And I'll close by saying this. Because anti- Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people, I learned, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilisation, and has to be fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic Jihad. Daniel Pearl's revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college, the chair of the Islamic Students' Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people are being reported from all over Europe today as I'm talking, and we can only expect this to get worse, and we must make sure our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this–this pest, by its right name; to make unceasing resistance to it, knowing all the time that it's probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment, and resolving (some of the time, at any rate) to do a bit more to deserve it. Thank you. .Christopher Hitchens
About This Quote
This speech was given by George W. Bush on September 12, 2001, in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was the only time he ever used the word “fascism” in public. Bush is speaking here to a crowd of mourners who had gathered to pay their respects to Daniel Pearl, the American journalist beheaded by al Qaeda.
Pearl was an American Jew who had been raised in Texas and had worked for the Wall Street Journal before he moved to Israel and converted to Islam. He was kidnapped and murdered while researching a story about terrorism in Pakistan. The speech is an eloquent tribute to Pearl and his work, which Bush describes as “revolting.” He tells the crowd that Pearl dedicated his life to “finding out what terrorists really believe and what they're likely to do next.”
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