Nonie DAarwish waited nervously outside the headmaster's office, staring at her feet for what seemed like an eternity. Finally the door opened and she entered gingerly.

Darwish's father was an ardent Egyptian nationalist and a member of the inner circle of Abdul Nasser's government. In the 1950s, Nasser sent him to head the Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza and the Sinai.

He started the first "fedayeen" (armed resistance) and mobilised the Arabs of Gaza to make cross-border raids and cause death and destruction in Israel.

"My first job was with a Jewish businessman. It was the first time I had ever met a Jew. He and his family were very kind to me and I began to think that maybe not all Jews were the monsters we had been told they were.

"My mother and my brother's wife accompanied him to IsraeI and could not believe the humanity and kindness the Israeli people showed to a son of a shahid (martyr) who had spent his life and had died fighting against Israel."

Back in the US where she was working as a claims adjuster for an insurance company, Darwish, a practising Muslim, felt she had to speak out but was too afraid to do so.

"Everywhere there was hate speech against Jews and Christians and I feared in my heart that all this hatred had to be directed somewhere and that something terrible was going to happen."

"I was even more traumatised when I learnt that one of the leaders of the mission was Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian man from a wealthy and well-educated Cairo family.

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