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''I shed a tear for Rachel''

By Raff Ellis

(YellowTimes.org) – When the tragic news broke of the senseless death of Rachel Corrie in Gaza, I couldn't help but think that she could have been my daughter. I reflected on the innocence and idealism of youth that was embodied in Rachel, an idealism that would lead her to face down tanks and bulldozers and also result in her death. What courage for Rachel just to be there!

It took me back to the days when a phone call would announce yet another arrest of my own daughter as she protested for peace. We always encouraged her in her beliefs but told her to be careful because there were a lot of crazies out there. One could never be sure, as she stood amid a large and hostile crowd, that an over-zealous or demented person would not resort to violence, even though the protests were peaceful, in the spirit of King and Gandhi. Rachel is the kind of person who would have been there with my daughter.

I also reflected on what could possibly have been going through the mind of the soldier operating the bulldozer as he crushed Rachel under the blade of his machine and then backed over her for good measure. What was there in his background that would compel him to do such a thing? Did he hate so much? Did he believe that he had the right to kill in the act of demolishing yet another house? Did he feel vindicated so much as to believe he would get a medal for what he did, as the dozer operator in Jenin did for burying people alive in their homes at a record rate? Rachel would have stood in front of that bulldozer, too.

Throughout history, unscrupulous and jingoistic leaders have inspired their minions to perform heinous acts in the name of patriotism or duty to the fatherland. The way immoral leaders achieve their aims is to feed their young people a steady diet of hate, just as Hitler did with the "Brown Shirts" and Mussolini with his "Black Shirts." Give a kid a gun and a uniform and tell him the people he is going up against are inferior, a cancer on their society, cockroaches, not a people but animals and then see how he behaves. Murder becomes a glorious and heroic act but Rachel wasn't afraid of them.

The same thing happened in American history when its leaders resorted to phrases such as, "A good Indian is a dead Indian." What would the rank and file soldiers think when they heard their officers hurl racial epithets at the native population? Would they be compelled to demonstrate their superiority over the "red man" with an avalanche of genocide? This is exactly what happened when the imported Europeans and their progeny believed they had the right of eminent domain over the land they coveted. Wanton killing of Native Americans was the result and few demonstrated any remorse. Rachel would have cried.

It wasn't bad enough that they killed Rachel. No, they had to lie about it saying that the bulldozer "was clearing shrubbery." We're now to believe that the Israelis are into landscape beautification for the Palestinians. They said the operator couldn't see Rachel even though there are pictures clearly showing Rachel atop a dirt pile looking directly at the operator. They said that the peace activists were a danger to themselves, the Palestinians and their forces. Yes, a young girl with a bullhorn is a danger to a soldier with bulldozer or a tank. Opposition is a danger. Truth is a danger. Rachel was standing up for the truth about the wanton destruction by Israelis against Palestinians. She shouted, "Stop doing this!" but the machine kept coming.

To further defame Rachel's death, the Israelis disrupted her return home to her family by not allowing the ambulance carrying her body to pass a checkpoint on its way to a crematorium. The young woman's friends, a group of 200 Solidarity members and Palestinian villagers, tried to hold a memorial service in her honor at the spot where she was killed. Soon the Israelis arrived with three tanks and three bulldozers, including the one that had killed her, and proceeded to harass and terrify the mourners. When the group refused to disperse, they drove around them at high speeds and sprayed a noxious gas that totally enveloped the mourners. They then tried to frighten them with sound grenades. Such were the tactics that Rachel faced on a daily basis described in her own words:

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 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. Nobody in my family has ever been shot at, 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 do not think Rachel would want her death to assume a greater significance than the deaths of the many other youths of Palestine, and in reality, it should not. What her sacrifice does show us is how the brutality of this onerous occupation and repression of an indigenous people results in tragedy on a daily basis. This time, the tragedy came home to America, to the home Rachel thought would always be her safe haven.

I shed a tear for Rachel, her family, her friends and for all the victims of these heinous acts. I'm sure I am not alone.

[Raff Ellis lives in the United States and is a retired former strategic planner and computer industry executive. He has had an abiding and active interest in the Middle East since early adulthood and has traveled to the region many times over the last 30 years.]

Raff Ellis encourages your comments: rellis@YellowTimes.org