Rachel’s Words

Palestinian activist tours U.S., explains pain and suffering

By Danielle Smith The Arab American News
April 30

For the past month, Palestinian activist Fida Qishta has toured the United States speaking about Nonviolent Resistance and the occupation of Palestine. After her stops in Detroit, Port Huron, Grand Ledge, Lansing and Ann Arbor, she will head to venues in New York. Her speaking tour in Michigan was sponsored by the Michigan Peace Team, a group affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Qishta said that she joined the International Solidarity Movement soon after she learned about the death of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old American student who was killed on March 16, 2003. Rachel was murdered when an Israeli military bulldozer ran her over while she was trying to stop the demolition of a home in Rafah. Fida said that Rachel’s story meant a lot to the people of Rafah, to know that an American was risking their life for the Palestinian cause.

Qishta said, “I started working with ISM and then the Michigan Peace Team in Gaza. I was a Palestinian Coordinator in Rafah. It was a way I could share my experience with the world.”

STAGE DIRECTIONS
Kamal Al-Solaylee
26 May 2006
The Globe and Mail

The Silencing of Rachel Corrie

The Wrecking Ball, that purveyor of political theatre in Toronto, presents The Silencing of Rachel Corrie, a one-night only event at the Tarragon’s Spring Arts Fair. This new documentary piece of theatre is inspired by the writings of the 23-year-old peace activist who was killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli bulldozers as well as the knee-jerk reaction of a New York theatre company earlier this year to indefinitely postpone a planned production of a British play about her life, My Name Is Rachel Corrie. Saturday at 8 p.m. PWYC. Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave. No advance booking.

NOTE: It is very important to note that while the British government has sought and obtained some level of justice for the murder of Tom Hurndall while continuing to pursue the same for James Miller, the US government has thus far refused to even ask for an investigation into the killing of Rachel Corrie. According to Cindy and Craig Corrie “While the U.S. Government is on record stating that the report of the Israeli military investigation into Rachel’s killing did not meet the standard of “thorough, credible, or transparent,” the U.S. has taken no steps to investigate this killing of an American citizen by a foreign military.”
Representative Brian Baird [D WA-3], introduced the Rachel Corrie Resolution (HCR111) asking for precisely what Prime Minister Sharon promised President Bush, a thorough and transparent investigation. As of March 13, 2004, the resolution had 56 cosponsors and no chance of getting out of committee for a vote.

By DAN IZENBERG
Published in The Jerusalem Post

The British government on Monday raised the possibility that Israel would pay compensation to the families of two British citizens who were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip three years ago.

Showdown at Brandeis: Palestinian paintings and the painful truth

Ha’aretz
Posted: May 17, 2006

I’ve been covering the controversy over Brandeis University and the Palestinian paintings (soon to be published in the print edition). In short, here’s the initial account as it was reported by the Boston Globe in early May: “A bulldozer menaces a girl with ebony pigtails, who lies in a pool of blood. A boy with an amputated leg balances on a crutch, in a tent city with a Palestinian flag. A dove, dripping blood, perches against blue barbed wire. Palestinian teenagers painted those images at the request of an Israeli Jewish student at Brandeis University, who said she wanted to use the art to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to campus. But university officials removed the paintings four days into a two-week exhibition in the Brandeis library. University officials said the paintings depicted only one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lior Halperin, the student who organized the exhibit, said the university censored an alternative view.”

Too hot for Broadway
Play based on diaries of peace activist killed in Gaza is moved from New York to the West End

By Anthony Barnes
Published: 14 May 2006
UK Independent

Rachel Corrie’s proud parents will walk into a West End theatre today, past their late daughter’s name in lights, past the posters showing her as a smiling, carefree child. Inside, Craig and Cindy Corrie will hear her words brought to life, directed by the actor Alan Rickman.

They should have been in New York, where the award-winning play My Name is Rachel Corrie was supposed to be running off-Broadway. But the production was scrapped abruptly. The reason? Fears that the Jewish lobby in the US would be upset by what it sees as the play’s pro-Palestinian stance.

The play tells the story of Rachel, 23, a peace activist killed three years ago by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza as she tried to protect Palestinian homes. Her emails and journals in the days leading up to her death were moulded into a one-woman play by Rickman and writer Katharine Viner, to great acclaim at the Royal Court Theatre in London last year.

Rachel Corrie’s Legacy
The 23-year-old’s 2003 death in Israel poses challenging questions—in court and out.
By Nina Shapiro

Joey Anchondo / Inset: Getty Images
The parents of Rachel Corrie somehow appear more ordinary than I had expected: smiling, gray-haired, and unassuming. But after settling into our seats at a Central District Starbucks, Craig at times stares forlornly into the distance and Cindy pours forth with impassioned memories. Its clear that the extraordinary circumstances of their daughters death three years ago have consumed them. As the world now knows, their 23-year-old daughter, an Evergreen State College student, died while defending a Palestinian home from demolition by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). A bulldozer killed her. It took over my life, says 58-year-old Cindy, a onetime flautist who, like her husband, wears a green plastic bracelet with the dates of Rachels birth and death. Living in Olympia, Cindy and Craig, a 59-year-old former insurance executive, now work full time seeking accountability, not only for Rachels death, but for what they believe are the unjust policies that caused it.

Note: these paintings are the work of Palestinian youth from the al-Rowwad Cultural Center at Aida refugee camp, in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The cultural center also houses a children’s theater. Rachel’s Words stands in solidarity with the Al-Rowwad center, which was recently attacked by the Israeli army.

Brandeis University Takes Down Palestinian Youth Art Exhibit Mounted by Israeli Jewish Student

Democracy Now

[video and audio at link]
May 10th, 2006

An art exhibit at Brandeis University featuring 17 paintings by Palestinian youths was removed by university officials last week, after several complaints from students. We speak with the Israeli Jewish student who organized the exhibit and the director of Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. [includes rush transcript]

We look at a controversy that has erupted over an art exhibit at Brandeis University in Boston. The exhibit features 17 paintings of Palestinian youths who depict their perspectives on life under Israeli military occupation. But just four days into a two-week run, the exhibit was removed by Brandeis officials after several complaints from students. A university spokesperson has said the school would consider re-mounting the paintings if they were to appear alongside paintings showing an Israeli perspective. The exhibit was organized by an Israeli Jewish student who said she wanted to showcase a Palestinian perspective on campus. The exhibit was subsequently moved to MIT where it is being housed for one week.

Catching the Conscience: Lessons Drawn from My Name is Rachel Corrie

Brooklyn Rail, May 10

by Rachel’s Words
“The play’s the thing in which I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet

Most people who know about New York Theater Workshop’s recent cancellation (or “postponement”) of My Name is Rachel Corrie know that this unfortunate news also led to a lot of useful discussion – about access and the arts, funding and corporate sponsorship, political theater in the current US landscape, and, most important of all, about the continuing violence that Palestinians face under an Israeli occupation relentlessly maintained by the world’s fourth largest army with the help of over $6 billion dollars in US aid yearly. The cancellation also galvanized people world-wide to organize readings of the words of Rachel Corrie on the third anniversary of her death, March 16th. From Tel Aviv to Bethlehem, Bosnia to Afghanistan and New Orleans, people gathered to read words of this 23-year old member of the International Solidarity Movement (a nonviolent movement of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals who serve as human rights observers in Palestine) who was crushed to death by an Israeli army-driven Caterpillar bulldozer as she attempted to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist and his family.

Excerpts of the source material for the most talked-about play this season and a statement by Alice Walker about Rachel Corrie’s legacy.

Thursday, May 4 at 8 pm
Sever Hall (Room 113)
Harvard Yard

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Please join us for a reading by Harvard students and affiliates of the extraordinary personal writings of the human rights activist Rachel Corrie. She was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer during a non-violent demonstration to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. Rachel was 23.

Over a thousand people gathered in New York to hear Rachel’s words after the New York Theatre Workshop, citing potential pressure from pro-occupation groups, suddenly ‘postponed’ the performance of the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” a docudrama based on her e-mails and journals which is currently a critical success running on London’s West End.

Admission is free.

Map: map.harvard.edu/level3.cfm?mapname=camb_allston&tile=F7&quadrant=B&series=W

For more information contact the organizers: ajme@riseup.net.