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Monday, March 26, 2007

An interesting reaction to the Rachel Corrie play

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Portland pro-Israel community responded to the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" in an interesting way: by setting up a website of facts about Corrie and the ISM, and buying ads in the playbill.

The website, rachelcorriefacts.org, is low-key and filled with context and links to show the context about Corrie. It meant to be used where ever the play is staged. It synopsizes the facts nicely:
My Name is Rachel Corrie is a simplistic, incomplete, one-sided portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The show, based on Rachel's diaries and letters, does not attempt or claim to be an objective or balanced report from the region. It contains many factual errors and myths. [More...]


The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-run organization that lures its members into war zones to act as human shields in obstructing counter-terrorism efforts.

The ISM describes itself as a peaceful humanitarian group, but in reality it is sympathetic to terrorist tactics and lures well-intentioned, idealistic young adults to the Palestinian Territories to promote its anti-Israel views. The ISM then knowingly leads its members into war zones, placing them directly in harm's way as human shields in an attempt to obstruct Israel's counterterrorism operations. [More...]

Rachel Corrie's death was a tragic accident.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel, acting as a human shield, attempted to deter bulldozers clearing brush and earth around homes in Rafah. According to a witness, Rachel slipped as she moved in front of the bulldozer, fell in front of the slow moving blade and was crushed by unearthed debris. An investigation, which included extensive interrogation of the driver and his commanders, using polygraphs and video evidence, revealed that the driver's view had been obstructed by the debris and by the bulldozer’s protective driver cage. An autopsy confirmed that the bulldozer had not touched Rachel. [More...]

Gaza was, and still is today, a hotbed and source of violent terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Between 2000 and early 2003, hundreds of Israeli men, women and children had been murdered and thousands were injured in suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups. Israel had escalated its military operations against Palestinian terrorist groups and infrastructure in 2002 and 2003 in an effort to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist violence. [More...]

Israel wants peace and has made sacrifices and territorial concessions in its quest for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Israel has always sought long-lasting peace with its Arab neighbors. Israel gave up all of the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 to achieve peace with Egypt, left its security zone in Lebanon in 2000, and withdrew soldiers and settlements from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Israel remains ready to negotiate peace based on a two-state solution. [More...]

Understandably for the liberal audience it aims to educate, the site avoids showing that Corrie herself was a rabidly flag-burning anti-American idiot who was supporting murderers and was protecting a weapons smuggling tunnel.

This approach to the play avoids the label (and libel) of "censorship" that dogs the usual approach that American Jewish groups use in cases like this.