Nonie Darwish: My Father Founded the Original Hamas Militia | Stories of Us | PragerU

There are so many children in the Middle East who are just like me. Their families are destroyed, their fathers were killed for a fake cause. My name is Noni Darwish and this is my story. I was born in 1948 in Cairo, Egypt. I lived in Gaza as a child. So we were Egyptians living in Gaza. Yes, I went to Gaza elementary schools. Israel was considered the enemy. I remember in school as a child they would recite jihadist poetry every morning. And I remember the girls would recite this poetry wishing upon themselves to die in the jihad against Israel. The word Fida'i is an Arabic word for men who want to self-sacrifice. You go sacrifice your life to the larger cause of Islam. That's what it means to be a Fida'i. The Fida'i were people of Gaza operating against Israel run by the Egyptian authorities. You have to go into Israel and kill as many Jews, regardless whether they're men, women or children. And that's what they did. And my father was the head of the military intelligence. He was the head of the Fida'i in operations. I remember when commanders of Israel were in our house. They were looking for my dad. They wanted to kill him, but they didn't find him. He wasn't home. So they left us unharmed. They didn't kill us. The mercy they showed us, I knew that we didn't show them the same mercy. The Fida'i went into the homes and killed everybody. One day, me and my siblings, we went to the movies. I heard like a bomb or a noise. And then the two soldiers who were with us said, let's go. We have to leave right now. And I remember I was, I wanted to finish the movie. I didn't understand what was going on. There was a bomb letter in my father's office. And he opened the letter and it exploded. And he died 12 hours later. It was from Israel. Well, at that time, I hated the Israelis because I knew half the story. The propaganda was still in my mind. It took me a few years to really see the truth. We left Gaza right after my father was killed. Went back to Cairo. It's a very Islamic culture. You don't find out of marriage pregnancy in Egypt. It's so bad that you can get killed. I was a teenager and we had a maid. Her stomach was a little bit big from the previous house she was in. She was raped as a young girl in a home. And unfortunately, she died. My mom asked, how? And they said, oh, her disgrace. Her disgrace. Which means she was killed. She gets pregnant even because of rape. They blame the girl. It's a very sad story. There was a movement at that time where all the women wore head cover. And I started feeling pressure from even friends. Why aren't you wearing a head cover? The poorer Christians in Egypt would even wear a head cover just to be left alone on the street. When you start oppressing people, eventually it becomes a way of life. And then I had a boyfriend. We wanted to get married. He was a Coptic Christian. If you're not a Muslim and you live in a Muslim country, you are by law a second-class citizen. So we had to get married outside of Egypt. So I felt it was time for me to leave. And I went to America at age 30. I spoke English and I had a job right away. The one who hired me was Jewish. He never cared what my religion was. And that was very different from where I came from, where they hired on the basis of religion. They fired on the basis of religion. I came out of the Middle East so blinded to the truth. And then with my first job with a Jew and how well they treated me, I started seeing reality. I even went to a church here. And I thought they would be preaching hatred. Like if you go to a mosque in Egypt, you will hear prayers. May God destroy the Jews and the infidels, the enemies of Allah. I told myself, wow, look, look at the difference. I went to a mosque one time only in America. They were condemning Jews still. And I said to myself, I can't do that anymore. This is sick. This kind of propaganda that's against Jews and Christians has to be exposed. I went to visit Egypt in 2001 with my family, with my children. The anti-American propaganda was so strong. Something was going to explode. I landed in America right before 9-11. When I saw the second airplane hit the Twin Towers, I said, this is a jihad. Jihad has come to America. And that's when I started speaking out. My whole life was a series of wars with Israel. The Fidayeen didn't go away. What you call Islamism, it's called Fidayeen in the 50s, then Hamas. It can have many names, but it's all focused on destroying Israel, destroying anybody who's not an Islamic country. It's a religious holy war. When I found out who Israel is and who the Jews really are, I felt not threatened at all. When will the Islamic world wake up? They really don't have enemies in the Jewish people or the Christians. My father died about a fallacy that Jews hated us and wanted to kill us. And it was not true. There are so many children in the Middle East who are just like me. Their families are destroyed. Their fathers were killed for a fake cause. Propaganda and lies, outright lies about Israel and the Jewish people. I'm very disappointed at the protests on college campuses in support of Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas is the reason Gaza is miserable. They chose to make their city a shooting ground on Israel. America doesn't understand how bad the situation is and how bad for Israel the situation is. Israel does not want war. I mean, Hamas, what they did on October 7th is unspeakable. They committed murder of whole families, rape of women and killing children. They're getting worse. They're getting more brutal and more violent. You cannot allow this kind of terror to happen to your citizens without fighting back. I'm very grateful to America. I'm very grateful to Israel. We should never, ever accept the lies against Israel equating Israel with Hamas. Good and peace-loving Arabs should start having the guts to say, no, enough is enough. We cannot keep focusing on hatred of the other. We have to focus on building ourselves, building our own society. So that's my hope and that's why I'm speaking. Thank you for watching this video and please consider making a donation.