In the Jerusalem Report July 9, 2007, I read a book review on Italian author Magdi Allam. The book is Called Long Live Israel – From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life: My Story. Allam is the deputy chief editor of Italy’s most Prominent daily, Il Corriere della Sera. Daniel Mosseri writes in the review that Allam said that Most women in Egypt did not wear veils and Western fashion was all the rage among the youth. Mosseri writes that Allam said In later years, Egyptian culture and the rest of the Arab world-evolved to be based on what he calls, the ideology of death. According to Allam, this culture began when Nasser broke the romance with the Western world, leaning onto the Communist bloc in order to become the leader of the Arab nation. This was Nasser’s pan-Arabic dream based on the denial of Israel’s right to exist led to Egypt’s transformation from a cosmopolitan tolerant country to an anti-Zionist and soon anti-Semitic intolerant nation.Mosseri explains that Allam believes that this made death and violence the core values of a once Liberal Islamic culture. In fact it is Allam’s belief that, Israel along with the Pope Benedict XVI represents the residual hope for Western civilization, which, more than other civilizations, embodies the sacredness of life and personal freedom. Allam is a Cairo-born Moslem. It is the brave out-spoken Moslem’s such as Magdi Allam that gives me hope for a better world in which the axis of evil pan-Arab – hatred towards the West and Israel will one day be replaced with a celebration for life and prosperity. I close with a another quote from Allam, When you start an ideological process of hatred, violence, and death, toward Israel and the Israelis, the first ones to be involved will be the Jews, then it will affect the Christians, and then the secular, liberal and non-observant Muslims; eventually, even those extremist Muslims that won’t submit to the other extremists will suffer from the process. He warns. It is insane that many Muslims condemn inter-Arab violence but then allow, for instance, the killing of Israelis, he adds. I understood that life is either a value for everyone or it is not a value for anyone. In order to guarantee the right to life for everybody, you need to eliminate the core issue of the hatred and death ideology. In other words, you need to eliminate anti-Israeli sentiment.
