The daughter of a high-ranking Egyptian officer assassinated by Israeli intelligence exposes the lies Muslim children are taught about Jews, reveals that even moderate Arabs tacitly support the radical Muslim line—and calls on all Arabs to support Israel.
Nonie Darwish is author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (Sentinel, 2006) and the founder of Arabs for Israel, an organization that opposes radical Islam and calls on Arabs to make peace with Israel. She was interviewed by Reform Judaism editor Aron Hirt-Manheimer and managing editor Joy Weinberg.
Your father was assassinated by the Israelis in 1956. Can you tell us about that time in your life?
My father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, was a high-ranking intelligence officer in the Egyptian army who had fought against the new State of Israel in the War of 1948. I was five years old when President Gamal Abdel Nasser assigned him to Gaza, and our family moved there.
Nasser’s overriding passion was to destroy Israel and throw her Jewish population into the sea, thereby restoring Arab dignity. Gaza, situated between Egypt and the State of Israel, was the perfect staging ground for accomplishing this goal. That is why he sent my father, one of his most trusted officers, to this place.
When, on January 16, 1956, Nasser vowed a renewed offensive to destroy Israel, my father was asked to organize and train fedayeen for terrorist operations against Israel. Often he was gone for days at a time. One night Israel sent its commandos to our home. They found only my mother, two maids, and five small children, so they left us unharmed.
Yet everything changed on July 11, 1956. After dropping my sisters and me off at the movie theater, my father went with my four-year-old brother to his office. There he received a parcel from a Palestinian courier. It contained a bomb. The bomb exploded and killed my father. My younger brother was slightly wounded.
In Egypt my father was hailed a shahid, a martyr. It is the highest honor bestowed on a Muslim and absolutely guarantees entrance to heaven.
President Nasser arrived at our home to extend his condolences to my mother before attending the elaborate military funeral ceremony for my father, who had been adored by the Palestinians of Gaza. Large crowds of people were weeping, wailing, chanting his name, and vowing revenge.
On July 26, 1956, Nasser addressed the Egyptian nation and nationalized the Suez Canal, an act that led France, Great Britain, and Israel to attack Egypt. In that same speech, Nasser spoke about my father’s death and called for retaliation against Israel.
As a child growing up in the Gaza strip, what were you taught about Israel?
In elementary school we were taught that Israel was an evil occupying foreign force. Jews were portrayed as devils and pigs. With tears running down their cheeks, older girls whom I admired would stand in front of the class and recite stirring poems pledging jihad, declaring their willingness to give up their lives to recapture Arab lands in Jewish hands, and promising to kill the Jewish enemies of God. We were all required to recite anti-Jewish poetry daily. After reciting the poetry, some said, “May God bless us with shahada [martyrdom].”
So it was the Egyptian regime in Gaza that was instigating Palestinian resistance against Israel?
Yes. The Egyptian authorities used shaming, blaming, and bullying tactics to make Palestinians feel the need to prove that they were worthy of the respect of the rest of the Arab world. I once heard Egyptian visitors in our home criticize the Palestinians as being traitors to the Arab cause because they “went right back to work after Israel became a state, like nothing happened. We Egyptians have to get them out of their fields and businesses and start their resistance.”
Indeed, Gaza Palestinians were accustomed to visiting relatives, trading and selling goods, even taking jobs in Israel. But now Egypt forbade them from crossing into and out of Israel; those who did so were branded as traitors or spies. Some were killed on the spot; others were jailed for five to ten years.
Egypt’s relationship with Israel changed radically in the 1970s, when President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and later signed a peace treaty with Israel.
Yes. At the time I felt relief and a great warm feeling of hope: no more wars, no more death and suffering. Sadat was a very brave man in defying conventional Arab wisdom and putting aside the hatred and vengeance toward Israel we’d been taught from birth. But radical Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere rejected the peace treaty, and Sadat was reviled as a traitor throughout the Arab world. Some said that when he signed the peace treaty he signed his own death warrant, and it was true. He was later assassinated by Muslim religious extremists.
You left Egypt for America in 1978, while Sadat was still president. Why?
Even though Egypt had become more open and peaceful under Sadat’s leadership, radical Islam was on the rise in the country. Women started covering themselves in burkas and men were growing beards. My choices in Egypt were limited—socially, economically, religiously—really, in every aspect of life. There wasn’t a way to live independently without the social and religious controls of Muslim society. I wanted to live in a country where individual freedom and human rights were respected.
Was adjusting to American society difficult for you?
Not at all. I think most immigrants have little difficulty adjusting to life in America, especially if they come from a culture that treats women and religious minorities as second-class citizens, as is the case in Muslim lands under sharia law. The first thing an immigrant sees here is the range of choices: in religion, affiliations, lifestyle.
Some of my first American friends were Jewish. Through these friendships I began to realize that the fear and hatred of Jews I’d been taught as a child were based on a big lie. From there I started questioning the Arab propaganda I’d been fed all my life—that Judeo-Christian culture is devoid of morals or values, that Western women are essentially whores, that American men don’t care about their women’s faithfulness, and that Jews are evil. I began to realize how deeply Arab indoctrination had influenced my thinking, as it had everyone I knew in Egypt.
In your book you describe Arab reactions to the 9/11 attacks as a turning point in your life.
Yes. After watching Arabs on television openly cheering in the streets for the nineteen criminals, I called friends and family in Egypt to get their reactions, and I was shocked by what I heard.
My sister said, “I doubt that Arabs from the caves of Afghanistan did this action.” She made this statement even though the names and faces of all the terrorists and the video of Mohamed Atta going through airport security were everywhere being broadcast on television.
A very moderate cousin of mine remarked that her sister, who wears a burka by choice, was happy this happened to America. “As for me,” she said, “I am perplexed, but don’t you think this is an Israeli conspiracy?”
A childhood girlfriend told me quite harshly, “Shame on you for dishonoring Egypt by claiming that Muslims did that.” Then she contradicted herself by saying, “You have to stand by Islam whether right or wrong. Let America experience the terrorism that is widespread in the Arab world! Why should only we suffer from terrorism?”
The man who was like a father to me, whom I had considered educated and wise, told me, “I cannot believe that a good Muslim like you, who is the daughter of a great shahid, can be so blind to the fact that 9/11 was an Israeli conspiracy. How can you blame Muslims for that?”
These were all some of the nicest, kindest people you could ever meet. Without exception, every one was supposedly a moderate Muslim, and most were non-practicing. Yet they tacitly supported the radical Muslim line.
What was the Muslim response in America?
The response was defensive, dishonest, and two-faced. The Muslim establishment engineered a massive public campaign in which Islamic scholars, distinguished clerics, and Arab intellectuals attempted to calm Western fears by painting a picture of Islam as totally benign. When asked about the roots of Islamic terrorism, they denied it had anything to do with the Koran. And when quoting from the Koran, they conveniently ignored passages that encourage holy war against infidels.
Also after 9/11 many Muslims in the West reinterpreted the meaning of jihad as an inner struggle for self-improvement. Yet this “inner struggle” business is hogwash, a PR ploy for Western consumption only. In the Arab world there is only one meaning for jihad—religious war against infidels. Ask anyone in the Arab street what “jihad for the sake of Allah” means and he will say it means dying as a shahid for the sake of spreading Islam. In the thirty years I lived in the Middle East, I never once heard any discussion of jihad as an inner struggle for self-improvement.
The notion that Islam teaches only peace and tolerance is ridiculous. If you heard, as I have, the anti-American and anti-Jewish hate that is being preached in many mosques and on Arab TV, you’d think you were in Nazi Germany, except that the commands are coming from Allah instead of Hitler. And look at how Islamic countries treat their minorities. Even in the new, supposedly “democratic” Afghanistan, in the spring of 2005 a Muslim who converted to Christianity was sentenced to death, a punishment mandated by sharia law. His life was spared only after Western governments pressured Afghan authorities, and the “offender” was secretly spirited away to Italy. So-called moderate Muslim leaders did nothing to protect or defend him.
Many Westerners do not realize that World War Three has already begun. Many thousands of Muslims have been bred to be suicide bombers ready to give up their lives in service of jihad. That is why we must not let ourselves be lulled into thinking that jihad is about self-improvement.
What is the ultimate goal of the radical Islamists?
Muslim imperialism. They want to conquer the world for Islam, to usher in a Caliphate—that is, a supreme totalitarian Islamic government that would forcibly impose sharia law on everyone.
That is why many radical Muslims choose to live in America and other Western nations: they believe the West legitimately “belongs” to the Islamic world. One booklet produced by a Muslim organization in California (and quickly removed after people complained) insisted that America was actually discovered, pre-Columbus, by Arabs who took Indian wives—thus giving them claim to America. Some Arabs say that the word “California” means the land of “Califa,” which in Arabic means “Caliphate” (Islamic state); therefore California is somehow the property of Islam.
Why do you feel Arabs like yourself need to support Israel?
Having lived in the United States for close to thirty years, I have developed appreciation and respect for minorities and religious diversity. The Middle East has been moving in the opposite direction, as a result of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and ’60s, followed by radical Islam thereafter. Consequently, minorities have left or been pushed out of Muslim countries. Today the Copts of Egypt are departing in large numbers. It’s reminiscent of the time when close to 900,000 Jews were driven from Arab countries, a terrible loss. I know from personal experience that the culture of Egypt was never the same.
Israel is the only non-Muslim state in the Middle East. That’s why it’s a target; many Muslims want the Middle East to be exclusively under Muslim control. Isn’t it enough that Muslims have been blessed with fifty-five Muslim states extending from Morocco to South East Asia? Why do they feel compelled to destroy a nation so small you can hardly find it on the map?
And this obsession has gone beyond the question of Jewish sovereignty. Many Muslims want to make the Middle East Jew-free. Every decent Muslim and Arab must say no to this, not only because Israel has every right to exist as a nation and is an asset in the region, but also because hatred and terrorism are destroying the moral fabric and goodness within their own societies.
What’s been the reaction from Arabs, here and abroad, to your message of support for Israel?
When I first started speaking out I received many e-mails from Arabs who said they supported me but were afraid of retaliation. Many said, “Please do not use my name,” and I honored that. Yet I felt there needed to be a forum for them to speak out; that was the original impetus for www.ArabsForIsrael.com.
I am humbled by the overwhelming appreciation of my message from Arabs who agree that we must look at Israel from an alternative paradigm. Arabs have been speaking with one voice for too long. It is time for more Arabs to speak out for peace, change, and reformation. Arabs and Muslims are in desperate need of hearing the truth.
What is your message for Jews?
My message to Jews is to unite, support Israel, keep the security fence, and not be too anxious to make peace treaties on paper that are not respected by the other side. Keep yourselves strong for about fifty more years till the oil wealth is gone, and after that, when the Islamic states are weakened, the problem will be solved on its own.
"Also after 9/11 many Muslims in the West reinterpreted the meaning of jihad as an inner struggle for self-improvement. Yet this “inner struggle” business is hogwash, a PR ploy for Western consumption only. In the Arab world there is only one meaning for jihad—religious war against infidels. Ask anyone in the Arab street what “jihad for the sake of Allah” means and he will say it means dying as a shahid for the sake of spreading Islam. In the thirty years I lived in the Middle East, I never once heard any discussion of jihad as an inner struggle for self-improvement...."
