September 15, 2006, - 8:52 am
Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.: Brave Fighter Against Nazis, Islamofascism
By
Some of the best writer/researchers on the truth about extremist Islam and jihad didn’t start out that way.
One is Joan Peters, who wrote “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine,” an excellent book that answers Israel’s critics. The book is so well done that Alan Dershowitz plagiarized Peters’ research for his rehash of it in “The Case for Israel.” Peters originally set out to write an anti-Israel, pan-Arabist tome, but her research showed her the opposite view was the correct one.
Then, there is Oriana Fallaci, the Italian writer. When I was growing up, Fallaci’s unwavering leftism put her among Israel’s most vocal, vicious non-Arab critics in journalism and one of the Islamists’ best friends in the world of the printed word.
Then, one day, she finally saw the late–perhaps, way too late. But she certainly did try to make amends for it, in a couple of books and countless articles on extremist Islam.
Fallaci’s essays, columns, and articles over the last several years were so spot on and well written that my father would constantly send them to me, even though we knew that before this new era of her enlightenment she was the Islamofascists’ useful idiot in friendly interviews with the likes Yasser Arafat–she called the terrorist murderer “charming” (though, at least, in an interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, she attacked Islam’s lack of women’s rights). Fallaci’s newer work was the truth she had denied for so long.
For that, Islamofascists repeatedly tried to silence her, stop the publishing of her material in countries like France, and she was put on trial. They don’t have the free speech in Europe that we have here.
It’s ironic because Fallaci–at the age of 10 in 1939–joined her father in the anti-fascist freedom fighter resistance against the Nazis. She lived to see them defeated early in her life. But she did not live to see the new Nazis–Islamofascists–defeated. And she warned that they may win, in her books, “The Rage and the Pride,” and “The Force of Reason.”
Unfortunately, in the era of her best work–her exposes on Islam’s extremist takeover of Europe–Fallaci was not only on trial for her work, her health went through its own trial. She was struck with cancer.
Sadly, today, Oriana Fallaci passed away at 77. Oriana Fallaci, Rest In Peace.
Tags: Alan Dershowitz, cancer, Debbie Schlussel Some, Europe, Force of Reason, France, Israel, Joan Peters, Khomeini, Oriana Fallaci, writer, Yasser Arafat
Its always sad when a good person passes away. Oriana Fallaci was always identified with the European Left. I think she changed not because she read books but because she traveled widely and experienced life in a way few of us have the chance to do. She saw much of the Muslim world both as a journalist and as a woman and the more she saw of it, the less she liked what she saw there. And that experience is refracted through her “Rage” trilogy. It is both a prophecy and a warning. We may well consider her the Cassandra of this century. It should profit us all to pay the last words of her life heed. Our preservation of our freedoms depends on acknowledging Islam, in its present form, is antithetical to that aim. Here Fallaci stands in good company on the subject with Alexis De Tocqueville. She will be sadly missed and let her rest in peace.
NormanF on September 15, 2006 at 9:59 am