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Rachel Corrie's Memory, Israel's Image
Seven years ago yesterday, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a
Caterpillar D9R Israeli bulldozer while nonviolently protesting the
demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, Gaza Strip, along with other
members of the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM). Now her parents, sister and brother are
suing the State of Israel and the defense minister, claiming wrongful
death.
The suit's objective, according to Rachel's mother, Cindy, "is to
illustrate the need for
accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by
[Israel's] occupation.... We hope the trial will bring attention to
the assault on nonviolent human rights activists (Palestinian, Israeli
and international) and we hope it will underscore the fact that so
many Palestinian families, harmed as deeply as ours or more, cannot
access Israeli courts."
The State's attorneys have decided to use any and all ammunition to undermine Corrie's suit. They claim that there is no evidence that Rachel's parents and siblings are indeed her rightful inheritors; they argue that she "helped attack Israeli soldiers," "took part in belligerent activities" and accompanied armed men who attacked Israeli soldiers. In defense of the soldiers, the lawyers even write that the state "denies the deceased's pain and suffering, the loss of pleasures and the loss of longevity."
The Israeli state attorneys demonstrate yet again that when winning is everything, shame becomes superfluous.
As Corrie's civil suit is being heard in a Haifa court, Simone Bitton's movie Rachel is being shown at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Rendering, as it were, the trial public, Bitton's subtle and nuanced movie also presents two narratives, one offered by the state of Israel and the other by the ISM activists and the Palestinian eyewitnesses who were with Rachel on that tragic day.
In a self-reflective moment, the film reveals that about an hour after Rachel was crushed to death, Salim Najar, a Palestinian street cleaner, was killed by an Israeli sniper in Rafah. The incident is important because it emphasizes that Palestinian blood is cheap--no media outlet bothered to cover the killing, and, as Bitton herself notes, no one will likely be making a movie about Najar. This incident also helps underscore that Rachel has become an iconic "Palestinian" of sorts as well as a symbol of the struggle for social justice. She dedicated the last part of her short life to the Palestinian cause, and, after she was killed, the memory of her human rights work in Rafah has helped internationalize the struggle. Rachel's memory has thus itself become a site where several struggles continue to be played out.
The Israeli government has always recognized the importance of the fight over narrative; it is particularly sensitive to stories--like Rachel Corrie's death--that take on global proportions and therefore influence Israel's international image.
These struggles are considered so important that in 2004 the Israeli Foreign Ministry introduced the "Brand Israel" campaign, whose objective was to alter the country's image by rebranding Israel as a land of medical, scientific and technological innovations. Over the years millions of dollars have been channeled into international PR firms; these firms advised the ministry to draw attention to Israeli scientists doing stem-cell research or to the young computer experts who have given the world Instant Messaging, while trying to de-emphasize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by loosening the link between Israel and concrete walls, torture, terrorism, house demolitions and extrajudicial executions.
Yet following last year's assault on Gaza and the subsequent publication of the Goldstone Report, Brand Israel proponents realized that drawing attention away from conflict-related issues just wasn't working. Turning the wheels back, they argued that "winning the battle of narratives" had to remain a prime objective.
Cutting-edge technology--such as Twitter, YouTube and a newly devised "Internet megaphone"--was immediately utilized by the Israeli military and Foreign Ministry to counter the images of mass destruction coming out of Gaza. Simultaneously, the strategy of branding anyone critical of Israeli policies as an anti-Semite became even more pervasive, and a variety of methods developed by Bar Ilan University's Gerald Steinberg were deployed to delegitimize human rights organizations documenting Israel's occupation while condemning the organizations' donors.
But this, apparently, was not enough. The attack now is directed not only against the messengers--namely, human rights groups and people like Rachel Corrie who refer to international law in order to protest the abusive nature of Israeli policies--but also against the very legitimacy of international human rights law. International law is now considered a major problem, because it is used to criticize Israel's violation of human rights in the occupied territories and obstructs certain strategies employed in the war on terrorism, like torture. The well-known trope that Israel is merely defending itself is at the heart of this complaint too.
When social justice activists like Rachel Corrie are branded terrorists and international human rights law becomes the enemy of the state--all in the name of winning the narrative battle--then it becomes absolutely clear that something is terribly wrong. As Jews around the world come together to celebrate Passover, the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery and the beginning of a life of freedom, they should keep in mind Rachel's last words to her mother: "I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports...." As Jews sit at the Passover table this year, they should take Rachel Corrie's words to heart.
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27 Comments so far
Show All"As Jews sit at the Passover table this year, they should take Rachel Corrie's words to heart."
I have no doubt that many Jews do take Rachel Corrie's death and words seriously.
Unfortunately, the motivations of the zionists - both in Israel and elsewhere - have nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism.
As for the lies being generated about Rachel by the defense lawyers, these scum have gotten away with their crimes for so long that, as the author notes, they have no shame - or humanity.
q
Israeli lawyers will now trash Rachel's reputation as its soldiers crushed her body, and as its military crushed Lebanon and Gaza.
The Israelis have become the new Huns. The abused have become the abuser.
They scoff at US representatives and flaunt new settlements as VP Biden visits.
These are not the actions of an ally or of a friend.
Shutting off the conduit of US taxpayer billions to Israel every year is long overdue.
"The abused have become the abuser."
But this generation of zionists has not suffered the abuses that the holocaust survivors endured.
q
True, but everyone has relatives who were lost. The memory of the Holocaust continues, as well it should, for Jews and non-Jews alike. For some, it teaches us to never let it happen again, to ourselves or any other group (like Palestinians, for example); for others, the memory somehow becomes a reason to bash others especially those weaker than ourselves, as abusers do.
MC
"Cutting-edge technology--such as Twitter, YouTube and a newly devised "Internet megaphone"--was immediately utilized by the Israeli military and Foreign Ministry to counter the images of mass destruction coming out of Gaza."
Exactly:
Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:
1 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
2 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
3 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier
4 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
5 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
6 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
7 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
8 – Defend the occupation and ethnic cleansing without mentioning the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
9 – Make so illegitimate arguments or use inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
10 – Switch between tactics 1-9 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
11 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic.
12 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.
Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like the above to try and win public opinion.
Israeli defense lawyers may affect the opinion of the court, the politicians, the Israeli citizen, and Zionists everywhere, but the rest of the world KNOWS what happened on that ugly day in March 2003. Shine, Rachel, shine.
Rachael Corrie died standing up to evil. Anne Frank died hiding from it. That makes all the difference.
???
I'm not sure exactly what the point of this apples/oranges comparison is, but Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp of typhus.
As true as that is, Obedient Servant, is it possible that maybe, just maybe, Anne Frank wouldn't have contracted typhus and died from it if her family hadn't been hauled off to Bergen-Belsen?
Oh, come on, Humbaba!!
As horrific as Rachel Corrie's death was, unlike Rachel Corrie, Anne Frank didn't have a choice. Her family did the best they could in the hopes of surviving the horrific Nazi onslaught and avoid the fate of most other Jews in the concentration camps, only to be found by the Gestapo and hauled off to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they all met their deaths just simply because they were the "wrong" religion...inotherwords, Jewish.
Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, chose to go to an extremely volatile part of the world and risk her life, and ended up getting killed, which was too bad. Don't forget, however, that Corrie went over to Gaza of her own volition. She wasn't sent over by her government or anybody else.
Every comment that you make seeks to diminish both the outrageousness of Corrie's murder - and it was murder - and the sheer inhumanity of the IDF.
There is no one to blame for Rachel Corrie's death but the driver of the bulldozer and whoever sent him to destroy.
Whether Corrie was sent to the Palestinians or went of her own accord is completely beside the point.
You may be a bit slicker than most of the zionist drones sent to this site but you are no less insidious.
q
Well said. Independent throws a few words out there to sound like a progressive (reasoning: no harm since there are so many progressive comments made) then slides a comment in that aims to further support the ethnic cleansing policy.
Another one of your personal attacks, Progressive101? Very smart.
Call me what you want, quickstepper. I don't approve of what Israel's doing to the Palestinians any more than you do, but given the fact that several ISM members, including Rachel Corrie herself, had narrow escapes with the bulldozers, they should've known that sooner or later, there was going to be a fatality at least in part, as a consequence of the strategy, and altered their strategies immediately.
That is the difference between being a victim and being a hero.
Frankly, smitty88,
I think you misunderstand something; Anne Frank and her family were victims just simply because of their heritage. It's sad that a planned, calculated extermination of a people by gas, etc, could happen like this.
While I'm sorry about Rachel Corrie's death, she put herself in harm's way, with the help of her friends. One doesn't have to approve of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem to realize that.
"... no one will likely be making a movie about Najar."
This is what is so horrifying - that it takes the death of an American citizen to get even a stir of attention from the MSM. Like the Americans who were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez the other day. Lots of press, lots of lip service to the drug wars on the border (though not to the poverty and social disruption) when nice white people are the victims. But poor little Sylvia X or Pilar Y or Maria Z, raped and murdered at the rate of several per day on their way home from some NAFTA spawned maquiladora in Juarez alone, get no attention from the police or the press or anybody else. A standing wave of dead innocents, day after day, year after year. They just don't seem to matter.
Not for the squeamish: Juarez - the laboratory of our future, a photo essay by Charles Bowden, preface by Noam Chomsky.
It's great that the young woman's family is suing Israel (and good luck getting the help of U.S. representatives with THAT!), but the weird sort of personality/martyr cult that seems to be creeping up for her makes me cringe.
Yes, the bastards killed her -- that's what the bastards will do. Who is surprised? There are about a zillion other victims of oppressors in human history, so what's with the obsession with this one? Why is the Nation still writing about her? Has nobody else been killed by Israelis since then?
Makes me think of the endless Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Free Leonard Peltier stuff I've seen in every rock show and record store I've been to in the last 20 years. Lots of noise, until there's only noise, and the bastards have got no problem with us distracting ourselves with noise.
I don't know if I can explain it clearly because more emotion is involved in my response to Rachel's death than any rational thought. A huge lump of sadness and admiration wells up in my chest for a type of courage that I might summon up today, but never would have when I was her age. Her death also marked a turning point in my life: a life-long believer in the goodness of Israel and in Israeli propaganda against the Palestinians, I was forced to face the phoniness of that propaganda and to abandon my insistence that Israel was the perpetual victim.
I wish you hadn't died, Rachel, but losing you to an Israeli bulldozer succeeded in making this person a better human being, one with a more open mind and less likely to judge others without first seeking out the truth. Thank you.
The Zionists slander the person they murdered (Rachel Corrie) just as they slander anybody who exposes their abomination.
I am ashamed that the US government is complicit in denying justice to Rachel Corrie.
In denying her humanity, they only demonstrate their own utter lack of same.
...
"...In denying her humanity, they only demonstrate their own utter lack of same."
"...same" or sanity?
...
"...In denying her humanity, they only demonstrate their own utter lack of same."
"...same" or sanity?
Jeevee: The answer is "both." Humanity and sanity are morally and intellectually equivalent.
That's why the political psychopaths who rule us, the Palestinians, etc., are serial perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
You know what's really depressing? There are only 18 comments here. Israel's campaign is working.
You are so right. I don't understand. Maybe even opinionated liberals haven't taken the time to find out who she is and why she matters so much.
Rachel Corrie's parents continue her work: to speak out for Palestinians.This dedication, the unwillingness to forget or be distracted from what is really important show what humans can be like when they decide to live as decent human beings.
The word should go out, from this day forward, that Rachel Corrie's death, the deaths of the crew members of the Liberty, the deaths of the human rights workers and journalists murdered by Israelis while simply doing their jobs, the deaths caused by Mossad hit squads operating all over the world, conclusively prove the following, the Israeli Jews are not murdering and torturing and destroying the lives of Palestinians because they are Palestinian, they are free to act this way because the Palestinians are non-Jewish. They will treat any one and everyone exactly the same way. This includes the non-Jewish fools who support them. How crazy is it, to support cold-blooded murdering racists who hate your guts and would kill you with impunity on a whim, and get away with it because their government doesn't recognize your humanity, or should I say, your Jewishness? You should rethink the ridiculous notion that Holocaust sympathies justify utterly unrelated murder, terror and genocide. It can't be that hard to understand, even for the thoroughly brainwashed.