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The Secular Beatification of Rachel Corrie
(Telegraph-UK) Brendan O'Neill - Over the past decade Rachel Corrie's supporters have elevated her to saintly status, turning her into a paragon of virtue who wanted merely to "protect Palestinians." This secular beatification of Corrie captures everything that is wrong with modern-day solidarity with Palestine. There was a time when supporting Palestine meant looking upon Palestinians as a people capable of governing their own lives, free from the meddling of outsiders. Now, Palestinian solidarity is all about treating Palestinians as the ultimate victims, as helpless creatures who need decent Westerners to come over and "save" them, in a not dissimilar way to how Bible-wielding white folk once tried to save the savages of Africa. Solidarity activists who travel to Palestinian territories are becoming secular versions of the crusaders of old. They are going to Palestine to find themselves, to try to give meaning to their potentially shallow lives through imagining that they can "save" an entire people by standing in front of a tank or writing some blog posts.