Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner - and all those who applaud their work - want you to believe that Rachel Corrie died for America's Middle East sins.

But if you believe that, it isn't much of a stretch to think, as Corrie apparently did, that the Jews of Israel deserve to die, too. As British writer Tom Gross noted at the time of the play's opening, its promoters, like Corrie herself, might have taken the time to learn about the many other Rachels, the Jewish women and girls slaughtered by Palestinians in the name of a jihad that Corrie supported whether she understood it or not.

Yet what makes My Name Is Rachel Corrie worth noting is that this premise of Israeli perfidy and Palestinian victimhood is actually presented in many an American classroom.

Those who wonder that truth can be so easily stood on its head need only wander up from the West Village playhouse where the show will appear until the end of the year, and visit virtually any campus where a Middle East Studies department has taken root.

The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com