THE PARABLE OF THE CHILD AND THE TANK AND THE ROCK Our Dead Statue of Liberty

F. G. Constantinescu

2012

MOTTO: "We're not gonna be tossed in jail, we're not gonna be tortured, you know, we're not facing what people in the occupied lands are facing. If we decide we don't wanna do it, fine. But then try to look yourself in the mirror and say: I'm a murderer." NOAM CHOMSKY

It's not true that Rachel Corrie, that twenty-three year old long-haired girl was murdered by a IDF army

bulldozer; she was murdered by an IDF army tank. In Israel, but mostly in the West Bank and Gaza tanks and army bulldozers are the same thing with minor differences, and a caterpillar bulldozer is even more horrible than a tank, is like an execution machine engineered by Franz Kafka in a Metropolis Fritz Lang world. IDF meaning Israeli Defense Forces, the Israelis defend with soldiers with guns and trucks against children who are afraid even to go to their schools. She was there at that demolishing spot and she thought she is before that tank sometimes in 1989, she must have seen that tape on TV or somewhere with the Asian protester standing alone in front of the invincible stupid tank and the invincible tank lost the battle, but Miss Corrie was in Gaza, Israel – a place which proved to be much more savage. The dust in the holy Land cries after the times of Suleyman, Isa and all the prophets and Abraham the Muslim. Today there are no more prophets, only crazy people, but who knows? As for what happened here, well, you know everything about it, and if you don't you can very well find out if you really want to, but I think that one of the most important things is that this girl cared about the people, not just about her people, or the people of the world in general, but for the people living in Gaza, and for this she was murdered. I heard her say two days before, she said about a massive military machine clutching us from all sides like a giant insect, trying to kill all of us here. She annoyed the Zionist war machine so the war machine ate her as the Red Beak Bird – the Romanian Communist Party – squashed Labiş, the unconscious Romanian idealist drunkard. She was dangerous, like Michael Jackson. She stood before the tank as a 21st Century man, and the tank chewed her with its blade as a prehistoric cannibal and did not stop. It caught her under and grind her like grains of wheat and bread. Rachel was there, and the IDF were there and death was there too. We all die, they say; but there are some who take great pride into killing others as Israel the government murdered Corrie the activist. She was for me, and they killed her. She was executed. They say that we are bad and they are good because we are bad and we are bad because

they are good mainly, so they beat my mother and father, they shot me in the leg, shoot over me and beat me in the face till blood was dripping, they demolished with military bulldozers and soldiers us every time they wanted and keep us locked as animals here and shoot missiles in our apartments, they broke my toys, the whole Gaza is debris and we are going mad and you see that tank is still over Rachel Corrie buried in the broken bricks, I can read the badge on the tank – IDF -, so I take a rock like my father Daud and throw it at the stupid tank, and I throw more rocks just to go away and speak the useless words of my anger. And as I was running over to the tank it hit me that Rachel Corrie is Our Dead Statue of Liberty, an executed one and how could you murder the Statue of Liberty but with a bulldozer?