Juventud Rebelde
March 2003
[Sorry, exact date not clear from Juventud Rebelde
website.]
The Beautiful Face of the United States
Imad Jada´a, Palestinian Ambassador in Cuba
A CubaNews translation by Robert Sandels.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Rachel Corrie was never a terrorist. She never sympathized with al Qaeda. Her blond hair and North American nationality distinguished her from many other women in the Gaza Strip, especially because Arab blood did not run in her veins. Nor did she profess Islam, and she was barely 23 years old.
Rachel lived in Olympia, Washington, and had been far away from home for several months. She belonged to the International Solidarity Movement and for the moment her profession was one that is new to the 21st century: a human shield against infamy and crime.
One could explain Rachel’s reasons for finding herself in the Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza and why she postponed her dream of graduating. She left for later the beautiful possibility to love and to have children. She wanted now, not later, to witness the Palestinian tragedy and, far from home, she learned the true meaning of North American justice.
Rachel was guilty. Guilty – according to Israeli statements – of being in the wrong country, at the wrong time, along with other misguided people. She was guilty of not having stayed at home dancing in discotheques, of no longer being an ordinary citizen.
She chose to be in front of a Palestinian house at the moment when an Israeli bulldozer was about to demolish it. In the first photograph that was taken, she is defying the driver with a simple hand-held megaphone. Her hair is loose. She had placed her body between the fragile wall of the house and the brutal blade of the bulldozer. The scene takes place in Rafah, in Gaza, and the protective gesture is touching. Never has such as defenseless person defied a machine transformed into a mechanism of death and destruction.
Her words could not be heard. Along with her in the first photo is another solitary youth, perhaps of the same nationality.
In the second image she is on the ground, bloody. According to witnesses, the bulldozer, after stopping for a time, decided to advance. After knocking her down with the first blow, it backed up and attacked again. Turning around, the driver fled the scene. Changing direction, he ignored as a thing of no importance, the house standing, the young lady demolished.
The image is mute. What did she shout to her assassin? Her shouts were not in Hebrew but in the purest English that a pure girl could speak.
The Israeli soldier could not understand because others were yelling at him in the exact same language of his protecting patron. Perhaps, he thought for an instant, how curious of these blond Palestinians to speak English, one second before the driver floored the gas pedal in his final assault.
Silence. The death of a blond woman of 23 years, who died crushed in Gaza, deserves silence.
There is no investigation. No one orders the assassin to be turned in, because that would be one less driver for the bulldozers, for the tanks; one less soldier for assassinations. And everyone is needed for crime.
No one gave their condolences to Rachel’s parents. Only the Palestinian leader had sent condolences. Nothing of importance had happened, therefore no one in the United Status or Israel needs to apologize. No one apologized or said it was collateral damage. It wasn’t necessary.
Perhaps they came to think it was the Palestinians who were responsible for not preventing her from standing in front of the house at the time of the disaster.
If she was with the offended Arabs, with the Third World, it is certain that she was not a real North American citizen. If she had been a real citizen, she would have been - like the president of her country – on the side of Zionism.
Something is missing in her data: Rachel Corrie is the first North American martyr; hers is the first North American blood to be spilled on Palestinian soil in Gaza. She is now gone, fluttering in the wind. From now on, she will be a part of the struggle because she entered history to give witness to the sadness and pain of the Palestinian nation.
Missiles and rockets are now falling on Baghdad. The mourning spreads to other houses and that image will remain as the terrible face of North America.
The United States has two faces; one side is the despised face of Bush, the other the sweet face of Rachel.
One is of arrogance; the other is of solidarity. One is scornful of a sovereign people; the other is full of admiration and love for humanity.
In contrast to all that Bush represents, Rachel is the beautiful face of the United States and the humanly beautiful face is everlasting.
(*Palestinian ambassador in Cuba)
http://www.jrebelde.cu/2003/enero-marzo/en1472/print/opinion.html
http://www.granma.cu/espanol/mayo03/lun12/rostro-apartado-e.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-viner1mar01,1,2229722.story
From the Los Angeles Times
A message crushed again
Three years after American activist Rachel Corrie died
under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, her words are being censored for political
reasons.
By Katharine Viner
March 1, 2006
THE FLIGHTS for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule
delivered; there were tickets advertised on the Internet. The Royal Court
Theatre production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," the play I co-edited with Alan
Rickman, was transferring later this month to the New York Theatre Workshop,
home of the musical "Rent," following two sold-out runs in London and several
awards.
We always felt passionately that it was a piece of work that needed to be seen
in the United States. Created from the journals and e-mails of American activist
Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her adolescence in Olympia, Wash., to
her death under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it
a unique American story that would have a particular relevance for audiences in
Rachel's home country. After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in
order "to meet the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax
dollars," and she was killed by a U.S.-made bulldozer while protesting the
demolition of Palestinian homes.
But last week the New York Theatre Workshop canceled the production — or, in its
words, "postponed it indefinitely." The political climate, we were told, had
changed dramatically since the play was booked. As James Nicola, the theater's
's artistic director, said Monday, "Listening in our communities in New York,
what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in
the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation." Three years
after being silenced for good, Rachel was to be censored for political reasons.
I'd heard from American friends that life for dissenters had been getting worse
— wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing antiwar T-shirts, Muslim professors
denied visas. But it's hard to tell from afar how bad things really are. Here
was personal proof that the political climate is continuing to shift
disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate and artistic expression, in
only a matter of weeks. By its own admission the theater's management had caved
in to political pressure. Rickman, who also directed the show in London, called
it "censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal
Court, New York audiences — all of us are the losers."
It makes you wonder. Rachel was a young, middle-class, scrupulously fair-minded
American woman, writing about ex-boyfriends, troublesome parents and a journey
of political and personal discovery that took her to Gaza. She worked with
Palestinians and protested alongside them when she felt their rights were
denied. But the play is not agitprop; it's a complicated look at a woman who was
neither a saint nor a traitor, both serious and funny, messy and talented and
human. Or, in her own words, "scattered and deviant and too loud." If a voice
like this cannot be heard on a New York stage, what hope is there for anyone
else? The non-American, the nonwhite, the oppressed, the truly other?
Rachel's words from Gaza are a bridge between these two worlds — and now that
bridge is being severed. After the Hamas victory, the need for understanding is
surely greater than ever, and I refuse to believe that most Americans want to
live in isolation. One night in London, an Israeli couple, members of the
right-wing Likud party on holiday in Britain, came up after the show, impressed.
"The play wasn't against Israel; it was against violence," they told Cindy
Corrie, Rachel's mother.
I was particularly touched by a young Jewish New Yorker from an Orthodox family
who said he had been nervous about coming to see "My Name Is Rachel Corrie"
because he had been told that both she and the play were viciously anti-Israel.
But he had been powerfully moved by Rachel's words and realized that he had, to
his alarm, been dangerously misled.
The director of the New York theater told the New York Times on Monday that it
wasn't the people who actually saw the play he was concerned about.
"I don't think we were worried about the audience," he said. "I think we were
more worried that those who had never encountered her writing, never encountered
the piece, would be using this as an opportunity to position their arguments."
Since when did theater come to be about those who don't go to see it? If the
play itself, as Nicola clearly concedes, is not the problem, then isn't the
answer to get people in to watch it, rather than exercising prior censorship?
George Clooney's outstanding movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" recently reminded
us of the importance of standing up to witch hunts; one way to carry on that
tradition would be to insist on hearing Rachel Corrie's words — words that only
two weeks ago were deemed acceptable.
KATHARINE VINER is the features editor at the Guardian in London and the
editor, with Alan Rickman, of "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which premiered at the
Royal Court Theatre in April 2005. Because of the cancellation of the New York
run, the play is transferring to the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End.
Diario de la
Juventud Cubana
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La cara linda
de Estados Unidos
Imad Jada´a*
Rachel Corrie nunca fue terrorista. No simpatizó jamás con Al Qaeda. Sus cabellos rubios y su nacionalidad norteamericana la distinguían entre muchas otras muchachas en la franja de Gaza, sobre todo porque por sus venas no corría sangre árabe. Tampoco profesaba el Islam y apenas había cumplido 23 años.
Rachel residía en Olimpia, en el estado de Washington y estaba desde hacía meses muy lejos de su casa. Pertenecía al Movimiento de Solidaridad Internacional y por ahora su profesión es un oficio nuevo del siglo XXI, ser escudo humano contra la vileza y el crimen.
Uno podría explicar las razones que tendría Rachel para encontrarse en el campamento de refugiados palestinos en Gaza, y cuáles serían los motivos por los cuales pospuso su sueño de graduarse, dejó para después la hermosa posibilidad de amar, de tener hijos. Quería ahora, no más tarde, testificar la tragedia palestina y, lejos de su casa, aprendía el concepto verdadero de la justicia norteamericana.
Rachel era culpable. Culpable —según las declaraciones de Israel— de estar en el país equivocado, a la hora equivocada, junto a las personas equivocadas. Era culpable de no haberse quedado bailando en las discotecas de Estados Unidos, de dejar de ser una ciudadana común y corriente.
Ella escogió estar frente a una casa palestina en el momento en que el bulldózer israelí pretendía derribarla. En la primera imagen que registra una cámara fotográfica, ella desafía al conductor con un simple megáfono en la mano. Tiene el cabello suelto. Interpone su cuerpo entre la endeble pared de la casa y la brutal pala de la escavadora. La escena tiene lugar en Rafah, en Gaza, y conmueve su gesto protector. Nunca una persona tan indefensamente débil ha desafiado a un vehículo transformado en mecanismo de destrucción y muerte.
No pueden escucharse sus palabras. Junto a ella, en la primera foto está otro joven solidario, tal vez de su misma nacionalidad.
En la segunda imagen está en el suelo y sangra. Según los testigos el bulldózer luego de estar detenido un rato decidió avanzar. Luego de tumbarla con el primer golpe, dio marcha atrás y arremetió nuevamente. De una vuelta del timón, el conductor se alejó del escenario. Cambió de dirección, lo dejó a un lado, como cosa sin importancia: la casa en pie, la adolescente derribada.
La imagen carece de sonido. ¿Qué gritaría a su asesino? Sus gritos no fueron en hebreo, sino en el más puro inglés que puede pronunciar una pura muchacha.
El soldado israelí no pudo entender por qué le gritaban en el mismísimo idioma del padrino protector. Tal vez pensó por un instante lo curioso de estas palestinas rubias que hablaban en inglés, un segundo antes de apretar el acelerador hasta el fondo en una arremetida final.
Silencio. La muerte de una muchacha rubia, de 23 años que muere aplastada en Gaza, merece silencio. No hay investigaciones. Nadie ordena que sea entregado el asesino, porque eso sería un chofer menos para los bulldózer, para los tanques, un soldado menos para el asesinato. Y para el crimen son necesarios todos.
Nadie ha dado el pésame a los padres de Rachel. Tan solo el líder palestino les ha hecho llegar su condolencia. No ha ocurrido nada importante, por lo que nadie tiene que pedir disculpas en Estados Unidos ni en Israel. Nadie ha pedido disculpas ni argumentado siquiera el daño colateral. No es necesario.
Tal vez, incluso lleguen a pensar que fueron los palestinos los culpables por no evitar que estuviera frente a la casa a la hora del desastre.
Si la joven estaba junto a los árabes agredidos, junto al Tercer Mundo, es un hecho cierto que no era una legítima ciudadana norteamericana, si fuera legítima estaría —como el Presidente de su país— al lado del sionismo.
Algo ha escapado a sus estadísticas: Rachel Corrie es la primera mártir norteamericana, la primera sangre estadounidense que empapa la tierra palestina de Gaza. Ella ahora se iza, flamea el viento. Desde ahora acompaña en la lucha, porque entró en la historia para acompañar en la tristeza y el dolor a la nación palestina.
Caerán ahora sobre Bagdad misiles y cohetes, el luto se extenderá a nuevos hogares y esa imagen quedará como el rostro terrible de Norteamérica. Estados Unidos tiene dos rostros, de un lado la cara despreciable de Bush, del otro, el dulce rostro de Rachel .
Él la prepotencia, ella la solidaridad; él el irrespeto a un pueblo soberano, ella la admiración y el cariño por la humanidad.
A diferencia de todo lo que representa W. Bush, Rachel es la cara hermosa de Estados Unidos, y el rostro humanamente hermoso es perdurable.
(*Embajador de
Palestina en Cuba)
SOURCE: [this doesn't work]
http://www.jrebelde.cu/2003/enero-marzo/en1472/print/opinion.html
Google cache of the above, which does work
Also reprinted in several other locations, including
Rebelion on March 28, 2003
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