Rachel Corrie
In Memoriam
~ Rachel Corrie ~
1979 - 2003
The Beautiful Face of the United States
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.
(*Palestinian Ambassador to Cuba)
This article was published in the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde