Most moderate Muslims choose to blend with American society and do not want to be associated with radical clerics or mosques imported from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and paid for by a wealthy Saudi government. But they cannot simply look the other way and ignore what is happening in radical mosques across this country. It is time to reject the politicization of Islam, the subverting of the call to prayer into calls for jihad, and changing America’s Constitution to the Koran. Having thrived financially in the United States for decades, American Muslims can well afford to pay the salaries of their religious leaders and maintain their own mosques. They need to choose preachers who are more in tune to the value system of this society they have chosen to call home, values such as compassion and tolerance and responsible freedom of speech. We owe it to America to return back its generosity and kindness.
Once they have control of their own mosques, moderate Muslims need to reach out to other religions and build interfaith dialogue based on mutual respect with the Christian and Jewish communities. They need to show the positive side of Islam. Some of this is already happening, but the process needs to be accelerated. I believe American Muslims have a golden opportunity to lead the rest of the Muslim world in rediscovering and restoring the humanitarian values of Islam.
I hope the voice coming out of mosques will change. I pray for a day of reconciliation and reformation. In my mind I always see the eyes—the beautiful, haunting eyes of the Arab children, men, and women who long for a better life. I want the best for them. I love them because they are my people. I pray for peace in the Middle East. I pray that my people will abandon terrorism and work together for democracy, freedom, and equality for all.
Epilogue
Shortly before the Mothers for Peace tour in early 2006, our sponsoring organization was researching my background in order to write press releases when they discovered a book written by an Israeli historian detailing my father’s role in Gaza in the 1950s. Soldier Spies, by Israeli military intelligence expert Samuel M. Katz, described my father as a man of integrity, skill, and “one of the most brilliant analytical minds found in the Egyptian military.”
I had read various Egyptian books that highly praised my father, but then Arabs always praise their martyrs in glowing terms. I took their lavish praise with a grain of salt. But here were my father’s enemies praising him. It was quite breathtaking and caused a flood of mixed emotions. The book went on to report:
Mutafa Hafaz was a rarity in the Idarat Muchabarat al-Askariya (“The Egyptian Army Intelligence”) in that he was a firm believer in egalitarian ideals. He cared little for the trappings of rank and privilege, and cared for his men’s welfare and happiness in much the same manner as his Israeli counterparts had learned to do in the IDF Officers’ Course…. Mutafa Hafaz also understood the Israelis: his admiration for the Israeli military refuted the claims of Egyptian propaganda. Unlike many of his counterparts in military HQ in Cairo who were plotting the destruction of the Jewish state in an ennobled jihad (“holy war”), Lieutenant Colonel Hafaz respected the Jews—their strengths as well as their weaknesses.*
The book went on to paint my father as a military tactician who was not motivated by hate, but by a sense of duty to his country and integrity as a soldier. The book described in detail Israel’s tortured debate on whether assassination of this “brilliant” foe was justified, and how and why the decision was made to “eliminate” him. It tells the story of several failed attempts on my father’s life, one of them by Ariel Sharon, until they finally devised a way to get a package into Gaza that my father and only my father would be likely to open—that fateful exploding package that would indeed take his life.
In Soldier Spies, the story unfolds in all its spy-versus-spy intrigue. I was finally finding out exactly what happened. Some of their facts were wrong, such as claiming my father opened the package around midnight. It was in the early evening while there was still some daylight. My mother and I remember the details all too well. That day is ingrained into my very being. For all the hurt it dredged up, the book also gave me a window into what an extraordinary man my father was, and what a great loss his death was to Egypt and its future.
However, I was soon to learn even further startling truths about my father. As I was concluding the last two chapters of this book, a contact I’d made as a result of my Israel trip sent me some documents that shed more light and even contradicted things I had learned about the fedayeen movement that my father headed in the 1950s. These insights came from official Egyptian military and intelligence records that fell into Israeli hands in the course of the Israeli-Arab war after my father’s death in 1956. They were found in my father’s office in the Palestine Intelligence office in Gaza. I read these documents in awe. (Please note that my writing about Palestinian infiltrations in the first chapter of this book was based on Palestinian and Arab viewpoints combined with my own assessments. These newly discovered documents and the light they shed would now change and add to my perspective.)
The captured documents showed that in the beginning acts of infiltration into Israel were not a result of governmental initiative, but were originally initiated by local “strongmen” to carry out theft and revenge and serve as a shortcut between Arab countries. Perhaps that is why Egyptian authorities in Gaza originally jailed Palestinian infiltrators who were caught crossing the border into Israel. Documents point to Egyptian efforts, beginning in July 1952 and continuing over a long period of time, to stop these acts of infiltration. The one-page report by my father stated: “We have been keeping track of the acts of infiltration and have blocked them. Close to fifty persons have been arrested and these incidents have just about come to an end.” The documents demonstrate that the Egyptian authorities’ opposition to these incidents was not just one of words alone, but there were attempts of implementation in such a way as to subdue the population of the Gaza Strip to bring it into the realm of general Egyptian policy. It was for this reason that my father, Mustafa Hafez, the chief Egyptian intelligence officer, strongly opposed drafting Palestinian residents of the Strip, for he claimed in the same report: “The principle reason for the presence of forces along the cease-fire lines is to prevent acts of infiltration; attacks carried out from these borders will only result in increased tension.”
At the bottom of this report, I found my father’s typed signature and position: “Commander of the Palestinians Intelligence.” Obviously my father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, according to the document I now held in my hand, was opposed to infiltrations into Israel, but in the last days of 1955, the Egyptian Chief of Staff Abdel Hakim Amer gave an order to turn the Palestinian Civil Guards into a fedayeen reservoir. This signaled a high-level decision of the Egyptian regime to turn the fedayeen into a military tool to be used against Israel.
My father, being a good and loyal military officer, followed his orders. However, disenchanted with his role and the dangers it posed for his family, he would put in a request to be transferred back to Cairo, a transfer that was approved but kept being postponed until it was finally scheduled to take place two weeks after the day my father was killed.
After reading these documents I wept. I knew that my father, as he wrote in this document signed by him, did not want to cause tension on the borders as a result of the infiltrations. It was Abdel Hakim Amer and President Nasser who directly gave orders to start the fedayeen activities. My father—and potentially my whole family—was sent to his death in Gaza by Nasser, who was consumed by his desire to destroy Israel. President Nasser, the man who wanted me, my brother, and my sisters to avenge my father’s death by killing Jews, this man knowingly created and used the fedayeen to spread terror inside Israel. For all the wars, death, and suffering that resulted from this decision, Nasser blamed Israel and never blamed himself, not even for the 1967 war, which was a strategic blunder on his part.
The 1950s represent a different time and a different political climate. My father was an honorable soldier, and I now know in my heart that if
he had lived, he would have been on that plane with President Sadat on his trip to Israel for peace. Perhaps I, his daughter, can carry out what I believe was going to be his natural development and final goal of peace. May God rest his soul.
*The Washington Post, May 21, 2006.
*Samuel M. Katz, Soldier Spies (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992), pp. 120–21.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 28