Posted on 08/31/2006 1:42:03 PM PDT by veronica
'I Can't Hate Them for What They Did,' Olaf Wiig Says
Aug. 31, 2006 — - Despite being taken hostage at gunpoint in Gaza by a jihadist group and held captive for 13 days, Fox News cameraman Olaf Wiig says he can't condemn his captors.
"It's really complex," Wiig said on "Good Morning America."
"In some ways, I feel such sympathy for the Palestinian cause. You know, in my heart. You know, I can't hate them for what they did. I resent on behalf of my family what they did. But there's a funny bit of me that's sympathetic to them still."
Wiig, 36, and Steve Centanni, 60, were abducted by masked gunmen earlier this month.
Centanni, a Fox correspondent, said they were sometimes held facedown in a dark garage, tied up in painful positions, and forced at gunpoint to make videos and say they had converted to Islam.
The two journalists were dropped off Sunday at Gaza City's Beach Hotel by Palestinian security officials.
Centanni said he felt "sheer animal fear" after he and Wiig were taken hostage.
"I was wondering if I was going to die of a heart attack or if the next thing would be a bullet in my head," Centanni said.
According to Wiig, when asked where they were being taken, their captors said, "To hell. You're going to hell."
Pledge Allegiance to Islam
A previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades held the two men in a garage for 13 days, forcing them to pledge allegiance to Islam.
On the day of Centanni's and Wiig's release, their captors delivered a video showing the two men in Arab robes reading from the Koran to indicate their conversion to Islam.
Centanni has said their conversion was forced at gunpoint.
"I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on," he said in other reports.
Centanni and Wiig were stripped of their possessions and dressed in sweat suits as part of a process of removing their identity.
The journalists said they were not harmed physically during their captivity.
Videotaped messages shown around the world revealed the apparent resignation in their faces.
"You have no choice but to stay calm," Wiig said.
The captors told Wiig that he would be released because he was from New Zealand.
However, Wiig said, they told him that his colleague, Centanni, an American, was dangerous and that they were going to kill him.
Wiig said he kept that information from Centanni.
"I just knew that he was under [a] huge strain already, and I thought it was a burden he didn't need to carry for however long," Wiig said.
Centanni said he was grateful for that. "He's a beautiful man and a good friend," he said of Wiig.
A Force to Be Reckoned With
Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, who is also a journalist, was on assignment in Damascus, Syria, when she heard the news of the kidnapping. She rushed to Gaza to put pressure on Palestinian authorities and local Islamist chieftains to save the lives of her "boys."
"The terrorists have not met my wife," Wiig said. "She is a force to be reckoned with."
McNaught said she believed Wiig and Centanni had been released thanks to a team effort on the part of local politicians and journalists, Fox News, her visibility locally and the men themselves.
"It's really crucial to emphasize this," she said. "Now know that a lot of the things I did were visible to the people holding them hostage. They knew I was in Gaza making statements, talking to Palestinian people. That on its own I don't think would have been enough to have got the guys out."
McNaught said it was Wiig and Centanni's "nobility and self-possession" as hostages that played a large role in their release.
"Because they kept, despite the stress they were under, they kept their cool," she said. "They got to know their captors. They behaved with generosity and courtesy. They took them seriously."
The video should be shown on TV. It harms the Islamics Fascists much more than it does anything else
http://www.cafenetamerica.com
If they should ever kidnap him again, I hope they keep him.
I do. She was very young, had been very sheltered and was kidnapped, raped repeatedly and kept in a closet.
It's easy to brainwash most people.
Let's not forget....the ONLY reason these guys were released was because they were REPORTERS, and it was recognized as a bad PR move.
You or me---we'd be dead w/ no head.
Sad but true...)-:
I agree with you completely. It also seems like Olaf is a nice, quiet guy who's used to being in the background both personally (his wife is a BBC reporter) and professionally as a cameraman. I doubt if anyone has ever cared what his political opinions were before, and coming on top of a traumatic two-week kidnapping, he is probably still in shock and not used to being the center of attention. Besides, if he can still honestly find any sympathy in his heart for the people who kidnapped him, then he is probably a better Christian than I am, and I would say that the forced conversion didn't take.
I'll buy that he's nuts.
In regards to their 'conversion', you certainly have a point. During the Turkocratia, when Christians regretted a conversion to Islam, and were secretly penanced and reconciled to the Church, it was only after not only the penance, but often years of obedience to a monastic elder that some were judged to be spiritually mature enough for the trail of marytrdom and were blessed to go and confront the Moslem authorities and accept martyrdom for Christ as the price of their 'apostacy' from Islam.
We cannot judge Wiig and Centanni for lacking the grace to accept martyrdom, whether for Christ, or secular humanism, or whatever creed the confess. None of us know whether we could be vouchsafed the grace to accept martyrdom under such circumstances. We can, however, fault them for their expressions of 'respect for Islam' once they attained their freedom.
Maybe he can go back and live with them, rather than touting how "wonderful" the hostage takers were all over kingdom come.
I think fox needs a new camera man.
I think fox needs a new camera man.What a wimp.
I saw the interview the guys did with Greta and she kept interjecting herself into the conversation. You could tell Greta was getting fed up with her.
My question to Olaf is...what if it had been your wife who was kidnapped and they beheaded her? Would he still say we need to "understand them?"
"I've never read such ridiculous, self-righteous preening as has been in the chastisements of these two men over the last three days."
Go back and read the Mel Gibson threads. Same self-righteous stupidity.
You can. I prefer to presume the best of these men, who are quite aware that their trashing of Islam might jeopardize some of their fellow journalists still in Islamic countries.
Given what these jihadist thugs put them through, saying they "respect Islam" is like like saying you have respect for a good prune crop.
I suspect everything they are feeling now is colored by reaction to their experience, and their lives are highly colored by this now, and it will take months to start putting it behind them.
I think it's incredibly unfair to judge the people they were before this or will be down the road by anything they say about the experience for the next few months...it is certainly unkind to condemn them from our nice safe computer desks. Until we are in the situation of deprevation of security, comfort, safety, light, maybe food and drink by people who think all non-Muslims are worth less than the air they breathe, and we ourselves have to look down the barrel of that gun and make a snap decision, it is truly unfair to be an armchair quarterback about the decisions they made to stay alive, and during the decompression period where what they say, feel, and how they cope tends to change on a rapid scale.
We should remember David Pearl. I bet both of them did. And it was a mercy they didn't end up like him.
Six months from now will be a diffferent thing, perhaps. But this is the type of mark that doesn't go fully away.
IMHO, of course.
ok tobyhill, but what is the fundamental thing doing the turning? there are many many left facing reporting organizations and they can't all be facing that way just because they support Hildabeast. what makes them ALL turn lib? money? support of masses? fame? power?
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