Rachel Corrie’s story is one America needs to know, too

Rachel Corrie’s story is one America needs to know, too
By Jack Dresser
Published: Tuesday, Mar 29, 2011 08:00AM
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Lord Leebrick Theatre Co.’s  production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” recently 
ended, ably directed  by Carol Dennis with Rachel’s role well-performed by 
Nicole Trobaugh. We  thank the theater for staging this important work, now 
translated into  some half-dozen languages and staged in over a dozen countries 
to date. 

We agree with Craig Weinerman’s March 9  guest viewpoint that more context for 
the events leading to Rachel’s  death was needed, and we provided some basics on 
one-page handouts to  theater-goers at each performance. On the first two nights 
our handouts  corrected misinformation on the theater’s website and playbill, 
which  managers agreed to remove after speaking with the Corries.
Following this, what Weinerman described as  our “aggressive and defamatory 
anti-Israel advocacy” on new handouts  included the mission statement of the 
International Solidarity Movement  with which Rachel worked, which describes 
itself as “a Palestinian-led  movement committed to resisting the Israeli 
apartheid in Palestine by  using nonviolent, direct-action methods and 
principles.”
It continues, “Founded by a small group of  primarily Palestinian and Israeli 
activists in August 2001, ISM aims to  support and strengthen the Palestinian 
popular resistance by providing  the Palestinian people with two resources, 
international solidarity and  an international voice with which to nonviolently 
resist an overwhelming  military occupation force.”
We added, “Martin Luther King once said,  ‘The moral arc of the universe bends 
at the elbow of justice.’ By  joining the ISM, Rachel was not simply following 
personal beliefs and  youthful idealism, but was engaging directly in shaping 
this historical  arc, defending the weak from abuse by the strong, challenging 
cruelty  and injustice, and supporting fundamental human rights under  
international law:
“Everyone has a right to life, liberty and security of person” — Article 3, 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property” — Article 17(2), 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“The occupying power shall not deport or  transfer parts of its own civilian 
population into the territory it  occupies” — Article 49, Fourth Geneva 
Convention.
“Any destruction by the occupying power of  real or personal property belonging 
individually or collectively to  private persons ... is prohibited, except where 
such destruction is made  absolutely necessary by military operations” — Article 
53, Fourth  Geneva Convention.
In addition, we corrected one playbill  statement defining the intifadas as 
“attacks by Palestinian militants on  the state of Israel,” defining them rather 
as “popular uprisings  against the Israeli occupation.” The first intifada 
followed Gandhian  principles and Palestinian resistance for some 2½ decades has 
been  largely nonviolent against Israeli occupation of their land, on their  
land. Israeli state violence has vastly exceeded violence by  Palestinians (see 
www.ifamericansknew.org). 

We also provided a list of informative  websites for theater patrons who might 
wish to explore more thoroughly  the conditions opposed by Rachel and the ISM 
and/or become more  involved. On the back of the sheet we provided our own 
mission statement  advocating “freedom, justice and equality in the Holy Land” — 
not  exactly radical ideas.
Weinerman’s characterization of the context  in which Rachel was crushed to 
death by an Israeli bulldozer while  attempting to protect a Palestinian 
family’s home from demolition as “a  counterterrorism operation” would be 
comical did it not reflect an  ongoing tragedy for many thousands of 
Palestinians in addition to  Rachel. Since 1967, over 25,000 Palestinian family 
homes and over a  million fruit and olive trees — the mainstay of their economy 
— have  been destroyed by Israel to establish illegal settlements, the  
segregation wall and a network of Jewish-only roads on Palestinian land,  some 
600 checkpoints on Palestinian roads that suffocate Palestinian  commerce and 
social relationships, and other activities illegal under  the Fourth Geneva 
Convention (see www.icahd.org).
Sympathetic identification with Rachel’s  death was compared with — and by 
implication reduced by — the “equally  tragic” stories of eight Israeli victims 
of suicide bombings named and  described by Weinerman. They too are certainly 
tragic. 

The Israeli human rights organization  B’Tselem has recorded the deaths of 
children on both sides since the  beginning of the second intifada in September 
2000 (see www.rememberthesechildren.org). Through the end of 2010, 124 Israeli 
and  1,457 Palestinian children had been killed. We encourage readers to  
examine these records online, organized in parallel columns by month,  
specifying the name, age and cause of death of each victim. 

Ninety-three Palestinian children had been killed before the first Israeli child 
died.
One hundred and five Palestinian children  had been killed before the first 
suicide bombing, which killed two  Israeli teenagers at a gas station. 

Following discontinuation of suicide bombings by Hamas in 2005, eight Israeli 
and 671 Palestinian children have been killed.
Rachel died to protect Palestinians. Each  Palestinian child also had a name, 
unknown and invisible to American  consumers of our pro-Israel press. Each had 
parents and family, who  remain voiceless. We too would like these other stories 
told. And as for  Rachel’s parents as “critics,” they must now also serve as 
proxies for  some 3,000 grieving Palestinian parents.
Jack Dresser is national vice  chairman of the Veterans for Peace working group 
on Israel/Palestine and  co-director of Eugene’s Al-Nakba Awareness Project.