Rachel Corrie on Stage

By JEROME RICHARD

Rachel Corrie was the young woman who in 2003 stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza strip and was killed by it. She was trying to protect a Palestinian house from demolition. There is a dispute over whether or not the driver saw her, or whether he could not see her over the bulldozer's blade. It is a crucial question, but not the one that concerns me here. I believe Rachel Corrie was sincere in her belief that she could help protect Palestinians from a house demolition, and admirable in her sympathies. My concern is the uses being made of her sacrifice.

A play titled My Name is Rachel Corrie, based on her diaries and e-mails home, was presented last year in London. It was scheduled this year in New York but has been postponed. Another play about her was performed here in Seattle recently by the Bread & Puppet Theater, and My Name is Rachel Corrie will be presented next year in Seattle by the Seattle Repertory Theatre. It will no doubt have other productions around the country if not around the world. The London staging, directed by the actor Alan Rickman, was reportedly very moving. That's the trouble.

My concern is that in order to foster admiration for Ms. Corrie her memory is being used to promote hatred against Israel.

For those who believe that only a fair two-state solution to the conflict will bring lasting peace, there is plenty to criticize on both sides. So, anyone who thinks the issues are one-sided, has removed themselves from the community of people seeking peace.

There was a time when Israel had the sympathy of caring people in the west. The country was seen as the underdog against an array of Arab countries bent on its destruction. Admiration reached a peak in the daring 1976 raid at Entebbe that rescued over a hundred Israeli hostages. But look around now at any college campus, or at street demonstrations on almost any issue, and you will see that sympathy has largely shifted to the Palestinians. This is partly because having won the wars inflicted upon it, Israel is no longer perceived as the underdog, but the principal reason is that the Palestinians are perceived as victims. Never mind that they are to a great degree the ultimate cause of their own victimization, or that they have suffered as much from their own corrupt and inept governments as from Israeli occupation, the perception is accurate enough. The Palestinians have real, legitimate grievances.

Israel's sometimes heavy-handed actions have enhanced the perception of Palestinians as victims. House demolitions of the families of suicide bombers were an example of such oppressive actions. They were meant to be a deterrent. It was a deplorable policy, and one that has since been rescinded. (Demolitions in Gaza were generally of houses that were concealing tunnels used to smuggle weapons whose end use was to kill Israelis.) The use of excessive force, resulting in the killing of innocents, and the seizures of Palestinian land and destruction of Palestinian olive groves certainly portrayed the Palestinians, accurately enough, as victims.

Of course, there is also much to blame on the Palestinian side, including the refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist (the PLO has done so belatedly; Hamas still refuses), participating in wars against Israel, rejecting a reasonable peace offer at Taba, and murdering innocent people. Thomas Friedman, foreign correspondent for the New York Times, and a person quite familiar with the Middle East, wrote a year or so ago that had the Palestinians practiced non-violence they would have had a state thirty years ago. I think he was right.

So a presentation that does not recognize the grievances of both sides, or one that merely promotes hostility towards one side or the other, is not helpful. In fact, it only aggravates the dispute. What is needed is understanding of the other side's grievances. The Guardian's review of My Name is Rachel Corrie (4/14/05) states: "Corrie went to Gaza specifically to support Palestinians whose homes were being demolished and makes no attempt to hide her partiality." That is why I will not go to see this play.

A performance I would go to see is Noa Baum's "A Land Twice Promised." Ms. Baum is Israeli born and raised, though living now in the U.S. She has a Palestinian friend and after much listening, and arguing, she prepared a presentation that dramatizes both sides of the conflict. She has performed it here and in Israel. It is the kind of endeavor that actually contributes to understanding, and therefore to peace. You can read about it at www.noabaum.com/performancenotes.html.

Israel would do much to regain the sympathy of the world's caring people if it acted generously rather than harshly towards the Palestinians. Even with peace, cooperation between the two peoples will be necessary. Instead of denying funds to the Hamas government unless it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel, suppose Israel were to provide those funds as long as there were no terrorist attacks and proclaimed that by accepting those funds it understood Hamas to implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist? Such a step would put the onus on the Palestinians.

If Hamas were to announce that they would renounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist permanently, not as a temporary expedient, on condition that Israel negotiate a two-state solution based on the proposals at Taba, or on the Geneva Accords agreed to on a non-governmental basis by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, the pressure on Israel to agree, both internal and external, would be so great that peace would, I believe, be inevitable.

The converse—Israel offering a fair peace if the Palestinian government renounced terrorism, etc.—would also be true.

Exploiting Rachel Corrie's memory will not promote peace. Peace will take understanding and sympathy for the grievances on both sides. If I were her parent, I would certainly grieve and be proud of her. She sympathized with people she considered oppressed, and acted on her principles. She was a protester. That was noble. She was not a peacemaker. That would have been more noble.