1#Road Kill

I thought

if they've taken a bus to the Hague

let's take a Caterpillar

I mean I know it couldn't be

the really exspensive kind

that they use to ride over the olive trees

and over people's homes

and over Rachel Corrie

and back again



But it could be the basic model

a symbol of how crushing

oppression is

a symbol of how crushing

taxes are

and what those taxes pay for

in foreign aid abroad

and I would paint it black

and tour around any country

to warn about non violent resistance

and what happens in a militarized state

that overrides international laws

and after they still do not

take responsibility for rachel's death and tom's

and countless others

I shall paint it again in pink

for that color between

blood's red stain and hope

and I shall empower the Machine

and redefine it as Art, Roadmap Art!

a Sculpture a Monument a Memorial

and I shall engrave and scratch and sign

all the names of those whose lives

have been thus crushed.

and when we are done

depicting depravities

there could be a museum for the bus

and for the bulldozer

and all the other scrap metal in peoples lives

ripped apart by bullets and bombs

and we can visit there

whenever we need to mourn

or be reminded

of what we have allowed to transpire.

Mary La Rosa 3.16.04

Rachel Corrie and the Boy Bomb
A year ago today, terror advocate Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Wash., died in a bulldozer accident while trying to obstruct an Israeli operation against Palestinian weapons-smuggling tunnels. Corrie didn't deserve to die any more than any other accident victim does, but neither does she deserve to be lionized as a martyr for peace--as she is, predictably, in her home state's two big papers, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Intelligent as a post!"). In contrast, Ruhama Shattan has a clearheaded tribute to Corrie, which our friends at the Jerusalem Post generously allowed us to reprint.

Here's a sample of the Post-Intelligencer's tribute, written by one Molly McClain, who works for an outfit called the Palestine Solidarity Committee:

Some people blamed Rachel, a student at Evergreen State College, for her own murder; they accused her of everything from being an impressionable, idealistic kid who had been brainwashed to a defender of terrorists.

It is hard to imagine what life is like for people in Palestine, and I cling to the hope that it is this lack of imagination that leads so many to believe that all Palestinians are terrorists or that Rachel was either brainless or evil.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this photo of Corrie burning the American flag a month before her death. A look of utter hatred is on her face, as a crowd of Palestinian children look on.

Here's an example of what this culture of hate produces: "Fatah Tanzim activists in Nablus attempted to use an 11-year-old boy to smuggle a bomb through an IDF roadblock on Monday, and tried to detonate the bomb when soldiers stopped him," the Jerusalem Post reports:

The men gave the boy a bag containing a seven-to-10 kilogram bomb stuffed with bolts. They promised him a large sum of money if he would carry it through the roadblock and hand it to a woman waiting on the other side.

Israeli soldiers rescued the boy, whom Yasser Arafat's men were preparing to murder. Ha'aretz, meanwhile, reports that Arafat yesterday "refused his cabinet's call to use the Palestinian security forces against terror organizations."

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

And, and as we noted at the time, Corrie's parents met with Arafat last September and presented him with a picture of their daughter. Martyr for peace indeed.