The daughter of a shahid (Muslim martyr), Nonie Darwish, spoke at UC Irvine on November 2 following a screening of the film Obsession , in an event sponsored by Anteaters for Israel.
Darwish, who is the founder of Arabs For Israel, asserted that it is “the terrorists who give Islam a bad name,â€? but that she had “never heard a peace song in Arabic.â€? Radical Islamists, she said, “believe…in a lifestyle imposed by sharia lawâ€? and that “no government is Muslim enoughâ€? for fundamentalists. “I never saw enough demonstrations against…radical Islam,” she said.
“You think poverty is only in the West Bank and Gaza? Drive across the border to Egypt…. [There] is extreme poverty in Egypt but none of this mattered to the media in Egypt,â€? she said. Darwish emphasized corruption in Muslim countries: “Mohammad Atta, lo and behold, he’s an Egyptian — This is the Jihad, this is the terror I left behind.â€?
Darwish said that speaking against everything she was taught to believe from infancy was no easy feat. She revealed that she had been taught to hate Jews for most of her life. “Children don’t need hate [in the West Bank and Gaza], they need hope,” she asserted, adding “We must end the dark age mentality that we’ve seen now….terrorists should not be looked at as freedom fighters.â€?
“I speak for the memory of the 3,000 Americans who died in 9/11, I speak out of empathy for the state of Israel,” she said.
Of rhetoric surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Darwish decleared, “Freedom fighters are the people of Israel who lived under terrorism for 58 years because of the occupation of Gaza.”
Darwish asserted that “Israel is not perfect,” while noting that “no society is, but the way of the Jews and other minority [in Israel] have been treated is unacceptable — there has been terrorism [in Israel] before the state.”
After her lecture, Darwish answered questions from the audience.
One question posed session asked Darwish what she thought about the administration’s laissez faire approach to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic speakers at UCI. Darwish declared that this kind of hatred against Jewish Zionists should not be happening on college campuses and suggested that Zionism is a big part of Judaism. Darwish declared that Zionism is an “honorable” concept, and that she believes Jews are entitled to the “small piece of land” that is Israel.

“Zionism should not be a dirty word. It’s an honorable word,� Darwish told the audience.
A few members from the Muslim Student Union came to the event, though they left when the movie ended and Darwish began her lecture.