Re-Remembering Rachel Corrie

The selfless teacher of Moral-Activism



Zahir Ebrahim



March 16 2008.



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Re-Remembering Rachel Corrie (1979 – 2003) as the selfless teacher of Moral-Activism.

On this 5th anniversary of Rachel's supreme self-sacrifice to stand up to tyranny on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinian people, it is à propos remembering this forgottened American victim of Jews-on-Jews violence with these pitiless 1943 words of Yitzhak Shamir the import of which, among other atrocities upon its indigenous peoples, deliberately harvested the cataclysm of the holocaust and European anti-semitism to lead to the construction of 'Eretz Yisrael' in Palestine:

“Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war, ... We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle”.

Lest those living in the void of modernity and 'united we stand' with the inexplicable 'war on terror' which has been deliberately divorced from its historical and imperial contexts think such terror doctrines were an aberration due to the tumultuous founding of 'Der Judenstaadt' in the aftermath of the holocaust in the otherwise vastly moral and lofty traditions of Zionism, it is also pertinent to remember Rachel Corrie in the context of these remorseless 1939 confessional words of Israel's first Statesman uttered before the word 'holocaust' even existed:

“[In Internal discussions post 1936-1939 revolt of the Palestinian Arabs, David Ben-Gurion noted] let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves ... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. [Their revolt] is an active resistance by the Palestinians to what they regard as a usurpation of their homeland by the Jews. Behind the terrorism [i.e. the Palestinian Arab revolt] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice.”

And lest one may think that this self-righteous 'ubermensch' attitude of 'god's chosen peoples' feeling entitled to forcibly occupy another's lands only existed pre-founding of 'Der Judenstaadt', and that the modern democratic Zionist state of Israel represents the moral inheritance of Moses, the Ten Commandments, and Judaism, rather than the terrorist apartheid pariah state that it still is today no different from its original conception, it is further instructive to remember Rachel Corrie by contextualizing her killing at the hands of the IDF as she defended a Palestinian family's home in the chauvinist 1983 words of the distinguished cockroach peddler and Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Raphael Eitan:

“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.”

and

“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

Not to stop there, Israel, in its pursuit of the systematic terror doctrine for incremental conquest of 'Eretz Yisrael' that is openly admitted to by generations of its Zionist leaders to be “very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle”, today threatens the largely futile “active resistance ... which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice” by its indigenous peoples sixty years down with an even “bigger holocaust”, as unabashedly expressed by Israel's present Defense Minister Matan Vilnai:

“The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves”.

This is the atrocious backdrop of the daily living hell created by the 'chosen people of god' for the Palestinians still alive in the unholy land of oppression that Rachel Corrie had gone to stop – as she wrote in her last desperate emails to her mother in America from Rafah, Palestine:

“Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that 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. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointed. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it.”

What a 'wonderfully' engineered modernity of the 'hectoring hegemons' – “the base reality of our world” – as the most powerful and sole-superpower sugar-daddy of the Zionist pariah state itself now descends into a fascist police state to carry-on its own devilishly crafted “imperial mobilization” in order to “birth-pang [the] New Middle East” for its convoluted clients-masters.

What is common in the modus operandi between Israel incrementally and systematically expanding its conquest of 'Eretz Yisrael' “waging wars by way of deception” in the name of fighting the terrorism of the recalcitrant Palestinians who refuse to obey the 1948 goyem's law propounded by Ben-Gurion of “the old will die and the young will forget”, and the “imperial mobilization” for “full spectrum dominance” by the world's sole superpower in the name of fighting a synthetic 'World War IV' against a “Bin-Laden” clan sitting barefoot and cross-legged in the caves of the Hindu-Kush armed to the teeth with laptops, airplane flying manuals, and Pakistani 'loose nukes'?

They both need what the first Statesman-founder of 'Eretz Yisrael' had so diabolically summed up as the quintessential Machiavellian method of inducing “birth-pangs” in order to raise new phoenix from deliberate ashes:

“what is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times”.

Thus “birth pang[ing] the new middle East” as noted by the erstwhile American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the “Global Zone of Percolating Violence” as chalked out in a map by former American National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in 'the Grand Chessboard', and the conquest of 'Eretz Yisrael' as contemplated by its generations of Zionist leaders and thinkers, not only happen to all coincide and share common exponents and tactics today, but also share the common underlying diabolical strategy observed by David Ben-Gurion above. “Imperial mobilizations” today require “revolutionary times” as much as fish require water – for without the pretexts of endless wars against suitably demonized and threatening enemies, none of these conquests at the expense of 'dispensable' peoples living in its paths would ever be possible.

And the indomitable courage of one 23 year old American girl, lovingly named Rachel Corrie by her parents, bearing witness to the continual construction of such “revolutionary times” in the land of Canaan with her own precious life, surely brings back some semblance of humanity into the otherwise misleading classification of 'human beings' as hominids, which today, has unfortunately become indistinguishable from 'ubermensch' baboons in suits and ties (with profound apologies to the real ordinary baboons) and from the mindless zombies among the rest of the multitudes apathetically oblivious of the genocide as they shop till they drop.

In the Western homelands among its “populist democracy”, it remains true that “Deception is the state of the mind; and the mind of the state” and a prerequisite for “imperial mobilization” when its ordinary peoples – the plebeians – are no longer imbued with the uber spirit of 'la mission civilisatrice'. But for the 'unworthy' victims of imperial mobilization, the bullets to the head of their children and their bulldozed homes leave little need for deception and 'the endless trail of red herrings' that is continually spun to the populist democracies to get them to accept the atrocities of conquest in the name of “defend[ing] ourselves” against terrorism.

So when the enemy can naturally exist, as the Palestinians do, and whose indigenous lands and possessions are being systematically usurped and destroyed in the name of 'self-defense' by the transplanted Zionists, that actually helps automatically create the requisite “revolutionary times” needed to construct 'Eretz Yisrael' due to the natural act of real but still “primitive” and altogether futile self-defense put up by the indigenous peoples against an overwhelmingly superior foe that is fully backed, militarily, economically, and politically, by the world's sole superpower. Wonderful stuff from the point of view of the Zionist leaders, despite some empty chairs on Shabbath in Tel Aviv – no differently from how some civilians were surely lost by the Anglo-Saxon 'White Man' to the scalp-hunting 'terrorist' Red Indians while settling their indigenous continent at the expense of remorselessly exterminating up to 10 million of them.

But what happens when the enemy does not naturally exist? It is fabricated into existence as a bootstrap, and greatly facilitated into becoming an 'enemy' to fight against in order to create the requisite “revolutionary times”. That is the entire underlying empirical underpinnings behind America's 'war on terror' since its 'new Pearl Harbor'. For without '911' and the “sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of well being”, as Zbigniew Brzezinski had astutely observed:

“It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is defense spending), and the human sacrifice (casualties even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.”

In either situation, whether the enemy is real or fabricated, since “revolutionary times” are what is being deliberately synthesized, the populist democracies must be diligently kept misinformed, uninformed, and continually disinformed by playing up the threat of the real or fabricated enemy (as the case may be), and suitably demonizing the “evil doers” while eulogizing their handful of 'worthy' victims, so that the populist democracies might acquiesce to the enemies' extermination with extreme prejudice. This extreme projection of barbaric power with overwhelming “shock and awe” upon civilian populations and anemically armed foes unable to realistically challenge the world's armed to the teeth colossus, constructs the controlled chaos, the random terror bombings, the F-16 retaliations and counter suicide strikes, the check-points and starvation, sanctions and deprivation, and eventual shattering of tabula rasa of the innocent with concomitant lust for revenge and hence more self-sustaining natural enemies – the “revolutionary times” – and thusly, new settlements and new military bases go up along with a healthy rise in defense spending and acquisition of new death-toys. New countries are primed for attack with chauvinist doctrines of 'preemptive self-defense' against fictitious threats and contrived pretexts to construct more “revolutionary times”.

Thus empire-building is effectively enabled contrary to the “democratic instincts” under “normal times”, and proceeds at full pace in the exercise of its unfettered “capacity for military intimidation”, easily dragging the otherwise vociferous recalcitrants into the wake of its turbulent vortex due to the raw shock-effect of the “revolutionary times”. Does this sound at all familiar to the thoughtful reader?

Consequently, as those given to a modicum of reflection can trivially predict for the fate of the 'enemy', we empirically witness a systematic effort to both malign Islam as the fabricated enemy to wage a lifetime of “World War IV” against using the inevitable mantra of 'Clash of Civilizations', and an alive Palestinian as the quintessential stone throwing, suicide bombing terrorist to defend Israel against.

Indeed, Daniel Pipes does great work on both counts when he delectably asserts almost a century later “[It is] Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized World and Barbarians”, in remarkable sympathy with similar projections by the founder of 'Der Judenstaadt' himself as he sold the concept of creating Zionistan in Palestine to the imperialists of his time “We can be the vanguard of culture against barbarianism”.

And since Rachel Corrie's courageous stand against the American made D9 Caterpillar armored bulldozer under whose tread she lost her life was to defend the 'unworthy' “barbarians” – attempting to prevent a Palestinian home from being demolished by the IDF under the Israeli pretext that these homes in Gaza were being used to take pot-shots at the occupying Israeli army and thus had to be eliminated as a security risk – she must be willfully ignored by the mainstream newsmedia as any other 'unworthy' victim in the path of any “vanguard of culture”. Thus we can now immediately begin to grasp the similarities in news coverage of the decimation of indigenous and 'unworthy' victims in both Israel's war on terror in Palestine and Lebanon, and America's war on terror in the entire world, but especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Pentagon openly admitting that they do not keep track of its victims.

And if it's not possible to entirely ignore the grotesque death of Rachel Corrie because of alternate newsmedia and the rapidly spreading Internet access in American homes, not to mention the popular readings of her letters in theatrical productions that are forcibly canceled in America and her eulogies written to music and spread through word of mouth on the Internet, then at least, due to its potential of making Rachel Corrie a popular name and a headache for Israel and for its sponsors, systematically belittle and discredit her as a misadventurous kook.

Heaven forbid that the zombie “populist democracy” ever wakes up to “the base reality of our world” and begins to ask rational and forensic questions as to why a sweet innocent college girl of 23 from small-town USA was in Palestine in the first place.

And worse, if the people begin to ask their politicians at election time why military and economic aid is being freely doled out to an armed to the teeth occupying power that is destroying indigenous civilian infrastructures, homes, orchards, farms, water wells, shooting children in the eyes and head, confiscating the indigenous lands and water supplies, building their own European settlements in place of destroyed indigenous properties, constructing giant 14 feet tall concrete walls to close-in the indigenous peoples into what in any other place and under any other jack-boots would aptly be described as giant open-air prison camps, concentration camps, and bantustans, in contravention to the occupier's responsibility under the Geneva Conventions!

Indeed, the most fair minded with an eye for perspective might even begin to ponder what crimes had the Palestinians committed upon the Jews that their indigenous continuously inhabited lands were gratuitously granted to the European Zionist aspirants by the imperialist powers in compensation, or why was there an occupier in what little was left to the Palestinians in the first place.

And perhaps even begin asking the first commonsensical question that even arises in the mind of an average Kindergartner when he or she innocently learns of the troubles in Palestine, that why the anachronistic and racist apartheid state in the modernity of today could not be dismantled like South Africa and transformed into one fair democratic state for all its indigenous peoples, Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike? And that if a Jews-only homeland had to be forcibly allocated for 'god's chosen ubermenschen', why could it not be done in Europe (or America) from where the majority of the Zionist transplants into Palestine hailed?

After all, it was Germany that did the Holocaust! And it was the American bankers and corporations that financed Hitler! And it was the Christian Europe that persecuted the Jews throughout their 2000 year history of Diaspora. Shouldn't these folks duly bear the burden of restitution to the Jews? And if the Jews demand their compensation, and an innocent third party is apportioned to pay it, who will pay the restitution to the Palestinians when their day finally comes too? Or perhaps these “barbarians” can be eliminated entirely, like the native Americans, to avoid such a day! Asking any child in sixth grade, when he or she first learns of the genocide of the native Americans, whether she might do anything to prevent it if that was happening today, what do you think might her answer be? What if these kids were told about this ongoing genocide in Palestine, and instead of tours of the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., they were taken on tours through the unholy land of oppression? Or instead of reading the Diary of Anne Frank in eight grade, they were assigned to read Rachel Corrie's letters from Palestine? Or asked to compare the two?

Asking such uncomfortable questions by the mainstream upon being exposed to the “base reality of our world” could certainly put a dent in the imperial scheme of things, especially if it created popular mass protests and shut-down strikes as in the case of the Vietnam War!

Thus Rachel Corrie today remains an unknown in America – only mourned by her friends and family, and of course, by the multitude of “barbarians” in the unholy land of oppression for whose defense she courageously chose to take direct action. Also perhaps occasionally remembered by a handful of ordinary people like this lowly scribe who only met her through her poignant letters to her mother, and was dumbstruck enough by her sheer courage to voluntarily stand up to the immeasurable tyranny being inflicted upon an innocent peoples right before the silent eyes of the world's leaders, to want to tell the rest of the world about her in the full context of her supreme sacrifice, so that it may yet yield some fruits before it is too late!

The detailed analysis of American newsmedia coverage of Rachel's killing presented in Chapter-4 of this scribe's maiden 2003 book 'Prisoners of the Cave' not only deconstructs the utter silence in the American mainstream newsmedia today even five years after her killing, but also the systematic and still ongoing attempts by the sponsors, architects, and circus-clowns of “revolutionary times” and “imperial mobilization” to denigrate her courageous stand. A search of “Rachel Corrie” on the Internet brings up countless websites and articles that attempt to discredit her, the most outrageous of which, in this scribe's view, is this 2004 comment from neocon Frontpage magazine on the occasion of Rachel's first death anniversary: “a useful idiot for, and one more victim of, Palestinian terror”.

To learn more of the stark brutish everyday reality of a peoples under occupation in the modernity of the twenty-first century being boldly threatened with a “bigger holocaust”, from the eyes and words of a genuine heiress to humanity who, by showing her unflinching courage before the world's mightiest military might, today keeps hope alive for all victims of the “Iron Wall”, see  http://rachelcorrie.org,  http://rachelswords.org,  http://rachelcorriefoundation.org,  http://youtube.com/watch?v=O3JI-axaRF4,  http://palsolidarity.org/main/category/rachel-corrie.

Unless one happens to be perversely indoctrinated, or incredibly self-serving and sharing in the aspirations of conquest with the baboons du jour who call themselves the 'hectoring hegemons', one can easily decide for oneself with some of one's own commonsense and a modicum of reasoning skills, if Rachel Corrie was a “useful idiot” or the flag bearer of an awakened conscience!

If you become outraged by learning a bit about Rachel Corrie, do drop a letter to the editor, to your favorite television anchor, and to your local councilman, remembering Rachel Corrie – your ordinary American girl next door who just had to stand up for what is decent, what is moral, and what is unacceptable as a human being first!

And to see how you, as an ordinary person sharing in the same gene pool as the genuine hominids, can contribute to the legacy of Rachel Corrie – of Moral-Activism – without leaving the comfort of your own home and sacrificing your own precious life to stand up to tyranny, do read this essay by Project Humanbeingsfirst: 'Dialog among Civilizations: Whytalksfail?' It was partly inspired by the Moral-Activism of this American princess, and was dedicated to her memory on the occasion of her fourth anniversary last year.

May you rest in peace dear Rachel Corrie, for surely, those continually suffering under the jack-boots of your brethren and cursing all those who know and remain silent bystanders, must make you restless even in 'Walhalla'! You did attempt to salvage, with the sacrifice of your own youthful and precious life, 'humanity' that has today become lost to human beings from the clutches of the Zionocons. You indeed showed once again that Zionism is the antithesis of the moral law of Moses, and everything that is decent. You demonstrated by your sacrifice that the Zionists have hijacked even the good name of Judaism for their nefarious agenda of 'Eretz Yisrael' – for none of their conduct as an oppressor reflects the high ideals of Jews as an ancient peoples who have carried the weight of thousands of years of history and know suffering more than any other peoples on the face of the Earth today. You showed by your supreme sacrifice, the hollowness of your murderers claims to being Jews. And you have certainly laid threadbare the inhumanity of us silent bystanders as well. All this is at least several lifetimes worth of achievement condensed into a mere 23 years. Now it is for us, those still living, and pathetically “looking from the side”, to wakeup to the grotesque reality of perpetual war on 'the Grand Chessboard' – that aims to create a “Zion that will light up all the world” through 'Noble Lies' – all of which is constructed precisely with devilishly orchestrated “revolutionary times”, and do our small bit. You now rest in peace, dear Rachel Corrie!

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The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by six publishers and can be read on the web at  http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at  http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.

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