Rachel’s Words

By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News

She is described as “the most talked about playwright in America today” but because she had cast her dice in support of the Palestinians her play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, is the target of vicious attacks by pro-Israeli elements in the country.

Corrie did not actually write the play. She couldn’t because she was crushed to death in March 2003 while blocking a 60-tonne Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer that was planning to demolish a Palestinian home she was protecting in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The bulldozer passed over her body twice and the Israeli authorities unabashedly claimed that her death was an “accident”. Her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement witnessed the incident and were able to retrieve her badly damaged body. The State Department has said that the investigation was neither transparent nor credible.

British actor/director Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner (of The Guardian) composed the 90-minute monologue from Corrie’s letters home, e-mails and journal entries while living in the Gaza Strip with a Palestinian family.

by Eleanor Clift, Newsweek

A new play about the life of a young woman run down by Israeli forces in Gaza may be politically controversial, but it speaks to cross-cultural human truths that deserve an audience.

Maybe you’ve heard something about the play, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” You probably haven’t seen it; few people have. But you know it’s controversial, that it’s not balanced, that it’s too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and doesn’t fairly present the Israeli side.

That’s all true, and it was enough to get a scheduled production in New York City canceled. But the play is also a remarkable piece of art, and it’s not meant to be balanced. It’s based solely on the writings, journals and e-mails of a young woman volunteering for a peace organization who was run over by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003.

By Mary Carole McCauley
published by Baltimore Sun, July 1, 2007

On March 16, 2003, a bulldozer powered by the Israeli Defense Forces on the Gaza Strip lowered its blades and rumbled into motion — and a young American protester named Rachel Corrie was crushed to death.

Four years later, the ground still has yet to settle back into place.

At least, that’s true metaphorically, if not literally. Consider the reaction when the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., announced that one of four productions for its 2007 season would be My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a one-actor play based on the tragedy.

Within 48 hours of the announcement last December, H. Alan Young, a retired attorney and festival director, and his wife withdrew their pledge of $100,000 for the festival’s building campaign, Ed Herendeen, the festival’s artistic director says. Organizers anticipate that the programming decision will cost an additional $20,000 to $50,000 in lost box-office revenues.

Initially, the 27-member board was so split on the wisdom of mounting such a divisive show that the festival hired a mediator. At the end of a session in mid-February, the board, with one dissent, decided to move forward with the production.

by AP
published in The International Herald Tribune

SEATTLE: The family of a woman killed trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in 2003 asked a federal appeals court panel to reinstate its lawsuit against Caterpillar Inc., saying the company knew bulldozers it sold to the Israeli government were being used to commit human rights violations.

“Caterpillar sold this product knowing — or it should have known — it would cause exactly this harm,” one of the family’s lawyers, Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky told the three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was crushed by a 60-ton Israeli bulldozer as she stood before a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.

Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, sued Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, seeking to hold the company civilly liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations — the destruction of civilian homes.

Four Palestinian families whose relatives were killed or injured when the Israeli Defense Forces flattened their homes joined the Corries in filing suit.

Associated Press

The family of a woman killed trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in 2003 asked a federal appeals court panel to reinstate its lawsuit against Caterpillar Inc., saying the company knew bulldozers it sold to the Israeli government were being used to commit human rights violations.

“Caterpillar sold this product knowing — or it should have known — it would cause exactly this harm,” one of the family’s lawyers, Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky told the three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was crushed by a 60-ton Israeli bulldozer as she stood before a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.

Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, sued Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, seeking to hold the company civilly liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations — the destruction of civilian homes.

Four Palestinian families whose relatives were killed or injured when the Israeli Defense Forces flattened their homes joined the Corries in filing suit.

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Three of the four plays at next month’s Contemporary American Theater Festival have volatile political edges. Even the fourth — a comedy about a middle-class family’s meltdown — argues that the “pursuit of happiness” is less a right than a destructive obsession. The 17th repertory festival ( www.catf.org) runs July 6-29 in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Topping the list is “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” about the young American activist who was killed in 2003 in a pro-Palestinian protest in Gaza. One CATF board member and donor resigned and some regular subscribers canceled after Artistic Director Ed Herendeen chose the play, objecting to its critical portrayal of Israel. CATF Associate Producing Director Peggy McKowen wrote in an e-mail to Backstage that subscriptions are “holding steady” compared with the previous two years. “Rachel Corrie” also provoked controversy last fall when the New York Theatre Workshop announced and then canceled plans to stage the solo piece, compiled by British actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner from Corrie’s journal entries and e-mails.

By Richard Morin
Published in Seattle Weekly

The moment I turned off Mercer and onto the path leading to the Rep’s Leo K. theater Saturday night, an elderly man in a sports coat shuffled up and, not impolitely, intercepted me. “Are you going to Rachel Corrie,” he asked. I told him I was, and he shoved into my hand a pamphlet of stapled white paper. Ah, Jesus, I thought, here we go. I opened the page to see all the other Rachels besides Corrie—the Olympia native killed at the age of 23 by an Israeli-driven bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home from destruction in 2003—who have been killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. Not too many steps further, I encountered a couple more demonstrators, holding signs and standing beside a wooden easel holding a large, framed poster of Corrie that said “Stop the Killing.” I accepted their literature as well, a yellow handbill eulogizing Corrie in agitprop. The moment I began to move on, a gust of wind tipped the easel, and as it crashed to the ground, I reached to save it. Before I could grab it, however, I heard the glass in the frame crash and splatter, and I yanked my hand away. “Thank you,” one of the demonstrators said. “It wasn’t me,” I protested. “It was the wind.” Then I realized he really meant it.

By Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic

Like any proud parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie eagerly anticipate the local debut of a play about their daughter.

But the Corries are also bracing for backlash. In 2003, at age 23, their daughter Rachel died after being run over by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And her activism in the Middle East has become so controversial that just saying — or printing — her name can incite an argument.

No one is shouting yet at Seattle Repertory Theatre, where the West Coast debut of “My Name is Rachel Corrie” is now in previews and opens Wednesday. But quietly, offstage, the debate re-emerges with the production of the solo play based on Corrie’s e-mails and diary entries, some of which express her political concerns.

It’s a debate that mirrors the impassioned divisions between some Israelis and Palestinians, and between their American supporters and critics.

A hit in its 2005 London premiere, the play was derailed in New York and Toronto when 2006 productions were postponed and canceled, triggering claims of artistic censorship and intolerance.

By Christian Hill
McClatchy Newspapers

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Cindy Corrie never imagined losing one of her children, nor did she believe she would survive such a loss.

Then on March 16, 2003, the unthinkable happened. Her 23-year-old daughter, Rachel, was crushed beneath an Israeli bulldozer as she stood defending the home of two Palestinian families in Rafah, Gaza.

Cindy, 59, and her husband, Craig, made up their minds then to keep their daughter’s words and message alive, despite their loss.

“In fact, within the hour, we did start making decisions,” Cindy Corrie said, “and one was because Rachel’s words (in diaries and e-mails) had had such an impact on us, that those words needed to be available to people. She had worked on that. That was something she wanted to see happen.”

Rachel Corrie’s voice can still be heard four years after her death, with last week’s opening of the controversial play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” in Seattle.

And her voice continues to resonate, in her hometown of Olympia, Wash., and elsewhere.

For some, it’s a message of peace, a calling for nonviolent protest to right what’s wrong in the world.

This article was originally published in Arabic by the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Ayyam on March 16, 2007, and translated by Mazin Qumsiyeh.

Children from the Mini Palestinian Parliament in Rafah commemorated the fourth anniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Corrie, 23, lost her life under an Israeli army bulldozer on March 16, 2003 while attempting to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a home belonging to a Palestinian citizen near the Brazil neighborhood southeast of Rafah city.

The children installed a permanent exhibit to honor her life that included pictures and personal belongings at the parliament site in the center of Rafah governorate. The exhibit includes pictures of Rachel and statements and other documents released upon her loss, some personal belongings, as well as a symbolic coffin covered by the Palestinian flag.

Nadeem Al-Mahaydeh, 11, and Islam Abu Sharkh, 12, read commemorative poems they’d written in English. The two girls spoke about Rachel’s heroic stand in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah—a stand that cost her life.