"My Name is Rachel Corrie"

It happened that I was in the Seattle area at the same time that the one-woman show, "My Name is Rachel Corrie" was opening. This is a play based on material drawn from the journals and emails of the young Olympia woman who died when she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, just a few days before the start of the Iraq invasion. I saw it with my nephew Ben, who is a little older than Rachel would have been, but shares with her the experience of being a student at Evergreen College. He continues to live in Olympia, so her reminiscences were close to home for him. He said it was right on.

Apparently the show we saw was significantly different from the one that played in London and New York, tailored for the hometown audience, the ones who would understand the significance of salmon swimming through a creek in a culvert to return to their spawning places. Marya Sea Kaminski, the actress who played Rachel, took us from the breezy hipness of a student going to college in her hometown to the anguish of a partisan totally absorbed in the cause of justice for Palestinians. Although Rachel had always wanted to help change the world, she realized when she went to Palestine just how silly her concerns in the middle-class college student world had been. She loved the Palestinian families she got to know with the wonderful passion of youth. She was part of a peaceful protest against the destruction of homes along the border between Israeli and Palestinian areas. That is where she was killed, standing in front of the bulldozer to discourage it from razing the home of a family she knew.

Two advertisements appeared in the program, one sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and one by a coalition of Jewish groups led by the Anti-Defamation League. They wanted to remind us that people are dying because of Palestinian attacks and the borders need to be secured. They wanted us to know that Rachel worked with the International Solidarity Movement, and that ISM supports "armed resistance" against Israel. The ADL ad's text told us that "the ISM exploited Rachel's idealism by intentionally placing her in harm's way, encouraging her to stand in front of bullets and bulldozers."

Maybe so, but I don't think it excuses mowing her down with a giant Caterpillar earth mover.

What's going on over there? What's going on over here that people want to make it okay to murder people who are engaged in nonviolent protest? The Jewish Federation ad wanted us to believe that Rachel Corrie died "by accident". I don't think so.

Palestinian extremists are certainly not to be excused for their suicide bombings, their artillery attacks, and all the rest. The Israeli government is certainly not to be excused for squeezing the livelihoods of Palestinians with border closings, destruction of water supplies, and bulldozing of homes, fields, and orchards. How can the constant escalation of nastiness be brought to a close?

I have no answer. I know that there is a role for people who affirm peaceful means in the face of violence, people like Rachel Corrie, who will go there and show what it looks like, standing with the Israelis, and standing with the Palestinians. I am grateful she lived and sorry that she died. I hope the spirit of nonviolent action will continue to stir and grow in that hostile land.