[Peace-discuss] Fwd: (Fwd) "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie to her family

[Alfred Kagan]

>From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <info at gush-shalom.org>
>Subject: (Fwd) "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie  to her family
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>Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 14:27:44 +0200
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>      Gush Shalom
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>
>International release, March 17, 2003
>
>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>"I am allowed to go see the ocean"
>Rachel Corrie wrote to her family 
>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
>
>[We forward the sad but courageous statement of the parents of Rachel
>Corrie, followed by a moving  "letter from Palestine" which she sent them
>on Feb. 7, 2003, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza Strip.]
>
>------- Forwarded message follows -------
>Date sent:     	Mon, 17 Mar 2003 01:27:48 +0000 (GMT)
>From:          	ism rafah <ismrafah at yahoo.co.uk>
>Subject:       	Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents
>
>March 16, 2003
>
>"We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details behind
>the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip.
>We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global
>community and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her
>convictions.  Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow
>man, wherever they lived.  And, she gave her life trying to protect those
>that are unable to protect themselves.
>Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to
>the media her experience in her own words at this time.
>
>Thank you.
>Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
>
>--
>Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003.
>
>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 structure than 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 checkpointa 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 havent wondered if the walls of your
>home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once
>youve 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
>worlds fourth largest military--backed by the worlds only superpower--in
>its 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 Rafahs 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. 
>
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu