Yvette Seifert Hirth
"Dis, dat, and de uddah"


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Oriana Fallaci:  One Brave Woman

The noted Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote the book "Rage and Pride", which has created a vast polemic in France and some parts of Europe.  Ms.  Fallaci, first treated as anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, has now been accused by a European panel of being a racist.  She has responded by calling her detractors "dirty fascists".  When covering a story in Mexico City in 1968, she was shot three times - but she still reported the story.  She is quite a woman.

The June 7, 2002 copy of Le Figaro contained an article by Oriana Fallaci titled "On Anti-Semitism".  The article and lead-in began on the front page and ran for almost an entire page, which is quite remarkable for an article by a local - albeit well-noted - journalist and author.  This article has, in all probability, been read by at least 20 million people, if not more.  Le Figaro translated the article from the language in which it was written (Italian) into French.

I have translated the article into English and have reproduced it here for your perusal.  I find it most uplifting, both from the author's viewpoint and from the knowledge that Le Figaro, one of France's "top two" dailies, had the courage to run it.  I hope you enjoy it.  I'm sorry it took so long to translate, but I had misplaced it and only rediscovered it recently.

(NB:  please remember - these words are Ms. Fallaci's, not mine.  And also please note that I translated this more literally than figuratively, so the wording may be a bit cumbersome to some readers.  I apologize for this.  I wanted to preserve as much of the original grammar as possible.  -ysh-)


On Anti-Semitism

I find shameful that in Italy someone dares to parade with individuals that are dressed as Palestinian kamikazes who, wailing hateful insults against Israel and brandishing portraits of Israeli leaders defaced with a swastika, incite people to hate Jews.

I find shameful those individuals who, in order to see Jews return once again to the camps of extermination, to the gas chambers, to the crematory ovens of Dachau and of Mauthausen and of Buchenwald and of Bergen-Belsen, would sell their own mother into a harem.

I find shameful that the Catholic church lets an Archbishop, otherwise living in the Vatican, go to Jerusalem, and then the little saint is "surprised" to have transported to Jerusalem, well hidden, in his saintly Mercedes, a complete arsenal of arms and explosives.  He is surprised when he finds that he has participated in that effort but then takes a microphone to thank, in the name of God, the kamikazes who massacred Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets.  He is someone who calls the kamikazes "martyrs who go to their death like they're going to a party".

I find shameful that in France, the France of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, synagogues are being burned, Jews are being terrorized, and their cemeteries are being defaced.  It is a shame that in Holland, in Germany and in Denmark the youths wear keffiyas like the youths that were faithful to Mussolini once wore the batons and the insignias of the National Fascist Party.

I find shameful that, in nearly all of the European universities, the Palestinian students impose their laws and nourish anti-Semitism.  That in Sweden they have demanded to repeal the Nobel Peace Prize from Shimon Peres who shared it with Yasser Arafat in 1994 and to return it completely to "The Dove with an olive branch in it's mouth", that is to say, Arafat.

I find shameful that the members so distinguished of the Nobel jury, a jury who (it would seem) considered the political color and not the merit, had taken the request under consideration and that they would even envision granting such a request.  Let the Nobel Prize go to hell! And honor those that did not obtain it!

I find shameful (I am now speaking about Italy) that the state television stations contribute to the reflowering of anti-Semitism in only crying over the Palestinian deaths, in minimizing the Israeli deaths, in speaking of them in an expeditious manner and often not willingly.

I find shameful that the televised debates welcome with such deference those louts in turbans or keffiyas who, yesterday, applauded the carnages in New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya and Tel-Aviv.

I find shameful that the newspapers are following suit.  That they are indignant when, in Bethlehem, the Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity.  That they are not indignant when, in the same church, 200 Palestinian terrorists abundantly equipped with machine guns and munitions and explosives (and counting among them several heads of the terrorist networks Hamas and Al Aqsa) were considered the not-disagreeable hosts of those good Fathers (who, nevertheless, accepted the bottles of mineral water and the baskets of apples which were gifts from the Israeli soldiers in the tanks).

I find shameful that in publishing the number of Israelis fallen since the start of the second Intafada (412), a well-known daily newspaper had considered only to underline in large letters that there were more accidents on the highway: 600 each year.

I find shameful that The Roman Observer, the magazine of the Pope, the Pope who recently slid a letter of apologies to the Jews between two stones in the wailing wall, accused of willfully exterminating a people that the Christians, that the Europeans, exterminated by the millions.

I find shameful that, for the survivors of these people (those who continue to carry a concentration camp number tattooed on their arms) , that such a newspaper refused the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated once again.

I find shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom today they would be unemployed) the priests of our parishes or social action centers conspire with the assassins of the Jews.  Jews who, in Jerusalem, cannot go eat a pizza or buy eggs at the market without taking the risk of being killed.

I find shameful that these priests go along with the camp of those who inaugurated terrorism in the seventies by killing in the planes, in airports, in the Olympic Games and who, today, amuse themselves by killing western journalists.  The shootings, the kidnappings, their throat-cutting, their decapitations.  (After the publication of Rage and Pride, someone in Italy wanted me to submit to the same fate.  In citing the verses of the Koran, the exhorted to their "brothers" of the mosques and of the Islamic communities to punish me in the name of Allah.  To kill me.  To die with me.  Since this shmok is a shmok who knows English, I respond to him in English:  F**k You.)

I find shameful that nearly all of the left, the left who, twenty years ago, permitted in one of it's syndicated series to display (along with a Mafia advertisement) a casket in front of the synagogue of Rome, forgot the contribution of the Jews to the Anti-Fascist war in Italy: Carlo and Nello Rosselli, Leone Ginsburg, Umberto Terracini, Leo Valiani, Emilio Sereni: those women like my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti shot in Florence on the 12th of June 1944 (I said the first names that came into my head); 75 of the 335 patriots massacred in the Ardeatines Pits near Rome; all of the others, dead from torture or in combat or before the firing squads.  (Those companions, those adults during my infancy and during my adolescence.)

I find shameful that as well as it is the fault of the left, or more correctly overall the fault of the left (this left that opens its Congress by applauding the representative of the PLO, in Italy the head of the Palestinians that want the destruction of Israel), in the cities of Italy, Jews have a new fear.  And equally in the cities of France, Holland, Denmark, Germany.

I find shameful that when louts dressed like kamikazes pass, Jews tremble like they trembled in Berlin during Kristalnacht, the night where Hitler began to hunt them.

I find shameful that, in order to obey the stupid, brown-nosing, dishonest of the politically correct - those who always conform - the habitual parasites exploit the word "peace".  That in the name of peace, a word sadly more defamed than the words "love" and "humanity", they give absolution to the hate and brutality of only their side.  That in the name of pacifism (read "conformism") delegated to those chirping crickets and those buffoons who in the past licked the feet of Pol Pot, they manipulate those who are confused or intimidated or naive.  That they ridicule, that they would poison those whose life they would turn back sixty years: I mean those with the yellow star on the back of their vests.

I find shameful those charlatans to whom the Palestinians mean as much as buffoons and the louts mean to me: that's nothing.

I find shameful that such a number of Italians and of Europeans would have chosen as their flag the flag of "Mr." Arafat.  This nobody who, thanks to the money of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, acts an eternal Mussolini and who, in his megalomania, believes that he will go down in history as the George Washington of Palestine.  This ignoramus who, while you interview him, is not even capable of formulating a complete sentence, of giving you an articulated response.  The type of guy that, in order to recompose everything, as the author and the publisher, you finish so exhausted that, compared to him, even Kadhafy becomes Leonardo da Vinci.  This false warrior who, like Pinochet, is always in uniform and who, nevertheless, has never participated in a single battle.

War, that is best left to others - to the poor fools that believe in him.

This incapable pompous and vain man who, taking the pose of the Chief of State, has failed at both the negotiations of Camp David and the mediation by Clinton.

"No.  No.  Jerusalem I want all for myself."

This eternal liar that has not had an instant of sincerity since the moment when he said (in private) he denies the right of Israel to exist.  And who, as I wrote it in my book, contradicts himself every five seconds.

He always plays the double-cross, he never speaks the truth even if you asks him "What time is it, please?"  Thus, no one ever can ever have confidence in him.  By him, in the end, one is systematically betrayed.

This eternal terrorist who is only a terrorist (all while being guarded in security) and who, while I interviewed him in the seventies, was at the same time, training ten-year-old children in the Baader-Meinhoff terrorist training camps.

The poor children!  Now they have been trained in order to become kamikazes.  One hundred "baby kamikazes" are being created - one hundred!

This weathervane who keeps his woman in Paris, served and honored like a queen, and who keeps his people in shit.  In shit from which they can never be extracted except to be sent to their deaths.  To kill and to die like those girls of 18 years of age who, in order to gain equality with men, had to stuff their clothing with explosives and to disintegrate themselves with their victims.  This so-called revolutionary who has not even given to his people a bit of democracy.  I'm not talking about total democracy, like that of Israel; I'm talking about even a little bit of democracy.  For that, many Italians love him.  Yes, they love him like they loved Mussolini.  Many Europeans, as well.

I find all of this shameful, monstrous, and in all of this, I see a new fascism rising.  A new fascism.  A fascism, a nazism more murderous and revolting than that which I knew in my infancy and my youth, because it is conducted and nourished by those same ones who, hypocritically, act like do-gooders, progressives, communists, pacifists, Catholics or, worse yet, Christians.  And who have the impudence, the effrontery of calling bellicose those who, like me, scream the truth.

I see all that, yes, and I say what follows.

With the tragic Shakespearean Sharon I have never been tender.  ("I know very well that you come to see me to add a scalp to your necklace", said Sharon, nearly with sadness, when I went to interview him in 1982.)  With the Israelis I find myself in dispute often, sometimes in a heavy fashion and in the past I have well defended the Palestinians.  Maybe more than they deserved.  But, I am with Israel.  I am with the Jews.

I am with those who I was with when, as a little girl, I was a combatant with them.  And with those shot dead, like Anne-Marie.

I defend their right to exist - to defend themselves so as to not be exterminated a second time.

And I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of such a large number of Italians and other Europeans.  I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my country and Europe (which is, in the best case, not a community of states but often a well full of traitors like Pontius Pilate.)

And even if all of the inhabitants of this planet think in a different manner, I would continue to think the same way.


Why I write today

I published my article "Oriana Fallaci on Anti-Semitism" today in Le Figaro which was first seen on the 12th of April, in the weekly Milan paper Panorama, a time where Europe dishonored itself, with enthusiasm, by it's indecent hate towards the Jews.

After having learned that Le Monde had asked the president of the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism ("LICRA") if he was ready to condemn "Rage and Pride" as a "racist" book, under that blow of indignation I made the decision to publish the article in a French publication.

The President of LICRA responded that "in this case we must examine the possibility of bringing a lawsuit".

I have the pleasure of reporting in this article that thousands and thousands of Jews around the world have written me to thank me for my set of articles (the one published today (in its original Italian) along with the Italian edition of "Rage and Pride", along with a CD that I recorded in my own voice).  I have even gotten replies from Jews in Morocco, in Bosnia, and in Algeria.

This article has also caused me to be saluted by the New York Post as "the only reply, and a very eloquent one, to the shameful obsession with which Europe practices anti-Israeli propaganda".

As for the Wall Street Journal, they called me "the conscience of Europe".

I have also the pleasure of adding what the Italian police, Interpol and the antiterrorism services of the state of New York know well, that because of this article my life is doubly in danger today.

The threats, that is to say, the promises of killing me (for example those that are contained in the ignoble pamphlet titled "Islam punishes Oriana Fallaci" which is sold across the Muslim community of Italy) are multiplying and intensifying.  That demonstrates the indignity of this disgusting insult of "racist" which has begun against me.  An insult to which I reserve myself, each time, the right to respond by legal means and, between times, I respond to my defamers by defining them as "dirty fascists".

O.F.


Copyright / Marque Déposée  2014/11/01@15:31:01 UTC, Yvette Seifert Hirth
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