Action Alert: The New York Times Distorts Cancellation of Rachel Corrie Play

Please READ and WRITE!!

In his March 6, 2005 New York Times article "Too Hot to Handle, Too
Hot Not to Handle" (see below or
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/theater/newsandfeatures/06conn.html)
New York Times cultural critic Edward Rothstein comments on the New
York Theatre Workshop's "postponement" of the play "My Name is
Rachel Corrie", about American activist Rachel Corrie who was crushed
to death by an Israeli bulldozer while attempting to prevent the
demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the Gaza Strip on March 16,
2003.


REQUESTED ACTION

Write to the New York Times at letters [at] nytimes.com and to the
Times' Public Editor Byron Calame at public [at] nytimes.com

Suggestions when writing to them

1) You appreciate that The New York Times is following the important
story of the postponement of the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" in
New York City. However, the New York Times needs to get central facts
right.

2) Contrary to Edward Rothstein's innuendo, Rachel Corrie was killed
while defending the home of a Palestinian family that had no
relationship to arms smuggling or terrorism.

3) Despite Rothstein's attempt to defend the Israeli government's
policy of large-scale home demolition in Rafah, Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International and the Israeli organization B'Tselem have all
documented that Israel's large-scale home demolition in Rafah
violated international law and could not be justified as a defense
against arms smuggling.

4) Rothstein attempts to discredit Rachel Corrie as "naïve" and
"radical." Rachel was killed while using nonviolence to stand
against a clear injustice and widely recognized violation of
international law. If using nonviolence to support international law
made Rachel "radical " and "naïve", then the world needs more
naïve, radical people.

5) Hamas' victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in
2006 should not be twisted to serve as a rationale for "postponing"
a play about an American activist killed in Rafah in 2003.


THE ARTICLE: TOO HOT TO HANDLE, TOO HOT NOT TOO HANDLE

Edward Rothstein hints that the New York Theater Workshop was naïve in
not understanding that the play was politically charged, an obvious,
but valid point.

Oddly, however, Rothstein then seems to turn around and blame the
playwrites Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, suggesting that they
disguised the political content of the play. Rothstein suggests that
the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" is "disingenuous" and that
the playwrites "elided phrases" "to camouflage Corrie's
radicalism and broaden the play's appeal".

But here Rothstein himself is guilty of camouflaging the truth, or at
least of naiveté. The primary example Rothstein cites of the play's
supposed "disingenuousness" is Rothstein's assertion that in the
play "there is no hint about why such demolitions" of Palestinian
homes in Rafah were taking place. Rothstein then explains that
"dozens of tunnels leading from Egypt under the border into homes in
Gaza were being used to smuggle guns, rocket launchers and explosives
to wield against Israel."

Thus, Rothstein leaves open the possibility that Rachel Corrie herself
may have been killed while preventing the demolition of a home hiding
an arms smuggling tunnel, and that the Israeli military's wholesale
demolition of thousands of homes in Rafah was aimed only at destroying
arms smuggling tunnels and preventing terrorism.

Rothstein is wrong on both these crucial points. Rachel Corrie died
defending the home of a Palestinian family who she knew well -
Palestinian pharmacist, Khaled, Nasrallah, his wife and children.
There was no tunnel in the Nasrallah home, and the Israeli army never
asserted that there was a tunnel in the Nasrallah home. Nonetheless,
the Nasrallah home, like thousands of others, was eventually demolished
by the Israeli army. The international organizations Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International
(http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150532004?open&of=ENG-ISR,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150402004?open&of=ENG-ISR),
and the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem
(http://www.btselem.org/English/Razing/) have all documented that homes
in Rafah were bulldozed as part of an Israeli government policy of
systematically demolishing entire Palestinian neighborhoods,
irregardless of any relationship to arms smuggling, in clear violation
of international law.

In their October 2004 report Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the
Gaza Strip (http://hrw.org/campaigns/gaza), Human Rights Watch noted
that:

"Sixteen thousand people - more than ten percent of Rafah's
population - have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of
whom were dispossessed for a second or third time...

The pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces
demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific
threat, in violation of international law. In most of the cases Human
Rights Watch found the destruction was carried out in the absence of
military necessity...

Under international law, the IDF has the right to close smuggling
tunnels, to respond to attacks on its forces, and to take preventive
measures to avoid further attacks. But such measures are strictly
regulated by the provisions of international humanitarian law, which
balance the interests of the Occupying Power against those of the
civilian population. In the case of Rafah, it is difficult to
reconcile the IDF's stated rationales with the widespread destruction
that has taken place. On the contrary, the manner and pattern of
destruction appears to be consistent with the plan to clear
Palestinians from the border area, irrespective of specific threats....

The IDF has failed to explain why non-destructive means for detecting
and neutralizing tunnels employed in places like the Mexico-United
States border and the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) cannot be used
along the Rafah border. Moreover, it has at times dealt with tunnels
in a puzzlingly ineffective manner that is inconsistent with the
supposed gravity of this longstanding threat...


Rothstein attempts to discredit Rachel and the play "My Name is
Rachel Corrie" by mentioning her "radicalism", Rachel's "more
contentious view", and her views that seem "naïve". He further
confuses the issue by directly comparing the conflict over staging the
play in New York City to the conflicts over "Andres Serrano's
photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine to the Danish cartoons
portraying the Prophet Muhammad." Thus Rachel and the play, already
"disingenuous" and "radical" are made sacrilegious and even
obscene to some readers. Despite all Rothstein's efforts at
distraction, the simple truth is that Rachel was an idealistic woman
who used nonviolence to support international law.

Finally, Rothstein implies that Hamas' recent victory in the
elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council somehow should have
some bearing on whether or not the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie"
should be staged in New York City ("and when the election of Hamas
provided proof that all was not simple, perhaps that was when the play
became more clearly understood"). It is a significant stretch to
understand how the election victory of Hamas in 2006 should influence
the cancellation of a play in the US about an American woman who was
run over by an Israeli bulldozer almost three years earlier. Indeed,
if anything the random, brutal deaths of thousands of innocent
Palestinian civilians, and a few foreigners like Rachel Corrie, at the
hands of the Israeli military from 2000 - 2006, help to explain the
dissatisfaction and anger that contributed to Hamas' election victory
in 2006.


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