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.

The play was a hit when it first opened in London two years ago. But when the New York Theatre Workshop “indefinitely postpon(ed)” its first American production last year, “presumably worried about a hot potato that might offend Jewish theatregoers because its title character is pro-Palestinian,” the action attracted national, if not international, attention.

Several prominent Jewish writers, including Harold Pinter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said in a letter in The New York Times that they were “dismayed” by the theatre’s decision.

“We believe this is an important play, particularly, perhaps, for an American audience that too rarely has an opportunity to see and judge for itself the material it contends with.”

Although the play appeared later at another New York theatre, it still encountered strident Jewish opposition elsewhere including Miami and Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and in Toronto, Canada as well.

What has also upset Jewish audiences has been the fact that Corrie’s experiences in Palestine reminded people of Anne Frank – sometimes she has been described as the Palestinian “Anne Frank” – a German-Jewish teenager who went into hiding during the Second World War with her family in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam.

Her diary covering those 25 months before her death in a concentration camp was first published in 1947 and has been translated into 67 languages.

Since the play has yet to come to Washington, D.C., my wife and I along with two other couples had to drive nearly two hours to Shepherdstown to see the play at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival held on the campus of Shepherd University.

Split over

Here, too, it turned out that the Jewish director of the festival, H. Alan Young, attempted to disrupt the festival in protest over the Corrie play. The 27-member board was so split over the play that they had to hire a mediator. But at the end of their meeting, the board, with one dissent, decided to go ahead with the play.

Despite all these futile interruptions, the play has recently finished a successful run at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Corrie’s home state. And the July 6-29 festival in Shepherdstown was equally very well attended.

Many in the audience were teary eyed and the actress, Anne Marie Nest, could not be better especially when she recited Corrie’s heart-breaking lines:

“If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled and lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment, with no means of economic survival and our houses demolished; if they came and destroyed all the greenhouses that we’d been cultivating for the last however long do you not think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best (as) they could?”

Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, joined by four Palestinian families, are suing the Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, which manufactured the bulldozer, for aiding and abetting human rights violations – the destruction of civilian homes. The case is under appeal a present.

In an interview, Craig Corrie said the play has been translated into several languages but not Arabic. They are also about to complete their book about their 23-year-old daughter, which will be published Norton’s sometime in February.

The least Arabs could do in gratitude for this wonderful family and their amazing daughter, who tragically lost her life in Gaza, is to have an Arabic translation of the upcoming book and the play that is beginning to rock the theatre world in the US and support the Rachel Corrie Foundation as well.

George Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com.

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.

Originally staged in Britain, the play opened in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in July amidst much consternation over how it would be received. The Contemporary Theater Arts Festival housed at Shepherd University is the brainchild of producer-director Ed Herendeen, and he stood his ground in the face of the uproar. One board member resigned, but fears that the controversy would hurt ticket sales proved unfounded. The festival is having its best year yet fulfilling its goal of producing edgy and original theater pieces. Rachel Corrie’s parents were there the weekend I saw the play. Talking with them made the experience especially meaningful.

Craig and Cindy Corrie were living in North Carolina when Rachel, their third child, announced she wanted to go to Gaza. Her mother’s first reaction was to search the Internet for a similar stressed place in the world, like India, that might attract their idealistic daughter without posing as much danger. Rachel, fresh out of college and living in Washington State, had gotten caught up in the peace movement in Seattle, where she signed up with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization set up to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli military occupation. The Corries had never thought deeply about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and their sympathies, like most Americans, tended toward the Israeli side. They worried about their daughter’s safety. But she was a 24-year-old woman living in another state, and this was her decision to make, not theirs.

“My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is drawn from the prolific musings of this young woman from the time she was 10 years old and won an essay contest calling for an end to world hunger. It is not meant to solve the Middle East crisis. Critics of the play say the ISM is a terrorist front group and that Rachel had been used as a human shield. Rachel’s naiveté is the one element everybody agrees on. “I’m kind of new talking about the Middle East Palestinian crisis,” she e-mailed her parents. “I don’t always know the political implications of my work.” Rachel was crushed to death as she stood trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes thought to be complicit in tunneling terrorists into Israel. Her family learned of her death when their older daughter, Sarah, saw it on a crawl across the television screen. They were disbelieving at first; then they spent months that turned into years learning everything they could about how and why their daughter died, and the cause that had stolen her away from them.

The play that honors Rachel’s life is really about letting go: loving, protective parents learning to let go of their child, and a determined, dreamy child learning to let go of her parents. “I’m sorry I scare you,” Rachel e-mailed her parents from Gaza. “But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower-world I grew up in?” The power of the play is in Rachel’s words, and in her journey. As a child, she had a long list of things she would be when she grew up, including the first woman president. And when adults would ask what she wanted to be, she would declare, “I AM a poet.” She remembers how her mother would walk her down the hill to school, and sometimes they’d play hooky together, going to the bookstore and to lunch. “My mother would never admit it, but she wanted me exactly how I turned out—scattered and deviant and too loud,” Rachel writes in her journal. Her father is shy about expressing emotions to his headstrong daughter. He e-mails less often than she’d like, relying on his wife to convey family news, saying he’s proud of her but wishes he could be proud of somebody else’s daughter.

After the production, theatergoers assembled on the campus lawn for a “Peace Café.” One man had bought the script to read but refused to see the play because he didn’t want to be manipulated by the emotion. An ad in the theater program reminds patrons of “The Other Rachels” who died at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. The Corries have met with Israelis who’ve lost a child to Hamas suicide bombers. Grief crosses all boundaries, and so should theater. “My name is Rachel Corrie” is a welcome start.

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.

In the months that followed, Herendeen received more than 100 letters and e-mails, some many pages long. Many of his correspondents passionately opposed the play’s inclusion in the four-week festival.

“This play was hijacked long before it ever got to me,” Herendeen says. “It was co-opted by both sides and used for their own purposes. I think if people actually see the play, they’ll be surprised it’s controversial. It’s really a small, lovely, personal story about one young woman’s journey.”

Corrie’s death at age 23 caused an international furor, primarily because accounts of the circumstances leading up to her killing are diametrically opposed.

A report by the Israeli government concluded that the bulldozer was searching for underground tunnels used in terrorist attacks. The government argues that the driver’s view was obstructed and he couldn’t see Corrie. The activist died, the report concludes, when she fell from a mound of dirt created by the bulldozer, and the mammoth machine piled debris atop her body. The government calls the death an accident.

But members of the International Solidarity Movement, of which Corrie was a member, say they were in the area to prevent the destruction of a home owned by a Palestinian pharmacist. They claim that an armored bulldozer deliberately ran over the helpless young woman twice, and they call her death a murder.

Two of the most outspoken proponents of the murder claim, actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, excerpted Corrie’s diaries and e-mails home and crafted them into a theatrical piece that expresses the young woman’s sympathy for Palestinians and anger about the Israeli military presence on the Gaza Strip.

Surprisingly, My Name Is Rachel Corrie elicited little controversy when it debuted in London in 2005. Its reception in the U.S., though, was far different.

A planned run at the New York Theatre Workshop was put on hold amid opposition from that city’s large and influential Jewish community. The show finally opened off-Broadway in October at the 400-seat Minetta Lane Theatre, where it ran for two months.

Subsequent productions that had been scheduled for Toronto and Miami also were shelved after a barrage of complaints — though My Name Is Rachel Corrie recently finished a successful run at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Corrie’s home state.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, plans to be in the Shepherdstown audience on the show’s opening night.

“We think it’s wonderful that the Shepherdstown group held firm and is doing the play,” she says.

“I think the controversy has less to do with the play itself and more to do with the climate in this country about these issues. The play has become a lightning rod about all the strong feelings people have about what’s happening in the Middle East and our country’s role in it. But this is a discussion that needs to happen.”

Cindy Corrie and her husband, Craig, estimate that they have attended more than two dozen performances in England and the U.S. Seeing the play is a way to remain close to their beloved daughter.

“From the time Rachel was a tiny child, we enjoyed the gift of words that she had,” Cindy Corrie says. “She was able to look at the world and to express what she perceived in a way that was very unique to her. She was an artist. So for us, to hear Rachel’s words over and over again continues to be a gift.”

But, as the Corries would be the first to acknowledge, no family has a monopoly on pain.

Some of the play’s opponents in the Jewish community lost loved ones in the death camps. Others have contended with acts of anti-Semitism.

Husband and wife Richard A. Belle and Marie Pogozelski of Bethesda supported the Shepherdstown festival enthusiastically for a decade. In the past, they have marked the date of each coming festival on their calendar 51 weeks in advance. They have proselytized to friends and neighbors and made unsolicited financial contributions. They even confronted theater critics whose reviews they thought did an injustice to the Shepherdstown productions.

No more.

On Feb. 17, the couple wrote Herendeen, imploring him to withdraw Rachel Corrie from the festival lineup.

“Whether you agree to cancel the play or not, you have the moral obligation to look around and see the effect of this hate-mongering play,” they wrote.

“You will see it on the Web sites. You might see it on a swastika-smeared synagogue in West Virginia or perhaps on an attack on a Jewish student on the Shepherd University campus itself. This will be part of the legacy of you producing a play that explicitly endorses hatred of the Jews. Oops, Israelis. (You and I make that distinction; most purveyors of this slime do not.)”

Young, who resigned from the festival’s board of directors, finds Rachel Corrie’s interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be prejudicial and deeply inaccurate.

He also objects to the inclusion of a play that he believes violates the festival’s mission to stage new works by American playwrights. (In his opinion, Viner and Rickman, both Britons, and not Corrie, are the play’s authors.)

“Unless Rachel Corrie had supernatural powers,” Young says, “she could not have written the account of her death with which the play ends. The account of her demise was written by another Englishman who was a colleague of Corrie’s, so that account is suspect.”

Those are some of the reasons Young resigned from the board. He also weighed other factors before making his decision: He believed the board was breaching its fiduciary duties to safeguard the festival’s financial well-being. In addition, he says the play can’t be considered “contemporary” because the situation on which it is based no longer exists. Israeli civilians and military forces have since left the Gaza Strip.

“The board should absolutely have superseded the producing director if they knew that putting on a particular play could have a detrimental impact on the festival’s financial outcome,” he says.

Young says he welcomes controversial and thought-provoking plays, “no matter what the subject matter. But I object when the plays are so offensive as to cause loss of significant funds. I also would expect them to present more than one point of view.”

Of course, not all Jews object to the show, and not everyone who dislikes the script dislikes it on principle.

“I’ve really stood by the producers,” says Ari Roth, artistic director of Theatre J, which is in residence at the Jewish Community Center in Washington. “They have every right to do this play.”

Roth spoke out this year at a town hall meeting in New York that he attended with other performing arts professionals, including Irene Lewis, artistic director of Center Stage; Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones; and JoAnne Akalitis, the avant-garde New York director and writer.

Roth even considered mounting a production of Rachel Corrie at Theatre J but ultimately decided against it for artistic reasons.

“It’s poignant, to be sure, but it’s not well-argued as a play,” he says. “When you look at it aesthetically, there are many not-so-great artistic decisions. It’s a legitimate subject for a drama, and it asks questions that should be asked. But ultimately, it’s somewhat boring and somewhat biased.”

Herendeen said he can’t help but be impressed by the deep emotions the play has stirred weeks and months before the first scheduled performance.

“It was really moving to hear the depth of the passion expressed by my own, very generous trustees,” he says. “It was really moving to read all those eloquent e-mails and letters.

“But, isn’t this the response we seek from a work of art? In this world, we’re constantly divided. This play creates an opportunity for us to talk to one another.”

The 17th annual Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., has a full slate of offerings in its four-week run.

In addition to four new works, there will be Under the Tent Lectures every Saturday afternoon on topics raised by the plays; a Peace Cafe, and actors’ labs in which non-Equity performers are showcased.

The festival is open Tuesdays through Sundays through July 29.

Tickets cost $30-$36 per performance; $26 for seniors and students. Subscriptions cost $100-$120; $81 for students and seniors.

Call 800-999-2283 or visit catf.org.

Here are the four mainstage productions:

• My Name Is Rachel Corrie. See accompanying article.

• 1001 by Jason Grote. This updating of the story of Scheherazade shuttles (via magic carpet, of course) from ancient Persia, where a new bride desperately weaves tales to bewitch a bloodthirsty king, to a modern love story set in Manhattan and on the Gaza Strip.

• The Pursuit of Happiness by Richard Dresser. This is the second part of Dresser’s Happiness trilogy, which examines the pervasive sense of unease underlying the American dream. An upper-middle-class family is thrown into turmoil when the brilliant teenage daughter decides not to go to college.

• Lonesome Hollow by Lee Blessing. In the future, the government has amassed extraordinary powers over private citizens. Lonesome Hollow, a penal colony for sex offenders, contains both a brutal pedophile and an artist punished for taking nude photographs.

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.

A U.S. District Court judge in Tacoma dismissed the lawsuit in 2005, agreeing with the company’s argument that it wasn’t responsible for how the Israeli army used its product. The family’s request to have the case reinstated drew dozens of protesters to the courthouse, some carrying black silhouettes of Corrie and others holding a painting of a diminutive figure standing before an oncoming bulldozer.

Chemerinsky insisted that the judge applied the wrong legal standard, and that as long as the company knew how the bulldozers were being used, it can be held liable under common law dating back centuries. The case should be sent back to the lower court for further proceedings to determine what Caterpillar executives knew, he said.

But lawyers for Caterpillar and the U.S. Justice Department, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Caterpillar’s behalf, argued that letting the case proceed would require U.S. courts to improperly intervene in political issues reserved for the president and Congress. It would also require American judges to pass judgment on Israel’s practice of demolishing Palestinian homes — “you can’t aid and abet a legal activity,” Caterpillar attorney Robert Abrams told the judges.

Abrams also said Israel purchased the bulldozers with U.S. aid, further complicating the issue.

“If your honors did look at the U.S. as paying for the bulldozer, the U.S. would be an aider and abettor as well,” he said. “There is no conclusion that can be reached other than, it presents a political question.”

Judge Michael Hawkins asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Loeb to consider the hypothetical case of a U.S. oven manufacturer during World War II: If the company continued selling ovens to Germany, knowing they were being used to kill Jews, would there be legal grounds to go after the company?

Yes, Loeb replied — treason, for starters.

But Israel is a U.S. ally, and “a U.S. court would have to opine on what really happened in Gaza and the West Bank,” Loeb said. “This is a prime example of where the court should decline to extend its common-law jurisdiction. … The financing and the sale of this equipment have been approved by the United States. (The plaintiffs) want to have a court second-guess the judgment of the government.”

Chemerinsky and another Corrie attorney, Gwynne Skinner of the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University School of Law, described those issues as red herrings and said there is no evidence in the record that the U.S. did pay for the bulldozers or approve any transactions between Caterpillar and the Israeli government. They wondered aloud how the U.S. could finance Israel’s acquisition of bulldozers while simultaneously decrying the demolition of civilian homes in the occupied territories.

“This is a case about direct commercial sales,” Chemerinsky said. “It’s about holding corporations liable when they aid and abet violations of human rights.”

Corrie’s parents said after the hearing that they have been carrying on their daughter’s work since she died.

“You can’t go back to the way things were before, so you determine a path forward,” Cindy Corrie said. “Rachel left a very strong message about trying to make a difference on these important issues. This gives our life a lot of meaning.”

The judges did not indicate when they would rule. The Israeli consulate in San Francisco declined to comment on case or the allegations of war crimes while the case pends.

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.

A U.S. District Court judge in Tacoma dismissed the lawsuit in 2005, agreeing with the company’s argument that it wasn’t responsible for how the Israeli army used its product. The family’s request to have the case reinstated drew dozens of protesters to the courthouse, some carrying black silhouettes of Corrie and others holding a painting of a diminutive figure standing before an oncoming bulldozer.

Chemerinsky insisted that the judge applied the wrong legal standard, and that as long as the company knew how the bulldozers were being used, it can be held liable under common law dating back centuries. The case should be sent back to the lower court for further proceedings to determine what Caterpillar executives knew, he said.

But lawyers for Caterpillar and the U.S. Justice Department, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Caterpillar’s behalf, argued that letting the case proceed would require U.S. courts to improperly intervene in political issues reserved for the president and Congress. It would also require American judges to pass judgment on Israel’s practice of demolishing Palestinian homes — “you can’t aid and abet a legal activity,” Caterpillar attorney Robert Abrams told the judges.

Abrams also said Israel purchased the bulldozers with U.S. aid, further complicating the issue.

“If your honors did look at the U.S. as paying for the bulldozer, the U.S. would be an aider and abettor as well,” he said. “There is no conclusion that can be reached other than, it presents a political question.”

Judge Michael Hawkins asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Loeb to consider the hypothetical case of a U.S. oven manufacturer during World War II: If the company continued selling ovens to Germany, knowing they were being used to kill Jews, would there be legal grounds to go after the company?

Yes, Loeb replied — treason, for starters.

But Israel is a U.S. ally, and “a U.S. court would have to opine on what really happened in Gaza and the West Bank,” Loeb said. “This is a prime example of where the court should decline to extend its common-law jurisdiction. … The financing and the sale of this equipment have been approved by the United States. (The plaintiffs) want to have a court second-guess the judgment of the government.”

Chemerinsky and another Corrie attorney, Gwynne Skinner of the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University School of Law, described those issues as red herrings and said there is no evidence in the record that the U.S. did pay for the bulldozers or approve any transactions between Caterpillar and the Israeli government. They wondered aloud how the U.S. could finance Israel’s acquisition of bulldozers while simultaneously decrying the demolition of civilian homes in the occupied territories.

“This is a case about direct commercial sales,” Chemerinsky said. “It’s about holding corporations liable when they aid and abet violations of human rights.”

Corrie’s parents said after the hearing that they have been carrying on their daughter’s work since she died.

“You can’t go back to the way things were before, so you determine a path forward,” Cindy Corrie said. “Rachel left a very strong message about trying to make a difference on these important issues. This gives our life a lot of meaning.”

The judges did not indicate when they would rule. The Israeli consulate in San Francisco declined to comment on case or the allegations of war crimes while the case pends.

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.

Anne Marie Nest, who starred in “Mr. Marmalade” at Shepherdstown last summer, will star. Nest says her link to Corrie is less political than emotional. “Just understanding where she’s coming from . . . wanting to fight for the underdog and wanting the world to be a more peaceful place and wishing that we were all better to one another than we are . . . all of those parts I immediately connected to,” Nest says. She sees “a young woman who was passionate, but also scared and questioning and insecure and knew she didn’t know everything. . . . Rachel’s politics aren’t as black-and-white as some people have painted them to be.”

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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.

This aura of agitation and unresolved conflict makes My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a one-woman play based on Corrie’s personal writings, a unique theater experience. First off, and most crucially, it’s impossible to be even halfway informed and still neutral on the subject of the Israeli-occupied territories; this long-standing conflict between Arabs and Jews cuts to the bloody heart of civilization itself. And in the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should say: Suicide bombing disgusts me, yet I fail to see how a seriously subjugated, impoverished, incompletely armed, and continuously besieged population qualifies as a serious threat to the Jewish state—one representing, as the old man’s Zionist literature claims, “a genocidal movement of Arab fascists seeking to destroy Israel.”

Second, and by extension, sitting in the audience during this play is a distinctly odd and somewhat disconcerting experience—one that, for us in our relatively safe haven of world domination, might not be such a bad experience to have. My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play of youthful idealism and confrontational despair that digs under the skin of complicity and apathy, creates a particular discomfort and anger—one that seemed palpable in the theater both prior to and during the show. At best, the tightness in the theater the night I attended represented a strangled withholding of judgment, one that somewhat stifled response to the play itself; at worst, it represented plain old anger.

I didn’t expect to like the play because, frankly, I didn’t expect to particularly like Rachel Corrie herself. For personal reasons I’d rather not discuss here, I have cause to be frustrated with young people who appear driven to die halfway across the world for an issue that obsesses them. I believe their efforts would be better served in their homeland, begging us all to wake up to the particulars of global injustice and the U.S. government’s hand in it. Strong feelings, yes, which makes it all the more surprising that I left the theater deeply moved by the play and feeling very, very sad that Rachel Corrie is dead; from what I saw, I like her—a lot. The reasons for that are manifold, not least of which is the writing of Corrie herself, which is disarmingly vulnerable, unusually wise, and heartbreaking.

The role of Corrie is played by WET veteran Marya Sea Kaminski, one of the most talented and diverse theater people we have in this city. During the course of the play—a narrative stitched together by playwrights Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from Corrie’s journal entries, e-mails, and correspondences—Kaminski achieves such moments of transcendence that she is literally transformed; she channels Corrie’s emotions in such a way that she breaks down all artifice, reaching directly into the soul of the material. The trajectory of the play, which opens in Corrie’s dorm room on the Evergreen State College campus in Olympia and ends with her walking offstage to her death, moves like a crescendo: If there are moments of meandering in the beginning, they are erased by the bristling momentum of rage and fear in the play’s second half—a second half announced rather frighteningly by unexpected gunshots in the night. Braden Abraham’s direction is superb, and the set design and sound work are perfect. The play ends on a definite note of pathos, yet one that is undeniably moving in its desperation to memorialize its subject.

There’s not much more to be said. This is a gutsy play, and it should be seen—especially by those most opposed to it. To stopper one’s ears to the imperfect and searching humanity behind youthful indignation is to miss the real truth behind why we choose or don’t choose to fight.

stage@seattleweekly.com

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.

The Rep run is going on as planned, but it reignites a larger debate over whether Corrie was a naïve but altruistic activist, a gullible tool of terrorists or a martyr for human rights.

A call for “balance”

The Rep is fielding many reactions to the play. One is a letter from the Va’ad HaRabanim of Greater Seattle, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish rabbis who say the play falsely casts Corrie’s death “as a murder while demonizing Israel as an evil, inhumane power whose only purpose is to kill innocents.”

The letter also urges the Rep to “balance” the play’s depiction of the complex Gaza situation by airing other, more vigorously pro-Israel views.

In a coordinated effort by some Jewish groups, the Pacific Northwest Anti-Defamation League took an ad in the Rep’s program (which is published by the Encore Media Group) defending Israel’s Gaza policies as essential security measures. And an ad from Seattle’s Jewish Federation ties the tragedy of Corrie’s death to those of six Israeli women, also named Rachel, who were killed by Palestinian violence.

Members of these Jewish groups also handed out pro-Israel leaflets to Rep patrons as they entered the theater for last week’s previews of “Rachel Corrie.”

But the play has defenders here, too. Nada Elia, a Palestinian-American professor at Antioch University and member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, says Corrie represents a “noble commitment” to “justice, peace and nonviolent resistance, even when one is not directly affected by the injustices one is working to end. … ”

Others hope the show will stir discussion inside an American Jewish community deeply divided over whether criticizing Israel holds that country accountable for its more controversial policies or plays into the hands of bigots and terrorists.

Eager for a “compassionate” open dialogue is Mercer Island psychologist Yaffa Maritz, co-founder of the interfaith peace group Find Common Ground.

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Maritz is an Israel-bred “patriot” and frequent visitor to her native land. She says many American Jews especially “are afraid that there is only room for one story about this issue. They’re afraid if Rachel’s story is heard, then their story [will be seen as] wrong.”

“A native daughter”

The Corries say they’ve also sought common ground, via their Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and visits to Israel and Gaza.

The Olympia couple, who are not Jewish, say they have mourned in Israel with Jewish parents whose children died in Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks there. And they strongly deny Rachel was a terrorist or anti-Semitic.

Craig Corrie believes “My Name is Rachel Corrie” is a multifaceted portrait of his daughter that will resonate locally. “Bringing this play to the Northwest is very special for us. There’s a lot about it that’s very specific to the Northwest.”

“This is about a native daughter of our area,” concurs Seattle Rep artistic head David Esbjornson. “I wanted to do it because it has really wonderful observations, and some really beautiful language, and real heart. But the bigger motive is for us as a culture to engage in a dialogue. We have to open this subject up for discussion.”

Death in Gaza

The roller-coaster response to “My Name is Rachel Corrie” can be traced to 2003, when Corrie went to the Gaza city of Rafah as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a controversial Palestinian-led group that describes itself as a nonviolent organization committed to resisting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.

While in Gaza, Corrie lived with a Palestinian family and protested Israel’s bulldozing of Palestinian homes — a tactic Israel says is essential to rooting out terrorist tunnels.

In detailed e-mails home, Corrie expressed “disbelief and horror” over the poverty and other suffering among Palestinian refugees, and her belief that the U.S. shared responsibility for it. “I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world,” she wrote, “and that we in fact, participate in it.”

Corrie’s death on March 16, 2003, during a demolition protest, provoked headlines worldwide. Details of the incident are still disputed: Israel ruled it an accident, while the Corries still press for an independent investigation.

Soon after Corrie’s death, the Guardian, a liberal London newspaper, published some of her Gaza e-mails. Moved by her words, famed film and theater actor Alan Rickman proposed that the Royal Court Theatre, a noncommercial theater in London, stage a play based on her writing.

With the Corries’ permission — and a sheaf of Rachel’s diary entries and e-mails collected by her older sister, Sarah — Rickman and co-adaptor Katharine Viner (a Guardian editor) assembled the script for “My Name is Rachel Corrie.”

A work for one actor (in Seattle, Marya Sea Kaminski, directed by Braden Abraham), the show draws from Rachel’s Gaza e-mails but also her searching, whimsical diary jottings from her early youth: about her love of Northwest nature (salmon, mountains, trees), family relations and her budding idealism.

“Rachel was always writing,” says Cindy Corrie. “And from the time she was little, she had her own unique way of looking at the world.”

Troubles in U.S.

In London, the play won some raves and was such a hot ticket it went on to a commercial run in the West End.

There were no organized protests, says Viner, noting that art reflecting a range of political opinions is popular in England — and in Israel.

The Corries were delighted by the London success but steeled themselves for a different U.S. reaction. They’ve been stunned, says Corrie’s mother, by the hate messages people send. One was “a toy bulldozer, with a note saying, ‘I’m glad Rachel died.’ ”

But it was still a jolt when the New York Theatre Workshop indefinitely delayed its U.S. debut of “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” The theater cited sensitivities in the Jewish community in an “edgy” period of escalating Israel-Palestine tensions.

Nobel playwright Harold Pinter and others angrily accused the theater of bending to pressure from hard-line supporters of Israel. Similar charges were lodged at Toronto’s CanStage company, when it backed off producing “My Name is Rachel Corrie.”

Last November, different producers mounted the play’s New York premiere, to mixed, mostly lukewarm reviews. Drama critics praised Corrie’s writing talent but faulted the script.

“I think after all the fuss, people came expecting something massive, or very political, and this play just isn’t,” Viner says. “What’s controversial isn’t the play, but Rachel herself.”

In Seattle, “Rachel Corrie” is selling well. And the Rep has slated nine post-play forums, several more than usual. Among others, Maritz, Rabbi Daniel Weiner of Temple De Hirsch Sinai and Ed Mast of the Palestine Information Project will be part of the discussions.

But Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, head of Seattle’s Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath congregation and signer of the Va’ad HaRabanim protest letter, says no one from his group was invited to participate — a missed chance, in his view, to balance “a very one-sided, simplistic picture” of a complex issue.

Asked for comment, the Rep issued a written statement arguing that “to provide the venue or time for anyone who has a differing point of view to what a particular playwright puts forth in their work would be … an overwhelming and impossible task.”

Any U.S. theater presenting this minefield of a play will likely face similar demands. So far, the Rep is the only American regional company to stage it.

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.

For others, it’s a sad tale of a misguided youth who paid for her naivete about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with her life. Still others associate Corrie with the Palestinian extremists working to destroy the Jewish state.

It may be too soon to consider Corrie’s legacy, but her death affected a lot of people in ways they are still dealing with.

At the time of her death, Corrie’s parents were enjoying their newfound life as empty-nesters by traveling and hiking. Then, virtually overnight, they became the public face for many Americans of a bitter struggle in the world’s geopolitical hot spot. Corrie died a few days before the commencement of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

After Rachel’s death, her message of peace became theirs when Craig and Cindy visited Gaza, a narrow strip of land on the southeast Mediterranean that has been alternately controlled by Egypt and Israel since 1948. A 1994 accord provided for gradual transition to self-rule.

“When can you stop working for a 6-year-old child that just pets a rabbit while her whole home is being surrounded by the military? … That child deserves a future as does a child in Tel Aviv riding on a bus. I think we’re working for both of those children,” Craig Corrie said.

Her parents started the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice to fight oppression and advance human rights. The nonprofit foundation moved from the Corrie home to the third-floor of a downtown Olympia office building in December. The foundation listed its net assets as $23,573 at the end of 2005, according to its IRS return.

The Corries were invited to 40 talks last year, and still are overwhelmed by the public response.

“Right from the beginning, we were awestruck by some of the very personal responses from different places right after Rachel was killed, and it continues,” said Craig Corrie, 60.

The Corries continue to lobby for a U.S. investigation into their daughter’s death. An inquiry by the Israeli military cleared its forces of any wrongdoing.

The Israeli report characterized as “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous” the behavior exhibited by Corrie and other members of the International Solidarity Movement, which describes itself on its Web site as a “Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation … using nonviolent, direct-action methods.” The report said the bulldozer was clearing land to search for explosives and not to demolish the Palestinian home, although eyewitnesses dispute that claim.

The Corries contend that the Israeli inquiry was anything but the “thorough, credible and transparent investigation” that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised President Bush.

The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

A resolution sponsored by U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., calling for a U.S. investigation into Corrie’s death never advanced out of committee, and Baird acknowledged there’s little chance of its being successfully resurrected given the U.S. government’s ardent support for Israel.

The Corries sued Caterpillar, the manufacturer of the armored D9 bulldozer that ran over their daughter, for compensatory and punitive damages. They allege the company “was aiding and abetting violations of international law by providing the IDF with the bulldozers used to destroy (Palestinian) homes.”

The U.S. District Court in Seattle dismissed the lawsuit in November 2005, but the Corries appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The appeal awaits oral argument.

Members of the International Solidarity Movement were forced to leave Gaza although they continue to support the Palestinians. Israel changed its entry requirements so those entering must declare they have no association with the International Solidarity Movement or any other group that aims to disrupt Israeli military operations. The change occurred after the death of Corrie and Tom Hurndall, another International Solidarity Movement volunteer, who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier.

“Her death triggered a greater interest in who she was and why on earth she was there,” said Andrew Lyons, a former International Solidarity Movement media coordinator, in an e-mail from Morocco. “If she hadn’t had so much writing, I doubt the story would have continued as long as it has. Her death did obviously cause the wider spread of her writing.”

Lyons also is president of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project, which is close to securing a formal tie between Olympia and the town in Gaza where Corrie died, an idea originally proposed by Corrie and carried on by family, friends and community members after her death.

“We feel it was just a natural evolution of Rachel’s dream,” said John Harvey, the association’s treasurer.

The Olympia City Council is scheduled to consider the proposal next month.

Others express doubt that Corrie’s legacy will be lasting or positive.

Joel Dotterer was based 10 miles from Rafah, arriving there six months after Corrie’s death as a member of a multinational force monitoring a peace agreement between the Egyptians and Israelis.

In conversations with several of the Egyptians and Israelis, he was struck by their opinion of her death. “She was a pawn. She was in over her head,” he said, relating the gist of their comments about her. “She may have had good intentions, but all she was was good press.”

He acknowledged that he didn’t discuss her death with Palestinians because he wasn’t allowed in Gaza.

In a sarcastic op-ed article published in The Jerusalem Post and reprinted in the Wall Street Journal on the first anniversary of Corrie’s death in 2004, Ruhama Shattan, an Israeli translator and writer, thanked Corrie for “showing the way to all those who seek peace in the Middle East.”

“Unfortunately, Corrie’s peace … means not peaceful coexistence but the elimination of the state of Israel, and death to those they call `the usurping Jews, the sons of apes and pigs,’” Shattan wrote.

The Corries are no stranger to such criticism.

“I would ask if the people that are making those kinds of accusations, if they have been there to see for themselves,” Cindy Corrie said. “What’s motivating their criticism?”

It’s clear the deeds, words and death of Rachel Corrie stir passionate opinions, but Craig Corrie hopes there’s a next step.

“I hope her legacy will be one of becoming involved,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be involved in Israel-Palestine. … But I think there’s just lots of places around the world and around our individual communities that cry out for taking some initiative and some responsibility.”

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.

The two girls emphasized in their poems that the children of Rafah, in particular, and all children of Palestine will never forget Rachel, who will be in their memories as long as they live. The children then hung placards with slogans commemorating Rachel and wishing she was still with them. Among the signs: “Rachel we will not forget you,” “Rachel we need you,” “Rachel Corrie died as a Palestinian,” and “We welcome her in the highest esteem and honor.” Children placed wreaths and olive branches on her symbolic coffin. They sent their wishes and honor to Rachel’s parents, who live in the U.S. and who joined the children last year for the third anniversary commemorations.

After posting a large picture of Rachel on the wall of the exhibit, Ameer Barakeh, 14, took a few steps to Rachel’s symbolic coffin, and placed some flowers on it. He looked for a long time at her picture and his eyes got misty and tears rolled down his cheeks. “Even though a long time has passed, she is still in my mind,” Barakeh said, “and every day I remember her wide smile when she used to come to this parliament, sit with us, talk to us, and give us gifts of toys and clothes.” He added that he and other young parliamentarians plan to hold commemorations regularly for Rachel Corrie, British ISM volunteer Tom Hurndall, British photographer James Miller and all the members of the solidarity movement who have lost their lives. [Another American ISM volunteer, Brian Avery, was shot in the face in Jenin and survived.]

Abdel Raouf Barbakh, the supervisor for the young parliament, emphasized that the idea for the exhibit came from the children themselves, who brought possessions and gifts Rachel gave them and began collecting the statements. Barbakh invited all civil and other groups to come visit the exhibit.