Rachel Corrie In Her Own Words
by
Rachel Corrie
Dissident Voice
March 17, 2003
(Editor’s
Note: On March 16, International
Solidarity Mission activist Rachel Corrie, age 23, was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer
driver as she tried to prevent the bulldozer from raising the home of a
Palestinian home in Rafah, occupied Gaza. For more information: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml)
Statement by Craig and Cindy
Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
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.
Excerpts from an e-mail from
Rachel Corrie to her family on Feb. 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 h! ave 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 its 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 peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of
tanks w! ith 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 t! he 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 voic! es 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.
Thanks for the news I've
been getting from friends in the US. I
just read a report back from a friend who organized a peace group in Shelton,
Washington, and was able to be part of a delegation to the large January 18th
protest in Washington DC. People here
watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large
protests in the United States and "problems for the government" in
the UK. So thanks for allowing me to
not feel like a complete polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many
people in the United States do not support the policies of our government, and
that we are learning from global examples how to resist.