Gaza power play | April 26, 2008
RACHEL Corrie died in Gaza in March 2003, a young American activist whose idealism led her down a dangerous path.

Five years later a contentious play based on her writing is soon to open in Sydney.
My Name is Rachel Corrie is a piece of theatre co-edited by renowned British actor Alan Rickman. It won awards in Britain, where Rickman directed the piece, before being summarily cancelled by theatre companies in the US and Canada. It has ignited anger across the world, with seemingly enough written about it - from all sides - to paper Gaza.

Clive Davis, of London newspaper The Times, dubbed it "unvarnished propaganda". But, by way of contrast, The New York Times' Ben Brantley saw the play as an "invigoratingly detailed portrait of a passionate political idealist".

Playwright Harold Pinter, among others, wrote to defend the play, while a website called Rachel Corrie Facts has been set up to correct the work's "factual errors and myths".

The play has dipped into that most prickly subject: Middle Eastern politics. Corrie drew derision and admiration during her short life: the play has had the same effect.

The director of the Sydney production, Shannon Murphy, is well aware she has chosen a difficult piece. Scheduled to open at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney's Surry Hills on May 14, the play is sure to draw fire.

"But I actually think it's been blown out of proportion in a way," Murphy says. "It's more a coming-of-age story."

The young director knows she is dealing with political dynamite and there are any number of charges that can be levelled against the play. "Of course it's biased," she says. "It's one person's perspective."

Murphy first read the Corrie piece last year and she was so taken with the play - as a play rather than as political polemic - that she began to look into how she could put it on.

She had been told the Corrie family was unlikely to grant her the rights, but she wrote an impassioned proposal to their agent and within 24 hours she had a response granting her permission. Perhaps it was because the Corries heard echoes of their daughter's fire in the proposal: a determination to take on the difficult issues.

Reared in Washington state in the US, Corrie was an imaginative child who felt deeply about many things, and half of the play is devoted to her life at home. As a college student she joined the International Solidarity Movement (dubbed a pro-Palestinian front by critics) and travelled to Gaza in January 2003. In the ensuing months she reportedly attended non-violent resistance training, took part in a mock trial of George W. Bush and burned a paper US flag in a demonstration against war in Iraq.

On March 14, 2003, in an interview with the Middle East Broadcasting Network, she said: "I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive ... Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realise there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with."

Two days later she was killed, in hotly disputed circumstances. It is certain, though, that Corrie was trying to prevent an armoured Israeli D9 bulldozer from working in Rafah, in Gaza, where she believed Palestinian houses were at risk. She was killed either by the bulldozer's blade or by rubble and debris moved by the machine. She was 23.

An Israeli Defence Force investigation found that Corrie had not been run over by the dozer and that the driver probably had not been able to see her. Her death made the news across the world.

Murphy believes Corrie's death was accidental, rather than a matter of the young activist playing the hero and standing in front of the bulldozer with her hand raised to halt it - as the brave Chinese activist did to a tank in Tiananmen Square - and then being deliberately run over.

"It was undignified," she says. "She slipped and she was trying to scramble up, and it crushed her. It was not expected. It was an accident." Whether the dozer driver was in any way at fault is another matter. "No charges have been laid, that's for sure."

Murphy sees the way Corrie died as a parallel to her political understanding: the activist wasn't deliberately risking her life, she was trying to prevent what she saw as the wanton destruction of Palestinian property. It was a prosaic stance, aligned with her position on Middle East issues, which Murphy says was more a search for understanding than a set-in-stone approach.

"Up until she died she was still trying to grasp what was happening between the Israelis and the Palestinians," Murphy says, adding that Corrie was angrier with US foreign policy than she was with Israel.

Sitting in the theatre's serene rehearsal room, Murphy is cautious about buying into the rights and wrongs of the play's past cancellations. A production directed by Rickman was cancelled by the New York Theatre Workshop in 2006, seemingly for political reasons. The theatre's artistic director James Nicola reportedly admitted the play had been binned.

"In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation," he told The Guardian. "We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict that we didn't want to take."

Rickman, perhaps best known for his acting in the Harry Potter films, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Love Actually, in a statement described the cancellation as "censorship born out of fear".

The play was also cancelled by CanStage in Toronto. CanStage board member Jack Rose admitted to the entertainment industry newspaper Variety: "My view was it would provoke a negative reaction in the Jewish community."

Murphy declined to comment on cancellations, but she says she greatly admires Rickman's work. He and Katharine Viner edited Corrie's writings to give the play dramatic structure. But Murphy says every word used was written by the young activist at one time or another.

"It's actually quite humorous, it's not as heavy as people think," Murphy says.

Carrying a one-woman play is a gruelling task, and Murphy eventually cast seasoned actor Belinda Bromilow. "I saw women from all over the country who flew in wanting this part," Murphy says. Bromilow is older than Corrie was when she died, but the activist, Murphy says, was extremely mature for her age: "She was ordinary and extraordinary."

Rachel Corrie Memorial Website


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Israel, We Won’t Forget Rachel
Alison Weir, the founder of If Americans Knew, is a freelance journalist who traveled throughout the Palestinian Territories in winter, 2001. She is the mother of a daughter born the same year as Rachel Corrie.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cu_sit/corrie.html

follow links ..zionist boycott.

By Alison Weir
Counter Punch
April 3, 2003

On March 16th, an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer two-stories high crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, an American nonviolent human rights protestor. According to numerous witnesses and photographic documentation, she was killed intentionally.

Rachel and a handful of others practicing Gandhian nonviolence in the Gaza Strip had been pleading with Israeli soldiers for two hours not to destroy a Palestinian family home. Suddenly, the Israeli bulldozer operator began driving his giant bulldozer toward the home, Rachel sitting in the bulldozer’s path. Witnesses report that she then stood up on the mound of debris and dirt pushed by the bulldozer blade and looked straight at the operator through the window. He continued, and she was pulled underneath the tractor, its blade crushing her. He then backed up, running over her again, burying her deeper into the dirt.

Three friends ran to Rachel and dug her out. According to an eyewitness report by Joe Carr of Kansas City: “Her body was in a mangled condition, she said ‘my back is broken!’ but nothing else. Her eyes were open and she was clearly in a great deal of pain.” A Palestinian ambulance made it through Israeli forces, and took her to the hospital, where she died. Reports are unclear whether it was her fractured skull or the suffocation caused by crushed lungs and being buried in the dirt that caused her death.

George Bush has yet to condemn this atrocity by an “ally” who receives more US funding than any other nation on earth, $7-$10 million per day. Congress has yet to pass a resolution condemning this use of American tax money to kill an American citizen. The U.S. State Department has yet to impose any diplomatic sanctions whatsoever against a government whose “apology” for one of its soldiers crushing a young, peaceful American student has consisted of calling it “regrettable,” and blaming Rachel for the Israeli soldier’s decision to kill her.

The American media have yet to accord this horror the attention it would normally merit, if it had been done by any other country on earth, including the U.S. government. We heard about Chandra Levy for many months. We read about the students in Tiananman Square for years. We heard news reports about Rachel Corrie for approximately two days. Apart from her hometown Washington state newspapers, there were virtually no follow up stories — no stories about the memorial service held the next day in Gaza that was broken up by an Israeli tank, while the bulldozer that killed her drove slowly, exultantly past. No stories about Israeli forces blocking the ambulance carrying her remains from exiting Gaza. No stories about Rachel’s grieving parents and siblings, about their inability to travel to Palestine. No stories.

This erasing of Rachel, her message, and her death is unconscionable. It is also extremely dangerous. Such silence is giving Israel a green light to escalate its killing of civilians, of peaceful protesters, of young girls. The day after Rachel was killed the Israeli military killed another 9 Palestinian civilians, including three children, the following weeks still more.

Israel has killed Americans before. On March 29, 2002, Israeli forces killed a 21-year-old American in Ramallah as she held her baby on her lap. She was Palestinian-American, so perhaps that’s why mainstream media largely failed to report this death. On June 8, 1967, Israeli forces attacked a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing 34 American servicemen, injuring 172. And nothing happened. The story was universally buried, the attack unmentioned in history books and reports on the Middle East. The families of those killed were given moderate sums for the loss of their young sons, husbands, brothers, fathers. After many years of finagling, Israel finally paid the US a minute fraction of the value of this ship — with no interest for the years it had delayed.

Historians have since written that the fact that Israel was able to attack a US ship and kill and maim American servicemen, with virtually no consequences, convinced Israeli hardliners that Israel could, whenever it wanted, get away with murder.

Rachel Corrie’s death may prove to be another pivotal point of escalation. If the world — in particular, if Americans — allow this incident to go virtually unnoticed, then our lack of outcry will give a green light to an Israeli regime known for its brutality: If Israel can get away with using an American financed, American-built bulldozer to kill a young American woman, then it will feel it can get away with anything.

It is time for the world to send an unequivocal message: No more. This time we will stop it.

It is time for Americans to turn the light bright red:

Israel, we will not forget Rachel Corrie. No longer will we look the other way. No more may you use American money to kill children, American money to kill Americans, American money to crush young women to death, American money to kill peace.

No more.

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Rachel Corrie
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Rachel Corrie

1979 - 2003
On the 16 March, 2003, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer. more

Thomas Hurndall

1981 - 2004
21-year-old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper on April 11, 2003. He died nine months later. more

Videos & Multimedia
Documentary – ISM Rafah - Solidarity Under Occupation

3/20/2004 demonstration in Karbatha, Palestine – activists shot

View footage from 2/6/2004 demonstration at Georgetown University, USA

View footage from 12/26/2003 demonstration in Mas’ha, West Bank—Israeli activist, Gil Ne’amati, is shot

View footage from 11/9/2003 demonstration in Ramallah, West Bank

View footage from 11/9/2003 demonstration in Zbuba, West Bank

MORE footage from 11/9/2003 demonstration in Zbuba, West Bank

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Additional Resources
Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance

Charter of the United Nations

Amnesty Report – Fear for Safety

Play – My Name is Rachel Corrie

Flyer – Rachel Corrie Cards

Poster – Rachel Corrie, 1979-2003

Poster – Tom Hurndall, 21-year-old killed

Booklet – Rachel’s Letters | en español

Congressional Resolution Expressing sympathy for the loss of Rachel Corrie – Not Yet Passed

Merchandise Commemorating Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall

Organizations
Americans for Middle East Understanding

End the Occupation Coalition

Al Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

International Solidarity Movement

Secular Peace Groups

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A Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT)

More Religious Peace Groups

RachelsWords.org

RachelCorrie.org

TomHurndall.co.uk

Justice For James Miller

International Solidarity Movement





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That girl got so pwned it's not funny.

Rachel Corrie

The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice

follow all the links

Why wasn't Rachel Corrie given proper security protection?
Was she set up to be killed by her own supporters?
Was this all about having a human rights activist killed to promote anti-Semitism?

__________________
Drill offshore now

Assassin israelis kill every one and any time...
What can you do .
They have been like this for centuries..

You spew psycho babble BS to justify your hatred for Americans.

__________________
Drill offshore now

Yer projecting, again.

Rachel Corrie was a pacifist...23 year old american.
She wanted to stop an israeli driven
bulldozer that wanted to demolish
a house belonging to a poor palestinian family ...
She was wearing a yelloow jacquet ...
The driver crushed twice ...
Still alive the Israeli soldiers refud to let her
be brought to the hospital .