Beatifying Rachel Corrie

"My name is Rachel Corrie," a play written and directed by the actor Alan Rickman debuted in London last week and--surprise!--was almost universally praised, says Melanie Phillips.

The British theatre is doing its valiant bit to promote the propaganda of lies and hatred towards the Jewish state. ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’, a dramatised version of the writings of the International Solidarity Movement activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in disputed circumstances while attempting to prevent the destruction of Palestinian houses, has received the kind of enthusiastic reviews one would expect from an intelligentsia which has almost universally inverted victim and murderer in the Arab war against Israel.

Clive James is a notable exception.

Early on, Corrie makes a point of informing us that more Israelis have been killed in road accidents than in all the country ’s wars put together. As she jots down thoughts in her notebook and fires off e-mails to her parents, she declares that “the vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance”. Even the late Yassir Arafat might have blushed at that one.

Smiling Neocon is disappointed in Rickman.

I used to like the British actor Alan Rickman. He was charmingly brooding as Colonel Brandon in 1995's Sense and Sensibility and darkly hilarious as the wry "voice of G-d" Metatron in 1999's Dogma. But it turns out his acting talents aren't balanced with a sense of reality.

Roger Simon takes his disapproval a step further:

If the facts of the Rachel Corrie story prove to be as "accurate" as those of the notorious Mohammed al-Dura case, as some are now suggesting they are, Mr. Rickman deserves to be taken behind the woodshed for a good old-fashioned public school caning.

Finally, Steven Plaut wonders about the fate of Israeli Rachels killed by terrorist bombs:

It would be interesting knowing how many of THESE Rachels were murdered
with explosives smuggled in through the same tunnels that Rachel Corrie
and her ISM pro-terrorist friends were "defending"!