American Martyrs for Palestine: A New Rachel Corrie

By Phyllis Chesler

The International Solidarity Movement, (#ISM), is a pro-#Hamas, pro-#terrorist organization–they view terrorism as “the right to armed resistance.” ISM has just created another Rachel #Corrie-like martyr for Palestine. Her name is #Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American “activist.” ISM recruits foreign, preferably American women as their human shields, the best fodder for prime time  propaganda. In 2005, HBO won an Emmy for a propaganda film by James Miller and #Saira Shah about Rachel Corrie who stumbled into or was pushed or guided into the path of an oncoming Israeli bulldozer whose driver could not have and did not see Corrie. I tried to persuade HBO to show one of filmmaker Pierre Rehov’s counter-narrative films–just to be even-handed–but got nowhere.

At the time, I was still dazzled by the writing of the Shah family: Saira herself, (I loved her “The Storyteller’s Daughter”), her father #Idries, her brother #Tahrir, (whose work on Morocco won my heart), her grandfather Ikbal, her Scottish grandmother, Saira Elizabeth Luisa),  who wrote under the pen name Morag Murray Abdullah; Morag had to convert to Islam (she did) and be proficient with a rifle, (she was), in order to be accepted by her #Pushtun family. She and Iqbal led a glamorous and adventurous life–the stuff of legend. And yet, and yet:   It seems that Saira and Tahrir’s father and grandfather were exceedingly charming frauds, who created a fabulous myth about an “exotic,” far from barbaric “East,” a myth powered by Sufi mysticism and uber-peaceful people. Ah well. I, too, was taken in by my Afghan husband who painted a similar picture of an hospitable, sophisticated, super-soulful Afghan family and culture. That turned out not to be true. As to the fabled Shahs: Just read Nile Green’s new book “Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan. The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah.”  I must note that Saira herself was advised not to rest on the laurels of her ancestors but to forge her own path. I am not sure she has done so.