JofGold's Summer Fellowship

Last night I had a chance to attend a lecture by three distinguished women who came from completely different backgrounds and from different countries. The featured speaker, presented by The Israel Project, was Nonie Darwish, a Egyptian born Muslim who's father was the head of the Fedayeen terrorist group in Gaza before the 1967 Six-Day War where Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

Because of her father's activities with numerous terror attacks on Israel, Nonie's father was the first to be assasinated by an IDF targeted killing in Gaza. Even Nasser, Egypt's then-president mentioned her father as a "shaheed" (martyr) at the opening of the Suez Canal. Later she and her siblings were asked by the Egyotian Government which of them would avenge their father's death. Nonie moved to the United States and started a Christian family and only went back to Egypt in the early 1990s when her brother was sick and needed an operation.

When she asked where to bring her brother, all Egyptians told her that if she wants her brother to live, she should bring him to Hadassah Hospital in Israel. That, she said, was the turning point for her to be very supportive and thankful to the State of Israel but she was still too afraid to speak out against Muslim extremists,as a mederate Arab woman herself. It was on September 10, 2001 that she and her family returned from the first trip back to Egypt since the '90s, and she saw at radical Islam had taken over her country while Armenians, Koptics and other groups were being driven out. When she woke up on September 11, 2001 and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center, she knew that Jihad had come to America. It was then that Nonie gained her courage to speak out against radical Islam.

Nonie, along with her daugher Shirene maintain a website for moderate Muslims called ArabsforIsrael.com which serves as an outlet for moderate voices around the Arab world to share their dislike of Islamic extremism and show support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State. The event was covered by the media and Nonie was photographed countless times. Nonie was also interviewed by Israel Channel 1 and then was invited to the Presidential House by Israeli President Moshe Katzav. Nonie was featured in an Honest Reporting film called Obsession, which dealt with radical Islam's global war against the west. While the movie was OK, it was Nonie's moving speach that mede people come to her and thank her for showing them what really is going on in the Islamic world.

The other two speakers were Nidra Poller, an author and expert on Islamic extremism living in France, and Isabel Kershner, Middle East Editor of The Jerusalem Report, who made alyah from Europe and shared with the public her interesting meetings with Hamas leaders. The event was very good and attended very well.

This is the movie "Obsession" about radical Islam that Nonie Darwish stars in: