The Tragedy of Rachel Corrie is the Tragedy of Government
Posted by Alex R. Knight III on Mar 11, 2010 in Commentary • 5 commentsSeven years ago, a 23 year old American woman, Rachel Corrie, stood bravely on the Gaza Strip in front of an armored Israeli bulldozer, peacefully protesting with a bullhorn the razing of Palistinian settlements in the area. She was no stranger to this kind of activism; she’d done it numerous times, and the Israeli ‘dozer drivers, all military personnel, while partially burying her with dirt, would always back off.
March 10, 2003, however, turned out to be different. Rachel Corrie was run over, crushed, and killed. A month’s “investigation” by the Israeli military, not surprisingly, found no soldier at fault. Now, Rachel Corrie’s parents are attempting to sue the Jewish State at a courtroom in Haifa, Israel. Here’s what an article from CNN’s Paula Hancocks had to say about Ms. Corrie and her parents’ thoughts:
“Corrie’s parents are proud of what their daughter did, recalling how important it was to her to help Palestinian families in Gaza.
“In an interview shortly before her death, Rachel Corrie, who grew up in Olympia, Washington, said, ‘There are just countless ways in which these children are suffering. I want to support them.’
“Her mother, Cindy Corrie, told CNN, ‘She deserves the attention that she’s receiving in this case. Every human being who is assaulted and whose life is taken in this way deserves some accountability, some explanation for why this happened, particularly when it’s done by a military and particularly when it’s a military supported by me and my tax dollars.’”
I was a bit surprised by this rare flash of mainstream media candor from CNN – even if they were only aquiescing to print a quote from an interviewee: To wit that American taxes pay for a good portion of Israel’s military. Is it any wonder the Arab World is committed to violent “jihad” in the name of this gross bias of America towards Israel, not to mention being militarily occupied and assaulted themselves by U.S. troops – again paid for by Americans through taxes extracted under threat of violent force?
Where Cindy Corrie is naive is only where most Americans – along with most of the world – are equal babes in the woods: Government is by its very nature disprone to “accountability.” As an institution, the very foundation of which is the use of violence to accomplish goals, it ought to be readily apparent that no particular moral standard can be ascribed to or expected of it. Sadly, Rachel Corrie’s death was not an aberration or anomaly. It was and is the norm when dealing with governments. Human life means little or nothing when it comes to the perpetuation of the elitists’ power cycle. Control, domination, and mastery become all-important. Ethics and scruples are mere laughable impediments and distractions. As Benito Mussolini was fond of shouting: “Everything in the State! Nothing outside the State! Nothing against the State!”
I, like any anarchist, prefer to turn that psychotic sentiment inside out and advocate the converse. I would’ve liked to see Rachel Corrie live. Both proverbially and literally, that means abolishing all political governments outright, in favor of voluntary non-violent free markets. If that makes me crazy in anyone’s view, so be it – though that view is a tragedy. As was the death of Rachel Corrie. As is the existence of government.
C4SS News Analyst Alex R. Knight III is an author of horror, science fiction, and fantasy tales, living and writing in rural southern Vermont. He is the author of Victoria's Place and Other Tales of Terror (BareBones Publishing, 2008), and numerous other works, including non-fiction and poetry. He is also a regular contributor to the libertarian journal Strike The Root.
St. Pancake of Rafah was protecting smuggling tunnels used by Hamas to bring weapons into Israel to kill civilians. The only tragedy about her death is that it wasn't by IDF firing squad.
Tim Starr displays a startling lack of knowledge about a conflict he seems to have such a strong opinion on. While it is possible that there were some smuggling tunnels around the Rafah border, the smuggling system as we know it didn't really take off until after Israel's imposition of a siege condition on Gaza in 2007, four years after Rachel Corries death. Unless she was a time traveller, it is unlikely then that she was protecting a weapons smuggling tunnel.
(Incidentally, the tunnels do not just bring in weapons, they also provide such shockingly dangerous illegal goods as concrete, pasta and livestock, all of which are currently blocked by the crushing IDF siege)
Also remember Tom Hurdall, killed for trying to protect children from IDF snipers just a month later. State justice initially tried to blame his death on a rare case of pneumonia, in no way aggravated by the an improperly administered dose of lead to the skull. In the end, they threw their Beduin scapegoat to the dogs, and the state moves on to kill again.
re: “Tim Starr displays a startling lack of knowledge about a conflict he seems to have such a strong opinion on.”
Ohhh, it’s not all that startling.
My knowledge of it’s a lot more consistent w/ the Wikipedia entry on the topic than “ewlparsons” claims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_smuggling_tunnels
The fact that the smuggling tunnels were radically expanded after Hamas took control of the area (after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, not “after Israel imposed a siege”) doesn’t mean they didn’t exist before, nor that Corrie wasn’t protecting one. She was protecting one, the IDF bulldozers were there for the sole purpose of destroying them, the owner of the house admitted there was one inside the house, and Corrie’s group (the ISM) has been busted for collaborating w/ Palestinian terrorists.
"Palestinian terrorists." Obviously, according to the hawkish shitbag Tim Starr, IDF enforcers who also bombed Palestinian civilians, are not.
Rachel Corrie may mistake Hamas (and Hizbu-illah) for freedom fighters who represent Palestinians, not recognizing them as another terrorist, criminal gangs like the IDF. That's why she was trying to protect Hamas' smuggling tunnel.
Had she lived long enough read Roderick Long's excellent article:
Trading Victims, Increasing State Power
By most reports, Israeli bombings of Lebanon are strengthening Hezbollah’s support among Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah bombings of Israel are strengthening the Israeli government’s support among Israeli civilians.
So here we have (what are by libertarian standards) two criminal gangs, both blasting away at innocent civilians, and the result is to increase these gangs’ popularity among the civilians being victimised! A very successful outcome for both sides.
The trick, of course, is that each gang is blasting away at civilians in the other gang’s territory. If each gang were to attack its own civilians directly, those civilians would quickly turn against the gangs in their midst. But since in fact each side’s continuation of bombings is what allows the other side to excuse, and get away with, its bombings, the situation isn’t really all that different; each side is causing its own civilians to be bombed. It’s just that by following the stratagem of attacking each other’s civilians, the two gangs manage to avoid (and indeed promote the exact opposite of) the loss of domestic power that would follow if they were to bring about the same results more directly. Think of it as the geopolitical version of Strangers on a Train.
No, I’m not suggesting that Hezbollah and the Israeli government are in cahoots. They don’t need to be. This is how the logic of statism works, this is how its incentives play out, regardless of what its agents specifically intend. The externalisation of costs is what states do best. (True, Hezbollah isn’t a state, but it aspires to be one, and its actions are played out within a framework sustained by statism.)
What would happen if the civilian populations of Israel and Lebanon were to come to see this conflict, not as Israel versus Hezbollah, or even Israeli-government-plus-Israeli-civilians versus Hezbollah-plus-Lebanese-civilians, but rather as Israeli-government-plus-Hezbollah versus ordinary-people-living-on-the-eastern-Mediterranean? Both Hezbollah and the Israeli government would quickly lose their popular support, and their ability to wage war against each other would go with it.
But by encouraging the identification of civilians with the states that rule them, statism makes it harder for civilians to find their way to such a perspective. (Of course racism and religious intolerance are part of the story too – yet another way in which such cultural values help to prop up the state apparatus.) As long as the people of the eastern Mediterranean continue to view this conflict through statist spectacles, Hezbollah and/or the Israeli government will continue to be the victors, while the civilian populace in both Israel and Lebanon will remain the vanquished and victimised.
Rachel Corrie, RIP.