Rachel Corrie, and Jimmy Carter, on Apartheid
This is in the end the power of Rachel Corrie's words. I know people in the theater world, and so I have heard the rap against the play in the last few months. That it is a piece of polemics, not theater, and that as theater qua theater it is not that effective, too spare and one-note.
I was inclined to agree with these critics for the first half hour of the show at the Minetta Lane Theatre. The makers of Rachel Corrie, Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner of the Guardian, chose to use all Rachel's words, without any other voices, until the end. The result is that we get a psychic autobiography of an American girl, for the first 30 minutes, and then she is in the Israeli occupation, and her politics are no longer poetical, they are existential. This is one of the most terrific moments you could have on any stage, anywhere, when Meghan Dodds rolls back the divider that is her apartment wall in Olympia, Wa., and is suddenly engaged with the stark set we have been regarding in the dim background all the while, the concrete wall of a blasted refugee camp in Gaza. Terrific.
Rachel Corrie was a poet. There is no doubt about it from this play. She was 23 and just getting started, but she had attained a splendid clarity of articulation of thought and feeling that some people live a lifetime in comfort and don't attain. She was I imagine a troubled person, a person who was called to suffering, and could tolerate disorder. That is what people said at her memorial service at Evergreen College three years ago, and I guess I wish that there had been some interpolation of those voices. Maybe two other actors, to break up the monolog.
But in some large dimension, this is a beautiful play, and that beauty is achieved when Megan Dodds is bearing witness before Rachel's death, stating Rachel Corrie's apprehensions of the effect of the Israeli occupation, and in particular the destruction of Palestinian greenhouses. Sending it out on her computer amid gunfire. I was deeply disturbed by my own visit to the occupation. I saw the denial of hope with my own eyes. I saw the separateness and absence of democratic conditions, I saw the two systems of roads, and yes I saw the Palestinian hatred and murderous feeling. I did not witness the overt brutalizzation that Rachel Corrie observed and then experienced herself. The beauty of this play is that you see a young woman's transformation before your eyes; and the piece conveys through the words of a young and idealistic, and not that innocent west coast poet, the horrors of what our country has licensed in the Middle East. I say not that innocent because at the end Rachel Corrie spoke with focus and maturity and power, with the hope that she might change American opinion. Which is why the New York Theatre Workshop cancelled the production last spring, because of the strength of the pro-Israel community, even in the sophisticated New York scene.
The times are changing. Jimmy Carter's book is coming out, Leon Wieselier and the New Republic spend half of Marty Peretzi's hardearned ink fighting Tony Judt. Walt and Mearsheimer are doing a book for FSG. George Soros and the Israel Policy Forum are starting a lobby to counter AIPAC, or maybe to be to the left of the Israeli government, in this country. Perestroika.
Given the bashing Weiss has been doing of The New York Sun for being one-sided in other posts, it's not surprising that he fails to mention the glowing review their critic gave of this play (Monday 10/16).
Thank you for your thoughtful and courageous words in support of the play, 'My Name is Rachel Corrie'. Indeed, as Dylan once sang, the times they are a changing. The tide is reversing on the Israel Lobby as it's lies about Israel's actions in the Occupied Territories are now, finally, being exposed for even the American public to see.
Gene St.Onge
I wouldn't completely agree that the review is glowing. Like Phil, it does not fail to slip in a delicate dagger about brutalisation (i.e., Arabs can be brutes : goodness gracious, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, to borrow a phrase).
It's boring already. Yes Phil we know, the sainted Rachel Corrie was crushed by the Israeli jackboot. And the play was censored by the omnipotent "LOBBY". And every Palestinian had a bunch of olive groves and a marble mansion until they were driven out by the hook nosed vermin kikes. And they didn't stand a chance because everybody knows the Palestinians are all a bunch of Ghandian quakers but do you know something. I remember a 17 yr old girl named Rachel Levy who was eviscerated by a suicide bomber in a Jerusalem market. I guess like animal farm some Rachels are more equal than others.
Did this Rachel Levy give her life trying to help others? Or did she die in the process of dispossessing those weaker than her?
I read an editorial by Katherine Viner in The Guardian. Her goal seems to be turning Rachel Corrie into a secular saint.
If you goal is to end the Israeli occupation, then I don't think that Jimmy Carter or Katherine Viner have done anything that will end the occupation one day earlier.
"Did this Rachel Levy give her life trying to help others? Or did she die in the process of dispossessing those weaker than her?"
I don't know who this Rachel Levy was, but just because she was an Israeli Jew, you are assuming that her life was less important. Just because she was Israeli Jew, you think she died in the process of dispossessing those weaker than her. You have put a bullseye on all Israeli Jews and you think that they deserve it.
You're right Susan. She may have been dragged kicking and screaming from her home in California to her new Jewish-only "homeland". We shouldn't judge.
Phil Weiss,
Your review of MNIRC, the comparison of the play's strengths and weaknesses to Jimmy Carter's growing visibility as an advocate for Palestinian rights, and anecdotal reference to your Hebron visit, make this the most political of the web articles about the play's US premiere I've yet seen. But your reference near the end to Corrie having participated in a battle that is being won by reason, struck me as the most prescient comment about art and the post-Hezbollah War's intellectual environment I've yet read.
This play has nothing to do with Rachel Corrie but everything to do with spreading anti-Israel propaganda.
Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman are shills for pro-Arab anti-semitic groups. I wouldn't be surprised if the Plo was behind the play.
Why is Rachel Corrie so important while the victims of terror like Rachel Levy, Abigail Litle, Laura Bennet are not?
I find their stories more interesting than Rachel Corrie who was accidentally killed because she was stupid enough to get in front of a bulldozer.
Philip Weiss and other Israel-haters out there imagine the tide turning against Israel but in reality it's not.
I'm a non-Jewish liberal feminist who spreads the truth about Israel and I'm finding a receptive audience.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East where the Arabs have a higher standard of living.
David's comment is truly despicable. But I don't expect anything less from a person who supports terrorists.
Rachel Levy didn't dispose of anyone. She was living in her homeland! Would you make the same accusation against my American Indian grandfather? Of course not!
Arabs are the ones occupying Jewish land. They are not allowed in certain areas because they blow up Jews.
I would rather live under Israeli rule than under Arab rule anyday. If you don't agree than move to Saudi Arabia and see how you like it.
It seems non Jewish liberal feminists have a dog in this fight too then, or maybe a bitch.
Rachel Corrie is important to us because she was an American. Americans don't need to apologize for caring about an American martyr. And there is nothing wrong with Americans being upset when such a person is smeared, when her sacrifice is smeared, and when her unique voice is suppressed.
Rowan, your wife or girlfriend must love you. Or maybe you go in another direction.