Rachel Corrie: my dream can and will come true

RACHEL Corrie was 10 years old in 1990 when she made this speech: “I’m here for other children. I’m here because I care. I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because 40,000 people die each day from hunger.

I’m here because these people are mostly children. We have got to understand that the poor are all around us, and we are ignoring them. We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable. We have got to understand that people in Third World countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they are us, we are them. My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.

My dream is to give the poor a chance. My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.

My dream can and will come true, if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there. If we ignore hunger, that light will go out. If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.” More than 300 children were killed by Israel during its attack on Gaza that began over Christmas 2008 and continued into the new year of 2009.

Many, many more were injured, maimed and made homeless and school-less; they are now subjected to an illegal siege by Israel. Thirteen years after Rachel Corrie made her speech, she was killed in Gaza by the Israeli army on March 16, 2003. Rachel Corrie was a human rights defender. She was American. She was 23.

Now, seven years later, an Irish ship bearing her name shines that light she saw as a 10-year-old girl, for all the world to see, on one of the greatest injustices of our times.

Rachel Corrie has returned once again peacefully to confront her killers with their own violence and injustice. Some lights don’t go out. Some lights grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow. Some things can’t be killed.

Paul Farrell

River Forest

Leixlip

Co Kildare