RACHEL CORRIE WAS A 24-year-old activist from the state of Washington, full of
big hopes and good intentions, when she was crushed to death by a
Caterpillar D-9R bulldozer operated by members of the Israeli Defence Forces
(IDF) on March 16, 2003.
Corrie was part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) based in Rafah,
in the Gaza Strip, a place akin to hell on earth. She was trying to stop a
Palestinian family's house from being destroyed.
She believed, along with her fellow activists, that Palestinians and Israelis
have the right to be secure in their homes, and she was making a point.
She wasn't the first to do this. Usually Israeli bulldozers stop for
activists, but this one did not. It pushed her on to a dirt mound, impaled
her under its blades, and then drove over her, crushing her body. Corrie was
alive when her friends reached her, but dead by the time she got to the
hospital.
The IDF concluded after an inquiry that was widely criticised as being unfair
that the driver did not see her, that no charges would be brought, that the
case was closed. But there were witnesses who said Corrie was pushed as high
as the cab of the vehicle and the driver probably did see her.
In her terrible death, Corrie became a heroine. Alan Rickman created a play
that ran at the Royal Court to great acclaim, and now her parents - who
understandably do not want her life to have been in vain - have compiled her
journals, e-mails and sketches into Let Me Stand Alone in order to make a
greater point about the grim situation in the world.
Corrie grew up a cute, hippy kid on the West Coast. Her attentive parents
encouraged their well-loved youngest child in her creativity and her
individuality. Corrie, like many sensitive kids, felt like an outsider. She
was a writer, an artist; in short, a sensitive soul.
“I have fire in the belly,” she wrote. It was fire she channelled into action.
She always had an interest in international affairs. Her family hosted
exchange students from Russia and Brazil and even as a very young girl in
1991 she was writing letters to unknown soldiers in her diary.
She travelled to Belize. She read widely. And by January 2003, as American,
British and other coalition forces were gearing up to invade Iraq, Corrie
made her way to Israel. She knew a bit about the Middle East situation, but
not much. For her role as an activist for ISM she taught English, worked
with families and NGOs and tried to practice the Gandhian technique of
non-violence.
It would be fair to say she was naive - but what 24-year-old is not? She tried
to learn Arabic and she studied the region. But eight weeks in Gaza is not
long, and the shock most people feel on first seeing the way ordinary
Palestinians live and the way the Israeli occupation affects their daily
lives is hugely distressing.
But like all geopolitical issues, the story is never what it seems, never
simply black and white. And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the
hardest to get your head around. After two decades of working in the region
I can say that Gaza is the kind of place that the more you know, the less
you know. And perhaps the less you want to know.
Unfortunately Corrie never got a chance to evolve politically, and
emotionally. The problem is that most 24-year-olds write about their
fluctuating emotions, and Corrie's, like those of every young woman her age,
are all over the shop. Her love for a character named Colin and the affair
that unwinds is baffling: they go to bed together, he tastes of bitter
almond honey that he tells her he uses to ward off bees, and she ruminates
endlessly about his addiction to bees.
I had to read and reread to wonder if Corrie really meant the little insects
or whether it was a reference to a heroin addiction. I never quite got it,
even when she wrote of overdoses.
Corrie has been compared with Anne Frank and with the American poet Sylvia
Plath, beloved by most American college girls, who gassed herself in London
in 1963 when Ted Hughes left her for another woman.
Both are unfair comparisons. Plath was an obsessive, rather humourless child
genius who had an elite classical education on the East Coast and who was
writing extraordinary poetry from the time she was a teenager. She won a
scholarship to Cambridge University and was teaching at Smith College in her
twenties. She was not an activist, she was a full-blown old-fashioned
intellectual and her diaries are, frankly, works of a talented writer,
whereas Corrie's are not.
Anne Frank was, well, Anne Frank. Rachel Corrie was a young woman with a good
heart and intense courage who might have matured into a devoted human rights
activist. But at the time she died her writings were immature and unformed.
There are no Plath-like insights, only the ramblings of a sometimes sad
young woman on the verge of womanhood.
I am not saying that her parents made a mistake; their grief must be huge. But
often, as in the case of the young British-American photographer Dan Eldon,
who died a hideous death in Somalia in 1993, relatives can turn their family
tragedy into an industry (Eldon's mother and sister have produced books,
diaries and films about him, and there has been much criticism that they
should have let him rest in peace).
I understand the Corrie family's immense frustration that neither the Israelis
nor the Americans did anything to punish the bulldozer driver. And I
understand that they want the work of this brave young woman to continue,
especially in times such as this when daily life in Gaza is unbearable.
But sometimes diaries should remain what they are - private diaries, unless
one has a full and exciting life like Martha Gellhorn; a gift for lyricism
like Katherine Mansfield; or even great gossip like Alastair Campbell.
I am afraid the writings of young Rachel Corrie, tragically cut down at the
start of her life, do not fit into any of those categories.
Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie
Granta, £12.99
Extract
February 1, 2003 . . . After we helped the water people do more repairs, we
went to look for banner fabric. Jehan found Will and me waiting to pay the
man for thirty meters of white cotton — told us there was a shaheed at the
Rafah-Egypt border that ambulances couldn’t get to. We met up at the
apartment and rode in a strangely Californian SUV past the cemetery to the
Palestinian side of the border crossing into Egypt. A swarm of people waited
there — we were given a stretcher and ushered into an office — people talked
for a while and then we went out — each of us with a handle.
We started into the field: five internationals plus Jehan. Jenny spoke over
the bullhorn saying, “Do not shoot,” “We are unarmed civilians,” “We are
internationals,” naming the countries we came from and letting the IOF \
know our intention to retrieve this man’s body.
The first response we noticed from the IOF was shouting. “Go back.” At
approximately midway between the buildings from which we entered the field
and the area of the body, the IOF shot in front of us about twenty meters.
As we continued to walk in the approximate direction of the body — the IOF
shots shifted in direction — hitting the ground two to four meters in front
of us. We also heard one to two high-pitched, whistling shots in the air
above our heads. At this point we stopped and Jenny continued to talk to the
IOF and requested to talk to the commanding officer. Initially, the
individuals in the IOF building stated that we would not be allowed to speak
to the commanding officer.
A white truck with a blue light rolled up and the person in the truck spoke
over the loudspeaker. Told us to leave. Stated, “You’ll get the body later,”
or “We’ll talk to you later.”
White truck cruised away and a tank and a bulldozer emerged from the IOF side
of the checkpoint and proceeded toward the olive grove. They began moving
dirt between us and olive grove. Smoke blew. Created mound of dirt. Shot
repeatedly into dirt.
Janine di Giovanni gives us her heavily tainted view of Rachel Corrie. Corrie was a member of a violent pro-Palestinian group who spent her time burning American flags (which she is doing in the photograph above) and placing herself in the midst of the Palestinian-Israel conflict. This story of her confrontation with an Israeli bulldozer is highly suspicious. The photographs from the scene (posted on the Internet) and the details of the formal IDF investigation describe a very different sequence of events.
Rachel Corrie probably thought she was doing some good. But she was naïve and foolish, and became a pawn in the hands of the Palestinian propaganda machine, which eventually led to her unfortunate death.
Ehad Ha'am, Ra'anana, Israel