[antiwar-van] Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents

March 16, 2003

"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.

Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie

--

Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 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 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 world's fourth largest military--backed by the
world's only superpower--in it's 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 with 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 the 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 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
tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and
to resist against all odds.

West Bank and Gaza Emergency Relief Fund: http://al-awda.org/wb_fund.htm

-------------------------------------------
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht