WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
Photo of George shown here and in web site banner courtesy of Debbie Hill, 2000.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
HomeBlogMarch 2010 March 11, 2010: Rachel Corrie and The New Fourth Estate
March 11, 2010: Rachel Corrie and The New Fourth Estate
March 11, 2010:Rachel Corrie, The New Fourth Estate and Israeli Justice
On 10 March 2010, in Haifa, northern Israel,
the family of Rachel Corrie, brought a civil suit against the Israeli defense ministry and is seeking accountability
for Rachel’s death under the wheels of a US Made Caterpillar D9R Bulldozer
driven by Israeli troops as Rachel stood up in defense of the home of a
pharmacist with five children in Gaza seven years ago and four days before George W. Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad.
Although USA Journalists were embedded with the Industrial Military Media Complex in
Iraq, Rachel, an altruistic young
American and perhaps the first of the New Fourth Estate, had been writing her heart out in Rafah. Rachel should be credited as the
founder of The New Fourth Estate: citizen reporters who leave their comfort
zones to go-seek-report to the best of their abilities and who are motivated by
the pursuit of justice and a passion for the truth.
Four eye witnesses – three Britons and an
American – who were on the scene when Rachel was run down and over twice will testify in Haifa. All are members of the International Solidarity
Movement, “a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli
occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and
principles.”
The Israeli government initially blocked the activists from entering Israel
three weeks ago, but Britain and the US exerted
strong pressure, and they were allowed entry for the hearing.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at
the time of Corrie’s death, promised a “thorough, credible and transparent
investigation” would be conducted.
An internal military inquiry cleared the two soldiers operating the
bulldozer was even criticized by US officials.
Human Rights Watch noted it “fell far short
of the transparency, impartiality and thoroughness required by international
law”.
The army report said Rachel Corrie "was
struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering
vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's
operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of
concrete resulting in her death."
Tom Dale, a British activist who was 10m
away when Corrie was killed, wrote an account of the incident two days later.He described how she first knelt in the path
of an approaching bulldozer and then stood as it reached her.She climbed on a mound of earth and the
crowd nearby shouted at the bulldozer to stop.He said the bulldozer pushed her
down and drove over her.
"They pushed Rachel, first beneath the
scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the
cockpit. They waited over her for a few
seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it
scraped over her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop
but they never did."
Rachel has been eulogized and demonized, celebrated and castigated. Her words
and witness speak for themselves and what follows are but a few excerpts from her
emails written while in the homes of strangers who became friends and family in
Rafah.
In January 2003, upon leaving Olympia, Washington, Rachel wrote:
We are all born and someday we’ll all die…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?
On February 7 2003, Rachel wrote:
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 of it is not at all the reality…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…When I leave for school or work I can be
relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting…at a
checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and
whether I can get home again when I'm done…I am in Rafah: a city of about
140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees - many of whom are twice
or three times refugees. 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. And then waving and [asking] 'What's your
name?'
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…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 you will start….
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. 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.
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.
…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.
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.
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.
February 20 2003:
Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the
major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and
register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their
jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home; and
internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won’t make it. We
could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international
white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and
deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.
The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the
“reoccupation of Gaza”, but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think
it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more
likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar
incursions and possibly the oft-hinted “population transfer”.
…A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon’s
assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working
very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any
meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a
lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me…
February 27 2003:
…I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house…Sometimes
the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at
night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I
am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his
two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper
tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be
exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small
babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his
house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of
detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been
planted by Palestinian resistance.
This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained
outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while
tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people.
The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of
entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this
man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids
than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be
shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day,
but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very
sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably
because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.
I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not
helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two
years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have
moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest
city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or
impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of
economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza international airport
(runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with
a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the
ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif
settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this
intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the
resistance but who happen to live along the border……about non-violent
resistance.
When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the
family’s house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the
two small babies. I’m having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my
stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are
facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole.
Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with
the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it
seem unreal to me. I really can’t believe that something like this can happen
in the world without a bigger outcry about it.
It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how
awful we can allow the world to be…you actually do go and do your own research.
But it makes me worry about the job I’m doing. All of the situation that I
tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things - constitutes a somewhat
gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive - removal and destruction of
the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am
seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are
atrocities - but in focusing on them I’m terrified of missing their context.
The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to
escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just
leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon’s possible
goals), can’t leave…they can’t even get into Israel to apply for visas, and
because their destination countries won’t let them in (both our country and
Arab countries).
…when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can’t get
out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think
it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of
genocide according to international law…
When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly
feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming
here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if
the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure
white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst
of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my
government is largely responsible.
February 28 2003:
…I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering,
somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should
at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic
ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I
also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet
these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.
February 28 2003:
I think I could see a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian
state within my lifetime. I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible
source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also
be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are
struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports.
I look forward to increasing numbers of middle-class privileged people like you
and me becoming aware of the structures that support our privilege and
beginning to support the work of those who aren’t privileged to dismantle those
structures.
I look forward to more moments like February 15 when civil society wakes up en
masse and issues massive and resonant evidence of it’s conscience, it’s
unwillingness to be repressed, and it’s compassion for the suffering of others.
I look forward to more teachers emerging like Matt Grant and Barbara Weaver and
Dale Knuth who teach critical thinking to kids in the United States.
I look forward to the international resistance that’s occurring now fertilizing
analysis on all kinds of issues, with dialogue between diverse groups of
people.
I look forward to all of us who are new at this developing better skills for
working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and
sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism and becoming more effective.
In fifth grade, at the age of ten, Rachel Corrie wrote her
heart out and stated it at a Press Conference on World Hunger in 1990:
I’m here for
other children.
I’m here because I care.
I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand
people die each day from hunger.
I’m here because those people are mostly children.
We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring
them.
We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care
and smile and cry just like us.
We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.
We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.
My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.
My dream is to give the poor a chance.
My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.
My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the
light that shines there.
If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.
If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential
of tomorrow.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
Establishment of Israel
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel