Very soon the family of Rachel Corrie are going to Israel to take part in a court case to establish the facts of her death by bulldozer that the Israeli Army investigation seemed to have missed.
I have written twice about this matter that the short memoried American public let fade away at the time of the Pentagon lies and media blitz about Jessica Lynch. This is the second article that I wrote when the play about Rachel was opened in London a couple of years after the incident. It seems appropriate to bring the facts back into the spotlight again for the sake of a real heroine.
In view of the fact that 'My Name Is Rachel Corrie' is going to open at the Royal Court Theater in London from October 11 to 29. Box office + 020 7565 5000., I thought to repeat the article that I wrote in September 2003 when we all heard the Pentagon inspired fiction about the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
To her undying credit she pointed out in a TV interview that the whole story was made up, and not by her. The interviewer was astonished that she would deny the story that made her a heroine. Integrity is a difficult matter for entertainment people to understand.
But the other death of an American heroine, a real one, Rachel Corrie, did not merit media attention so I wrote this article at the time for the Practical Magick newsletter.
I am writing this at the beginning of September, 2003 which contains several personally memorable anniversaries. On September 1st 1939 World War II began in Europe when Germany invaded Danzig. On September 1st I was evacuated from London with thousands of other young people to be in a place away from the bombing that was expected. On September 2nd 1945 I had not yet been back home even once, and was just finishing a year in hospital, when the surrender of Japan was announced. On September 3rd 1939 Britain declared war on Germany, and at 11 o’clock that morning I saw my first low flying Messerschmidt 109 streaking at an altitude of about 200 feet down the main street of the town where I was evacuated.
So my thoughts these few days have been about the unsung heroes and heroines that I knew during the blitz at home and the fighting overseas. My 5 foot 2 inch tall mother was an air raid warden by night and a house cleaner by day. When she came out of the shelter where she looked after about 50 people, some of whom were already homeless, she found that only one wall of our house was standing amidst the smoking pile of bricks. On top of the one brick wall remaining was our cat, having lost a couple of its nine lives already. She asked one of the bomb disposal crew to use a ladder to get the animal. They demurred because the wall, they said, was obviously about to collapse.
So she took one, put it up against the wall and got up and back with the cat before the wall collapsed. That incident wasn’t even newsworthy. People all around were being made homeless amidst the blazing gas mains and the broken water mains. Amazing deeds of self-sacrifice and courage were commonplace.
The King and Queen ignored pleas to evacuate to Canada because their home was in London and that was where their subjects lived. They visited the bombed out people many times after the raids and became well-loved because they shared the danger.
A few years later, when a V1 flying bomb demolished the house next door my mother was under the table with the same cat, because it had suddenly rushed indoors off the window-sill and dived under the table. She followed suit. When the bomb went off it fragmented the house next door. Our second house collapsed. The debris held the table together.
After twenty minutes or so my mother began to dig herself out because she didn’t want to be late for work. The bomb disposal rescuers arrived to receive a verbal blistering for being late and making her late. Then she went to work with the cat. That wasn’t newsworthy either, so much else was going on.
I lost many friends and relatives during the War, some in action on the ground, one was burned alive as tail gunner of a Wellington bomber when it was hit, some were in German prisoner of war camps, and my list was not in the least unusual. Some came back alive. My sturdy uncle weighed 98 pounds when he came back from a German prison camp. I knew many real heroes and heroines who just took it for granted that acting in the way they did was all they could do. Neither the evacuated children, some of whom like me left home, didn’t see it again for years and lost one or both parents during the bombing, nor the returning personnel had, or expected, counseling of any kind. We were expected to get over it and live in the NOW.
The friends I later made in Europe had had things much worse in occupied countries that were the recipients of 1000 bomber raids later in the War, daylight raids and night raids, not to mention the chaos as hundreds of thousands of soldiers fought backwards and forwards round or through their home towns.
So my idea of what a hero or heroine is always includes heroic actions, often accompanied by an indomitable will, and certainly NOT always associated with a uniform.
When my relatives came home from prisoner of war camps they weren’t automatically regarded as heroes, just because they had been prisoners. Some of them indeed were decorated for valor and heroic deeds. The civilians who bore the brunt of the bombing and the uncertainty for years received no awards, or very few. Heroic behavior was a norm.
It was with these sort of thoughts in mind that I was told by a friend today that Jessica Lynch had signed a one million dollar book contract for a book on her ordeal. Did I think I would read it? …was the query that followed.
Well I had followed the story in the European press and radio, the Canadian press and the Australian press, and had compared the Pentagon account with what the press corps of those countries had found out by interviewing the hospital personnel and local residents at great length and individually. I will not read the account, even if it is labeled as fiction. If it is based on the Pentagon story, and then wrapped in the flag to make any criticism of it un-American and unpatriotic, then fiction it will certainly be.
I have another non-uniformed American heroine in mind instead, who died seven days before Jessica was taken prisoner. Her act of courage was as riveting as that of the single student who stood totally alone in front of a column of tanks in Tiannamon Square, not all that long ago.
I am talking about the civilian Rachel Corrie. Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could well have passed for sisters. They were both pretty American blondes. Rachel was 23 and Jessica 19. The Middle East war zones changed the destinies of both of them. Private Jessica Lynch, who became a soldier so that she could get an education as a kindergarten teacher, was badly hurt when her army vehicle overturned. Rachel Corrie, the peace activist, was murdered by an Israeli soldier in front of witnesses and a video camera, in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Private Lynch obeyed orders and went to Iraq as a soldier because of the administration’s political need for a war. Corrie went to Gaza in Palestine to oppose what she thought were the immoral and unethical actions of her government. She believed that as a citizen of the country that supplied US weapons to Israel at American tax payers’ expense she had an ethical responsibility to do what she could to defend helpless Palestinian civilians against the Israeli army. Her letters home, describe how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote.
She belonged to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which held the view that the Israeli military's killing of Palestinans might be slowed by the presence of highly visible "internationals". They thought that though the killing of Palestinian civilians was commonplace and ignored by the US administration, the Israelis wouldn’t want the diplomatic or media scandals that would come if it killed a US citizen, who was obviously a US citizen. This may have been naïve considering the military mind set, yet she thought this and put her life consciously on the line because of her thought.
She was hoping to use a thing that has become obvious over the years, the belief of the administration that American lives are worth more than any others. It was her hope, and courageous determination to use this concept to save a few Palestinian homes from demolition. Believing her fluorescent orange jacket, blonde hair and advertised presence would serve as a deterrent, Corrie stood in front of bulldozers, slept beside wells and escorted children to school. The only orders she was obeying were those of her conscience.
When that Israeli bulldozer driver looked at Corrie's orange jacket, blonde hair, and obvious American presence and put his foot down on the accelerator anyway, he proved something about the Israeli military mind. Having crushed her body under the pile of dirt from his blade, he ran completely over her, and then backed over her. All this was captured on video and in front of many witnesses.
The aftermath of the two incidents does indeed show that some lives are valued more than others by the administration. When the Pentagon announced Lynch's successful rescue, she became a media heroine. According to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, President George Bush was "full of joy for Jessica Lynch". Her rescue, we were told, was a testament to a core American value: as West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller said to the Senate: "We take care of our people."
That is doubtful. Corrie's death was in the paper for two days and then virtually disappeared from the media. Her death has met with almost total official silence, despite the fact that eyewitnesses claim it was a deliberate act. President Bush who was full of joy for Jessica has said nothing at all about a US citizen killed by a US-made bulldozer bought with US tax dollars. It was an American-made Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer incidentally. Check Google for Rachel Corrie, to see the pictures.
A US congressional resolution demanding an independent inquiry has been buried in committee, the usual stalling tactic. Israeli military's investigation is the only one that has taken place and as expected it cleared itself of any wrongdoing. Since then ISM members have been meeting with Israeli induced accidents. Currently I have a list of 17 Representatives who are in favor of an investigation. None of them are from Illinois I must say.
Now the other thing that the two women have in common is rather important. Both of their stories were grossly distorted by the different militaries to suit their own agendas. The official story was all over the breathless American media, just when a boost was needed in the public view of the military operations. They said that Lynch was captured in a bloody gun battle, mistreated by sadistic Iraqi doctors, and then rescued in another storm of bullets by heroic Navy Seals; just like the movies.
However, since then, because of investigations by people who were not photographers in uniform, another version has emerged. The doctors who treated Lynch found no evidence of battle wounds, and they even donated their own blood to save her life. Her father has told the press that her injuries were not battle related. And witnesses have told the BBC, and other newspaper correspondents from the Toronto Star and Washington Post, that those daring Navy Seals already knew there were no Iraqi fighters left in the area when they stormed the hospital.
Corrie's story was also twisted by the Israeli authorities to make her look suspicious. Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, the two British suicide bombers, attended a memorial service for Corrie in Rafah, a fact the Israeli military has seized on to link the ISM to terrorism. Members of ISM point out that the event was open to the public, and that they knew nothing of the British visitors' intentions.
We know in this country how the flimsiest circumstantial evidence can be twisted to the advantage of the official story. Some ISM members have been shot since then by the Israelis, but they intend to stay.
Now back to Jessica, who has just closed a million dollar contract for the story of her ordeal, which her doctors said she was unlikely ever to remember.
The BBC called the American story one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived. That’s BBC talk for ‘lies.’ Here are the main points from the interviews.
Private Lynch, a 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital, which at the time was swarming with Fedayeen. Eight days later US special forces stormed the hospital, capturing the "dramatic" events on a night vision camera.
They were said to have come under fire from inside and outside the building, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter. Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.
But Iraqi doctors in Nasiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for the soldier in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital and one of only two nurses on the floor.
"I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle," said Dr. Harith a-Houssona, who looked after her. There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."
Witnesses told us that the Special Forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital. There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Dr. Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.
When footage of the rescue was released, General Vincent Brooks, US spokesman in Doha, said: "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make his happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen comrade."
The American strategy was actually to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves. The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series "Profiles from the Front Line", that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approach was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.
As for Private Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction sites list Jessica Lynch items, from an oil painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica Lynch" fridge magnet.”…..end of summary of BBC material.
Doctors now say she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will. Who then will write the account?
But someone said that she was slapped and ill treated by the Iraqi doctors. The U.S. military later insisted that an Iraqi lawyer witnessed this incident and then informed them of Lynch's whereabouts. His credibility as a source however, is going to be hard to verify because he and his family were immediately transported to the U.S., where he was immediately granted political asylum and has refused all interview requests.
You will be relieved to know that the poor fellow’s future is assured. He has a job with a lobbying firm that represents the defense industry. It is run by former Republican Rep. Bob Livingstone. He also has a $500,000 book contract with HarperCollins, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox network did much to hype Lynch's story, as it did the rest of the war. It will be interesting to compare the stories for some people.
A comment that I believe came from CNN says, “ In the 1998 film "Wag the Dog," political operatives employ special editing techniques to create phony footage that will engender public sympathy for a manufactured war. Now we find that in 2003 the real-life Pentagon's ability and willingness to manipulate the facts make Hollywood's story lines look tame.”
We know that the Spanish-American War was created by the Hearst newspapers, In my first article in volume 2 of the e-zine Tid-Bits Intellectual Honesty is a No-No which is in the archives of this blog I related the true story of the totally made-up book about the Palestine issue that became a best seller here and was praised by the intellectuals. When the European press found that every reference was a fake, and the whole thing was probably written by the CIA, the intellectuals didn’t admit their error. Instead they just stopped talking about it and severely punished the man who found them out by destroying his career.
We know that the incident that started the Vietnam War was a non-incident, blown up and lied about for political ends, and those political ends caused the deaths of thousands of innocent American soldiers. The President concerned got off without punishment.
Maybe the idea that the words hero or heroine must be associated with a uniform is just another piece of well-planted programming.
I wish Jessica the best. It seems doubtful that if her book is as fervently promoted as the lies about her ordeal that she will become a kindergarten teacher. That is the nation’s loss. I’m very sorry that such an innocent and well-meaning person became a pawn in the military/political strategy, without regard for her final welfare
If you check on the non-corporate controlled media you will find the whole story of both ladies. The mother of Rachel Corrie saw the play and wrote a fine letter about it on the Common Dreams news site. I sent her a copy of the article you have just read.
