Make no mistake about it: They are sacrificing their men, women, and children for this goal of world domination. They are willing to bring about an Armageddon to conquer the world to Islam. We are already in World War III and many people in the West are still in denial. Unlike during the cold war with communism, the enemy is not a superpower, but a fanatical religious movement equipped with a very powerful weapon of mass destruction called suicide/homicide bombers. For generations, thousands if not millions of suicide bombers have been bred, trained, and nourished to give up their lives in service of jihad. That makes this an unprecedented world war. There is no use pretending: We know where the enemy comes from. We know who is financing terrorism and praying for its success. It is at the highest levels of the Muslim world. Each and every dictator in the Arab world, the Muslim leadership, and Arab media—all have been complicit. The young men and women willing to die for Allah are their leader’s source of power in a brutal part of the world. They know they don’t have the power, the organization, or the armies to win in conventional warfare. They have to circumvent civilized international law to achieve their goal. Terrorism is not by accident; it is part and parcel of the religion and culture of jihad, of the march to world domination that has been brewing for decades in the Islamic world. Ironically, Arabs who accuse the West of imperialism are themselves using jihad to facilitate Arab imperialism.
These are the plain and simple truths about the war we face.
Furthermore, we must be aware of the insidious way Islamic extremists use our own democracy against us, how they are demanding equal rights in America’s open system and immigration for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to make Islam a reality in America. They have perfected the art of playing games with the West by understanding Western weakness and taboos, effectively using buzzwords such as “racist,” “Islamophobia,” and “profiling.” At the same time that Muslims demand tolerance from the West and decry ethnic profiling, they refuse to show tolerance to Jews or Christians in Muslim countries. Muslims freely build mosques around the world, but prohibit the building of churches and synagogues in Muslim countries. Saudis forbid foreigners from practicing other religions and don’t allow them to set foot in Mecca and Medina. Americans need to know that what they treasure the most—their freedom—is very much at stake.
When I started speaking out, of course I was accused of defaming Islam. Some even called me an infidel. It is not me—or those few moderate Muslims who are speaking out—who have given Islam a bad name, rather it is the terrorists, their sympathizers, and the silence of the Muslim majority that defames a great religion and a great people. We cannot continue denying the undeniable that there is a major problem within Muslim and Arab society that has produced terrorism. Now is the time to own up to the dysfunction in the Islamic world and seize the moment to bring about change. Good and loyal Muslims all over the world should demand an end to the violence and terror. They should work to reform their institutions, beginning with the education of young children. They should join the other great religions of the world to advocate peace and tolerance, love and harmony.
Five years after my life was changed by 9/11, I continue to speak and write. My strongest motivation for speaking out is my sense of duty to serve America. After all that America has given me, it was time to give back. My writing and speaking have become stronger with each e-mail of encouragement and word of appreciation from the American public.
Why am I such a vocal supporter of America? For those of us who fled tyranny, if not for America, where else could we run? If it weren’t for America, where would I be now? I can only imagine myself, a second or third wife competing with other wives for my husband’s love and respect, unable to control the upbringing of my children in a culture of hatred and violence. What would have been the future of my daughters and son? What would I be wearing, and what would I be thinking if I had stayed in Egypt and not moved to America in 1978?
I would have grown to be a totally different person. I look at my mother and sisters, cousins and friends in Egypt, and even though most of them are at the top level of Egyptian society, they are all struggling with how the culture regards and victimizes women. The best example was my mother’s tragic life. Her beauty, talent, intelligence, and ability to give was devalued and buried in a society that deprived her from a normal family life; a society that placed our family in the Gaza war zone to die in the process of killing Jews; a society that told my mother that her family came second to the hatred and killing of Israelis. And after her husband was killed as a shahid, that same society told her that her household was not as respected as a home headed by a man. The critical and cruel eye of radical Muslim society prevented her from living a free life or even pursuing the simple pleasures of life after my father’s death. Like all Muslim women, she lived to please society more than doing what she really wanted. I feel deep sorrow for my mother, what a waste of talent.
So why didn’t I just shut up, breathe a sigh of relief, count my blessings, and enjoy my life. In 2001, that momentous year when my life changed, I knew from the outset that speaking out against terrorism and in support of the United States and peace with Israel was going to bring me trouble from Islamists, radical Muslims, and even from moderate Arabs and Muslims in general. But the time of silence, of being afraid to speak out, was over for me from the day the planes hit the twin towers. After seeing 3,000 fellow Americans killed in an instant, I had to stand up for America.
I choose the culture of life and not the culture of death. I choose the culture of freedom and not the culture of tyranny. I choose America.
Ten
Arabs for Israel
Israel has been the object of constant terrorism—a barrage of 9/11’s all through its history. As a percentage of their total population, Israel has lost far more lives to terror than the United States did in 9/11. Arabs have always rejected peace with Israel, using Israel as their excuse for a jihad that has now reached all corners of the globe. The way the Jews have been treated in the Middle East is tragic and a disgrace. And the world—including much of the West, with the exception of the United States—has abandoned Israel in order to appease twenty-two Arab countries with large oil reserves.
My position on Israel is in sharp contrast with the majority of the Muslim world and Arab Americans. It is even more unusual coming from an Arab woman. But the stalemate in the Arab-Israeli crisis will not be solved by Arabs and Muslims clinging to the same old outlook toward Israel. There must be a new paradigm, a fresh perspective by Arab countries if they are serious about peace and ending the stalemate.
As my articles in support of Israel began appearing, I started receiving e-mails from Arabs and Muslims who had begun to circulate my articles inside the Arab world. Some supported my views on Israel; I discovered I was not alone in my wish for peace with Israel. There were Arabs just like me who wanted peace and were ready to move beyond the conflict. But almost all of them told me not to post their names. Some of what they told me was very personal, private, and moving. It was a call for help from inside the Muslim and Arab world. The e-mails streamed in from Egypt, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, Malaysia, Tunisia—from all over the Arab world. Many of them told me, “You are right on the money!” or “You have the courage of ten Arab men!” Through the e-mails that flooded in, I heard of the suffering on both sides, the Arab and the Israeli.
In February 2004, I founded the Web site www.ArabsforIsrael.com as my answer to this tragedy, my attempt to bring a voice to all these people who needed to express their views without fear. Thank God for the Internet.
ArabsforIsrael.com now provides a forum for Arabs and Muslims who want to express their support for Israel. Tragically, Israel has few friends at this point in history, and I wish through my actions to convey to every Israeli and Jew around the world, that, yes, there are Arabs and Muslims who support them and wish for their well-being.
Some Arabs asked me, wh
y not call the Web site something like “support Israel and Palestinians.” To them I say: there is nothing new about an Arab supporting Palestinians; that will not bring any new perspective to solving the crisis. Palestinian Arabs already enjoy the encouragement and support of all Arab and Muslim countries as well as many non-Muslim countries around the world. What we need now is a revolutionary idea, a new perspective—one that regards Israel as an asset and not as an enemy in the region. This new outlook is necessary if our common goal is peace. I was convinced that “Arabs for Israel” was the right name for the new perspective I was advocating. I want to tell Palestinians that they have a neighbor who could be an honest partner with them. Having a neighbor of a different religion and perhaps a different culture can be an asset and not the handicap that the Arab world has been telling them it is for fifty-eight years.
The so-called support the Arab world gives Palestinians is poisonous. In setting up the Web site, I wanted to distance myself from the kind of support twenty-two Arab countries have been giving to Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. I have seen it, lived it, been immersed in it for too long. Life has gotten only progressively worse for Palestinians since the days when I lived as a child in Gaza. These twenty-two powerful Arab countries have brought nothing to the Palestinians but defeat after defeat, failed promises, and feelings of despair and victimhood. All sorts of tactics have been used in their quest to bring “justice” for the Palestinians: manipulation, shaming, blaming, and rewarding terror. All of it has been done at the expense of a stable life for the Palestinians. In the process, Palestinians have nothing to show for all these decades of war and terror.
Like most of the Arab world around them, Palestinians are predominantly poor, living under corruption, mismanagement, and chronically high unemployment. Conditions for the majority of poor in Egypt is no better. Instead of Palestinians lining up for work on their borders with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Syria, they have been lining up for work inside Israel—the very country Arabs expect them to terrorize. Several generations of Palestinians have forgotten what life in a normal setting is and are immersed in self-pity. In the midst of the false pity the Arab world around them dishes out, some Palestinians have begun to feel that the world owes them. They don’t remember a society with respect for the rule of law, a society in which citizens produce what they need to live on instead of waiting for handouts from around the world. Geographically, Gaza is untenable. It has too many people crowded into a tiny strip of desert that cannot possibly economically support that size of a population. It is an artificial and unnatural situation allowed by surrounding Arab countries to purposely keep Gaza an overcrowded tinderbox of unrest. The Palestinian family unit has been shattered and ripped apart by jihad and terrorism. Encouraged by Arab countries, jihad has become a greater value than motherhood. Women are urged to become terrorists as much as men are. And mothers are brainwashed to be proud when their children blow themselves up to kill Jews.
Arab “love” and “support” of Palestinians has been extremely self-serving, manipulative, and crippling, and has kept them in constant turmoil, terror, and war. They are literally loving them to death. The two regions—the West Bank and Gaza—have simply been cynically used and abused by Arabs as launching grounds for war and terror against Israel. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict represents the focal point of the larger confrontation of the Muslim world against the non-Muslim world. Israel may be the frontline enemy, but beyond the Mediterranean and the ocean is the non-Muslim world that Muslims believe they need to conquer for Islam. In the process, Palestinians have been sacrificed and kept hostage as the human frontline of Arab jihad.
No, I do not want to give that kind of support to Palestinians. They have been used and abused enough by the Arab world. Palestinian children deserve better. They don’t need hatred; they need hope. They don’t need jihad; they need jobs. I reject such eternal jihad and terrorism. I can no longer wish this on any Arab child. That is why when people disapprovingly ask me, “Don’t you support Palestinians?” I say to them, “Yes,” but not in the same way as the rest of the Arab world. I no longer want Palestinians to be hostages to Arab dreams of a caliphate.
In the meantime, supporting Israel and the Jewish people who have contributed to the Middle East culture for thousands of years is simply good, right, and the honorable thing to do.
The following are the principles that I and other like-minded Arabs have enumerated for the Web site ArabsforIsrael.com:
We Are Arabs and Muslims Who Believe…
We can support Israel and still support the Palestinian people. Supporting one does not cancel support for the other.
We can support the State of Israel and the Jewish religion and still treasure our Arab and Islamic culture.
There are many Jews and Israelis who freely express compassion and support for the Palestinians. It is time that we Arabs express reciprocal compassion and support.
The existence of the State of Israel is a fact that should be accepted by the Arab world.
Israel is a legitimate state that is not a threat but an asset in the Middle East.
Every major world religion has a center of gravity. Islam has Mecca, and Judaism certainly deserves its presence in Israel and Jerusalem.
Diversity should not be a virtue only in the United States, but should be encouraged around the world. We support a diverse Middle East with protection for human rights and respect and equality under the law to all minorities, including Jews and Christians.
Arabs must end the boycott of Israel.
Palestinians have several options but are deprived from exercising them because of their leadership, the Arab League, and surrounding Arab and Muslim countries who do not want to see Palestinians live in harmony with Israel.
If Palestinians want democracy, they can start practicing it now.
We stand firmly against suicide/homicide terrorism as a form of jihad.
We are appalled by the horrific act of terror against the USA on September 11, 2001.
Arab media should end the incitement and misinformation that result in Arab street rage and violence.
We are eager to see major reformation in how Islam is taught and channeled in order to bring out the best in Muslims and contribute to the uplifting of the human spirit and advancement of civilization.
We believe in freedom to choose or change one’s religion.
We cherish and acknowledge the beauty and contributions of the Middle East culture, but recognize that the Arab/Muslim world is in desperate need of constructive self-criticism and reform.
I put the Web site together myself—without the support of any organization—with the part-time help of my husband, who was very supportive and lent his professional Web design skills to the project. My abilities to run a Web site were limited and so were my resources, but I did the best I could. The response to the Web site was phenomenal. I received e-mails from all over the Middle East and from other Muslims around the world. Arab fear of speaking out in support of Israel was understandable, so when they asked me, “Please don’t post my name,” I honored that request. There were other guidelines I followed. For instance, I did not publish letters from former Muslim converts who were hostile to Islam, because I did not want to dilute the positive message of the Web site.
I also received e-mails from Jews and Christians who were stunned by what they were reading. They could not believe what I and other Muslims wrote. The Jewish response, particularly, would bring tears to the eyes of the hardest heart.
In 2003, before I began the Web site, I had participated in a lecture series at Carnegie Melon University called “Arabs for Israel,” which was sponsored by the Young Zionists of America. Several Arabs who supported Israel spoke at this event. An Egyptian female student who attended my presentation told me she was offended when I described Arabs who blew up buses and restaurants inside Israel as terrorists. She believed they had a right to do so, and in her mind they were freedom fighters. She also insisted she w
as never taught hatred of Jews but only Israelis. However, I was pleasantly surprised when two other Muslim students present at the lecture told me they were grateful that I had opened their eyes to the intense hatred and anti-Semitism they grew up with. I realized the need for this open discussion among Arabs and Muslims. The taboo against supporting Israel must be broken. That taboo is simply evil.
Since 9/11, I have been speaking in support of Israel to various groups—Jewish, Christian, political, and secular. I have spoken on college campuses across the United States and Canada as well as in Europe, Israel, and South Africa. Some Arabs and Muslims who read my writings say, “She cannot be an Arab or a Muslim.” They send me e-mails wondering who is behind me, who is funding me. That is the way Arabs regard those who dissent; they assume we cannot think like that on our own or act out of free will. Surely it must be a Zionist conspiracy—in their minds, that is the only possible explanation behind those Muslims or Arabs who hold views favorable to Israel or the West. When they learn more about me, they are often shocked that I lived for thirty years in the Middle East, that I was born to two Muslim parents and four Muslim grandparents, and that I am the daughter of a prominent shahid who died in the struggle with Israel. I explain to them there is no one behind me but my own conscience. Writing articles from home and running a Web site does not exactly require a fortune. I have been able to give of my time because I am semiretired. Certainly, without my husband’s moral and financial support, I could not have done what I am doing. He has encouraged me and stood behind my work 100 percent. But essentially it is just me, working for what I believe is right.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 24