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PALESTINE: Remembering Rachel Corrie and facing the future


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Rachel Corrie bulldozer_1.jpg
Photo by Joe Carr.  Carr worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Gaza and later with CPT in Hebron and At-Tuwani.  His sequence of photos showing the bulldozer running over Corrie was not enough
to convict the driver of her death.

by Kathleen Kern

Note: Our director asked if we were going to remember Corrie in some way, so I wrote this for CPTnet. Not sure if I hit it out of the park, but I don’t necessarily have to do that every time.

In 2003, when the Hebron team heard that the Israeli military had crushed Rachel Corrie to death with a Caterpillar bulldozer, the news hit all of us hard. Some of us had conducted nonviolence trainings for the first waves of International Solidarity Movement volunteers that had poured into Palestine to address violence of the Second Intifada.  These volunteers had included Corrie, and Tom Hurndall who was shot and later disconnected from life support, as well as Brian Avery, also shot and permanently disfigured.  Most of us had at one time or another stood in front of a bulldozer or had friends who had stood in front of bulldozers in an effort to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home.  Israeli soldiers and police had roughed us up, detained us or arrested us.  Until Corrie died, I don’t think we believed that soldiers would run us, our friends or the Palestinian homeowners over.

Sixteen years later, if I heard soldiers had deliberately run over anyone with a bulldozer in Hebron in this current political climate the news would not shock me.  The number of extrajudicial executions that happen in this city simply because Palestinians make soldiers nervous is frightening.  Yet right now, less lethal things chip away at my soul: for example, young Israeli soldiers addressing professional Palestinian men in their forties and fifties as “walid” or “boy” as they walk through the checkpoint.  Also, can you think of anywhere else in the world where elementary schoolchildren are regularly, routinely blanketed with teargas as they walk to and from school? And little children scurrying from teargas aren’t even the images that haunt me.  It’s the faces of soldiers laughing I can’t shake.  They laugh as they load the teargas grenades into their launchers, preparing to shoot them at the children.

Adam Serwer, a writer for the Atlantic, wrote an article last year about the Trump era, entitled “The cruelty is the point.”  Nothing is quite so demoralizing as cruelty for the sake of cruelty, as watching grown men and women in uniform taking pleasure in mistreating children and our other neighbors in the Old City of Hebron.

But while this cruelty can haunt and even paralyze those who care about Palestinians, that’s not the lesson to take away from Corrie’s life.  I remember reading emails to her family after her death and being struck by her optimism and her plans for the future.  Her final email to her father particularly moved me:

Thanks also for stepping up your anti-war work. I know it is not easy to do, and probably much more difficult where you are than where I am. …

Also got an invitation to visit Sweden on my way back – which I think I could do very cheaply. I would like to leave Rafah with a viable plan to return, too. One of the core members of our group has to leave tomorrow – and watching her say goodbye to people is making me realize how difficult it will be. People here can’t leave, so that complicates things. They also are pretty matter-of-fact about the fact that they don’t know if they will be alive when we come back here.

I really don’t want to live with a lot of guilt about this place – being able to come and go so easily – and not going back. I think it is valuable to make commitments to places – so I would like to be able to plan on coming back here within a year or so. Of all of these possibilities I think it’s most likely that I will at least go to Sweden for a few weeks on my way back – I can change tickets and get a plane to from Paris to Sweden and back for a total of around 150 bucks or so. … Let me know if you have any ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life

As the cruelty of the Israeli military occupation increases, and internationals find it increasingly difficult to travel to the Occupied Palestinian Territories because the Israeli government denies them entry, Corrie’s words remind us that Palestinian resistance ultimately does not rely on outsiders.  And, that like Corrie’s father, internationals can undertake much of that resistance in their home countries and communities.  Corrie’s words also remind us that while internationals can seriously commit themselves to the cause of Palestinian liberation, they do not have to take themselves so seriously.  We do this work knowing the risks, but assuming there is a future.  And that even if we cannot envision the change that is going to occur, we know that something will change.


On Stone Throwing and Strategies

ImageSoldiers preparing to fire tear gas on boys throwing stones about 100 meters away

by Kathleen Kern

[Note: The following first appeared on the CPT Palestine blog in a slightly condensed form ]

Years ago in our Hebron apartment, we had a foam cushion insert on which someone had drawn a smiling face.  We dubbed it “Happy Foam Square,” and would throw it at a wall when our work got frustrating.  Doing so was surprisingly cathartic.

So in a small way, I understand why throwing stones feels good.  I also understand, when I see the posters of small boys throwing stones at tanks, that their actions are brave.  I understand why the narrative of an occupied people resisting one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world with rocks and Molotov cocktails is a source of pride in some circles.

But monitoring clashes in Hebron has always been one of my least favorite things to do, because we have almost no impact on the situation, and so little strategy is involved on the part of the Palestinian boys throwing things. They do it because it feels good, because it helps take the edge of the humiliation of the Israeli military occupation, and they just don’t think about the consequences to themselves, their families, or the people living and working in the staging area for these clashes.

In some situations, a thrown stone can literally grant a soldier a license to kill or can result in months, even years in jail for Palestinian youth.  We have seen boys as young as eight taken away on suspicion of stone throwing. (Israeli settler youth are never arrested for throwing stones at Palestinians.)  In one case, I witnessed soldiers detain children because they were wearing balaclavas in the cold weather; they told me the masks proved the boys were intending to throw stones (For  more information on what happens to children accused of throwing stones, see Occupied Childhoods. Newly released report on violation of children’s rights in Hebron.)

On school days, we monitor two checkpoints through which students and teachers must walk to get to school.  At one checkpoint, almost every day, schoolboys throw stones at Border Police and Border Police respond with tear gas and sound bombs.  One young mother told me, exasperated, “If they weren’t here, the boys would not throw stones.”  And it’s true.  If the soldiers, for the fifteen minutes before the school bell rang just went around the corner, had a cup of coffee, and let the principals shoo the children into the schoolyards, this dreary daily theatrical production would not take place.

Stone throwing at the Qitoun checkpoint happens less often, but last week, it had a tragic consequence for a family in the line of fire.  After a volley of stones lasting less than a minute, a Border Police officer shot tear gas from a nearby rooftop at the boys.  He missed, and it went into a family’s home and caught something on fire. They lost everything.

So do I think Palestinian children should stop throwing stones?  Of course.  Apart from my own pacifist beliefs, I see it having no positive outcomes for the children and teenagers.  But there is a reason that societies hold adults more responsible than children for their negative actions, and the soldiers firing the teargas and rubber bullets at stone throwers are at least nominal adults.  And the strategists running this stupid, immoral occupation passed the threshold of adulthood a long, long time ago.

Israeli soldiers beat 15-year-old boy at Dubboya Street Checkpoint

There were clashes in the city center of Hebron today because soldiers beat this boy at a checkpoint. Same checkpoint where the young man with Down’s Syndrome was humiliated a couple days ago: http://cptpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/hebron-reflection-special-treatment/ I was on my way to have dinner with friends (about which my colleague Markie will  write an account) when the clashes began.

I thought I would repost the team’s short news item on my blog because of the connection to the release I wrote.  My teammates who interviewed the boy are Palestinian and Welsh. They followed him to the hospital and were able to conduct the interview in Arabic while he waited for his X-ray results.

BREAKING
Today CPTers talked with 15 year old Mohammed (not his real name) in the Alya Hospital Al Khalil/Hebron. Mohammed had been beaten by Israeli military for not having an ID.

Palestinians are not issued ID’s until they reach 16. Mohamed had been beaten in the back of his head and body by the soldiers who had also used the butts of their guns. Mohammed subsequently fainted.

The Military then covered his body and left him where he had fallen. After a crowd had gathered and news had spread, Mohammed’s family arrived on the scene and were able to get him to the hospital.

Mohammed was severely shaken by the experience, was awaiting the results of a X-ray and complained of having an intense headache.

The beating took place at the 56 Check point which sits between Shuhada Street, which is under full Israeli Military control, and Bab iZeweyya which is under Palestinian civil control.

Photo: BREAKING Today CPT talked with 15 year old Mohammed (not his real name) in the Alya Hospital Al Khalil/Hebron. Mohammed had been beaten by Israeli Military for not having an ID. Palestinians are not issued ID's until they reach 16. Mohamed had been beaten in the back of his head and body by the soldiers who had also used the butts of their guns. Mohammed subsequently fainted. The Military then covered his body and left him where he had fallen. After a crowd had gathered and news had spread, Mohammed's family arrived on the scene and were able to get him to the hospital. Mohammed was severely shaken by the experience, was awaiting the results of a Xray and complained of having an intense headache. The Beating took place at the 56 Check point which sits between Shuhada Street, which is under full Israeli Military control, and Bab iZeweyya which is under palestinian civil control.
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