ORIANA FALLACI: WRITER AND FIGHTER

by yonatan silverman

Oriana Fallaci made a name for herself in the 1970s for her pugnacious and revealing interviews with the world's most famous and powerful political leaders. But she took the opportunity to aim her pen at a burning issue in April 2002 and wrote an astonishing trail-blazing critique of antisemitism in Europe

I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.

She goes on:

I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as Mussolini's avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist badge.

I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism.

Yet she also admits in the same article: 'I have often had disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they deserved." (1)

Who was Oriana Fallaci? Born in Florence, Italy in 1929, Oriana Fallaci was active in the Italian anti-fascist Resistance at age 14. Shortly after the Allied Victory in Europe she began her legendary career as a journalist and writer. .Fallaci's anti-fascist resistance activities as a girl in Italy during World War II, definitely stayed with her; however, and they were always close in spirit to her heart and work.

Fallaci published her writing in major Italian, European, and American newspapers and magazines, including Corriere della Sera, La Nouvelle Observateur, Der Stern, Life, Look, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and The New Republic.

As a war correspondent, she wrote about the major conflicts of our time.

She reported on the insurrection in Hungary, where she was arrested..

She corresponded for seven years from the field in Vietnam, both North and South, and was finally thrown out of the South.

She also covered the revolutions in Latin America: Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, as well as the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, where she was one of just two survivors. During this encounter Fallaci was caught up in a demonstration opposing the Mexican government's decision to spend an enormous amount of money on the 1968 Olympics and Fallaci was shot by the police. She received bullet wounds in her shoulder, back, and knee.

She also covered the Lebanon civil war and the Kuwait War. (2)

In the 1960s and 1970s; however, the interview became Fallaci's trademark, As an interviewer of world-famous personalities there was no journalist more probing more perspicacious, or more disarming than Fallaci. and she published remarkable interviews with such important world political figures as: Yasir Arafat, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Haile Selassie, Deng Xiaoping. Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt, Lech Walesa, Muammar Qaddafi, Ariel Sharon, and H. Rap Brown, among others. To Fallaci's credit she never flinched from consciously employing her own personal and frequently controversial approach to issues and personalities.

In the preface to "Interview with History," her classic 1976 collection of published interviews, Fallaci comments with typical bravado:

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon. . . I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.

In one of her most famous coups, Fallaci lured US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger into admitting that the war in Vietnam was "useless". In addition Kissinger boasted to Fallaci that he believed Americans admired him because "he always acted alone. "Sometimes," Kissinger went on, "I see myself as a cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, a wild west tale if you like." This comment evidently soured his relations with president Nixon, and provided an apt image for newspaper caricaturists. Kissinger was known to reflect later that his interview with Fallaci had been "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press."

Fallaci's characterization of Kissinger, in the introduction to his interview in Interview With History shows precisely how she was always the one to get the last word:

Let's put it this way: he is an intellectual adventurer. And there would be nothing wrong in his being an intellectual adventurer (many great men and many great politicians have been – I would say almost all). If he succeeded in living in his own time and inventing something new, instead of going back to the decrepit concepts of his erudition or to personages who are in every sense defunct. Instead he is a man who lives in the past, without understanding the present and without divining the future.

In her March 1972 interview with Yasir Arafat, Fallaci elicited the following:

Abu Ammar, you always invoke the unity of the Arab world. But you know quite well that not all the Arab states are willing to go to war for Palestine and that, for those already at war, a peace accord is possible, even desirable. Even Nasser said so. If such an accord comes about, as even Russia hopes, what will you do?

We will not accept it. Never! We will continue to wage war against Israel alone, until we reacquire Palestine. The end of Israel is the goal of our struggle, and it permits neither compromises nor mediation. The points of this struggle, whether our friends like it or not, will remain fixed in the principles that we enumerated in 1965 with the creation of Al Fatah…We know the intentions of some Arab leaders: to resolve the conflict with a peace accord. When this happens, we will oppose it.

Conclusion: you don't want at all the peace that everyone hopes for.

No! We don't want peace! We want war, victory. Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else. That which you call peace, is peace for Israel and the imperialists. For us it is injustice and shame. We will fight until we achieve victory. Decades if necessary, generations. (3)

In her April 2002 essay on antisemitism in Europe Fallaci characterized Arafat in her own inimitable no holds barred style:

I find it shameful that many Italians and many Europeans have chosen as their standard-bearer the gentleman (or so it is polite to say) Arafat. This nonentity who thanks to the money of the Saudi Royal Family plays the Mussolini ad perpetuum and in his megalomania believes he will pass into History as the George Washington of Palestine…This false warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, never putting on civilian garb, and yet despite this has never participated in a battle… This pompous incompetent who playing the part of Head of State caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations…This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel's right to exist, and who as I say in my book contradicts himself every five minutes… With him you will always wind up systematically betrayed. This eternal terrorist …And yet many Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many other Europeans do the same.

Fallaci elicited another revealing insight into the grand designs of radical Islam in 1972, when she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash. He told her (while a bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head) that the Palestinian problem was about far more than Israel. The Arab goal, Habash declared, was to wage war "against Europe and America" and to ensure that henceforth "there would be no peace for the West." The Arabs, he informed her, would "advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet."

Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later did she realize that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens … In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism." (4)

Not only terrorists, but even the president of Algeria Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, openly proclaimed on the same theme of radical Islamic conquest when he spoke at the 1974 UN General Assembly:

One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.(5)

Fallaci's interview with then prime minister Golda Meir took place in Jerusalem in November 1972. Her personal impressions of the prime minister were unabashedly favorable:

In my opinion even if one is not at all in agreement with her, with her politics, her ideology, one cannot help but respect her, admire her, even love her. I almost loved her.

I must admit that I will never be objective about Golda Meir. I will never succeed in judging her with the disenchantment I would like to impose on myself when I say that a powerful personage is a phenomenon to be analyzed coldly, surgically.

Fallaci's first question to the prime minister was whether they would see peace in the Middle East in their lifetimes? Golda replied:

You will, I think. Maybe…I certainly won't. I think the war in the Middle East will go on for many, many years. And I'll tell you why. Because of the indifference with which the Arab leaders send their people off to die, because of the low estimate in which they hold human life, because of the inability of the Arab people to rebel and say enough…We can only arrive at peace with the Arabs through an evolution on their part that includes democracy. But wherever I turn my eyes to look, I don't see a shadow of democracy.

Their talk rolls on into discussions of Golda's impressions of Egyptian president Sadat and King Hussein and the likelihood of their engaging in peace talks. Fallaci at one point asks point blank: "Will you ever give up Jerusalem, Mrs. Meir?" And Golda replies: "No, never."

"And Gaza? Would you give up Gaza, Mrs. Meir?" To which Golda replies: "I say that Gaza must, should be part of Israel. Yes, that's my opinion." But she does express reservations about keeping all of the Sinai captured in 1967.

The interview then turns to the question of terrorism. Fallaci asks the prime minister her opinion of the war against terrorism and its leaders: Arafat, Habash and others.

I simply think they're not men. I don't even consider them human beings, and the worst thing you can say of a man is that he's not a human being. It's like saying he's an animal isn't it?...More than any other Arab country, Lebanon is offering hospitality to the terrorists. Are we supposed to sit here with our hands folded praying and murmuring, 'Let's hope that nothing happens'? Praying doesn't help. What helps is to counterattack.

Golda goes on fielding Fallaci's questions about the Palestinians, her politics and position as a socialist, and her personal life and family, among other things. Fallaci concludes by asking the prime minister how she looks on death, and Golda replies: "I can tell you right away, my only fear is to live too long". (6)

Fallaci's interview with then defense minister Ariel Sharon transpired at a particularly hot moment in the Arab/Israeli conflict. The bitterly fought Peace for Galilee Operation had just ended with the expulsion of Arafat and his PLO forces from Beirut. According to the Washington Post, where the interview was published on the front page on August 29, 1982, Fallaci had spent 10 hours interviewing Sharon in his home in Israel.

There is a dramatic difference in tone between her interview with prime minister Meir and her interview with defense minister Sharon. The end of the interview tells the story:

Sharon: …We did not go to war with the Palestinians, we went to war with the terrorists of the PLO, and having solved the problem of the PLO means to have done just a little part of the job.

Fallaci: Solved? Do you really believe to have solved it, General Sharon? Don't you ever suspect to have multiplied it, intensified it instead? A generation of hatred will be born from the 10,000 men who have been chased, kept away from their families, spread out in eight different countries. And from now on the terrorism will burst anywhere, blinder than ever. The men that you think you have defeated are very angry men, General Sharon, and not resigned at all. Arafat has just said that their struggle will go on like before.

Sharon: I wouldn't talk about these hypothetical, disastrous possibilities. I already told you that in those countries they will not be able to do what they did in Lebanon. Syria and Jordan did not permit them to in the past, so I don't see why they should be permitted now. And the other Arab nations have already said that they will authorize only political activities…Besides should the terrorists try, Israel would not stay motionless.

Fallaci: How is it possible that, among all people you don't want to understand their tragedy? How is it possible that among all people, you refuse to admit their need to have a home, their right to have a homeland?

Sharon: But they have a homeland. It is the Palestine that is called Jordan, yet Transjordan. (7)

The January 23, 2003 issue of the internet weblog GREEN LITTLE FOOTBALLS quotes an article from The New York Observer entitled "The Rage Of Oriana Fallaci" in which Fallaci tells many anecdotes, including this one of her first contact with Sharon since the 1982 interview:

Last April, she said, Ariel Sharon phoned her to praise an article she had written in the weekly Italian publication Panorama about the problem of European and Arab anti-Semitism.

She said she answered the phone and said, "'Hey, Sharon! How are you? Are you as fat?' Because I know him. Sharon said, 'Oriana, I called you to say, "Damn, you have guts; damn, you are courageous; damn, do I thank you."' I said, 'Ariel, you thank me—I apologize with you. I was too tough to you 20 years ago.' And he was, as usual, a gentleman."

The night before the phone call, there had been an attack on a kibbutz.

"I said, 'Listen, dear, I know what happened last night in that kibbutz. Will you please permit me to express to you and to your people my condolences?' Sharon started crying. I don't know, I didn't see the tears. But the voice was of a crying man, and he started to shout: 'Oriana! You are the only one who says the word condolences! Do you know, these bloody heads of states, I just spoke with the British and the Americans'—meaning Blair and Bush—'they did not say that word to me.' And then with broken voice he said, 'Do you know who were the dead last night? One was the grandmother who was in Dachau and who still had the number on her arm. The second one was her daughter, who was seven months pregnant. And the third one was the child of the daughter, who was 5 years old. And they are all dead! All dead! All dead!' He was crying." (8)

Fallaci published 13 books, that have been translated into 26 languages, and all but two are also in English. But in the 1990s she stopped publishing completely and retired to a Manhattan townhouse to write an historical novel. It would appear that she also settled in Manhattan to receive medical treatment for her breast cancer. The devastating al Qaeda attack on the United States on September 11, 2001; however, brought Fallaci out of retirement.

Her Corriere della Serra editor pleaded with her to write something about what happened, particularly since she was herself in Manhattan. Fallaci responded with a 14,000 word cri de couer titled The Rage And The Pride. The article was quickly reprinted as a book that sold a million copies in Italy and 500,000 in the rest of Europe. The book was also published in English in a translation Fallaci herself undertook.

The Rage And The Pride and its sequel The Force Of Reason take aim at the phenomenon of radical Islamic influence in Europe. The voice in both books is that of someone fighting a battle against that influence. A battle of life and death, no less. At least in Fallaci's assessment.

"You ask me to speak, this time." Fallaci begins writing to her Corriere della Serra editor:

You ask me to break at least this once the silence I've chosen, that I've imposed on myself these many years to avoid mingling with chattering insects. And I'm going to. And I am very very, very angry. Angry with an anger that is cold, lucid, rational. An anger that eliminates every detachment, every indulgence. An anger that compels me to respond… Your request has triggered a detonator that's been waiting too long to explode.

Fallaci knows exactly to whom she is addressing herself, and she characterizes the whole issue with great severity – even near panic:

I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy seeing images of the wreckage and snicker good–it–serves–the–Americans–right. I am speaking to those who, though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt. And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!"—you don't understand or don't want to understand that a reverse–Crusade is in progress.

You don't understand or don't want to understand that if we don't oppose them, if we don't defend ourselves, if we don't fight, the Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or worse we've managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigoted—or even not bigoted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures. (9)

Other major writers like Bat Ye'or, Steve Emerson and Robert Spencer have also identified the problem for which Fallaci is clearly sounding an alarm. Professor Daniel Pipes, for example, writes in his article on "Europe's Stark Options":

"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam." So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione, or, "The Force of Reason." And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity's ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam. (10)

In 2002, a French group, Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples, tried unsuccessfully to get "The Rage and the Pride" banned. A year later, Swiss officials, under pressure from Muslim groups in that country, asked that Fallaci be extradited to stand trial. The Italian Minister of Justice refused the request. And she also faced trial in Italy, on charges that amounted to blasphemy. In 2005, Adel Smith, a convert to Islam who heads a group called the Muslim Union of Italy, and who had previously sued the government to have a crucifix removed from his sons' classroom, persuaded a judge in Bergamo to allow him to charge Fallaci with defaming Islam. A criminal code from the days of Mussolini holds that "whoever offends the state's religion, by defaming those who profess it, will be punished with up to two years of imprisonment." Though the code was written to protect the Catholic Church, it has been frequently amended in the past ten years, so that it encompasses any "religion acknowledged by the state." The complaint against Fallaci marks the first time that the code has been invoked on behalf of any religion but Catholicism. ( Fallaci's supporters in the Italian Senate pushed through an amendment to the code, reducing the maximum penalty to five thousand euros. (11)

Some Italian readers have called The Rage And The Pride "the most impassioned wake up call for Italian patriotism in decades...and a long overdue rejection of political correctness, a paean to the values of the West and to their fruition in the United States." Others have denounced Oriana Fallaci for what they interpret as Islamophobia, racist delirium, and an anti-immigrant tirade. (12)

Inimitably and with cool nerve Fallaci always entered the fray, whether under fire as a war correspondent or face to face interviewing famous and powerful political figures, or criticizing radical Muslim influence in Europe. As she said in her New Yorker profile a few months before she died in 2006 of breast cancer, in her native Firenze: "I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom…" (13)

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(1) Panorama, April 2002
(2) (from Daniel Pipes's introduction to an address by Oriana Fallaci on November 28, 2005 sponsored by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in New York City)
(3) INTERVIEW WITH HISTORY pp 123 – 139)
(4) ) http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/the-fallaci-code/12921/
(5) FORCE OF REASON http://forgottenprophets.blogspot.com/2006/03/obituary.html
(6) INTERVIEW WITH HISTORY pages 88-122)
(7) The Washington Post August 29, 1982, front page, pp 18, 19)
(8) http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=5369&only)
(9) The Rage And The Pride English translation http://italian.about.com/library/fallaci/blfallaci01.htm
(10) http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4323
(11) The Agitator Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker September 15, 2006
(12) Rage and Pride Ignites A Firestorm http://italian.about.com/library/fallaci/blfallaci01.htm
(13) The Agitator Margaret Talbot The New Yorker June 5, 2006 "Oriana Fallaci Directs Her Fury At Islam"

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Yonatan Silverman is a professional Hebrew to English translator living in Tel Aviv. He also edits and publishes an electronic mail newsletter called SARTABA

Submitted December 4, 2009