Editor's Letter
Zionism's Indefatigable Tug
S
he strode to the podium proud, determined and
with her verbal guns blazing.
"When you stand strong in front of your enemies
— when you stand authoritatively, when you don't back
down, when you do not get intimidated by their constant
threats — they weaken:' said Brigitte Gabriel, TV producer,
Zionist and author of Because They
Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror
Warns America.
Gabriel, 41, grew up the only child
of Lebanese Christian parents in
south Lebanon. Today, she wears
her Zionism as a badge of honor to
espouse Israeli values against the
harsh currents of terror-riddled Islam.
She discovered firsthand the gradual
transformation of Lebanon from an
open-minded Christian nation to
a Muslim state that branded non-
Muslims the "infidels." It didn't help that Palestinian madman
Yasser Arafat had set up shop in Lebanon by 1974 to harass
Israel.
In 1975 when Gabriel was 10, radical Muslims had infiltrat-
ed Lebanese military bases. In one battle, a Katyusha rocket
left her family's home in rubble and put her in the hospital
for 2'12 months. The family ended up in a bomb shelter for
10 years to escape the wrath of their homeland's new ruling
regime.
Robbed of her youth, Gabriel learned by example that
Lebanese Christians weren't going to be
killed by Israelis, who provided weap-
ons, support and later security, but by
jihad-spooked Muslims bent on slaugh-
tering Christians and ultimately Israelis.
Gabriel experienced an epiphany in
1982 after her mother was wounded in
front of their bomb shelter. Later in an
Israeli hospital, Gabriel saw Jewish doctors and nurses treat
Christians, Muslims and Jews with equal compassion. The
Israeli humanity, after years of being told that Jews were pigs
and monkeys condemned by Allah, overwhelmed her.
She returned to Lebanon to care for her elderly parents, but
vowed to live in Israel among "people whose values and char-
acter I greatly admired and cherished, and wanted to adopt as
my own."
I don't buy her exaggerated and inflammatory pitch that
Muslims are Muslims, period. The majority of Muslims aren't
radical in the terrorist sense. But she spurred me to deeper
thought about interfaith harmony instead of blind acceptance.
Israel had been fighting for over 50 years was now the enemy
that the whole world was fighting': she said.
StandWithUs-Michigan was the lead sponsor of Gabriel's
Dec. 5 talk before 300 people at the Holocaust Memorial
Center in Farmington Hills. The crowd was aghast when
Gabriel cited Hamas cells in more than 40 U.S. states.
"We have a problem, a major problem:' she said. "People in
America want to bury their heads in the sand and talk about
interfaith dialogue without realizing what U.S. mosques are
teaching in Arabic."
Gabriel reported that the independent Freedom House went
undercover in American mosques for one year and found
Saudi-funded teaching materials targeting non-Muslims and
democracy. Consequently, beware of clerics who preach peace
to the news media in English but violence against Zionists
and Jews in Arabic.
I would never claim that every U.S. mosque embraces such
hatred and indoctrination. But by necessity, the burden falls
to clerics to prove their mosques opt out of Islam's fundamen-
tal goal as Gabriel defines it: "to invade the Western heart-
land" until "all religions are exclusively for Allah."
That's scary.
The Battlefront
Gabriel bravely set the challenge before us: "This is the time
when every single one of us needs to come together, Jew and
Christian — and be inspired, be mobilized, be networked, be
encouraged — and to speak with passion against Islamic big-
otry, hatred and intolerance. We all must stand up and defend
I don't buy her exaggerated and inflammatory
pitch that Muslims are Muslims, period. But
she spurred me to deeper thought.
Changed Perspective
Gabriel began to see the Arabic and Muslim worlds through a
different prism in 1984 when she moved from south Lebanon
to Jerusalem to become anchor for the Arabic evening news
on Middle East television. For the first time, she saw informa-
tion not filtered through the fog of Arab propaganda.
"I started realizing that the difference between the Arabic
world and Israel is a clash of civilization — between civilized
and barbaric, dictatorship and democracy, evilness and good-
ness," Gabriel said.
Gabriel soon realized that Muslim-inspired terror in the
Middle East had spread worldwide. "The same enemy that
Israel because Israel is on the front lines against the fight
against Islamo-fascism."
This fiery founder of American Congress for Truth.com , a
nonprofit dedicated to exposing the dangers of radical Islam,
lamented that too many Jews in general and Israelis in par-
ticular are meek. We want peace so badly that ever since the
ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993, we've been shamed to believe
that Palestinian peace proposals were legitimate.
"The Jewish people as a group are so goodhearted and have
such conscience Gabriel said. "You live your life by tikkun
olam — to repair of the world. But to do that, you must con-
front evil. Not wanting to create waves does not protect you.
The Jews did the same thing before World War II — and they
were marched into concentration camps."
Clearly, Jews must become emboldened. We can't hope
that "good will" prevails miraculously.
We must fight as one for who we are as Jews and in
defense of Israel. No one else can do that for us, not even
Christian friends like Brigitte Gabriel.
Brigitte Gabriel will speak at 7:30 p.m. Kabbalat services Friday, Jan.
5, at Congregation Shaarey Zedek Southfield, and at 10 a.m. wor-
ship services Sunday, Jan. 7 at Word of Faith International Christian
Center, Southfield.
December 28 • 2006
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