Thank you Donna and those who attended today's vigil in memory of Rachel.
Below is an email from her parents. Rachel was also part of GIPP, which one of
my organizations arms and a grassroots international organization for the
protection of Palestinians. Peace, Amineh

Amineh Ayyad


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 22:16:04 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [palestinejustice] ISMer killed today: Rachel Corrie's parents &
in her own words

Note: forwarded message attached.
Statement March 16, 2003
Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
 
We are now in a period of grieving and still finding
out the details behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza
Strip.
 
We have raised all our children to appreciate the
beauty of the global community and family and are
proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. 
Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her
fellow man, wherever they lived.  And, she gave her
life trying to protect those that are unable to
protect themselves.
 
Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would
like to release to the media her experience in her own
words at this time.
 
Thank you.
 
 
Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her
family on February 7, 2003.
 
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour
now, and I still have very few words to describe what
I see.  It is most difficult for me to think about
what's going on here when I sit down to write back to
the United States--something about the virtual portal
into luxury.  I don't know if many of the children
here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in
their walls and the towers of an occupying army
surveying them constantly from the near horizons.  I
think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the
smallest of these children understand that life is not
like this everywhere.  An eight-year-old was shot and
killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here,
and many of the children murmur his name to me,
“Ali”--or point at the posters of him on the walls. 
The children also love to get me to practice my
limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?"  "Kaif
Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon"
"Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic.  (How is
Sharon?  How is Bush? Bush is crazy.  Sharon is
crazy.)  Of course this isn't quite what I believe,
and some of the adults who have the English correct
me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman.  Today
I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I don't
think it translated quite right.  But anyway, there
are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the
workings of the global power structure than I was just
a few years ago--at least regarding Israel.
 
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of
reading, attendance at conferences, documentary
viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for
the reality of the situation here.  You just can't
imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are
always well aware that your experience is not at all
the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli
Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen,
and with the fact that I have money to buy water when
the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that
I have the option of leaving.  Nobody in my family has
been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher
from a tower at the end of a major street in my
hometown.  I have a home.  I am allowed to go see the
ocean.  Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me
to be held for months or years on end without a trial
(this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to
so many others).  When I leave for school or work I
can be relatively certain that there will not be a
heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay
and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with
the power to decide whether I can go about my
business, and whether I can get home again when I'm
done.  So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering
briefly and incompletely into the world in which these
children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would
be for them to arrive in my world. 
 
They know that children in the United States don't
usually have their parents shot and they know they
sometimes get to see the ocean.  But once you have
seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where
water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night
by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when
you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might
suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and
once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone--
once you have experienced the reality of a world that
isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed
"settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if
you can forgive the world for all the years of your
childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance
to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth
largest military--backed by the world’s only
superpower--in it’s attempt to erase you from your
home.  That is something I wonder about these
children.  I wonder what would happen if they really
knew.
 
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in
Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately
60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom are
twice or three times refugees.  Rafah existed prior to
1948, but most of the people here are themselves or
are descendants of people who were relocated here from
their homes in historic Palestine--now Israel.  Rafah
was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. 
Currently, the Israeli army is building a
fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine
and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses
along the border.  Six hundred and two homes have been
completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular
Refugee Committee.  The number of homes that have been
partially destroyed is greater.
 
Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes
once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the
other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was
coming.  Followed by waving and "what's your name?". 
There is something disturbing about this friendly
curiosity.  It reminded me of how much, to some
degree, we are all kids curious about other kids:
Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into
the path of tanks.  Palestinian kids shot from the
tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see
what's going on.  International kids standing in front
of tanks with banners.  Israeli kids in the tanks
anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and also
occasionally waving--many forced to be here, many just
aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander
away.
 
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along
the border and in the western region between Rafah and
settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers
here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of
streets.  Some just army green metal.  Others these
strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of
netting to make the activity within anonymous.  Some
hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings.  A new
one went up the other day in the time it took us to do
laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. 
Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the
border are the original Rafah with families who have
lived on this land for at least a century, only the
1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian
controlled areas under Oslo.  But as far as I can
tell, there are few if any places that are not within
the sights of some tower or another.  Certainly there
is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to
the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over
the city for hours at a time.
 
I've been having trouble accessing news about the
outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on
Iraq is inevitable.  There is a great deal of concern
here about the "reoccupation of Gaza."  Gaza is
reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think
the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets
and remain here, instead of entering some of the
streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days
to observe and shoot from the edges of the
communities.  If people aren't already thinking about
the consequences of this war for the people of the
entire region then I hope they will start. 
 
I also hope you'll come here.  We've been wavering
between five and six internationals.  The
neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of
presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil,
Block J, Zorob, and Block O.  There is also need for
constant night-time presence at a well on the
outskirts of Rafah  since the Israeli army destroyed
the two largest wells.  According to the municipal
water office the wells destroyed last week provided
half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities
have requested internationals to be present at night
to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. 
After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at
night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the
streets as resistance and shoots at them.  So clearly
we are too few.
 
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could
gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a
commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-community
relationship.  Some teachers and children's groups
have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this
is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that
might be done.  Many people want their voices to be
heard, and I think we need to use some of our
privilege as internationals to get those voices heard
directly in the US, rather than through the filter of
well-meaning internationals such as myself.  I am just
beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very
intense tutelage, about the ability of people to
organize against all odds, and to resist against all
odds. 
 
Thanks for the news I've been getting from friends in
the US.  I just read a report back from a friend who
organized a peace group in Shelton, Washington, and
was able to be part of a delegation to the large
January 18th protest in Washington DC.  People here
watch the media, and they told me again today that
there have been large protests in the United States
and "problems for the government" in the UK.  So
thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete
polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many
people in the United States do not support the
policies of our government, and that we are learning
from global examples how to resist.

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