RACHEL CORRIE AGAIN

Rachel Corrie Again (WSJ-BOTW)
It was three years ago yesterday that Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old native of Washington state, died in a bulldozer accident in which she was at fault. Corrie had been standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer that was destroying tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt to terrorists in the Gaza strip. We wrote a lot about Corrie at the time, but frankly have become weary of the subject.

Much as we'd like to let Rachel Corrie rest in peace, we must return to the subject, because sympathizers with Palestinian terrorists insist on glorifying her as a symbol, apparently believing that the support of a naive-seeming white girl from America somehow diminishes the enormity of the exterminationist campaign that Palestinian Arab terrorist groups are waging. Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr.--last seen advocating a permissive approach to "barnyard amour" (the politically correct term for bestiality)--sees a Jewish conspiracy to taint the sacred Corrie legacy:

The New York Theater Workshop recently canceled a scheduled production of a play about Rachel amid rumors that gurus in the theater world and pro-Israel audiences would not like a script challenging their view of the world.

In Seattle, the Bread and Puppet Theater production of "Daughter Courage," a different play about Rachel, met with warm embrace. Still, my colleague, Regina Hackett, who wrote about it, received a rash of rebuke. On the Seattle P-I's online blog, "Dr. Evil" wrote: "Only in this wonderful, liberal city would a pathetic naïve girl who tried to protect terrorists be celebrated."

If fear of offending Israel--a country in blind lockstep with the United States on foreign policy--drives this second silencing of Rachel, then her story is needed now more than ever.

Friends of Israel and Jews tend to react fast when they feel they're getting a raw deal.

Seattle official Cindi Laws learned this the hard way. She made remarks that were considered anti-Semitic during a re-election bid for the monorail board, and people howled. Laws lost.

And remember what happened in 2004? The local Middle Eastern community tried to get pro-Palestinian language in the plank of the King County Democratic Party platform. Again, people howled. The language got nixed.

In both instances, the message was clear: Don't mess with us.

Last week the P-I's art critic, Regina Hackett, offered a more balanced treatment of the Seattle production:

The play is uncritically on Corrie's side. Israel is represented as a big foot crushing innocent Palestinians. The plot features no Hamas-sponsored violence and no suicide bombers bent on earthly havoc followed by spiritual glory.

Not only that, representatives of the Palestine Solidarity Committee are passing out literature in the lobby. There's no table representing Israel.

Isn't ConWorks presenting a monologue instead of a dialogue?

"Well, OK, a monologue then," said Pearlstein. "But all these monologues add up to dialogues during our season."

During the season, will there be plays or artworks of any kind sympathetic to the struggles of the Israeli people?

"I'll have to double-check on that," he said.

In an interview with "Democracy Now" (hat tip: NewsBusters.org), the actress Vanessa Redgrave, a longtime anti-Israel activist, explains that she is in favor of free speech--except when she isn't:

Actually, there's many more people want the freedom to communicate, as long as it's not blasphemous and destructive in a rotten way of other people, in other words, racist. I mean, those cartoons, for instance, that have shocked us all were racist. They were fascist in character, the cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb on his head. I mean, that's a very rightwing paper, Jyllands-Posten, and it's not surprising that they published those cartoons as a sort of provocation. We have got these sort of fascist kind of things happening in the world, and we don't need any more of them.

However, the play, because the New York Theater Workshop canceled, there's a producer in London, and it's going to open in London at a major West End Theater, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," and the press night's March the 28th. So, while every attempt has been made to suppress by governments, I think we've got that reminder of what Shakespeare said, "The truth will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm it, to men's eyes."

A New York Times article yesterday on the controversy over the canceled New York production refers to "the sharply divided opinions of Ms. Corrie--idealistic or recklessly naïve, depending on one's political point of view." But take a look at this photo, taken a month before Corrie's accidental death. Judge for yourself, but to our eye this is the face neither of idealism nor of naiveté but of hatred.