vs.

To paraphrase Alexander Cockburn, I feel like I've eaten rat poison.

I was just down the street from my work, dropping off some literature at a local arts center. As I was organizing the materials on their table for such things, I glanced up to see a larger-than-life photo of Rachel Corrie, over a table covered in candles and flowers. I'm sure there was more to it than a shrine, but I felt an immediate vacuum around me, and left for outside so I could breath again.

I knew her. Not well, mind you, but we've been introduced and re-introduced about five or six times. We went to the same parties, and shared some friends. I've checked my usual practice of name-dropping and star-fucking, because I'm so ambivalent about the war, and her death was so senseless and brave and idealistic and sad. And since I didn't know her well, it would be in bad taste to harp on it, like I am now, I guess. She falls into the category of person where you shake hands, and then remember each other. I don't remember bumming cigarettes from her, although I may have. I don't remember hitting on her, although I kind of wish I did, and glad I did not.

I almost went to a party at that space two weeks ago. Some of the organizers were the mutual acquaintances I shared with Ms. Corrie. These people were friends of hers, back from college. They loved her, and have been grieving. I a friend I wasn't sure I would attend the party, because I didn't feel well, and I was afraid it would turn into a rally (a possibility mentioned by the organizers). My friend immediately jumped down my throat, saying "We all knew Rachel Corrie, it isn't going to be a rally, the war is wrong, etc..." I could only reiterate I wasn't feeling well, and wonder if all these people knew Rachel Corrie so damn well, why don't they call her "Rachel"?

Seeing the shrine upset me. Do her friends realize how dehumanizing that is? How fascist? How Stalinist? By calling her a martyr and hailing her death, her friends and allies are as complicit as their opponents who call her a moron. I've only read of a few who see her as anything but.

I'm sure she opposed the war. She must have despised the monstrous regime in Israel. But I don't know. I don't know her nuanced feelings, and I'm disgusted that ideologues on every side have chosen to caricature this young woman into a minstrel show for their own beliefs. Even if they're her friends. Her convictions may well have been simple. I rarely discuss politics with artists. To be frozen in youth as she was is enough of a tragedy, but to strip her of humanity is worse. I hope when her friends think of her in decades to come, they remember a friend and not a symbol of their generation.