DAVID COLLIER: MY NAME IS RACHEL TOO
On 2 October 1938, Arab ‘rioters’ infiltrated a Jewish neighbourhood
in Tiberias. They first cut the telephone wires to frustrate calls for
help. They then set about massacring innocent civilians. According to
the British:
‘It was systematically organized and savagely executed. Of the
nineteen Jews killed, including women and children, all save four were
stabbed to death.’
There were about 70 armed Arabs involved in the attack, they set fire
to Jewish homes and the local synagogue. According to Wiki ‘in one
house a mother, and her five children were killed’.
Wiki doesn’t explain that the father, Shimon Mizrachi, was elsewhere,
on guard duty protecting other families. Nor does the account give you
the names and ages of those five murdered children. Ezra (aged
twelve), Miriam (five), Yocheved (three), Samuel (two) and Hephzibah
(one).
It doesn’t give you the mother’s name either. The mother’s name was Rachel.
The Rachel of Kiryat Shmona
Kiryat Shmona is about 35 miles from Tiberias. A city in the Northern
District of Israel, near the Lebanese border.
On 11 April 1974, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP) attacked civilians in Kiryat Shmona. These
terrorists first tried to attack a school, but there was nobody
inside. Instead they attacked a nearby residential building. Rehov
(St) Yehuda Halevi number 15. They went from flat to flat in a
barbaric killing spree. Eighteen people were murdered, half of them
were children.
Anisa Stern (47) was one of the victims, killed alongside her
eight-year-old daughter. The daughter’s name was Rachel
The Rachel of Ma’alot-Tarshiha
Just a few weeks after the massacre in Kiryat Shmona, on the 12th May
1974, a group of fifteen to seventeen year old students set out on a
field trip of the Galilee. It was three days before Israel’s
twenty-sixth Independence Day. It was a large student group and they
had made arrangements to spend a night at the Netiv Meir School in
Ma’alot.
The same day, a group of terrorists from the Popular Democratic Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP) had infiltrated into Israel.
They had attacked a van taking some Christian Arab women home from
work, then having reached the city of Ma’alot, approached some
residential buildings. When Fortuna and Yosef Cohen opened their door,
the terrorists shot and killed the couple, and their four-year-old
son, Eliahu.
Eventually, the terrorists reached the school. The terrorists entered
the building at about 4 a.m. Some students jumped from windows, but 85
students and several teachers were held hostage. When the Israelis
attempted a rescue, the terrorists opened fire on the students. Twenty
two of them were slaughtered.
None of those 22 students were to grow up. One of them was called
Rachel. Rachel Afita was just sixteen when she died.
Rachel ‘X’
An exercise in telling in detail the individual stories of all the
Jewish Rachel’s, who were not permitted to live out their lives
because of anti-Jewish hatred, would be a mammoth task. The three
above are just an example of lives and families ruined because for
some, Jews have no place on this earth. Here are some others:
(This list was formed using the Israeli website for the victims.)
Rachel Bavli, 21, killed by sniper fire on 1 July 1954 in Jerusalem
Rachel Lev, 51 bombed in her Haifa apartment on 22 Oct 1969
Rachel Weiss, 69, stabbed as part of a Hamas recruitment initiation
test in Moshav Shafir on August 3rd, 1988
Rachel Drouk, 35, murdered by terrorists as she made her way to a
demonstration on 27 October 1991
Rachel Tamari, murdered on 24 July 1995, as she was caught up in a
suicide attack on a Dan bus in Ramat Gan
Rachel Sela, 82, murdered in the Dizengoff Centre suicide bombing on
March 4 1996
Rachel Munk, 24, murdered in a drive by terrorist attack on July 26, 1996
Rachel Tejgatrio, 83, murdered in a suicide bomb attack on July 30
1997 at Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem
Rachel Weiss, 26, was murdered in the Jericho bus firebombing on October 30 1998
Rachel Levi, 19, killed as a Palestinian terrorist, drove a bus into a
crowded bus stop on 14 February 2001
Rachel Thaler, 16, murdered when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a
pizzeria in the shopping mall in Karnei Shomron on February 27 2002
Rachel Gavish, 50, killed by a Palestinian terrorist, as she sat with
her family for a Passover meal at her home on March 28, 2002
Rachel Levy, 17, killed by a suicide bomber as she went shopping in
her local supermarket in Kiryat Yovel on March 29 2002
Rachel Charhi, 36, died on 4th April 2002, five days after being
fatally injured in a suicide bombing against a cafe on Allenby Street
in Tel Aviv
Rachel Shabo, 40, murdered by terrorists in an attack on Itamar on 20 June 2002
Rachel Weitz, 70(?), died on 23 August 2003, three days after being
fatally injured in a bus bombing in Shmuel HaNavi, Jerusalem
Rachel Ben Abu, 16, killed in a suicide bombing outside the entrance
to Hasharon Mall in Netanya on July 12 2005
Rachel Kol, 53, murdered by terrorists, whilst driving home on July 23 2005
Rachel Schwarzberg 81, hit by a Hezbollah rocket attack in Nahariya on
July 14 2006
The list could have been much longer, two Rachels died in Italian
bombing raids during World War two, and several died in the civil and
regional conflict of 1948.
The Rachel with a name
All of those names above, died as victims of hate. All had stories to
tell, and were never given a chance to fulfill their promise. None of
them did anything that contributed to their death. Each and every one,
was an innocent victim, slaughtered by ideologies of hate. One
‘Rachel’, who is not listed above, has been used to impose a false
narrative on a gullible audience. Today, if you google ‘Israel, Rachel
and Terrorism’, then ‘Rachel Corrie’ will probably return as the first
result.
Rachel Corrie’s death was tragic, but it was an accident created by
terrorists who rely on anti-Israel propagandists to distort the minds
of vulnerable young Western minds. Lies are spun, hatred is fueled,
and in the end, young fools line up to protect terrorists against
liberal democracies in the middle of a conflict zone. One of those
people was Rachel Corrie.
I do not need to go over again, the true events of Rachel Corrie’s
death in detail. Others, such as Melanie Phillips, have recently
posted blogs detailing the level of distortion involved.
Shameful Young Vic
Corrie was not a victim of terrorism. Nor was her death deliberate.
Corrie was a victim of anti-Western radicalisation, that resulted in
her accidental death. This occurred only after she had lost all sense
of right and wrong.
Anti-Israel propagandists are never interested in what really occurs
when incidents like this happen. Their only concern is how an event
can be distorted to maximum effect. Enter those who wrote the play ‘My
Name is Rachel Corrie’. Based on a diary of a brain-washed activist,
the play sets out to vilify Israel and claim Rachel Corrie was
deliberately killed. It is false and provocative and it incites,
through fanning flames of hatred. The play was edited by Alan Rickman
and Katharine Viner.
Rickman and Viner did not attack the terrorists, nor did they attack
the organisation who sent her out to her death. They didn’t even take
the creative opportunity to look into the dark truth of
radicalisation. This play should have been discarded long ago as
political propaganda. It is shameful the Young Vic chose to show it.
As antisemitism is rising in Europe, a political propaganda play full
of lies and hate against Jews is showing in London. Another sign of
the times.
Kol Nidre
The opening night of the play at the Young Vic was Kol Nidre, the
beginning of Yom Kippur. It is customary for Jews to light a memorial
candle before Yom Kippur begins. The Young Vic should have placed
memorial candles at the entrance on opening night. One candle for each
of the Rachels that didn’t live to see their own name in lights.
Credit is due to Richard Millet, who inspired this blog with his
Twitter campaign #mynamewasracheltoo. Credit also must go to various
online bloggers who have in the last ten years, spoken of other
Rachel’s in blogs – and with one eye on the ‘Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers‘
website- whose research was also used in tracking down some of these
stories)
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