If America were not ruled by Jews it would have no problem with Islam.
An Israeli Bulldozer killed an American student, Rachel Corrie, trying
to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes.
Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her family on
February 7, 2003 from the Gaza Strip.
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
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, 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 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 it's 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 Rafah's
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.
Thanks for the news I've been getting from friends in the US. I just
read a report back from a friend who organized a peace group in
Shelton, Washington, and was able to be part of a delegation to the
large January 18th protest in Washington DC. People here watch the
media, and they told me again today that there have been large
protests in the United States and "problems for the government" in the
UK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete polyanna
when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the United
States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are
learning from global examples how to resist.
http://www.ihr.org/ http://nationalvanguard.org/ http://heretical.com/
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