From: Tom Warner <[log in to unmask]> 03/24/03 08:07PM >>>
Hello to Rachel's family,
  I'm writing to express to you my great sorrow for Rachel's death and 
compassion for you at this time. This morning a friend posted an article 
in Spanish about Rachel written by the Palestinian Ambassador in Cuba and 
published in the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde. It is a poignant 
tribute to Rachel and I wanted to share it with you and with others, so I 
translated it. The article is copied below as part of the email message, 
and I'm also attaching a copy as a Word document since below some of the 
formatting is lost.
  Peace,
-Gretchen

The Beautiful Face of the United States

Imad Jadaa*

Rachel Corrie was never a terrorist. She never sympathized with Al Qaeda. 
Her blond hair and U.S. nationality and the fact than no Arab blood ran in 
her veins made her stand out among the other young women in the Gaza 
Strip. Neither was she a follower of Islam and she was barely 23 years 
old.

Rachel lived in Olympia, in the state of Washington, and she had been far 
from home for many months. She belonged to the International Solidarity 
Movement and for the moment her profession was a new one for the 21st 
century: that of a human shield against evil and wrongdoing.

One might guess at the reasons why Rachel found herself in a Palestinian 
refugee camp in Gaza, and why she postponed her dream of graduating from 
college, leaving behind for the moment the beautiful possibility of 
loving, of having children. She wanted now, not later to bear witness to 
the Palestinian tragedy and, far from home, she was learning the true 
meaning of U.S. justice.

Rachel was guilty. Guilty according to Israeli statements of being in the 
wrong country at the wrong time with the wrong people. She was guilty of 
not staying home to dance in the discotheques of the United States, of 
ceasing to be a common, ordinary citizen.

She chose to stand in front of a Palestinian home at the moment an Israeli 
bulldozer was trying to tear it down. In the first image captured on 
camera, she is challenging the driver with a megaphone in her hand. Her 
hair is loose around her shoulders. She places her body between the 
weakened wall of the house and the brutal shovel of the bulldozer. The 
scene takes place in Rafah, in Gaza, and her protective gesture is 
poignant. Never has such an undefended, fragile person challenged a 
vehicle transformed into a machine of death and destruction. 

One cannot hear her words. Next to her in the first photograph is another 
young solidarity worker, perhaps of her same nationality.

In the second photo, she is on the ground bleeding. According to witnesses 
the bulldozer, after stopping for awhile, decided to move forward. After 
knocking her down with the first blow, it backed up and attacked once 
again. With a turn of the steering wheel, the driver drove away from the 
scene. He changed direction and left her there to one side, like some 
unimportant object: the house still standing, the young woman on the 
ground. 

The image has no sound.  What was she shouting at her assassin? Her cries 
were not in Hebrew, but in the purest English pronounced by a pure girl. 

The Israeli soldier could not understand why the shouts were directed at 
him in the same language of his godfather and protector. Maybe he thought 
for an instant how odd were these blond Palestinians speaking English, a 
second before he floored the accelerator for the final attack.

Silence. The death of a blond young woman, 23 years old, crushed to death 
in Gaza, deserves silence. There are no investigations. No one orders the 
assassin arrested because that would mean one less driver for the 
bulldozers, for the tanks, one less soldier to carry on the killing. And 
all of them are needed to keep carrying out these crimes.

No one has expressed regret to Rachel's parents. Only the Palestinian 
leader has expressed his condolences. Nothing important has happened 
because no one has to ask forgiveness in the United States or Israel. No 
one has begged forgiveness or even contemplated the collateral damage. It 
is not necessary.

Perhaps they may even think that the Palestinians were responsible, for 
not preventing her from standing in front of that house at the hour of the 
disaster. 

If the young woman stood together with the Arab people under attack, 
together with the Third World, it is a certain fact that she was not a 
legitimate U.S. citizen. If she were one, she would have been like the 
President of her country, on the side of Zionism.

Something is missing from their statistics: Rachel Corrie is the first 
U.S. martyr, the first U.S. blood shed on Palestinian soil in Gaza. Now 
her banner is raised and flies in the wind. From now on she will accompany 
the struggle, because she has entered into history to accompany the 
sadness and pain of the Palestinian nation.

Missiles and bombs will fall now on Bagdad, the mourning will spread to 
new homes and this image will remain as the terrible face of the United 
States. The United States has two faces, the contemptible face of Bush, 
and the sweet face of Rachel .

He, arrogance, she, solidarity; he, disrespect for a sovereign people, 
she, admiration and love of humanity.

Unlike everything that W. Bush stands for, Rachel represents the beautiful 
face of the United States, and the beautifully human face is everlasting. 

(*Palestinian Ambassador to Cuba)
This article was published in the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde

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