Re-Remembering
Rachel Corrie
in
the 60th year of the Nakba
Zahir
Ebrahim
March 16 2008.
©
Project
HumanbeingsfirstTM.
Permission granted to use freely as per copyright notice.
Re-Remembering
Rachel Corrie (1979 – 2003) as the selfless teacher of
Moral-Activism in the 60th year of the on-going Nakba of the
Palestinian peoples with no end in sight!
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 Jewish
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
for 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 the Christian folks duly bear the
burden of restitution to the Jews? And if the Jews demand their
compensation, and an innocent third party – the Palestinian
people – 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!
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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Re-Remembering
Rachel Corrie 8
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in the 60th year of the Nakba