At two o’clock in the afternoon,on Sunday March 16th, 2003, Rachel Corrie received a phone call from a comrade from the International Solidarity Movement. Saying that the Israelis were heading to Dr. Samir’s house. Samir Nasrallah was a Palestinian pharmacist who lived with his wife and three children yards from the Egyptian border in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, and had befriended many of the activists, that came from a dozen countries from around the world. Many were Jewish. Rachel and other activists had frequently spent the night in Samir’s home, acting as human shields against the Israeli tanks and bulldozers clearing a security zone around the border. Almost every other structure had been knocked down. Collective Punishment. Samir’s home now stood alone.
It wasn’t just homes that she and her cohorts protected. They acted as human shields as municipal construction workers were rebuilding a well that was vital to the area, and destroyed by the IDF. Municipal workers were killed by IDF snipers...so,hence the need for a human shield. And to reiterate, some from the ISM wore yarmulkes.
Wearing a bright orange jacket and with a megaphone in her hand, she was killed whilst standing in the path of a bulldozer that was about to demolish the Nasrallah home. She was run over...twice..by the bulldozer. Fractured skull. Punctured lungs. Shattered ribs. She died in pain. Surrounded by her crying friends and numb locals.
A dozen witnesses insisted that the driver, a Russian immigrant, smiled as he came for her, with deliberation. Her parents filed a civil lawsuit in 2005 against the state of Israel, charging Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case..that she was intentionally killed or that the soldiers had acted with reckless neglect. For a symbolic one dollar. No one was surprised when the court upheld the military investigation’s decision.
Rachel went to Rafah to connect it with her home town of Olympia, Washington. In a sister-cities project as part of her senior- year college assignment.
She witnessed injustice on a scale unknown to her. I can relate. As an American Jew, my initial visits to my ancestral homeland sobered me entirely. As i witnessed brutality and disrespect time and again. This time with kids. That time with seniors. Based on their ethnicity,..certainly not the content of their character. That the perps where fellow Jews shook me to my core. And it still does. I started venturing into the Strip,..with my yarmulke on proudly, if a little foolish. There was understandable mistrust of me in the beginning. But when i put myself as shield and advocate time and again against young Israeli soldiers,..that sealed the deal with most. I was befriended and met brothers and sisters in a great plight. It was then that i briefly met Rachel. As a mutual friend of ours wrote..
“I wish i had been closer to her, because from her writing an intelligent, compassionate and complex figure emerges. Within a short time she was aware of the complexity, the nuance, the conflicts of the situation. Please do as she did. And put the humanity back into how you think about other people. We are all individuals with families, hopes, dreams, loves, fears,..and the abilities to do amazing things in the world”.
I haven’t returned to Israel since 2003, and have no intention of doing so. I can’t reconcile the attitudes there, with what i have learned from my teachings of Judaism.
I was raised what it was to be a Jew. To crave and fight for social justice and equality, wherever that may lead, including one’s own backyard..or one’s own heart. To live the words of the Prophets..’You shall not oppress a stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’, and ‘Let your neighbors property be as dear as your own, and let your neighbors honor be as dear as your own’, and ‘You shall not rejoice as your enemy falls, you shall not exult when your enemy stumbles, you shall not hate another in your heart, but love your neighbor as yourself’. One must be true to one’s own heart, conscience and ideals.
Rachel personified this down to a tee. She remains for me an emblem of righteousness. She was a mensch. Her presence would have have done so much to enrich the world. In fact, it already has. May i be so brave.
In her own words, two months before her death..
“We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. But what if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure- to experience the world as a dynamic presence- as a changeable, interactive thing?
If i lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor. It would be reality.
And i have no right to this metaphor. But i use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.
This realization. This realization that i will live my life in this world where i have privileges. I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.
I can wash dishes. Fetch water. And do my part.”
Rachel was 23.