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Recent Stories
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
26, 2003
The Beautiful Face of the United States
Rachel Corrie
By IMAD JADAA
Rachel
Corrie was never a terrorist. She never sympathized with Al Qaeda. Her
blond hair and U.S. nationality and the fact than no Arab blood ran
in her veins made her stand out among the other young women in the Gaza
Strip. Neither was she a follower of Islam and she was barely 23 years
old.
Rachel
lived in Olympia, in the state of Washington, and she had been far from
home for many months. She belonged to the International Solidarity Movement
and for the moment her profession was a new one for the 21st century:
that of a human shield against evil and wrongdoing.
One
might guess at the reasons why Rachel found herself in a Palestinian
refugee camp in Gaza, and why she postponed her dream of graduating
from college, leaving behind for the moment the beautiful possibility
of loving, of having children. She wanted now, not later to bear witness
to the Palestinian tragedy and, far from home, she was learning the
true meaning of U.S. justice.
Rachel
was guilty. Guilty according to Israeli statements of being in the wrong
country at the wrong time with the wrong people. She was guilty of not
staying home to dance in the discotheques of the United States, of ceasing
to be a common, ordinary citizen.
She
chose to stand in front of a Palestinian home at the moment an Israeli
bulldozer was trying to tear it down. In the first image captured on
camera, she is challenging the driver with a megaphone in her hand.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders. She places her body between
the weakened wall of the house and the brutal shovel of the bulldozer.
The scene takes place in Rafah, in Gaza, and her protective gesture
is poignant. Never has such an undefended, fragile person challenged
a vehicle transformed into a machine of death and destruction.
One
cannot hear her words. Next to her in the first photograph is another
young solidarity worker, perhaps of her same nationality.
In
the second photo, she is on the ground bleeding. According to witnesses
the bulldozer, after stopping for awhile, decided to move forward. After
knocking her down with the first blow, it backed up and attacked once
again. With a turn of the steering wheel, the driver drove away from
the scene. He changed direction and left her there to one side, like
some unimportant object: the house still standing, the young woman on
the ground.
The
image has no sound. ¨What was she shouting at her assassin? Her
cries were not in Hebrew, but in the purest English pronounced by a
pure girl.
The
Israeli soldier could not understand why the shouts were directed at
him in the same language of his godfather and protector. Maybe he thought
for an instant how odd were these blond Palestinians speaking English,
a second before he floored the accelerator for the final attack.
Silence.
The death of a blond young woman, 23 years old, crushed to death in
Gaza, deserves silence. There are no investigations. No one orders the
assassin arrested because that would mean one less driver for the bulldozers,
for the tanks, one less soldier to carry on the killing. And all of
them are needed to keep carrying out these crimes.
No
one has expressed regret to Rachel's parents. Only the Palestinian leader
has expressed his condolences. Nothing important has happened because
no one has to ask forgiveness in the United States or Israel. No one
has begged forgiveness or even contemplated the collateral damage. It
is not necessary.
Perhaps
they may even think that the Palestinians were responsible, for not
preventing her from standing in front of that house at the hour of the
disaster.
If
the young woman stood together with the Arab people under attack, together
with the Third World, it is a certain fact that she was not a legitimate
U.S. citizen. If she were one, she would have been like the President
of her country, on the side of Zionism.
Something
is missing from their statistics: Rachel Corrie is the first U.S. martyr,
the first U.S. blood shed on Palestinian soil in Gaza. Now her banner
is raised and flies in the wind. From now on she will accompany the
struggle, because she has entered into history to accompany the sadness
and pain of the Palestinian nation.
Missiles
and bombs will fall now on Bagdad, the mourning will spread to new homes
and this image will remain as the terrible face of the United States.
The United States has two faces, the contemptible face of Bush, and
the sweet face of Rachel.
He,
arrogance, she, solidarity; he, disrespect for a sovereign people, she,
admiration and love of humanity.
Unlike
everything that W. Bush stands for, Rachel represents the beautiful
face of the United States, and the beautifully human face is everlasting.
Imad
Jadaa is the Palestinian Ambassador to Cuba. This article was
originally published in the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
Today's Features
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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