| Last April, she said, Ariel Sharon phoned her to praise an article she had written in the weekly Italian publication Panorama about the problem of European and Arab anti-Semitism. She said she answered the phone and said, "‘Hey, Sharon! How are you? Are you as fat?’ Because I know him. Sharon said, ‘Oriana, I called you to say, "Damn, you have guts; damn, you are courageous; damn, do I thank you."’ I said, ‘Ariel, you thank me—I apologize with you. I was too tough to you 20 years ago.’ And he was, as usual, a gentleman." The night before the phone call, there had been an attack on a kibbutz. "I said, ‘Listen, dear, I know what happened last night in that kibbutz. Will you please permit me to express to you and to your people my condolences?’ Sharon started crying. I don’t know, I didn’t see the tears. But the voice was of a crying man, and he started to shout: ‘Oriana! You are the only one who says the word condolences! Do you know, these bloody heads of states, I just spoke with the British and the Americans’—meaning Blair and Bush—‘they did not say that word to me.’ And then with broken voice he said, ‘Do you know who were the dead last night? One was the grandmother who was in Dachau and who still had the number on her arm. The second one was her daughter, who was seven months pregnant. And the third one was the child of the daughter, who was 5 years old. And they are all dead! All dead! All dead!’ He was crying." He told her he would be coming to America soon. "I said, ‘Ariel, we’ve got a problem: How do we see each other in New York without the journalists knowing it?’ So we have organized 007 story—beautiful. And the night before—do you remember what happened, the great massacre in Jerusalem? I remember that his assistant, this woman, she called me. I answered the phone and she said, ‘We’re leaving, we must go back, we don’t come to New York, do you know what has happened?’ I said, ‘I know, I heard it, tell the Prime Minister I shall come to Jerusalem.’ I never went. I couldn’t."
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The book—a passionate cry in which she accuses the West of being blind to the true threat of Islam—caused a scandal when it was published in Europe last year, but has raised barely a murmur in the U.S. [...] The relative silence with which Americans have greeted the book is somewhat puzzling: It is precisely Americans who have the most evidence, in downtown New York, of the danger which Ms. Fallaci lays out in her 187-page book.
In The Rage and the Pride, Ms. Fallaci compares Islam to a "mountain which in one thousand and four hundred years has not moved, has not risen from the abyss of its blindness, has not opened its doors to the conquests of civilization, has never wanted to know about freedom and democracy and progress. In short, has not changed."
Why should we make a fuss about the book?
It's not a revelation to us.
Good read ping.
"The point is not winning or losing," she said. "Of course, I want to win. The point is to fight well with dignity. The point is, if you die, to die on your feet, standing up. If you tell me, ‘Fallaci, why do you fight so much? The Muslims are going to win and they’re going to kill you,’ I answer to you, ‘Fuck you—I shall die on my feet.’"
This woman is a fighter. A kick-ass-and-take-names fighter. Tragic that, in our current state in the West, her attitude and delivery are anomolous.
Honest and refreshing.
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#82 Amy 1/23/2003 04:20PM PST As for the Likud scandal, it's a scandal, and that's the point. It's out in the open, it's being vigorously pursued by the Israeli press, and those involved will be severely punished, and their political careers will be over. Now let's look at the terminally corrupt and tyrannical regimes in the rest of the Middle East, shall we, and perform some real moral comparisons. Let's talk about Assad and Saddam slaughtering their own citizens with bombs and poison gas. Let's talk about the Saudis exporting their hate-filled ideology and chopping off people's hands, feet and heads. Let's talk about the mullahs' secret police in Iran. Let's talk about threatening death to women who dare to walk out of their homes by themselves, drive a car, go to school or have a job. Let's talk about Palestinian child abuse - raising their children to hate, to seek death, to murder. Let's talk about the official Egyptian media, which spreads blood libels and lies about worldwide Jewish conspiracies, publishes caricatures of Jews worthy of the worst Nazi excesses and broadcasts the Protocols as if they were the truth. And let's talk about Egyptian persecution of anyone who criticizes the government. Let's talk about Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which will not be satisfied with any Israeli pullbacks, will not be satisfied with a Palestinian state alongside Israel, will not be satisfied with autonomy over Arab Jerusalem - will never be satisfied until all of "Palestine" is Judenrein and Israel destroyed. Let's talk about Hezb'Allah, which continues to shell Israeli territory from the safety provided by the Syrians on the concocted pretext that the Israelis are occupying Lebanese territory (despite the U.N.'s finding that the Israelis are not setting foot on one inch of Lebanese soil). Let's talk about how much blood Arafat has on his hands. Let's talk about Arabs disemboweling and literally tearing apart two Israelis who blundered somewhere they didn't intend to go. Let's talk about the Palestinian intimidation of the press which tries to bear witness to Palestinian celebrations of the deaths of innocents. Let's talk about the corruption of Arafat and his cronies, who skim millions off the aid that the idiot Europeans shell out every month instead of seeing to the needs of their own people. Let's talk about the Israeli policy of demolishing homes instead of carpetbombing the rats' nests of terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank. Let's talk about the Palestinian destruction of Joseph's Tomb and the Jordanians' wanton destruction of Jewish synagogues and graveyards, using tombstones to pave streets and line latrines. Let's talk about antisemitic attacks taking place all over the world (There was a long article in today's Ha'aretz about antisemitic incidents and vandalism of Holocaust memorials and cemeteries, when there are a grand total of 5,000 Jews in Greece). Oh, but the antisemites like Justa Goy don't want to discuss that stuff of course. In fact, Israel is necessary in order to protect Jews from people just like him. Too bad for Justa Goy that the glorious period of Hitlerism is over - JG was born too late to join in the fun. What a pity! People like Justa Goy are offended and incensed when Jews dare to defend themselves. How dare those hook-nosed bastards kill anybody, even people who have dedicated their lives to killing Jews. To quote my idol Oriana, "Fuck you!" |
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And to think I was 18 when I read Call of the Wild, and White Fang. And 30+ when I completed his entire collection. She was blessed from the beginning.