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CounterPunch
March 18,
2003
How Will We Honor Rachel Corrie?
Nonviolence
Must Triumph Over Tragedy
By MORGAN GUYTON
The Israeli bulldozer driver who killed Evergreen
State University student Rachel Corrie in Rafah, Gaza was probably
not a public relations expert. Still he could not have picked
a better time to commit a war crime when the US media as well
as peace movement have geared up to focus all their attention
on a war two countries away from Palestine. Perhaps it is with
callous words that I must cope with the death of someone I did
not know who made me cry when I saw her picture.
As I think of everything we must do to
make Rachel's tragedy provoke a positive, permanent change in
the shape of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict forever, I am haunted
by the realization that she did not go to Palestine to be a martyr.
Consider these words from her March 3rd International Solidarity
Movement report:
"Internationals here can walk in
front of tanks on Palestinian land without being killed. We can
only imagine what it is like for Palestinians living here for
whom this is not a nightmare, but a continuous reality from which
international privilege cannot protect them."
Rachel took it as self-evident that no
Israeli soldier or bulldozer driver would dare kill the citizen
of a country from whom Israel was requesting a $11 billion aid
package. She did not relish her 'international privilege'--she
tried her best to share it. Her duty as she saw it was not to
become a poster child but to fulfill the obligations of international
peacekeepers under Articles 140, 142, and 143 of the Geneva Convention
to gather information about military attacks against civilians
in war zones as well as protect civilians from these attacks.
She followed in the footsteps of thousands of US citizens who
have gone abroad to prevent civilian loss of life with their
bodies since the time of the Reagan years in Central America
and even before then.
Rachel's two primary pursuits as an International
Solidarity Movement volunteer in Rafah, Gaza were to prevent
unlawful housing demolitions and protect Rafah's water supply.
On several occasions, she and other ISM volunteers successfully
prevented Israeli tanks from killing Rafah water officials as
they repaired the Tel e-Sultan wells which the Israeli military
has repeatedly tried to destroy. On March 4th, she was actually
able to convince the US military attaché to stop Israeli
gunfire within minutes against a house where she slept in a rare
showing of support for US citizens by the Tel Aviv Embassy.
Rachel saved many lives and many houses
in the month and a half she got to spend alive in Rafah. Still
she has died and the precedent a lukewarm response by the United
States government would set could have enormous repercussions
for all future US peacekeepers as well as the future of Palestine
and Israel.
What should the peace movement do to
honor Rachel Corrie? First, we must not let our government fork
over the $11 billion Israel has requested in supplemental aid
without fundamental changes in Israeli policy. Second, we must
ensure that our State Department makes definitive changes in
its policy towards US peacekeepers who put their lives on the
line just as courageously and for more noble reasons than the
troops flag-waving patriots scream for us to support. Third,
we must work to root out the racism in our own communities which
require the death of a white girl to notice the thousands of
dark-skinned Palestinians who have died in similar circumstances.
Fourth, we absolutely cannot get washed away in protesting the
war with Iraq to the point of abandoning the tragedy faced by
the immigrant people of Israel and the indigenous people of Palestine
and caused by the cowboy sheiks who use Christian and Islamic
fundamentalism and tragically misguided gladiators to distract
their populations from domestic problems and whet their own Apocalyptic
fantasies.
Those of us who call ourselves nonviolent
will lose political credibility if we hesitate to take action
in Rachel's honor for the justice of Palestine. If we do rise
up and compel permanent change to take place in US and Israeli
policy, then Rachel Corrie will be remembered as a witness to
the world for the triumph of nonviolence over tragedy.
Morgan Guyton
works with Tri-City Action for Peace in Saginaw, Michigan. Email:
morgan@mutualaid.org
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