Families here to raise funds for Palestinians to rebuild

by Emily Walker
Kalamazoo Gazette

Safina Aman's 17-year-old daughter wants to witness firsthand the Palestinian people's struggle to live in an Israeli-occupied land.

But as a mother, Aman has major reservations about letting her daughter visit a place so polarized and wrought with violence. So she wanted to ask someone who knew firsthand about having a daughter visit the Gaza Strip.

"Will my daughter be safe if she goes?" Aman asked Cindy Corrie at Damascan Restaurant in Kalamazoo on Wednesday. Corrie and her husband, Craig, lost their 23-year-old daughter, Rachel, in 2003 when she was killed as she faced down an Israeli bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian family's home.

Cindy Corrie couldn't answer Aman's very personal question of whether Aman should allow her daughter to go.

Members of the Nasrallah family, whose home Rachel died protecting, were also at the restaurant with the Corries as part of a national tour to raise money to rebuild the Nasrallahs' home. The Kalamazoo event was sponsored by the Palestine Office and the Michigan Peace Team.

Thousands of homes have been razed in Gaza to clear Palestinians from the Gaza-Egypt border, according to the Human Rights Watch, the largest human rights organization in the United States. The Nasrallahs' two-family home was in the border city of Rafah.

Cindy Corrie recalled visiting Rafah and talking with a little boy who told her, "When Rachel came to town, I told my friends not to play with her because she was an American." He changed his mind when he saw Rachel playing soccer with kids in Rafah. "Then she died," the little boy said.

After Rachel's death, Cindy Corrie stopped working as a musician, and Craig Corrie left his job in insurance to devote their time to struggle for justice in Palestinian areas and Israel.

The Nasrallahs, on their first trip to the United States, spoke to the crowd of about 50 at the restaurant.

Khaled Nasrallah recalled having a bulldozer parked in front of his home for weeks, not knowing when, or if, his home would be destroyed. His wife, Samah, said through a translator that one day she opened a window for some air, and Israeli soldiers sprayed a round of ammunition into the window, barely missing her and her daughter.

"Words can't explain how much it is difficult," Khaled said in broken English. "Because no place in your home is safe."

He said Rachel opened his eyes to a new idea of what an American is. He said he was surprised at first that a Christian American woman would want to help a Muslim Palestinian. "We used to see Americans as guns without hearts," Khaled Nasrallah said. But since meeting Rachel and traveling to the United States, his opinion has changed. "Humility is higher than the nationalism and the religious," Khaled said.

The national tour will take the Nasrallahs and the Corries to 22 cities in California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Washington (Rachel's home state) and Michigan. The tour has already raised $30,000 toward rebuilding the Nasrallahs' home; they still need $18,000.

For more information, visit the Web site at www.RachelCorrieFoundation.org. To donate or to get more information about the Rebuilding Alliance, the group building the Nasrallahs' home, visit www.rebuildingalliance.org.

© 2005 Kalamazoo. Used with permission