Note: Below are
selected excerpts from Brigitte Gabriel's speech delivered
at the Intelligence Summit in Washington DC, Saturday
February 18, 2006
Ms. Gabriel began
her career as the News Anchor for "World News"
the evening news broadcast for Middle East Television
seen weeknights throughout Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan,
Cyprus and Lebanon. She is the former Production Coordinator
for ARD (German Television) in South Lebanon, Gaza
and the West Bank. She is also the former Satellite
Video Distribution Coordinator for METV/WTN (Worldwide
Television News) studios in London for daily Eurovision
Satellite Distribution to networks worldwide. She
relocated to the United States in 1989 where she founded
an entertainment company providing services to national
and international media clients. Ms. Gabriel founded
ACT, "American Congress For Truth," in 2002
to provide information about the Middle East conflict.
She has appeared on news and information TV shows,
talk radio and made numerous public speaking engagements.
She speaks four languages, Arabic, French, English
and Hebrew. Ms. Gabriel is available as a speaker.
We gather here today
to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is
not merely cold hard data about numerical strength
or armament or disposition of military forces. The
most important element of intelligence has to be understanding
the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has
been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial
for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil
against innocent victims in the name of Allah.
I was ten years old
when my home exploded around me, burying me under
the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive,
as the perpetrators shouted ?Allah Akbar! My only
crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian
town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the
word "infidel."
I had a crash course
in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb
shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness,
freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass
to live. At the age of 13 I dressed in my burial clothes
going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered.
By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed
by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York,
or Britons in London. We were Arab Christians living
in Lebanon.
As a victim of Islamic
terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up
on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves "Why
do they hate us?" The psychoanalyst experts were
coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did
we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and
the West were paying attention to the Middle East
they would not have had to ask the question. Simply
put, they hate us because we are defined in their
eyes by one simple word: "infidels."
Under the banner
of Islam "la, ilaha illa allah, muhammad rasoulu
allah," (None is god except Allah; Muhammad is
the Messenger of Allah) they murdered Jewish children
in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed
Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India,
and expelled almost 900,000 Jews from Muslim lands.
We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now
infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference
and shortsightedness.
Tolerating evil is
a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection.
It earns disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes.
Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing
suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles
around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading
us to our demise.
America and the West
are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand
up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about
Wahabbi and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form
of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful
moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of
the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to
the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper.
From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those
who mock Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared
for another holocaust, those pictures have given us
a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News pictures
and video of these events represent a canvas of hate
decorated by different nationalities who share one
common ideology of hate, bigotry and intolerance derived
from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is
awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its
wrath against the infidel and dominate the world.
An Islam which has declared "Intifada" on
the West.
America and the West
can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of
overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental
disease are starting to attack the body, and if they
don't take the necessary steps now to control it,
death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand
the nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry
of snakes. They slither and they hiss, and they would
eat each other alive, but they will unite in a hideous
mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam
on the world.
This is the ugly
face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting
a powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic
human instincts. An ideology that can turn a mother
into a launching pad of death. A perfect example is
a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian
Territories who raves in heavenly joy about sending
her three sons to death and offering the ones who
are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that
is capable of offering highly educated individuals
such as doctors and lawyers far more joy in attaining
death than any respect and stature, life in society
is ever capable of giving them.
The United States
has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred
and terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East
ring with shrill prayers and monotonous chants calling
death, destruction and damnation down on America and
its people. The radical Islamists? deeds have been
as vile as their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis,
more than three thousand Americans have died in a
terror campaign almost unprecedented in its calculated
cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide.
Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into
human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well
as the deaths of their victims. This intentional,
indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American
citizens is justified and glorified in the name of
Islam.
America cannot effectively
defend itself in this war unless and until the American
people understand the nature of the enemy that we
face. Even after 9/11 there are those who say that
we must ?engage? our terrorist enemies, that we must
?address their grievances?. Their grievance is our
freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom
of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process
where the rule of law comes from the voices of many
not that of just one prophet. It is the respect we
instill in our children towards all religions. It
is the equality we grant each other as human beings
sharing a planet and striving to make the world a
better place for all humanity. Their grievance is
the kindness and respect a man shows a woman, the
justice we practice as equals under the law, and the
mercy we grant our enemy. Their grievance cannot be
answered by an apology for who or what we are.
Our mediocre attitude
of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred
wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30
years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to
launch a full scale attack on the very freedoms we
cherish in their effort to impose their values and
way of life on our civilization.
If we don't wake
up and challenge our Muslim community to take action
against the terrorists within it, if we don't believe
in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we
should hold every patriotic American to, we are going
to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our
children and our country, we must wake up and take
action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective
and terrorist murder, America's learning curve since
the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost
flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult
it will be to stand erect.
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