She reminded me of another young women, who at the age of 23 became a symbol for non-violent resistance when she was crushed under the blade of an Israeli bulldozer as it set out on another illegal house demolition in the Gaza Strip. That was Rachel Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement. Since her death in 2003, she’s served as a tragic example – one among thousands – of unlawful killings committed by Israel Defense Forces against the unarmed civilians in The Occupied Territories. In Corrie’s diaries and her letters home, one can sense the same amount of courage demonstrated by Candy.
Rachel Corrie’s death was quite controversial, not of course for the circumstances. Eyewitness accounts made it quite clear that she was visible to the soldier behind the wheel. After the blade pressed her into the earth from foot to head, to the point where she was then almost beneath the driver’s seat, the tractor then backed up, this time, with the blade moved down lower, for another full scrape across her body. All of this happened while the driver was in earshot of screaming onlookers. So the circumstances of her death were quite uncontroversial – murder. However, reflexive apologists for the crimes of Israel condemned the victim. Characteristic of this blame-the-victim pile-on was Alan Dershowitz’s take of the incident in his now infamous book, The Case for Israel, in which he says that Rachel Corrie “threw herself infront of the bulldozer.” The death of an American, under any other circumstances, in most any other country, would receive unanimous condemnation. But Rachel Corrie suffered from making a principled stand against U.S. power. And when you do that, not only will your death pass without sorrow, you will be subject to the most venomous, vilification – acceptable discourse within circles that cravenly align themselves with power.
Like Candy Brown, Corrie awoke every morning in the Gaza Strip with that same uncertainty. Like Blacks in the South of the USA in the mid-20th century, Palestinians suffer punishment on a daily basis in the Occupied Territories. All of this is made possible of course with massive amounts of US aid – military aid (advanced weapons systems, aircraft, helicopters) and infrastructure financing (the separation wall surrounding West Bank and Gaza, secret prisons).
Today’s American society, though, markedly more civilized since the ‘60s, is of course far from being the one envisaged in Martin Luther King’s message. This is getting to be a perennial cliché, spouted by most commentators. But they’re usually only talking about some parallel reality of King’s vision, where it’s limited to “where all races are equal.” The way they put it makes it sound so damned daunting, doesn’t it? “A place where all races are equal? How the hell do we do that? Oh well, I guess that’s not going to happen anytime soon… I have to go back to work tomorrow.”
The motives for simplification of MLK’s message are obvious, as all public figures that are now lionized are effaced of any characteristics that might be deemed offensive to the establishment. If all that’s remembered about MLK in the mainstream is his “I have a dream…” without remembrance of practical measures on how to realize the ‘dream,’ then the ‘dream’ will be just that. Well what was MLK doing on the day he was shot? He was out supporting striking sanitation workers. He was behind organized labor. He was also an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam – that is he thought it was fundamentally immoral, an abomination, as are all invasions and occupations under the thumb of Western Imperialism. This lost him a lot of friends in the Liberal establishment. It was one thing to see him condemn thuggish Southern Sheriff’s, but quite another when the criticism was turned at apologists for the war and a State economy that takes public monies and transfers them to the war makers. MLK had lots of ideas on what could make a society more equitable. He knew that a system where a bureaucracy spreads wealth to the wealthy war-makers would always be inimical to equality.
However, we can’t really have a government holiday that canonizes such views. So that’s quickly glossed over, as is the fact that our 13-year saga in Indochina, which started in earnest in 1962, with the dropping of chemical weapons on South Vietnam, left two to three million people dead, and left Cambodia so ravaged, fragmented, and radicalized as to make it fertile ground for the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
Today, January 23 2008, the Gaza Strip is in the depths of a beastly siege, whose ultimate beginnings can be traced back to January of 2006, when the electorate, through free-and-fair, monitored elections, voted for a majority of Hamas party members in the Palestinian parliament. The response from Israel, with support of the US has been a serious of harsh clampdowns: cutting off fuel, food, and medical supplies; more targeted assassinations of people alleged to be militants; supporting the opposition, Fatah, in hopes of fomenting a civil war – it has. Then of course, there are the routine forms of terror that continue on a daily basis – strafing roofs of Gaza residences with F-16s, for example. For Palestinians, this practice and others that create an atmosphere of war and fear cause an inestimable number of post-traumatic disorders, anxiety, fear and night panic. Palestinian children “suffer from bed-wetting, dyslexia and cognitive impairment” (WHO).
Things however, have become markedly worse since Israel declared Gaza an ‘enemy entity’ in September of 2007. And in the months that followed, movement in and out of Gaza was completely stopped. Little aid has been able to pass through. Food and energy imports were severely restricted. As of Thursday January 17, Gaza was completely sealed, and no fuel was allowed through. Gaza’s only power plant soon shut down, and blackouts ensued.
This is no small thing. No power means limited medical care. It also means no clean water, as the sanitation system runs on fuel. Just yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a “dire warning” on the state of basic services in the Gaza Strip.
In a noble effort to offset the siege, peace organizations like Gush Shalom, Israel Committee Against Housing Demolitions, public Committee Against Torture, and Physicians for Human Rights have raised money for water filters and foodstuffs, which they will attempt to spirit through a Gaza checkpoint on Saturday January 26.
Rachel Corrie and Martin Luther King Jr., and more importantly the nameless millions, fought the same fight against oppression, against racism. The former, vilified; the latter, revered. I think it’s safe to say that had Martin Luther King Jr. been known solely for his speeches after 1965, where he openly criticized US empire, his legacy may have suffered the same fate as Rachel Corrie’s. It seems that ‘government holidays’ can only commemorate the lives of those with at least a few views that fit nicely into the accepted, entrenched viewpoints of today. Of course, Martin Luther King had one other thing going for him: the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s had an enormous popular backing. And once a movement becomes too large to ignore, the mainstream will eventually, very begrudgingly, and only on a few points, conform to popular sentiment. This should make it plain where the Palestinian solidarity movement needs to go.
This weekend, there will be protests across the world in opposition to the siege. Check your local IndyMedia website for a demonstration near you.
End the Siege! End the Occupation!
J. Orvis
1/23/2008
