This week, we are sharing essays from ‘N Korrel Zout (a grain of salt), the newspaper of Jeannette Noëlhuis Catholic Worker in Amsterdam. You can read the newspaper online here.
We’re excited that two writers translated their articles from Dutch into English, making this beautiful newspaper accessible to our English-speaking audience.
Today, we’re sharing an essay in honor of Rachel Corrie, a young American who traveled to Gaza to protest the destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah. Rachel was run over by an Israeli armed bulldozer, crushed, and killed on March 16, 2003.
As Susan van der Hijden writes, today, Rachel Corrie’s legacy lives on. In Iowa, there is a house named after Rachel at the Des Moines Catholic Worker. That legacy also persists, as Nikki Apeldoorn testifies in her essay that will be featured tomorrow, in continued resistance to the forces of destruction and protection of the innocent and the earth.
“You use machines and dynamite to tear me apart,” Appeldorn writes.
How much blood clings to the stones you’ve taken from my deepest layers?
I am not your enemy, but you have made me into a battlefield.
peace,
Renée
Rachel Corrie: 1979-2003
By Susan van der Hijden
Rachel Corrie was a dedicated peace activist. She was killed while trying to prevent an Israeli army bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.
Rachel was born on April 10, 1979, and grew up in Olympia, Washington, United States. She was the youngest of three children of Craig Corrie, an insurance agent, and Cindy Corrie. Cindy describes their family as “average Americans—politically liberal, economically conservative, middle class.”
After graduating from Capital High School, she attended Evergreen State College. She took a year off from her studies to volunteer with the Washington State Conservation Corps, where she visited psychiatric patients weekly for three years. While at Evergreen State College, she became a dedicated peace activist, organizing peace events through a local group called “Olympians for Peace and Solidarity.” She later joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to protest the Israeli military's policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
She went to Gaza as part of a research project for her final year at university, to connect Olympia and Rafah as sister cities. While in Rafah on March 16, 2003, she joined other ISM activists. In an attempt to nonviolently prevent the demolition of Palestinian property by Israel, she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer that crushed her.
Deliberate
The use of armored bulldozers by the military to demolish houses was criticized by some human rights groups as “collective punishment.” Israeli authorities said the demolitions were necessary because “Palestinian gunmen were using the structures as cover to fire on their troops patrolling the area, or to hide tunnels under the border between Gaza and Egypt.” Rachel was a member of a group of about eight activists from outside the Palestinian territories who were trying to prevent the Israeli army's activities by acting as human shields.
Doctors and fellow ISM activists present at the scene stated that Corrie was wearing a neon safety vest and was deliberately run over, while the Israeli army said it was an accident because the bulldozer driver did not see her. After the incident, an Israeli military investigation concluded that Corrie's death was the result of an accident and that the bulldozer driver had limited visibility. The ruling drew criticism from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, and Yesh Din.
Joe Carr, an American ISM activist, gave the following account in an affidavit recorded and published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR):
"Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had done successfully dozens of times that day..... When the bulldozer came so close that the earth moved beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer.... Her head and upper body were above the blade of the bulldozer, and the bulldozer operator and his assistant could clearly see her. Nevertheless, the operator continued, causing her to fall backward, out of the driver's sight. He continued forward, and she tried to scramble back, but was quickly pulled under the bulldozer. We ran toward him, waving our arms and shouting, one activist yelled into their megaphone. But the bulldozer operator continued until Corrie was completely under the middle section of the bulldozer."
The bulldozer operator was interviewed on Israeli television and insisted that he had no idea she was standing in front of him: “You can't hear, you can't see properly. You can run over something and you'll never know. I shoveled some dirt, I couldn't see anything. I pushed the dirt away and I didn't see her at all. Maybe she was hiding there.”
In Des Moines, Iowa, in the United States, there is a Catholic Worker house named after Rachel Corrie.
We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?
If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a reality.
And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.
This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.
I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.
I can wash dishes.
― Rachel Corrie, January, 2003
Susan van der Hijden is a member of Jeannette Noelhuis in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.