On March 16 Craig and I were interviewed on Democracy Now about our recent trip to Gaza, the situation there and about Rachel. You can watch the interviews in two-parts here via these Youtube videos, or visit the Democracy Now website. An excerpt from the interview is below.
Read an excerpt here:
CINDY CORRIE: You asked about Rachel and how people respond to her here, and I—most everybody, at least if they—you know, they know her name when they hear it, most all of them. If somebody points out that we’re Rachel Corrie’s parents, you know, they’re very kind, and they want to talk to us.
I think I can only explain that because, you know, this—it is a prison here, and when someone comes from the outside, as Rachel did and as others do, other ISMers, other internationals come to Gaza and the West Bank, and then pay the ultimate price, which is what they feel Rachel has done, I think it gives them some hope. I think it probably strengthens their resolve, you know, to know that there are people on the outside that care as much as Rachel did. And I think that also it means a lot to them to see that we continue, in a way, continue some of her journey, not doing the same kinds of work, but that we haven’t forgotten them, that we’re back again, and that we’re doing what we can in the United States.
Rachel brought us to the issue. We, certainly—if we had an allegiance before that, it was really to the Jewish Israeli story and narrative. That’s what we knew about. And we learned—she was very good about bringing us material, pointing us to websites and so forth, and she really tried to bring us along, even before she came here. She didn’t just abruptly one day get up and go. She did some planning and preparation for it, and she tried to include us in that process. But, of course, we learned much more as she was there, particularly when she wrote the emails to us. It was eye-opening, because we knew about her as a writer and as an observer. So, it’s one thing to read about things on a website or in a newspaper article or a book, not knowing the people who are doing that; it’s another thing to hear about it from someone that you know and trust. And so, immediately we started to learn things, and so did our entire extended family and Rachel’s friends, because the things that she was writing about were being shared.
When we came here after she was killed, you know, our knowledge, you know, just developed more and more. And there really is no better way to learn about a situation than to come and see it for yourself.
But I guess a few weeks after Rachel was killed, we met someone named Linda Biehl, whose daughter was killed in South Africa when she was registering voters for the first election in which everyone could vote. And her family has carried on her work in different ways, Amy’s work, Amy Biehl’s work. And I remember looking at Linda Biehl and saying, “Were you ever able to retrieve any part of your previous life?” And she thought for a moment and she said, “Not really.” My daughter, Sarah, said she knew that that was “game over,” that we were—you know, we had work to do. So, a good part of what we do is trying to educate people within government. And we’ve found that most of those people haven’t ever been to Gaza, so we have something to offer in the way of information.
Certainly, in the last couple months, with the support of many people in Washington state, we’ve been really bringing a lot of—as much information as we can to our members, our entire congressional delegation, people meeting with the different congressional offices throughout the state. And it’s a difficult process, but I feel like we’re having some impact. And Rachel’s congressman came to Gaza, Brian Baird, our congressman, as well. We didn’t know before he made the trip that he was going to do it, but we were so thrilled when we heard that he was here. And we’re really happy to hear, I think, very honest, heartfelt statements from him about what he witnessed here, as well.
CRAIG CORRIE: You know, the people here are just folks. And you’ve got to understand people as people. And that’s the sort of first thing. And this one person here says, “We’re certainly not animals to be kept in a zoo, and somebody throws food over the wall to us every time.” But trying to bring the humanity of the issue to people, I think, is an important message.
The first thing people here need is hope, probably. Anybody, to survive, you need hope. And the second thing is respect, respect for their humanity. And I have vast respect for these people. And then we have to get to work, of course, on some humanitarian aid and rebuilding aid, but again, that has to come in a political context which gives them a hope for a real future.
You look at the children here that we’ve seen throughout this day and the previous days and, of course, on other trips, and they’re beautiful. They’re just beautiful, smiling. Somehow they manage still to smile. How can you be shaking for twenty-five minutes and then—children are resilient in a lot ways and run around smiling later, but they deserve a future, just like our kids have. And we won’t have the kind of future that we want unless these children have that, a chance at that future. You know, they need to be able to get that way.
So I think that’s part of it: trying to tie what is a real connection that we see between people of Palestine and our own existence in the United States. We’re wedded together, whether we like it or not. And so, we need to figure out how to make that, I guess, a happy marriage. And it can be. The people here will somehow have the capacity to, first of all, make a distinction between Americans coming here and our foreign policy, which for them is atrocious.
This—you know, United States largely paid to build some of these factories here, to build—for instance, you look at the electrical plant that was destroyed or partially destroyed a few years ago, and the United States built it, the United States insured it, and the United States bombed it. And with this—it’s largely true for the whole Strip, that through US aid money and some other of things—a lot of this was built with US money. It was certainly bombed with US ammunition. The United States paid and actually transported the fuel for this somewhat during the summer. While we were paying $4 a gallon for gas, we were also shipping gas to Israel for use here. And now we’re talking about rebuilding it again with US dollars. You know, enough is enough. I absolutely think we need to rebuild the Gaza Strip, but it has to be rebuilt with the standards of—political standards that need to go around that, so that it’s not going to be bombed apart again.
Read the whole interview, watch it or listen to it at Democracy Now.