Misrepresenting Rachel Corrie

Misrepresenting Rachel Corrie



Washingtonpost.com April 26, 2003

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39781-2003Apr25.html



Eric Rozenman [Free for Fall, April 19] attempts to recast the perspective on the final e-mails of Rachel Corrie. By his account, she was a misled young woman with "no hint of understanding the violent situation into which she was recruited by a Palestinian 'solidarity' organization." Rozenman carefully avoids addressing the issue that brought Corrie to our attention in the first place. An Israeli bulldozer ran over an unarmed young woman without a moment's pause. No warnings, no efforts to have someone pull her out of the way. Full steam ahead! It is precisely this kind of egregious, callous treatment of Palestinians as garbage to be swept out of the way of Israelis that serves as recruitment material for pro-Palestinian causes. It also explains an increasingly vehement "anti-Israeli policy" camp among those who are otherwise pro-Jewish.

While organizations are free to name themselves whatever they want, Rozenman's submission, as a representative of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), reveals the political agenda behind his organization's ostensible accuracy.



Robert Myers

Eric Rozenman uses isolated words in Rachel Corrie's last e-mails to her family to misrepresent her as an extremist and accuses her of "justify[ing] terrorism," when she did no such thing. Corrie -- according to her own words -- was motivated by an informed and admirable desire to confront Israel's well-documented violence against Palestinian civilians.

Rozenman portrays Israel's 1967 military occupation as an act of "self-defense." Thirty-six years into this occupation, one wonders how long it would take for Rozenman to acknowledge it as the means by which Palestinian land continues to be offensively colonized daily -- a coordinated, government-led process that does great violence to land and people and undermines the future livelihood of the Palestinian people. One also wonders why his claims about the "benefits" of this occupation do not accord with statistics compiled by international monitoring organizations.

Family, friends and colleagues of Rachel Corrie remember a thoughtful, committed activist who responded admirably to compensate for our failings as a nation to seek justice in this conflict.

Rozenman's attempts to generate suspicion that Corrie was "misled" or "recruited" by dark forces and to discredit her eyewitness testimony as "hysterical" are nothing less than a second bulldozing of Corrie.

Adam Shapiro

The writer is an organizer for the

International Solidarity Movement.