The Left - and Palestinian racism - killed Rachel Corrie

Today is the 20th anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death, accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she acted as a human shield against a mine clearing operation.

Her death came directly because of the Leftist myth that Israelis are racist - and that Palestinians aren't.

Corrie was brainwashed by her "progressive" teachers at Evergreen College and her International Solidarity Movement colleagues. 

One of her instructors, Simona Sharoni,  not only encourages but requires students to engage in activism in her classes. Corrie received college credit for her trip to Gaza, working with her professors to call her activism an independent study program. 

A basic tenet of the far-Left, which has now become mainstream, is that Israel is an irredeemably racist entity engaged in "genocide" against non-white Palestinians. This myth is what fueled Corrie and ISM to place activists in harm's way, because of a naïve belief that they were invincible - protected by their "white privilege."

One of Corrie's fellow Evergreen students, Joe Smith, also received independent study credit for his time in Rafah while Corrie was there. "I saw ISM as a way that I could directly use my white, Western, American male privilege to directly serve underprivileged people of color," he said a week after her death.

Corrie's emails to her parents while in Gaza emphasized her unwavering beliefs that white privilege would protect her, and that her anti-Israel activism was penance for her being an American. She emailed that Israel wouldn't arrest her and hold her for a long time because "I am a white US citizen." She wrote about how ISM members could make "serious use of our international white person privilege," and said, "If the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible."

Other ISM activists admitted after Corrie's death that they felt invincible. ISM believed that "the white foreigners were the magic bullet that could neutralize Israel's overwhelming military strength." Smith himself admitted how he and his fellow ISMers felt invincible by their whiteness: "It's definitely easy to get cocky in this war zone when a tank is shooting at people and you walk up to them and shout at them, 'Hey, I'm here!' and they pack up and leave. You get so used to this idea, 'Hey, they won't hurt us.' It has really made me realize how naïve and cocky I was."

Corrie and other ISMers took huge risks with their lives because of this child-like belief that their whiteness is a superpower. In fact, an Irish activist in Rafah at the time named Jenny was nearly run down herself by a D9 that she thought she could stop. “The bulldozer’s coming, the earth is burying my feet, my legs, I’ve got nowhere to run, and I thought, ‘This is out of control.' Another activist pulled me up and out of the way at the last minute.” 

Even the Palestinians that these activists befriended considered them crazy. But there were no adults around to counteract the almost religious belief they had that Israeli racism would protect them in a war zone.

Notably, ISM would specifically recruit white kids because of this very assumption. Activists were well aware (and struggled with the idea) that they were promoting the idea of being white saviors of darker Palestinians and complicit in the racism they claim to oppose. 

But there was another reason why Corrie took such a risk that day that she was killed. And that was Palestinian racism and misogyny.

Even though these woke, white ISM activists flocked to Rafah to supposedly help Palestinians, there was much mistrust among the oppressed people of color that they deigned to help. ISM members were very concerned over an anonymous letter they had received:

[Corrie] was propelled, in part, by frustration. During the past few days she and the nine other ISM activists had become preoccupied with an anonymous letter circulating through Rafah that cast suspicion on the human shields. “Who are they? Why are they here? Who asked them to come here?” it asked. The letter referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as “nasty foreign bitches” whom “our Palestinian young men are following around.” 

That morning [of Corrie's death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. “We all had a feeling that our role was too passive. We talked about how to engage the Israeli military,” Richard “Fuzz” Purssell told me by phone from Great Britain. 

Corrie, while assuming that Israeli racism would protect her, felt that if she would only take more risks, then Palestinian racism and misogyny would magically disappear. 

And that is exactly what she did.

We know now that Palestinians have treated these white international women horribly. There are many reports of how they have been raped by the Palestinians they think they are helping - and the stories are hushed up by the very organizations like ISM they volunteer for. Corrie believed that Palestinians are inherently good and Israeli Jews inherently evil, and she only had to try a little harder to prove it. 

The narrative of Israeli racism and Palestinian victimhood is fundamental to the existence of these organizations like ISM. And that false narrative is not only what killed Rachel Corrie, but also promoted a culture of Palestinian sexual assaults on her fellow, invincible, white women. 

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Academic fraud whines that I started a "Twitter campaign" against her

A new subchapter in the Simona Sharoni saga:From Plattsburgh State's student newspaper Cardinal Points:

Plattsburgh State gender and women’s studies Professor Simona Sharoni has received a slew of online threats after making comments about feminism and the conflict between Israel and Palestine, particularly in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, BDS, movement.

The threats were received by Sharoni through both her PSUC and personal email accounts, as well as tweets directed to her Twitter handle.

“The vast majority of of the messages were sexist in tone and incoherent in substance. They consisted of attacks on my character and academic reputation with several messages that included threats to my career and job security and two messages, which included direct threats to my safety,” Sharoni said in a letter addressed to PSUC colleagues. “One threatened me with rape and the other with both rape and physical violence.”

The initial twitter campaign against Sharoni was initiated April 19 by user @ElderofZiyon, whose bio on the social media site states he is a “International man of mystery, who just happens to run the world. Zionism, Israel, the Arab world, Palestinians, all from a different viewpoint.”

Twitter user @Mrvigilante tweeted to Sharoni, “may be [sic] you should try rape and terrorism to see the difference. Can be arranged.”

I tweeted to her exactly once in April, which is not exactly starting an entire Twitter campaign, and certainly I have nothing to do with any alleged threats of rape against her:

Idiot professor @simonasharoni pretends to link campus rape to Israel https://t.co/ohpUH8xnBo #AcademicFraud pic.twitter.com/tJXdeUf8SN

— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) April 20, 2016

I wrote to the newspaper and asked why they mischaracterized my role.

The answer I received is that Sharoni herself is the one who accused me of starting this campaign in the letter to her colleagues!

(The editor says that she will correct the article, although that hasn't happened yet. Her characterization of two alleged threats as a "slew" is more sloppy reporting.)

After the initial threats were received in April, Sharoni said she contacted University Police.

She said she “was fairly satisfied with the response of campus police and IT specialists,” though she still felt vulnerable on campus.

The example from @MrVigilante of a "rape threat" does not strike me as that at all, either. While I don't condone it, he is saying that Sharoni's linking of Israel to rape is less credible than linking Palestinian terror to rape, and crudely offering to help her research the topic. Again, I don't support that statement nor did I have anything to do with it, besides publicizing her own words.

If Sharoni felt threatened by him or any other tweet, she should have gone to the actual police or the FBI, not the campus police. This was not even remotely a credible threat to her.

But Sharoni decided to make an issue of her being "threatened" and "harassed" by Freedom of Information Law requests because she simply cannot defend her absurd positions linking Israel to campus rape via "intersectionality." She claims that she is being persecuted because of her support for BDS, but in fact she is being criticized for this tendentious linkage which she admits is an anti-Israel strategy she made up to inflame passions.

Essentially, Sharoni does not have the ability to defend her slanderous and false accusations against Israel, and to divert attention from her own failings in logic and truth, she is claiming victimhood because people are now asking questions about how an academic can so easily make such false statements.

It is not unreasonable to ask whether someone entrusted to teach students is trustworthy herself.

What is sad is that her colleagues, her college newspaper and some media are accepting her version of events without even bothering to check her accusations. Even this incident shows that Sharoni has no academic rigor as she lashes out at her ideological opponents armed with nothing but false accusations and lies.

I invite her colleagues at Plattsburgh State to read my critique of her words and to agree - or argue -with me. It is something that Sharoni clearly doesn't welcome herself.

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Academic fraud who equates Israel with campus rape claims "harassment" when critics ask questions

Simona Sharoni is an academic fraud who wrote an article earlier this year that pretends that there is a relationship between Israeli policies and men raping women on college campuses.

"Intersectionality," you know.

After she exposed herself as an idiot, it is natural that people would start to look at her background a little bit. This is the person who helped send Rachel Corrie to Israel to protest IDF actions for college credit, and she may be one of Corries' mentors who told her that her "whiteness" would protect her, something that may have directly caused her death as the poor, stupid girl felt she was invincible in front of the slow-moving bulldozer that couldn't see her.

Someone, apparently from Stand With Us, filed a Freedom of Information request to SUNY Plattsburgh, where she now teaches, to find out about Sharoni's hiring, employment history and participation in academic conferences.

It is a legal request. It is a moral request to find out whether state-funded employees who teach New York students are really qualified to do so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to find out this information.

But Sharoni suddenly went from being the principled, strong voice speaking truth to power that she pretends to be into a whining, quivering weakling who is complaining, "Look! I'm being persecuted by the evil, all powerful Lobby!"

I'll let Electronic Intifada explain:

[O]n 6 September, Sharoni says she was informed by a school administrator that an individual had made five requests under New York’s Freedom of Information Law asking for records on her hiring, employment history and participation in academic conferences.

According to Sharoni, Sean Brian Dermody, assistant to the vice president for administration and director of management services at SUNY Plattsburgh, asked Sharoni to help with the request by locating the records and turning them over.

The next day, Sharoni says, Dermody sent a follow-up email asking her to give him all correspondence in her possession related to her hiring. Sharoni began working at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2007. She became a professor in 2010.

In the latest update, Sharoni says she was informed that a request was made to disclose all of her travel authorizations and records of what she did and who paid for it.

Ken Knelly, a spokesperson for the university, stressed to The Electronic Intifada that the administration must follow the law. “We are subject to the New York State Freedom of Information Law,” which he says was created to ensure that the government and its institutions are responsive to the public. “The law is based on a presumption of access.”

In response to concerns that the requests may be part of a campaign of intimidation and harassment, as Sharoni and MESA argue, Knelly said the school will review the requests. “Based on the content of individual records requested, we can restrict access if exemptions apply in accordance with state law.”

“We need to follow the law,” he said.

Bob Freeman, executive director of New York’s Committee on Open Government, told The Electronic Intifada that according to precedent dating back to the beginning of the Freedom of Information Law, public records are accessible to anyone without regard to the nature of their interest.

Freeman noted that a request can only be denied if it meets the standard of an “unwarranted invasion of privacy.” He remarked that if every government employee could protest that a Freedom of Information request was intended to intimidate them, then not many requests would be granted.

But Sharoni wants to pretend to be the victim:

“My administration’s utter silence on the matter until today,” she added in reference to Ettling’s email, “underscores an alarming trend in higher education of appeasing external political entities by curtailing the free speech and academic freedom of faculty and students who according to administrators work on ‘controversial issues.’”

“It is an attempt to undermine and discredit scholarly work on Israel/Palestine that includes calls to hold Israel accountable for its systemic human rights violations and repression.”

But Sharoni has no intention to retreat from her work. “I am going to deal with my sense of insecurity and vulnerability by speaking up even louder on these issues, by refusing to let administrators define support for justice in Palestine as controversial and by letting colleagues who don’t work on these issues know what are the broad implications of the loss of academic freedom.”

Sharoni here admits that the FOI requests are not affecting her academic freedom at all.

If she is so brave, and has nothing to hide, and if these requests aren't chilling her speech one iota, and if they are legal requests, then...why is she whining about it? 

The reason is because victimhood is sine qua non for anti-Israel activists. They must claim that the Israel Lobby is all powerful and that they are the victims, while at the same time saying that they are brave and they fight despite the crushing weight of pressure from the Zionists.

This case shows that this narrative is utterly false. The truth is that there is no quashing of academic freedom by asking questions, and a true academic would welcome people seeking out information.

Sharoni doesn't base her research on facts. She comes up with her assertion of Israeli evil first, and then tries to shoe-horn any wisps of evidence she can find from any other field to support her foregone conclusion.

No wonder she is against anyone trying to find actual facts.

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A useful list of academic frauds who demand textbooks publish lying anti-Israel propaganda

The "Jewish Voice for Peace" group seems very upset that McGraw-Hill removed a textbook from circulation after I showed that it included a false piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2016

Dozens of Prominent Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Censor Palestinian Loss of Land Maps

Last month, publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education withdrew and destroyed copies of a US college level textbook because of complaints from supporters of Israel over a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946, shortly before Israel was established, to 2000.

In response to this shocking and outrageous act of censorship of the Palestinian narrative from US schoolbooks, dozens of respected Palestinian, Israeli, and American academics have signed onto the enclosed open letter calling on McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision. Signatories include Rashid Khalidi, Noura Erakat, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Sarah Schulman, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé, and Angela Davis.

Here is the letter they signed. Keep in mind that these people are considered "academics."

Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Destroy Textbook

We, the undersigned, urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its recent decision to withdraw and destroy the US college level textbook, “Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World”, which was made following complaints about a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946 to 2000.

This blatant act of censorship, in response to complaints from those who seek to suppress a free exchange of knowledge and ideas about Israel and Palestine, is shocking and unacceptable.

The maps in question are historically accurate and vividly illustrate Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land, which is why the Israeli government and its supporters wish to suppress them. If there were in fact any minor errors with the maps they should have been corrected rather than removed altogether. Last year, in a similar act of censorship, the cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

It is imperative that students be able to visualize history, including through the use of maps, in order to learn how to analyze and understand it. Further, it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.

We urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision and reinstate the maps and textbooks in question.

First these academics say that the maps are historically accurate, but they they admit that the maps may have "minor errors" that "should have been corrected." Which is it?

It is neither. The maps are lies from beginning to end, both individually as well as in the way they are presented as a series. But you wont find any of these "academics" actually answering the proofs that they are propaganda. If they were true academics, who wouldn't lower themselves to answer my proofs, they should answer the objections of Yaacov Lozowick, who really is a historian unlike virtually all of the signatories.

If you need more proof that these "academics" are academic frauds, think about this: I am willing to bet that not one of them has actually seen a copy of this textbook. They are defending this propaganda map without knowing if it even fits in with what the text is saying! They argue that "it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced" but without reading the book, how can they know that this is appropriate in this case?

Here are the facts, since I've seen the full context and they haven't. The section of the book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is less than two pages. The text  mentions the separation fence and refers to the series of maps as showing where the fence is - but the maps don't show that.

I don't know whether it is the authors or copy-editors of the book who are to blame, but the reference the book gives for the Map that Lies is an obscure article, written in Arabic, that was published in a now defunct website. It was not published as an academic paper anywhere as far as I can tell.

Furthermore, the map was not created by the author of that paper; it was grabbed from some propaganda site and thrown in by the webmaster just to add an illustration. The paper was about possible security-specific solutions between Israel and a Palestinian state and had nothing to do with supposed land loss.

In short, there is no academic source for this series of maps. It was placed in the textbook even though it had nothing to do with the text, referencing a paper that had no relationship with the map to give it academic cover. There was some effort involved on the part of someone to include this piece of propaganda and to hide its origins from anti-Israel hate groups.

The academics who signed this don't give a damn about truth. They are saying that anti-Israel lies must be inserted in every possible medium and venue. In this sense they are echoing what professor Amy Kaplan said at a BDS conference on how to try to incorporate anti-Israel propaganda in courses that have little to do with the topic.

McGraw Hill did the right thing because the maps are filled with lies, the source for the maps was falsified (or laundered, if you prefer,) , and the graphics had nothing to do with the actual text. The Isrsel-haters know that the maps are a great propaganda tool and they cannot stand the fact that its lies have been exposed so publicly, both in this case and by MSNBC last year.

There are 37 signatories of this absurd letter. Being a signatory of this letter defending the indefensible is a very good indicator that these "academics" are simply frauds who are willing to sacrifice the truth in their hatred for Israel.

So here is the list of these academic frauds, courtesy of JVP.  I include links where I previously showed them to be liars and deceptive (or quoted others who did.) Note also that there is at least one prominent J-Street member, Rebecca Alpert.

• Nadia Abu-El-Haj, Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University
• Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion, Temple University
• Sofya Aptekar, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Sa’ed Atshan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Swarthmore College
• Elsa Auerbach, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley
• George Bisharat, Emeritus Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco
• Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley
• Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Omar Dajani, Professor of Law at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law
• Angela Davis, Author and activist
• Estelle Disch, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University
• Nada Elia, Program Manager, Global Cultures Program, Northwest Language Academy
• Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor at George Mason University
• Andrés Fabián Henao Castro, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Margaret Ferguson, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Davis
• Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Director of the Open University Project, and member of the steering committee of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University
• Marilyn Frankenstein, Professor of Media and Society, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Randa Jarrar, President of Radius of Arab American Writers
• Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University
• Martha London, University of Massachusetts Boston
• David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside
• Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA
• Ussama S. Makdisi, Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies, Rice University
• Bill V. Mullen, Professor of American Studies, Purdue University
• Nadine Naber, Associate Professor, Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
• David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
• Ilan Pappé, Professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies
• Rachel Rubin, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Sarah Schulman, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, City University of New York, College of Staten Island
• Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford
• C. Heike Schotten, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Jack Shaheen, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute and The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
• Simona Sharoni, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh
• Barry Trachtenberg, Director, Judaic Studies Program, University at Albany – SUNY
• Judith E. Tucker, Professor of History, Georgetown University

This is a very useful list - a list of so-called academics who act in opposition of what academia is supposed to stand for. Anyone who attends any of their schools - or pays tuition for someone who does - should really ask their deans whether they are proud to have educators who explicitly favor hate and lies over the truth.

(h/t Alyssa)

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Rachel Corrie DID get college credit for joining ISM

Yesterday, I asked whether Rachel Corrie received college credit for joining the ISM in Gaza. I based this on a 2003 article that said that all Evergreen students in Rafah were getting independent study credit.

It looks like Corrie had set up her trip to Gaza as an independent study course at Evergreen. A lengthy 2003 article in Mother Jones tracing Corrie's journey says:

In the fall of her senior year a friend returned from five months in Gaza and talked enthusiastically to Corrie about the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group founded just the year before. A motley collection of anti-globalization and animal-rights activists, self-described anarchists and seekers, most in their 20s, the ISM upholds the right of Palestinians to carry out "armed struggle" and seeks "to establish divestment campaigns in the U.S. and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel the same way the international com- munity put pressure [on] South Africa during the apartheid regimes."

...Corrie proposed an independent-study program in which she would travel to Gaza, join the ISM team, and initiate a "sister city" project between Olympia and Rafah.

So indeed, Corrie went to Gaza with the expectation of receiving college credit for her work.

I still don't know which of her teachers sponsored her study program. Footnotes in the book based on her journals list three radical anti-Israel teachers who encouraged her to go: Simona Sharoni (who I mentioned in yesterday's post,) Steve Niva and Jean Eberhardt.

Steve Niva is a piece of work. In an article he wrote for Electronic Intifada on the first anniversary of Corrie's death, he defended her for burning the American flag - and made it sound like it was her patriotic duty!

Israeli apologists frequently circulate a picture of Rachel burning an American flag at a Palestinian demonstration, as if to prove that she was an irresponsible promoter of anti-American hatred.

Yet the most important point that her critics miss is that the symbol of an American questioning her government’s policy in the Middle East is extremely important and highly beneficial to Americans in general. It is very important for Americans to show people in this region that America is not monolithic and that some American civilians strongly disagree with their government’s policies. Lack of exposure to these voices is a major factor that increases the likelihood of terrorism and animosity towards American citizens.

Compared to the immensely dangerous impact on regional public opinion of the widely disseminated images of U.S. Marines placing flags on Iraqi government symbols during the recent war, Rachel’s act appears altruistic. Americans should be thankful for people like Rachel who uphold deeply rooted American values about freedom from illegitimate domination and for presenting a progressive image to the world.

Get that? Burning the symbol of America represents American values!

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The Mother Jones article disputes the Corrie's parents contention that the area was not a war zone (they repeated this last night in a videoconference call): It also confirms the Haifa judge's contention that there were hidden explosives in the area that had to be cleared .

Masked militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades prowl the city's sandy alleyways at night, past gray cinder-block homes and shops whose walls are covered with "martyr" posters and brightly painted images of assault rifles and exploding Israeli tanks. Nightly gun battles pit Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers (apcs) patrolling the border strip -- known by the Israelis as "Philadelphi Road" or the "Pink Line" -- against guerrillas firing anti-tank missiles, grenades, and Kalashnikovs. Roadside bombs lie buried in the sand, and a local Bedouin family controls a lucrative business smuggling weapons from Egypt via tunnels dug as deep as 100 feet and often concealed inside Palestinian homes.

And it appears that Corrie naively thought that her status as an international would be a kind of force field that would protect her, no matter what. As the article goes on to say:

Corrie had come to Rafah a paper radical, primed for outrage, but with little real-world experience. That changed immediately. On her first night in Rafah, she and two other human shields, a fellow Olympian and an Italian, set up camp in a heap of rubble inside Block J, a densely populated neighborhood along the Pink Line and frequent target of gunfire from an Israeli watchtower. By placing themselves between the Palestinian residents and the troops, and hanging up banners announcing the presence of "internationals," the activists hoped to discourage the shooting. But the plan backfired. Huddling in terror as Israeli troops fired bullets over their tent and at the ground a few feet away, the three activists decided that their presence at the site was provoking the soldiers, not deterring them, and abandoned the tent.

But even after this incident, Corrie still believed that she was invincible because she was an "international." She wrote on February 22, nearly a month after arriving in the Middle East:

People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won’t make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation.

Joe Smith, another ISM member, admitted that they felt invincible:

It's definitely easy to get cocky in this war zone when a tank is shooting at people and you walk up to them and shout at them, 'Hey, I'm here!' and they pack up and leave. You get so used to this idea, 'Hey, they won't hurt us.' It [Corrie's death] has really made me realize how naive and cocky I was.

Corrie's professors and her ISM comrades told her that her "whiteness" would protect her, because Israeli  kill Palestinian Arabs purely for racist reasons.  She even wrote that in a February 27 email:

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

This is what Rachel Corrie was taught, and this is what she believed.

Her mentors encouraged her to risk her life for their anti-Israel cause, falsely telling her that she was protected because she was white and from America and had a magic fluorescent vest and a magic bullhorn and magic signs that can stop tanks and bulldozers.

No wonder that after her death, her martyrdom is celebrated. By dying, Rachel Corrie managed to make the difference she was indoctrinated to make. And, according to the same Joe Smith, it was all worth it:

The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression.

(h/t Ian, Nevet)

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Did Rachel Corrie get college credit for joining the ISM? (updated)

There is an interesting detail in this 2003 article from a local Olympia, Washington newspaper that profiles a number of Evergreen College students who traveled to Rafah along with Rachel Corrie:

Rafah is one of the most dangerous places in the Gaza Strip--"a combat zone," according to Captain Jacob Dallal, the Israeli army spokesperson.

...My Jewish ass has been to Israel several times, but never to Gaza, and I am a bit scared. I have been told not to use any of my Arabic, lest I be suspected of being an Israeli spy. Above all, I have been told not to mention my religion.

[Corrie's] cohorts at ISM Rafah were an international group, with members from both Europe and the U.S. It was a young group--most people were under 30, and many were closer to 20. And it was a group that held the potential for romance--a Swedish ISMer named Stefan Villkatt would soon become Rachel's boyfriend.

...In addition to Stefan, there was Chris Allert, 31, also from Olympia, who joined the ISM in April 2002 after hearing about the intense fighting in the West Bank town of Jenin.

...There was Will Hewitt, 25, another Evergreen student who arrived in Israel around the same time as Rachel.

..And then there was Joe Smith, 21--yet another Evergreen student who, with his thick beard and red-checked kaffiyeh, looks like a better-fed, Palestinian-territory version of John Walker Lindh. Joe is from Kansas City, Missouri, and says he (like other Evergreen students) is getting independent study credit for his time in Rafah.

At the time, the US State Department had a travel warning against Americans going to Gaza.

If true, Evergreen College was rewarding students to go to a war zone and put their lives in danger.

(h/t Daled Amos via email)

UPDATE: MThis was noticed in 2010 in this JPost article:

Corrie arrived in Israel as part of an independent study program during her senior year at Evergreen State College. It was there that Corrie first heard of going to Gaza with the loosely affiliated assortment of left-wing radicals known as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Evergreen’s faculty also displayed gross negligence in allowing her to spend a semester abroad, for course credit, in the West Bank and Gaza during the height of the second intifada. After a mere two days of ISM “training,” Corrie and her fellow activist trainees were sent to the Rafah crossing, described by IDF spokesman Capt. Jacob Dellal as “the most dangerous area in the West Bank and Gaza.”

And Evergreen still has an independent study program that could include study abroad.

I wonder who the academic supervisor of the Evergreen students was?(h/t Nevet)

UPDATE 2: Maybe Simona Sharoni?

 Corrie "was one of Sharoni’s “dear and beloved” students who Sharoni influenced to go to Gaza to serve what Sharoni has called “compassionate resistance."

A citizen of Israel who served in the IDF, [Sharoni] worked closely with Rachel Corrie before she left to Gaza while Sharoni was teaching at the Evergreen State College.

And this from Commentary:

Corrie’s school, the progressive Evergreen College, irresponsibly encouraged her participation with ISM. Corrie wrote that the course that most affected her was “Local Knowledge,” whose primary purpose was to get students involved in community activism for progressive causes. ...

She had had no particular interest in the Middle East or knowledge about it, but spurred by the class, she began attending Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (OMPJ) meetings since anti-Israel activism was one of the smorgasbord of causes. There she uncritically absorbed OMPJ’s ideology and learned about “people offering themselves as human shields in Palestine,” and heard ISM activists talk about their “Freedom Summer” in Palestine in September 2002. She was inspired: “They say we are invited there. I can’t believe this can be true. Even me?”

She eagerly signed up, and her indoctrination continued. She began ISM training and reading ISM recommended tracts about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and staple anti-Israel narratives from Amira Hass, Sarah Roy, Noam Chomsky, Al-Ahram Weekly, and journalist Graham Usher. The three Evergreen faculty and staff members she consulted included Simona Sharoni, an Israeli who co-founded Women in Black. They did not try to dissuade her from going.

There is an air of unreality in all of this. Neither Corrie, nor the faculty, nor the ISM activists ever acknowledged she would be entering a war zone. Suicide bombing in Israel had reached a peak in early 2002, and Israel had launched Operation Defensive Shield to wipe out the terrorist networks in late March and early April. The violent conflict was still intense when Rachel chose to go to “meet the people who are on the other end of the portion of my tax money that goes to fund the U.S. and other militaries”—and to “get the learning that comes from traveling while hopefully having my trip have some use to the people I am going to see.” No one warned her that entering a war zone was not just an interesting travel experience.

Sharoni has been the faculty member who has most associated herself with Corrie, but it appears that there were three Evergreen teachers who could have been involved.

Here are Sharoni's Facebook and homepages. From her many interviews, it does not appear that she feels bad at all about her role in Corrie's death. But then again, Corrie is a martyr, and martyrs should be celebrated, right?

UPDATE 3: A book about Corrie says that the three teachers who encouraged her were Simona Sharoni, Steve Niva and Jean Eberhardt.

(h/t Ian)

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