A Political Interlude: The Corrie Verdict, Part I--What Happened?

Part I--What Happened?

I have been working on a report on the Rachel Corrie verdict since that verdict was reached in Israel back in August.  My discussion has grown to encompass various approaches, so first I'll start with a journalistic-like overview based on already available information.

In subsequent posts I'll follow with Part II, a discussion of how her death, and now the verdict, fit into the larger narrative of Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.  In the 3rd part I'm going to try to look at the theology of how her death gets used--what it is for her advocates--holding to the understanding that theology and politics are intertwined.  In Part IV, I will venture into the scriptural underpinnings of that theology and politics--an approach I think can help point us in a good direction.

It is in a sober mood that I get ready to publish my explorations of this topic in my blog.  There has been a lot said already.  What I've seen is very polemical, blaming Israel for an unjust decision, and it gets repeated over and over.  Church members and friends are helping spread it.  Former President Jimmy Carter has supported such opinions, as have The Guardian and even Amnesty International. 

In the face of the oncoming barrage I can sometimes feel overwhelmed before I even start to write.  Yet the truth is I'm not overwhelmed unless I can't speak.

Avoiding being overwhelmed is a good thing when there is so much news on one side of an issue and virtually none on the other, because in that situation the human mind is predisposed to jump to erroneous conclusions.  Flooding the media too easily translates to biasing our minds.


Another problem is that, in our polarized society, it can look like I am a right-wing political conservative if I'm not ratifying the widespread left-wing belief in the all-encompassing evil of Israel and everything that comes out of it.  Yet I'm not writing from a right-wing position.

From still another angle, some people may be disturbed at seeing tragedy discussed in connection with controversy.  I've touched on the death of Rachel Corrie previously, and there I said that, whatever else, her death is a tragedy.  That still holds.  But it's also the case that her advocates and apologists do discuss it to make their points, and so will I.

The views I'm going to be expressing, or at least the way I've put those views together, are not those of any denomination or group, but are my own.  In fact, I have taken the trouble to write because I can't find anybody else making the points I think should be made.  It's possible they have been made, but I just haven't found them.  

Also, I've decided that even though I am not an expert in political or theological matters, it is important for me to articulate what I've been thinking.  If others, experts or not, have feedback, that can help the process along.


With that preface, I'll begin.

In the fall of 2007 I began going to a liberal mainline church with my husband.  I was there because we were exploring each others' faith traditions.  That in itself was not at all a prosaic proposition; in fact, on the personal level, it was cataclysmic.  On top of that, I was soon to learn the extent to which the 1st century of the common era is still with us, not far below the trappings of 21st century America, sometimes as if there were little history and no space since then, sometimes as if modern day Israel were the scene and cause of Jesus' dying all over again, and nearly always as though the Gospels were a literal, historical record of what Jesus did and--especially--what the Jews did.  Finally, a relative of Rachel Corrie went to this church.  All together, it was enough to drive me, a Jew who had avoided organized religion since I was 16 years old, to a new depth of understanding of religion and community.  As to the subject at hand, Rachel Corrie's death, I took a weekend afternoon in 2008 to read up on whatever I could learn, because of what I was hearing at church.

As most readers may know, Rachel Corrie was the young International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist who in 2003 was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, under disputed circumstances.  Her name had recently been in the news again as I began to write, since a lawsuit brought in Israel by her family had just resulted in a decision vindicating the Israeli Ministry of Defense.  The court having just handed down a decision that her death was accidental, not intentional, the usual suspects have lined up to condemn Israel for what they say is an unjust decision.

In 2008, the primary source I found was a lengthy 2003 Mother Jones article by a journalist named Joshua Hammer (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/09/death-rachel-corrie).  It was from that article I first learned that ISM is a controversial organization that does not limit itself to nonviolent resistance but, at the very least, pursues what it claims is nonviolent direct action.  It reserves the right to advocate for the appropriateness of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens or Jews in circumstances it deems justified.  While its leaders say that ISM activists themselves do not commit violence, even that is murky; the organization does support violence by those it considers to be freedom fighters.

Despite giving the above picture of ISM, the 2003 Mother Jones article is not pro-Israel by any stretch.  In fact, it tends to portray Israeli military activity in the region as oppressive and as taking place for no good reason.  The time period we are focusing on, and when Rachel Corrie died, is the time of the Second Intifada, an extended period of intense Palestinian violence against the Israeli citizenry that followed the disappointing conclusion of former President Bill Clinton’s 2000 Camp David summit.  Some see the Second Intifada as in part the result of Arafat’s being publicly made to take the fall for the failure of the summit—that he revenged himself for the finger pointing and stoked his credibility with Palestinians by riding the crest of the violence and even encouraging it (The Much Too Promised Land, Aaron David Miller).  At any rate, it was a violent period before the wall—the protection barrier—had been built.  There were dozens of suicide bombings at public places such as cafes or synagogues.  At the time, the Israeli military had the aim of controlling weapons smuggling and terrorist activity in that area of Gaza.  In general, the picture painted by the Mother Jones article seems to be as would be expected from a left-leaning magazine.

Despite that slant, when I searched for current updates, I found advocacy groups have made a concerted effort to discredit the article, not by challenging the facts themselves, but by alleging the author plagiarized parts of the text.  I didn’t see accusations of plagiarism from anyone else, and I did see later articles by that author, who apparently remains a working journalist.  Advocacy groups also accused him of smearing Rachel Corrie’s memory.  This looks to me like one of those situations in which a partisan group accuses an author of dastardly bias for not telling the story precisely according to the party line.

ISM is reminiscent of the by-any-means-necessary activist groups of the American Left during the late 1960s and early ‘70s—antiwar groups and post-MLK Jr. black activist groups—or possibly of more recent radical environmental groups we occasionally hear about in the news—groups who do not forswear violence and that, in today’s political climate here in America, any politician, clergyperson, or pillar-of-the-community layperson would be quick to publicly disavow.

Getting back to one central aspect of what I learned: ISM gave the media what turned out to be an erroneous series of pictures after Rachel Corrie’s death.  One picture in particular made it appear she was standing up on level ground using a bullhorn and was run down by a bulldozer.  As one might guess, purported eyewitness accounts vary, but all agree she went toward and into or onto the huge mound of dirt or rubble being pushed by the bulldozer.  I want to specifically mention that mound of rubble because that is simply not the picture a lot of people have in their minds. People think she was standing there in plain sight.  It turned out those questionable pictures had been taken earlier, in different places, with the sun at different points in the sky, and with different shadows, different backgrounds, and different bulldozers.   The Mother Jones article said the media lost trust in ISM because of their apparent attempt at manipulation, while ISM spokespeople claimed the news service had miscaptioned the pictures. 

Rachel Corrie's advocates don’t tell her story as I have described.  In fact, it appears there has been an active program to promote the story as advocates insist it must have occurred.  A play has been written and promoted, and an ongoing media campaign conducted.  In certain quarters, Rachel Corrie is held up as the face of the Palestinian movement and the anti-Israel movement.  With enough time and repetition, some mainstream news sources are reporting the story now as though it had happened as advocates claim--complete with misleading pictures.

In the time since 2008, I came to the conclusion that if the eventual trial failed to result in the desired outcome, advocates would claim the decision was a whitewash—and that is indeed what has happened.

This concludes my description of the events surrounding Rachel Corrie's death and the recent verdict.  In the next section, I'll move on to the context in which those events occurred--Israel and Palestine, and the Mideast in general.

Addendum, November 8:  Since my original post of Part 1 on November 4, 2012, I have found that the English translation of the verdict is available online.  It was difficult to find because the Internet is cluttered with articles criticizing the outcome of the trial.  Such articles dedicate the bulk of their text to the criticism and relatively little if any space to the verdict itself, which they say is over 160 pages long (although the report of the exact page count varies).  The English summary is only a few pages long, which is consistent with all the original news stories stating the judge read it out loud.  I will include here the title of the verdict as well, so that if there is difficulty with the link, the reader will be able to search online as I did.

Here is the title I searched for:

[TRANSLATION]
Summary of the Verdict (T.A. 371/05) Estate of the Late Rachel Corrie, etc. v. The State of Israel - Ministry of Defense