Corrie's sacrifice will never be forgotten, by Mustafa Karkouti aljazeerah.info

aljazeerah.info Opinion Editorials

Corrie's sacrifice will never be forgotten
By Mustafa Karkouti, GN, 3/25/03

"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."

This is an excerpt from an e-mail of February 7 to the parents of Rachel Corrie, the young courageous American activist killed on March 16, by an Israeli bulldozer, while trying to prevent its soldier driver from demolishing a Palestinian house in Rafah Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip.

Describing the tragic situation of daily life for Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Rachel expl-ains: "What with the difficulties the Israeli army would face, if they shot an unarmed U.S. 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."

Rachel Corrie was a university student from Evergreen State College in Washington and she had been in Gaza trying to help prevent house demolitions for two months before her killing, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

By reading her letter it is obvious that she became immediately aware of the realities of not only the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, but also of the Jewish supremacist.

"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," she says. "I have a home and 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 U.S. 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."

Explaining to her parents the desperation of Palestinian children, Rachel says: "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 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," Rachel Corrie concluded.

Rachel's life and death is a stark testimony for an unjust occupation and continuous deprivation of a people from practicing the simplest and basic right: the right to live, to work, to go to school, to eat and to drink.

Her role and the role of a couple of hundred Western volunteers in providing some form of moral protection to the Palesti-nians under Israeli occupation, is deeply and warmly appreciated by the locals in the West Bank and Gaza.

All of these volunteers, like Rachel, strongly and passionately believe in the love of humanity and rightly understand that basic human rights must be shared not only by the privileged, but also by all human beings everywhere.

In their grief message to Rachel's friends and the world, Craig and Cindy Corrie fully explained this point: "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," her parents say, "and we would like to release to the world her experience in her own words at this time."

The Coalition of Women for Peace placed an advertisement in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz which said: "We extend heartfelt condolences to the Corrie family and to all members of ISM on the murder of Rachel during her valiant and nonviolent efforts to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian family's home. The occupation has led to a cheapening of human life - Palestinian, Israeli, and others."

Rachel's death is a tragic loss but her courage and profound sense of humanity and justice have deeply moved many and inspired all those who have learned about her ordeal. She truly represents the best of mankind.

There is no consolation for the loss of a child. The crime that brought her beautiful life to such premature end cries out for justice. But she will live on in the grateful hearts and minds of millions who sincerely hope that her sacrifice will hasten the day of liberation and independence for the Palestinians.

Following Rachel's killing, hundreds of Palestinians held a symbolic funeral, holding a stretcher draped with an American flag, marched through the refugee camp as a sign of mourning.

"We fly a U.S. flag today to show our support to all American peace lovers, those like Rachel," said Palestinian farmer Hassan Abu Toa'ma, 24. It was a rare change of pace for Rafah, where American flags have more often been burned than held in reverence since the Intifada began in September 2000.

The writer is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London. The writer can be contacted at mkarkouti@gulfnews.com

http://www.aljazeerah.info

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.