FW: [Fwd: Rachel Corrie]
Dear friends,
This evening I went to a candlelight memorial event fro US activist Rachel Corrie, who was buried alive and crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer. Israel's escalation accompanies the US offensive in Iraq and ominously points to the future.
Act for peace and justice!
gk

Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 6:37 PM
Subject: FW: [Fwd: Rachel Corrie]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Rachel Corrie
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 10:54:31 -0800 (PST)
From: brenna forester < brenna_forester@yahoo.com>

I wanted to send out this message to make sure that
everyone had heard about the killing of Rachel Corrie,
23, a friend of mine and fellow student here at the
Evergreen State College. Rachel was in Rafah in the
Occupied Gaza Strip as an International Solidarity
Movement peace activist. She had been there for 2
months with 8 other internationals acting as witnesses
and protectors for Palestinians who are targeted daily
by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as "terrorists".

Rachel was killed while standing in front of a
bulldozer that was moving to tear down the home of a
Palestinian doctor and his family. Despite what some
of you may have read in the mainstream news, Rachel
was clearly seen by the IDF soldier driving the
bulldozer - she had been speaking with him through a
megaphone for at least 10 minutes before the soldier
drove the bulldozer forward and ran over her. She was
clearly visible in a flourescent orange jacket.

Internationals were at this particular residential
site to prevent the destruction of homes by the IDF -
homes that are being destroyed in order to construct a
"security wall" through the area. On the same day
Rachel was murdered, the IDF also killed 11
Palestinians, including a 4-year old girl and a
13-year old boy.

These terrible crimes are part of a larger reign of
terror perpetrated by the Israeli government with the
complicity (and weapons, bombs, helicopter gunships,
and bulldozers) of the US government. They cannot be
separated from the larger issues of US militarism and
unilateralism around the world - focused most recently
on Afghani civilians and now on Iraqi civilians.

PLEASE do not believe the IDF and State Department
coverup of Rachel's death. It was NOT an accident,
and the killing will continue in Palestine and around
the world unless we stand up, raise our voices and get
in the streets to stop this US government bent on
death and terror.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? This quote from Starhawk, activist
and feminist also in Palestine with the International
Solidarity Movement: "Rachel was twenty three years
old. I am trying to fathom the mind that could pull
the levers and gun the motor to crush the life out of
her young body. That choice, that deliberate act of
murder that ended her sweet life, seems
incomprehensible. But here in occupied Palestine, that
murder seems a logical outgrowth of the system of
total dehumanization that controls every aspect of
life, that cannot see the human being in the
Palestinian, that claims to be fighting terror by
institutionalizing it.

Please register your outrage-at Rachel's murder, at
the home demolitions that she was trying to stop, at
the illegal occupation that can only be defended by
brutalizing a whole people.

Call the Ministry of Defense
972 3 6955476
(011972 3 6955476) from the US

972 3 69 75 220
(011972) 3 69 75 220 from the US

Fax the Foreign Office
972 2 5303506
011972 530 3506
General Director: Phone
972 2 530 7704
011972 2 530 3506 (from the US)

Call or demonstrate or shut down the Israeli Embassy
or you local consulate.
If you are from the US, call or write your Senators
and Congressional representative."

I have attached some photos of Rachel - one taken
immediately before her death. I've also attached
Rachel's first dispatch from Rafah - please read it
and pass it along to others.

Get informed - go to www.palsolidarity.org as well as
indymedia.org. Listen online, on the radio, or on
free speech TV to Democracy Now!
(www.democracynow.org).

Brenna

Note: forwarded message attached.

__________________________________________________

From: Rachel Corrie <corporat"enguin@hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 14:12:56 -0500
To: paradise.com@attbi.com, michithacker@excite.com, joecrescente@mail.ru, christi@beaudesigns.com, sesamegroup@hotmail.com, siriengstrom@yahoo.com, elifintz7@cs.com, chuismom@aol.com, vanlelyveld@hotmail.com, ism-alerts@palsolidarity.org, kingalabar@yahoo.com, tomwright59@yahoo.com, mayleetiger@hotmail.com, brenna_forester@yahoo.com, simpsse@aol.com, elijahs@earthlink.net, cbcflute@aol.com, semilabesada@yahoo.com, eltrescott@hotmail.com, anyaahm@mail.ru, pcr@p-ol.com, monieram@earthlink.net, slaemi16@evergreen.edu, kdorje@yahoo.com, carriejl@attbi.com, brettpeary@hotmail.com, liv@olywa.net, fischela@evergreen.edu, isaac_zito@hotmail.com, bluebunt@hotmail.com, beng30@msn.com, cclarkengstrom@juno.com, it@morelater.com, foranfam4@cs.com, saint_copious@hotmail.com, info@palsolidarity.org, jenamatt@attbi.com, curtishays@hotmail.com, mesvoboda@hotmail.com, christmuffins@hotmail.com, fluxionalenergy@yahoo.com, shadowhorse@hotmail.com, lmosqueda@attbi.com, moon2o@juno.com, ghcramos@yahoo.com, localknowledge@yahoogroups.com, salibat@evergreen.edu, pageecho@yahoo.com
Subject: Rachel in Palestine

Hi friends and family and others,
This is my first real attempt at a large dispatch out, since I've been having some trouble using the first list I told many of you about. I know there are a lot of loved-ones and just interested-ones out there who aren't on this list, so please forward it to others or ask them to send me an e-mail at corporatepenguin@hotmail.com and I will sign them up. You can also call me at 011-972-67-857-049. I know some of you may be surprised to hear from me-- let alone from me in the Gaza strip... so feel free to e-mail questions if you have them, although I have very limited access to e-mail right now-- mostly due to limited time. I am asking people who care about me-- or just have some passing interest in me--to use my presence in occupied Palestine as a reason to actively search for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of course particularly about the role of the United States in perpetuat ing it. I am here because I recognize that as a citizen of the United States I have some responsibility for what is happening here. I'm also here because I need to see for myself. I want to suggest a few resources for people who may be new to the issue-- or who are solely reliant on the US media--everything always of course through the lens of critical thought:

www.palsolidarity.org This is the website of the International Solidarity movement, which I am working with here. There are two others-- soon to be three-- in Rafah from Olympia, so if you check out the reports section you can hear from them.

www.ahram.org Al Ahram daily is a newspaper produced in Egypt-- english language. Graham Usher has been suggested to me as one of the best reporters on Palestine.

Ha'aretz: Ha'aretz is a maintstream Israeli daily-- availabel in English free online-- but I don't remember the address.

www.merip.org Middle East Reports

www.electronicintifada.org This Palestinian-produced website provides thorough accounting of the impact of occupation on the people of Palestine.

Also-- if you don't know any of the history I suggest the book "One Land, Two Peoples" as a starting point... but again.. I can't remember who wrote it. I also have an annotated bibliography of things I read before I left if anyone is interested.

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 murmer 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 of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face of they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, 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 difficicult 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 w ork 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 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 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 spent an evening when you didn't wonder if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have 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 worlds fourth largest military apparatus--backed by the worlds 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 people--or 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, Palestine and the border, and carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. 602 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. And then waving and "what's your name?". 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 with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously-- occasionally shouting-- and also occasionally waving-- many forced to be here, many just agressive-- 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 cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah-- 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 nowhere invulnerable to apache helicopters or the camer as 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. I went to a rally a few days ago in Khan Younis in solidarity with the people of Iraq. Many analogies were made about the continuing suffering of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation and the upcoming occupation of Iraq by the United States-- not the war itself-- but the certain aftermath of the war. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you 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, as well as the need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah after the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells (providing half of the water for Rafah according to the municiple water office) last week. Many of these places have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten pm 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 could 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 voices 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 tuteledge in 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.

my love to everyone. my love to my mom. my love to the cult formerly known as local knowledge program. my love to smooch. my love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and lincoln school. my love to olympia.

Rachel

011 972 67 857 049

corporatepenguin@hotmail.com

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