Corrie’s parents continue their daughter’s work

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Five years to the day after the death of their youngest daughter, Craig and Cindy Corrie were in a theatre in the Israeli city of Haifa, listening along with an international audience to a Palestinian actress recite for the first time in Arabic the words their daughter had emailed home to them in the months prior to her death.

Days later, they travelled through checkpoints and past military towers looming over small Arab villages to the Palestinian city of Nablus to attend a rally commemorating their daughter’s death.

Weeks like this that have become almost commonplace for the soft-spoken couple from Olympia, Washington since the horrible day five years ago when they received the news that their daughter, Rachel Corrie, had been killed by an Israeli military bulldozer.

“In some ways our family is really fortunate, because with our loss there was obvious work to do and that’s been helpful to us, although I wish there could be some resolution so the work would go away” says a tired-sounding Cindy Corrie over the phone from a YMCA in East Jerusalem. “What happened to Rachel is something that we think about every single day of our lives, so in some ways I think anniversaries are more momentous for other people rather than us because we just recall all of this all the time, of course.”

“What happened to Rachel” has become an internationally recognized story, one that has inspired thousands around the world, has been made into an acclaimed play and a recently released book, and has changed the course of her family’s life forever.

It was during her senior year at Evergreen State College that Rachel Corrie, a gifted writer with a passionate commitment to human rights, became involved with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led group of non-violent activists who engage in direct action to challenge the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

On Jan 18, 2003 she travelled as part of an ISM delegation to Rafah, a Palestinian city of 130 000 in the Gaza Strip on the Egyptian border, where two-thirds of the residents live in the sprawling refugee camps which surround the city.

She spent the next two months documenting the destruction of Palestinian property, and working and living with Palestinian families.

Corrie also sent frequent, eloquent emails home to her family in Olympia in an attempt to communicate the overwhelming experiences she was having in witnessing the everyday dehumanizing acts of the occupation and the dignity of the Palestinians.

On Feb 27, she wrote an email to her mother, writing in part, “I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore.”

On the afternoon of Mar 16, Corrie and six other ISM activists tried to block Israel Defense Force bulldozers which were demolishing Palestinian houses and land. As one Catepillar D9 bulldozer approached the home of pharmacist Samir Nasrallah and his family, Corrie, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and speaking through a bullhorn, put herself between the bulldozer and the home. Despite multiple eyewitness accounts that say Corrie was clearly visible, climbing to the top of the dirt pile as the bulldozer advanced, the driver continued forward and the 23-year-old Corrie was pulled under the blade and killed.

Corrie’s death became an international incident. They day after her death Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised US President George W Bush a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation. Yasser Arafat phoned the Corrie family directly, and Corrie was both hailed as a brave defender of human rights and vilified as a naïve dupe of the ISM.

In the midst of ther suffering, Craig and Cindy Corrie pledged to keep Rachel’s words alive and agreed to release the emails their daughter had written while in Rafah. Within days the UK paper The Guardian had published them. Soon after, Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman of London’s Royal Court Theatre contacted the Corrie’s for permission to create a play based upon Rachel’s writings. Using both her emails home and the voluminous collection of diaries, poems and letters kept in plasitc tubs in the Corrie home, the two created and premiered My Name is Rachel Corrie in London in the spring of 2005.

In the intervening years, the play has been staged dozens of times in productions around the world, keeping alive Rachel’s words and, more importantly for Cindy and Craig, connecting tens of thousands of people to the plight of the Palestinian people, a cause to which Rachel lost her life and the Corries have since committed theirs.

“I know that when people go to [the play] they’re very much with Rachel and they hear her words and they know the tragedy,” Cindy says. “Once the play takes you to Gaza … I think through the very strong feelings she has about what she’s seeing that there is a connection to the Palestinian people. And I think it helps to humanize the people in Gaza.

“I think we in the West—particularly people who don’t have the option like Craig and me to come here and meet individuals—are so easily willing to accept the stereotypes that we sometimes hear or see if we’re not searching for more,” she continues. “So, I really hope the play just prods people a little to look further and do some searching about what’s really happening here to understand the story more. I think that’s what Rachel would want.”

The Corries themselves are eloquent examples of what can emerge from such an exploration. They have travelled to Palestine and Israel three times in the past five years, have established the Rachel Corrie Foundation to promote peace in the region and—inspired by their daughter’s example—have become activists to end the occupation.

“At least in the US there tends to be more focus on the violence that happens against Israelis rather that the violence that is happening towards Palestinians,” she says. “I think even in focussing on the most extreme violence on both sides we miss the bigger picture, which is the occupation and the humiliation people experience.

“In the US, we’re coming to have a better sense about what occupation means, having been in Iraq for five years and seeing the results of all of that. And this is an occupation that has gone on now for 41 years ... it’s almost unbelievable.”

Their work, says Cindy, has also led them to a greater, and intensely peronsal, understanding of the connection between their country and what they have witnessed in Palestine.

“For people in the US, we’ve invested in all this. We’re responsible for a great deal of it. Craig and I believe that it was our tax dollars that purchased the bulldozer that killed Rachel. We’re funding the Israeli military, which is, I think, very much engaged in trying to keep this conflict going. When you’re here you really get a sense of what’s being done to push the Palestinian people away and out or to isolate them completely. I hope that’s it’s growing awareness of our responsibility and of the price that people here are paying but that ultimately we will all pay if we don’t find some just and long-term resolution, if we don’t work to support that.”

While she stresses that there is suffereing on both sides of the conflict, Cindy insists that the conflict simply can’t be viewed as two sides being equally at fault.

“Rachel says it in the play: there’s a conflict that is not balanced. You have a very strong government and military here backed by a superpower financially against an oppressed people and I don’t think in other situation where that would occur that you would think that you have to somehow provide balance between the view of the oppressor and the view of the oppressed.”

It’s this notion of the need for false balance that Cindy says has been at the heart of much of the criticism of the play, which has been cancelled or postponed in some cities due to organized backlash.

“I have no problem with discussion happening or discussions emanating from the play, I think that’s a healthy thing,” she explains. “[But] I feel that Rachel is in this play presenting her point of view and talking about what she’s experiencing and seeing. ... It’s not intended to teach people or to tell people everything about what’s happening here in Israel-Palestine and I think it starts to be a very dangerous expectation if we have expectations of art—whether it’s theatre, visual arts, music—that when you present a creative piece then that it has to immediately be contrasted with something that presents a opposite point of view or even a more complete point of view, because I don’t think we should ever have the expectation that one piece of art can tell us a whole story about anything.”

Despite criticism from some quarters, Cindy is happy that her daughter’s experiences and words continue to have an impact, especially inspiring people of the age Rachel was when she was killed.

“Young people seem to be really impacted by Rachel’s story and we’re told often that they’ve spent some time thinking about what is important in their lives. And Rachel wouldn’t want people to think that because of seeing this play they should go out and go to Gaza or stand in front of bulldozers or that sort of thing. But if it encourages young people to think about how they can live their lives, but also try to make some difference for somebody, that’s a good thing.”V

Corrie’s parents continue their daughter’s work

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