ZGram - 3/18/2003 - "Some of Rachel's last words and thoughts"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

March 18, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The young girl murdered by an Israeli bulldozing crew has haunted me 
all day.  She was an exceptional young lady.  I am amazed that 
America takes it so calmly.

Here are some of her last words and thoughts:

[START]

Email From Rachel Corrie -
An American Martyr
A EURO Press Release
3-17-3

(Rachel Corrie was a University student in Washington who decided to 
go to Israel and try to stop the killing of Palestinians and the 
destruction of their homes. By reading her letter it is obvious that 
she became immediately aware of the realities of Jewish supremacism. 
Though she was probably liberal, her bravery and commitment to her 
convictions are something to be honored and respected. For those who 
still don't understand the realities of the Israeli occupation and 
oppression of the Palestinian people, here is a reality check. A 
picture of Rachel can be found on our website at www.davidduke.com)
 
=====

Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her family on February 
7, 2003 from the Gaza Strip.
 
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still 
have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for 
me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back 
to the United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. 
I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without 
tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army 
surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although 
I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children 
understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old 
was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, 
and many of the children murmur his name to me, "Ali" --or point at 
the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to 
practice my limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" 
and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" "Sharon Majnoon" back in my 
limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is 
crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the 
adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is 
a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I 
don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are 
eight-year- olds here much more aware of the workings of the global 
power structurethan I was just a few years ago--at least regarding 
Israel.
 
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, 
attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth 
could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You 
just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always 
well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with 
the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed 
US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the 
army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option 
of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, 
by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my 
hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly 
it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on 
end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed 
to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be 
relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier 
waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a 
checkpoint"a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about 
my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I 
feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into 
the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about 
how it would be for them to arrive in my world. They know that 
children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot 
and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have 
seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for 
granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have 
spent an evening when you haven,t wondered if the walls of your home 
might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once 
you,ve met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have 
experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous 
towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I 
wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your 
childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the 
constant stranglehold of the world,s fourth largest military--backed 
by the world,s only superpower--in it,s attempt to erase you from 
your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder 
what would happen if they really knew.
 
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of 
about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees-- 
many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior 
to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are 
descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in 
historic Palestine--now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the 
Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a 
fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, 
carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred 
and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah 
Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been 
partially destroyed is greater.
 
Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, 
Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, 
"Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's 
your name?". There is something disturbing about this friendly 
curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all 
kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange 
women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from 
the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going 
on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. 
Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and 
also occasionally waving--many forced to be here, many just 
aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away.
 
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in 
the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, 
there are more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at 
the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange 
spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity 
within anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. 
A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry 
and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some 
of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families 
who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 
camps in the center of the city are Palestinian controlled areas 
under Oslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places 
that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly 
there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the 
cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours 
at a time.
 
I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, 
but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a 
great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza." Gaza is 
reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that 
the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of 
entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or 
days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If 
people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for 
the people of the entire region then I hope they will start. I also 
hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six 
internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of 
presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, 
and Block O. There is also need for constant night- time presence at 
a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the 
two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells 
destroyed last week provided half of Rafah,s water supply. Many of 
the communities have requested internationals to be present at night 
to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten 
p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army 
treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So 
clearly we are too few.
 
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and 
offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of 
a sister-community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups 
have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip 
of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people 
want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our 
privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the 
US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals 
such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to 
be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize 
against all odds, and to resist against all odds. Thanks for the news 
I've been getting from friends in the US. I just read a report back 
from a friend who organized a peace group in Shelton, Washington, and 
was able to be part of a delegation to the large January 18th protest 
in Washington DC. People here watch the media, and they told me again 
today that there have been large protests in the United States and 
"problems for the government" in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to 
not feel like a complete polyanna when I tentatively tell people here 
that many people in the United States do not support the policies of 
our government, and that we are learning from global examples how to 
resist.
 
=====

Read previous EURO press releases: http://www.whitecivilrights.com/news/

(Source:  http://www.rense.com/general35/eme.htm )