Corrie for all intents and purposes committed suicide in her efforts to prevent Israeli anti-terror operations from proceeding. That did not prevent the American flag-burning Corrie from becoming the patron saint of anti-Semites all the way from David Duke on the Far Right to Alexander Cockburn on the Stalinist Left.
The anti-Israel lobby also decided to revise history with the malicious "My Name is Rachel Corrie" piece of propaganda. An Israel-bashing "play" that lies about what happened to Corrie (not!) and which lies about who was really responsible for her death (her ISM comrades and herself), it has already polluted the cultural life in many cities. When first proposed for the Toronto theater, the Canadian Stage Company wisely decided not to stage it. It is about as artistic and politically balanced as a 1930s Goebbels film, and indeed the two share part of the same political agenda. But later it was staged in Toronto and recently played there at the Tarragon Theatre.
The Corrie parents have also been running their own little anti-Israel jihad. Writing articles for anti-Semitic magazines and web sites, and doing the Grand Bash-Israel Speaking Tour, the senior Corries did not even have second thoughts when they themselves were kidnapped January 5, 2006 by terrorists while visiting the Gaza Strip, although they were quickly released. After all, they were of more value to the Hamas roaming the world freely.
The Corrie lobby has never had any interest in any of the Rachels, Jewish women named Rachel, who were victims of the Palestinian terrorists assisted by Rachel Corrie and her ISM terrorhoid friends. And there have been quite a few of those.
And while the Corrie lobby and the Corrie parents have spent years capitalizing on an accidental death in a bulldozer accident caused by the stupidity of a pro-terror naif in Gaza to make trouble, they have been thunderously silent about the mass murder this week by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem, where three people were murdered and dozens injured by him intentionally after he commandeered a construction bulldozer.
Batsheva Unterman had to undergo long periods of fertility treatment before she was able to conceive. But at last she and her husband had a baby. Five months ago, Baby Efrat was born, a healthy little girl. This past week Baby Efrat's Mom took her for a checkup in the clinic for babies in downtown Jerusalem. When they were finished, Mom put Efrat in her stroller and went out into the street. Mom then strapped Baby Efrat down in her baby seat in the car and hopped into the driver's side. The terrorist inside the bulldozer had stopped the vehicle, but suddenly started on his rampage again.
The dozer driver who hit Corrie did not see her at all and would have backed up if he knew she was there. The Jerusalem bulldozer terrorist intentionally murdered people and tried to murder dozens more. Among those taking credit for his rampage are the very same groups that the ISM of Rachel Corrie actively supports. So where are the Corrie apologists today? Where are those staging the Rachel Corrie propaganda play? Will Corrie's parents take time off from their campaign of vilification against Israel to speak out?
There is no play about Bathsheva Unterman on Western stages. James Taranto from the Wall Street Journal claims that the Jerusalem terrorist got the idea of using the bulldozer for murder from the years of false claims by the Corrie Lobby that Israel "murdered" Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer.He wrote this July 3, 08: "On March 16, 2003, as we noted the following day, the Israel Defense Forces were carrying out an operation in Rafah, Gaza, to fill in tunnels used by Palestinian terror groups to smuggle weapons in from Egypt. A misguided 23-year-old American named Rachel Corrie, as a "protest" against Israel's self-defense, interposed herself between an IDF bulldozer and a tunnel. Tragically, the soldier driving the bulldozer did not see Corrie, and she was literally crushed. Anti-Israel activists accused the soldier of deliberately running Corrie over. They might have thought they were merely slandering the Jewish state. It is possible that in the process they were giving ideas to future terrorists."
Meanwhile, since the Corrie Lobby has
spent the past few years demanding that the Caterpiller company join the anti-Israel boycott movement, perhaps
now would be a good time to send out a fax demanding that Caterpiller
stop all sales of equipment to the Palestinian Authority!
Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press. A collection of his commentaries on the current events in Israel can be found on his "blog" at www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.
frontpagemagazine.com Friday,
July 11, 2008
Russian version