While criticizing Kos’ recent remarks, Mark Kleiman says he’s “prepared to defend” his response to someone calling Rachel Corrie a peace activist:
Her death, like the death of any human being, was a sad thing, but there’s no evidence that the man driving the bulldozer intended it.
I feel a lot sorrier for the people — Jews and Arabs — who weren’t deliberately getting in the way of earth-moving equipment in support of a terrorist campaign, and who died at the hands of Rachel Corrie’s beloved Palestinian “resistance” for the crime of taking the wrong bus.
1. Did Rachel Corrie support terrorism?
I can’t imagine that Mark will be able to defend most of what he wrote without resorting to guilt-by-association. Nothing in Corrie’s writings indicated that her goal was “to kick the Jews out of Israel”; rather, she wrote that she’d welcome “a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within my lifetime,” which isn’t consistent with the kind of anti-Semitism Mark implies Corrie supported.
Mark states that Rachel opposed all Israeli self-defense. From Rachel’s writings, it’s clear that she was passionately driven by Israeli actions against ordinary Palestinian civilians; there’s no evidence that she opposed Israelis firing back when fired upon.
If Israel had been respecting Palestinian human rights all along – by not allowing settlers to steal Palestinian land, by not destroying the orchards and homes of Palestinians who have not been convicted (or in most cases, even accused) of terrorist acts, by not engaging in collective punishment of Palestinians, and by not using the IDF to terrorize many innocent Palestinians – if, in other words, Israel had kept to the green line and attacked only those Palestinians who made armed attacks on Israelis – then it seems unlikely that Rachel would have been protesting Israeli actions.
Rachel never wrote clearly about terrorism; Mark may consider this evidence that she must have supported terrorism. This is as illogical as assuming that pro-Israel writers who never mention collective punishment must favor collective punishment.
Rachel died protecting the house of Samir Nassrallah, a Palestinian pharmacist. Despite the fact that the Israelis have presumably investigated him following Corrie’s death (since evidence that Corrie was defending a terrorist would be very helpful to Israel), there is no evidence that Nassrallah is a terrorist or provides support for terrorism; nor is there any evidence of smuggling tunnels under his (no longer existing) house, as some folks have claimed. The most that can be said against him is that he provided a floor for human rights activists like Corrie to sleep on, and that he’s been a critic of Israel. And that he’s Palestinian.
So in what way was defending Nassrallah’s home “support of a terrorist campaign”? Mark’s statement is only coherent if any Palestinian criticism or resistance to Israel – no matter how peaceful, no matter how unarmed – is defined as a terrorist act. (It’s all part of the resistance, after all). Palestinians have no human rights, and anyone who defends their human rights is defending terrorism.
Or, I suppose, Mark has some solid evidence showing that Nassrallah is a terrorist or actively supports terrorists (funny how he has evidence the IDF apparently does not). In which case, I trust he’ll share that evidence soon.
Finally, it’s possible that Mark considers the International Solidarity Movement, of which Rachel was a member, a terrorist organization. However, it’s been eleven months since the IDF raided the ISM office in Beit Sahour, taking all their files and computers. No charges have been filed, nor has any evidence linking the ISM to terrorism been released – which suggests that no such evidence exists.
2. Was Rachel Corrie’s death justifiable?
Since the Israeli military has refused to allow an independent investigation of Rachel’s death, it’s impossible to know if she was deliberately murdered. However, I don’t think that’s the relevant issue.
As I wrote shortly after Rachel’s death, the question is, does the IDF run its bulldozing operations in a way that puts the highest possible priority on not risking civilian lives (not just peace activists, but also Palestinian civilians)? I think it’s pretty clear that they do not. Amnesty International rightly pointed out that Rachel’s death was one of a series of civilians killed by IDF bulldozers. From The Independent (February 6 2003):
The Israeli army said it was checking the reports of Ms Sa’id’s death, and claimed soldiers had carefully checked the building before demolishing it. Ms Sa’id would not be the first Palestinian to die in this way: there have been previous well documented cases. One of her stepsons, Khaled Sa’id, said: “Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way, they got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in.” He said Ms Sa’id was partially deaf and could not hear warnings from the soldiers to leave the house.
The Israeli army demolished the house because it used to be the home of another of Ms Sa’id’s stepsons, Baha Sa’id, who killed two Israelis in an attack on the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in September 2000 before being shot dead.
There have been other occasions when Palestinians were crushed to death when the Israeli army demolished their homes on top of them. One of the best-documented cases was in Nablus in April last year, when eight members of the al-Shu’bi family died because an Israeli soldier bulldozed their house, despite warnings from neighbours that there were people inside.
In December, just a few miles north of Ms Sa’id’s home, Ashur Salem, a 68-year-old man, was crushed to death when Israeli soldiers blew up his house, according to witnesses. His son said when he found the old man’s body, his head was “like a bar of chocolate, it was only two centimetres thick”.
But there have also been instances when Palestinian claims that people had been crushed to death in house demolitions turned out not to be true. There was a case in Jenin where Palestinians assumed a missing relative had died, only for him to later turn up alive.
The Israeli army routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinian militants, even after their deaths, claiming the suffering it inflicts on their families acts as a deterrent. International human rights groups have condemned the practice as collective punishment, which is outlawed under the Geneva Conventions.
In practice, the relatives of suicide bombers and other dead militants are often provided with new homes by the militant groups, while their neighbours, whose homes are often also damaged or even destroyed in the course of the demolition, are the ones who are left homeless.
Recently there has been a spate of demolitions of houses and shops in the occupied territories whose Palestinian owners are not connected to any militant groups or attacks on Israelis, on the basis that they were built without the correct permits.
The IDF’s bulldozing methods have demonstrated a pattern of reckless disregard for civilian life. (And before anyone asks: yes, I think Palestinian terrorists are worse. But I also think the IDF should be held to a higher standard than “better than people who bomb buses.”)
There is only one responsible way to bulldoze an area when civilians (protestors or otherwise) are present; you park the machine a safe distance away until police or soldiers have detained the civilians, and only when you know that every single civilian is safely out of the area do you proceed. To do otherwise – to plow a bulldozer into an area which may contain civilians – is morally wrong.
Several people have excused what happened to Rachel Corrie by pointing out that Israeli bulldozers have unusually large blind spots. But that only makes things worse. Larger blind spots make it more likely that a civilian will be killed, and make it even more essential that the area be completely cleared of civilians before bulldozing begins.
Mark’s implication that the IDF is free of blame if Corrie wasn’t intentionally murdered is, to my mind, grade-school morality. The IDF has the ability and the responsibility to make civilian safety a priority; they have to do more than merely refrain from actively murdering protestors.
(Note: What I wrote above is recycled from a post written shortly after Corrie’s death.)
3. Was Rachel Corrie a “peace activist.”
I think calling Rachel a “peace” activist may be a misnomer, if by peace activist you mean pacifist. She clearly supported the right of Palestinians to engage in armed resistance in the occupied territories, which is not an unreasonable view (as long as it doesn’t extend to supporting killing unarmed civilians or blowing up buses). Nonetheless, Rachel’s actual activities consisted of non-violent protests to protect human rights; since she was there to support human rights, not peace, it’s more accurate to call her a human rights activist.
(On the other hand, one could argue that there can’t be peace as long as Palestinians lack basic human rights, and so activism for human rights is activism for peace.)
I don’t agree with everything Rachel wrote; the situation in Palestine is more complex than her writing (or Mark’s) indicates. Still, it’s easy to understand how someone could lose track of nuance living with Palestinians suffering under Israeli collective punishment. In the end, I think that human rights activists who die unarmed, in the protection of the rights of noncombatants, are heroes, and deserve admiration and respect.
I’ve often enjoyed Mark’s writing, and I’m not going to do anything silly like delink him (like he’d even notice!). Nonetheless, his comments about Corrie – and his implication that because some Palestinians blow up buses, all Palestinian resistance should be considered terrorism – deserve nothing but contempt..
How sad it is when someone who I respect so much as a blogger like Kleiman writes something so repulsive. It makes me feel so dirty.
I appreciate your defense of Rachel. There are a number of eyewitness accounts that state that the driver clearly saw her, the pictures are gruesome. If folks truly want to find the truth they should contact their congressperson and ask them to support HCR 111 asking for a commision to investigate her death (something that previous administrations have done without congressional pressure when American citizens died in political action). Unfortunately, Kleiman has taken the path of character assasination rather than calling for inquiry into the facts surrounding Rachel’s death.
you can link to information on HCR 111 at http://capwiz.com/adc/issues/alert/?alertid=1795771
The most that can be said against him is that he provided a floor for human rights activists like Corrie to sleep on, and that he’s been a critic of Israel. And that he’s Palestinian.
Scary, scary, scary.
Several years ago, I planned a comic which ended up shelved due to artistic differences with my proposed collaborator. It was set in a dystopic future society, and featured a young woman with radical political views who kept open house for people who shared any or all of her views. One of her houseguests turned out to be a suicide bomber, and after some investigation she was convicted of terrorist activities.
It was supposed to be satire. It was supposed to be fiction. It wasn’t supposed to be a prediction of where we’re heading.
It is terribly depressing that the Israeli army and the supporters of the Sharon government have taken to accusing all and sundry of anti-zionism. The blanket condemnations reveal a loss of reason that forbodes ill for the state of Israel. I think that the holocaust has inflicted a kind of cultural post traumatic stress syndrome which results in this knee jerk reactionism from many people whose only direct experience of the holocaust is through the media or, at best, family stories. This is not an unknown phenomenon – that people the furtherest away from a tragedy emote the most.
But this kind of emotional blindness is rapidly leading Israel and it’s supporters up a cul de sac where anti-zionism is being inflamed by the lack of responsiblity that Israel continues to display towards the Palestinians that were dispossessed by the creation of their state.
I found it interesting, in the examples you cited, that the IDF bulldozed the home of relatives of a guy they already killed in a manhunt after an attack he made in Sept or November of 2000… and the bulldozing took place in February of 2003!
Even if there could be a deterrent factor motivating the bulldozings, once the attacker has been killed, what deterrence can there be two years after his death?
Thus, in addition to the violation of the Geneva accords that you noted, there is simply no observable logic to some of the bulldozings.
Clearly, there is much glossed over in Israel’s actions because we are allied with Israel. I do not blame the bulldozings on ‘Israelis’ any more than I blame our war in Iraq on you and me. The blame falls on Israeli leaders like Sharon. It may be true that many Arabs are so anti-Jew that all Israelis have an understandable sense of persecution, yet it’s noteworthy that many maintain perspective and their humanity, while guys like Sharon use that persecution as a blank check to commit acts of brutality that deserve condemnation and prosecution.
And Corrie? She deserves far better, in life or in death, than she’s gotten from her critics. Mark indicates he’s deliberately waited a year to bring forth his critique yet has not delivered any fresh information to bolster his position. I remain baffled by his assertion and I do find it appalling as it stands. I’ll be asking him to elucidate further.
I just don’t get it: what kind of “armed resistance” are palestinians engaged in apart from killing unarmed civilians?
What kind of “freedom fighting” you are standing for?
Will you resort to some sort of examples about blowing up Israeli checkpoints?
“Some palestinians blow up buses” – yes, and some cafes and some shooting at civilian cars etc. Where are the examples of legitimate and humane killing?
And what is the goal of this struggle? To free what land? is it only about jewish settlements in Gaza Strip or “all palestine land”? or 67-year boundaries? Can you be more specific please?
It is just happened to getting absurd in particular when people come to the point of the goal. Suddenly, people realise that “right of return” is an impossible option and trying to achieve is nothing but a stubborn violence.
Yuryr, there are frequently press reports of Palestinians either firing shots at or throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the occuptied territories.
I don’t think there are any examples of “legitimate and humane killing.” I’m morally horrified by anyone who thinks that killing to protect land ownership makes sense, and that includes both Palestinians and Israelis. Nonetheless, while shooting at people is always moreally questionable, shooting at armed opponants is preferable to shooting at unarmed opponants.
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Rachel Corrie was a terrorist enabling, socialist, Evergreen College dupe of the wild animal Palestinian fascist-islamic groups.
I blame Evergreen for allowing their students to indulge any notion that enters the ether of their unformed minds and the socialsits for using her death as a hammer (pun intended) to push their anti-American afenda that is thinly veiled as pacifism.
Rachel made her choices and it killed her. There is no sypmathy, rather, it is called NATURAL SELECTION.
What is it with trolls who dig up year-old-plus threads to shit on ?
Do they have a singular obsession with one “enemy” (in this case, Corrie) and simply enjoy cyber-roaming from place to place at all hours, leaving bleakly interchangeable globs of excrement in every available open space ? Is it a particularly specialized hobby, like a philatelist who specializes in stamps of old fighter jets ?
Well, at least that would explain why it took Mr/Ms Patritroll so long to… errrr, respond to this thread. I use the term “respond” loosely, since it’s obvious that Mr/Ms Patritroll didn’t actually read the thread.
Ho hum.
Well, at least “American Patriot” acknowledges the fact of natural selection, and thus, evolution.
American Patriot – do you believe that the 1700+ and climbing American troops killed in Iraq “made their choices and it killed [them]” to join the military, many under the corrupt, war-mongering George W. Bush and his wild animals named Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith?
And I know Evergreen State College – it will chew up and spit out neocon youth and send them running into the woods screaming for daddy to get them out of there….
What is this, Rob’s alma maters day? I went to Evergreen, too. The only thing it did to this neocon was strengthen a budding recognition that declining to bathe is not a revolutionary act. Just a stinky one.