“You’ve got to get old, because you have nothing to lose. You have this respectability that is given to you, more or less. But you don’t give a damn. It is the ne plus ultra of freedom. And things that I didn’t used to say before—you know, there is in each of us a form of timidity, of cautiousness—now I open my big mouth. I say, ‘What are you going to do to me? You go fuck yourself—I say what I want.’ ”
Oriana Fallaci has died. I mourn the loss of one of my greatest heroes and a brutally honest, clear and courageous voice for freedom. May G-d bless and keep her holy soul.
When the going got tough, she stood with Israel, she stood with the Jews. She was a fighter. I will always be deeply grateful to her, and I will miss her terribly.
The good news is that she will now never be tried in Italian court for defaming Islam. She had the last word on that:
“This trial is not against me. Nor is it a trial brought by a judge in search of publicity. It is a trial aimed at creating a Precedent, the Fallaci Case. I will not deign to honor them with my presence. This lawsuit is unacceptable, unpardonable. To distort a person’s thought, pick at a word here and another there, sew it all together with little dots, is illegitimate. Illicit. Illegal. Criminal. Contrary to every moral and intellectual decency. For shame!”
You go, girl. You go tell G-d what you've been telling us.
And may you make the journey "with casual ease."
"... in my country house, in Tuscany, there is a tiny little chapel. It’s always closed. No one goes there since my mother died. But I go there sometimes, to dust, to make sure the mice haven’t made a nest, and despite my secular upbringing I feel comfortable there. Despite my priest–hating tendencies, I move there with casual ease...."
from The Rage and The Pride of Oriana Fallaci, zt"l (the memory of the righteous is a blessing)
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