FW: [MO-NP] Fwd: "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie to her family

["mc.foto" <mc.foto at libero.it>]

ciao,
inoltro questa mail in ricordo di Rachel Corrie

saluti di pace
maurizio
mcfoto.net



----------
Da: David Grant <BlueFoxNL at yahoo.com>
Data: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 05:41:21 -0800 (PST)
A: NP Discussion <npdiscussion at yahoogroups.com>, "MO-NP at yahoogroups.com"
<mo-np at yahoogroups.com>
Oggetto: [MO-NP] Fwd: "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie  to
her family

Rachel Corrie, 23, American, a member of Grassroots
International Presence for the Protection of Palestine
(GIPP, a member organization of the Nonviolent Peaceforce)
was killed over the weekend while trying to prevent an
Israeli buldozer from destroying a house in Gaza.
    According to news reports "at least one Palestinian was
also killed" at the time.
    This statement is forwarded by the Gush Shalom(Hebrew:
"Peace Block") from Israel:

> /////////////////
>      Gush Shalom
>      /////////////////////////
> 
> International release, March 17, 2003
> 
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "I am allowed to go see the ocean"
> Rachel Corrie wrote to her family
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> [We forward the sad but courageous statement of the
> parents of Rachel
> Corrie, followed by a moving  "letter from Palestine"
> which she sent them
> on Feb. 7, 2003, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza
> Strip.]
> 
> ------- Forwarded message follows -------
> Date sent:       Mon, 17 Mar 2003 01:27:48 +0000 (GMT)
> From:            ism rafah <ismrafah at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject:         Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents
> 
> March 16, 2003
> 
> "We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out
> the details behind
> the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip.
> We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty
> of the global 
> community and family and are proud that Rachel was able
> to live her 
> convictions.  Rachel was filled with love and a sense of
> duty to her fellow
> man, wherever they lived.  And, she gave her life trying
> to protect those 
> that are unable to protect themselves.
> Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like
> to release to 
> the media her experience in her own words at this time.
> 
> Thank you.
> Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
> 
> --
> Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003.
> 
> 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 which these children
> exist, 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.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> If you got this forwarded and you want to subscribe, send
> mail to 
> 
> gush-shalom-press-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org
> 
> and write "subscribe" in the subject line.
> 
> --
> 
> To unsubscribe, send mail to
> 
> gush-shalom-press-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org
> 
> and write "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
> 
> For assistance: info at gush-shalom.org
> ------- End of Forwarded Message -------
> 
> 
> George Rishmawi
> Coordinator,
> Travel and Encounter Program
> Holy Land Trust
> Middle East Building
> No. 205, Manger Street
> Bethlehem, Palestine
> Tel: + 972 2 276 5930
> Fax: + 972 2 276 5931
> Email: encounter at holylandtrust.org
> Website: www.holylandtrust.org
> Mobile: 052 50 20 79
> 



=====

David Grant / Nonviolent Peaceforce / POB 11309 / Washington DC 20008 / USA
/    (+1) 202-244-0951 / fax: -6396 / www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org
Out of office: 3-4, 9-11 and 16 April
 "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their
mission can alter the course of history."                 - M.K. Gandhi


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