel Corrie was run over by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer, manufactured in the United States and sent to Israel as part of the regular, annual U.S. aid package of $3 billion to $4 billion. The use of Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy civilian homes is in direct violation of U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. military aid against civilians.

Wednesday, April 13, has been set aside as an "International Day of Action Against Caterpillar," and a protest is planned at the Chicago Caterpillar board meeting.

Israel is in its 38th year of what has becomean unrelentingly violent occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - one of the longest such occupations in modern history. It continues only because of our own country's support.

In an e-mail message Rachel wrote to her parents just before she was killed, she said, "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 really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel."

Rachel Corrie was inspired by a quotation from Albert Einstein: "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

When will the rest of us begin to learn the lesson of Rachel Corrie's life and death?

posted March 17, 2005 01:44 PM            

I will, however, take issue with this quote:

"Rachel Corrie was run over by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer, manufactured in the United States and sent to Israel as part of the regular, annual U.S. aid package of $3 billion to $4 billion. The use of Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy civilian homes is in direct violation of U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. military aid against civilians."

We also send billions of aid to the palistinians as well as other Arab countries to try and keep the peace. The fact that our aid or our manufactured products are being thrown in our face as if WE, the US killed that woman is just assine and irreponsible.

That is the equivalent to saying "Little Johnny died because Budwieser makes 1 billion cases of beer a year and which is distributes throughout the country. If Budweiser had been more responsible and if GM hadn't manufactured the car that Johnny drove, he would be alive today"

It is unreasonable to lay responsibility of someone's actions (Israel) on the fact that a US company makes tanks, weapons or anything else.