From Lebanon with Hate

The Maid of Darkness from Lebanon's 'Meadow of Springs' Imports Extreme Islamophobia Stateside

The difference, my dear Christian friends, between Israel and the Arab world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil and this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic and Islamic world. I am angry. They have no SOUL! They are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah,” which is very different from the God we believe in, because our God is the God of love.

— Brigitte Gabriel, speaking at John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Convention, July 27, 2007

A strong person is not the person who throws his adversaries to the ground. A strong person is the person who contains himself when he is angry.

— Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

Marjayoun, Lebanon — One imagines that all Americans, and people from every part of the globe and of sundry faiths, are touched emotionally upon encountering the natural beauty of the northern Biblical Holy Land that is South Lebanon. With its rugged vegetation-covered hills and valleys and more than 500 picturesque villages, many quite ancient and populated by warm, devout, and peaceful people, the area is hypnotic.

So it is for this observer, visiting Marjayoun (“meadow of springs” in Arabic), one of Lebanon’s most stunning towns and the home of the historic Cathedral of Saint Peter as well as beautiful historic mosques. A lovely, modest, bucolic town of roughly 2,300 residents in winter and 3,500 in summer, Marjayoun sits majestically on a hill facing Mount Hermon to the east, Beaufort Castle, the 1,000-year old Crusader Castle above the Litani River and overlooking Mount Amel (jabal amel) to the west. Marjayoun’s fertile plains, some of the richest in the Middle East, extend southward into the Galilee and Syria’s Golan Heights.

Shia and Sunni Muslims, Greek Orthodox and Maronite Christians, and Greek Catholics had lived in Marjayoun, mainly in peace, for more than ten centuries until the invading Israeli forces in 1978 installed near the town center its proxy militia, the so-called South Lebanon Army (SLA).

The SLA and the Israeli army quickly constructed the notorious regional detention center just down the road at Khiam, where systematic torture has been documented by many human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, until its May 25, 2000, storming and liberation by townspeople.

Israel and its proxy army stayed in Marjayoun for nearly a quarter-century and as various local resistance forces rose to confront the occupation and the Israeli-funded (via US taxpayers) Saad Haddad/Antoine Lahad militia, Marjayoun, like scores of other villages, suffered from the fighting.

Marjayoun’s most recent tragedy occurred on August 11, 2006, when Israeli forces took control of the town, following the announcement by the UN of an agreement to cease hostilities. Israel gave the UN and the Red Cross permission to evacuate a convoy of 3,000 people huddled in the town, providing a map of exactly which roads they were to use and repeatedly pledging safe passage to the terrified evacuees. Despite this, the Red Cross/UN convoy was targeted after dark by an Israeli air-strike at Joub Jannine, killing eight and wounding 37 refugees, most of whom were Christian.

The convoy attack was the 12th such strike during the 33 days conflict for which Israel exonerated itself, stating that its air force “erred” owing to erroneous targeting data and expressing regret in the wake of too-short-lived international outrage.

Despite its frequent problem with ‘targeting errors,’ Israel’s air force earned the highest praise and commendation from last month’s Winograd Commission Report for “its outstanding success, service and bravery” during the July 2006 war. This “finding” was based on the fact that Israel’s Air Force suffered practically no casualties in its bombing, which was conducted with American aircraft firing from an altitude of around 15, 20, and sometimes 25,000 feet and at a distance of as much as 10 miles from most of its 1,100 plus civilian victims, nearly one-third of whom were children.

The commission credited the coldness of what Col. Dan Smith instructs us is “a rational, cost effective, calculated, uninvolved, ‘sanitized’ unemotional killing of other humans from a far distance over the rather more unstable frenzy that requires facing an enemy close up which is considerably more dangerous for Israel’s military.”

Amnesty International has criticized the Winograd Commission Report because it fails to address the issue of war crimes against the civilian population in Lebanon, and “the indiscriminate killings of many Lebanese civilians not involved in the hostilities and the deliberate and wanton destruction of civilian properties and infrastructure on a massive scale.”

In whitewashing Israel’s killing of more than 1,000 innocent civilians, Winograd missed “another opportunity to address the policies and decisions behind the grave violations of international humanitarian law — including war crimes — committed by Israeli forces,” said Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program director, Malcolm Smart.

Yoav Peled, a professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, shares Amnesty’s criticism of the report. “The commission performed its expected role: to whitewash the disaster and get the politicians off the hook,” he said in a statement following the release of the Winograd report.

Maid Brigitte of Marjayoun

Marjayoun has become notorious recently, in some circles, not just for decades of Israeli crimes, but also as the base from whence Ms. Brigitte Gabriel, a local woman, appeared and launched her virulent strain of Islamophobia. Joining with the US-Israel Lobby, she has been organizing perhaps the most vicious hate campaign against Islam, Arabs, and Muslims ever witnessed in America.

There is no shortage of people in Marjayoun with varying views of “what happened to Miss Brigitte” and how she became so hateful toward her countrymen and became an Israeli collaborator. “She always loved the Israeli occupation of Marjayoun and over time just came to dislike Arabs of all types, even though as a Lebanese she is totally Arab,” one of her former neighbors explained.

Another disagreed, “Brigitte never really thought of herself as an Arab at all, rather she fantasized that she was ‘Phoenician’ and pointed out to her Arabs neighbors that ‘Phoenicians were in Lebanon long before the Arabs invaded and it belongs to us!'” According to a former classmate, when she was in middle school, Brigitte preferred French and would announce to classmates in Arabic class, “I don’t speak Arabic, I speak Lebanese!”

Before moving to Israel and eventually to the United States, Brigitte worked for Middle East TV, a Marjayoun-based station run by the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and funded by Israel. It moved to Cyprus for a period and was later purchased by Pat Robertson, who is now building a Christian Zionism Center in Israel. After obtaining a green card by marrying an American, Brigitte set up a business selling her new country “insider information not available elsewhere” about the existential dangers posed by Islam and Arabs, based, she announced, “on my unique perspective having been nearly killed by them and rescued by Israel.”

Regarding recent Lebanese affairs, according to her former neighbors in South Lebanon, Brigitte has been a close supporter of the Phalange militia and SLA since her teenage years. According to her ACT office in Virginia Beach, Brigitte hopes to host the current Lebanese Forces warlord, Samir Geagea—fives times convicted of murdering various Christian opponents and their children—during his upcoming March visit to the US.

Denied a US visa since his murder convictions, Geagea has been forgiven by the US embassy in Beirut, and he will spend much of March with the Welch Club discussing military aid to Lebanon and subjects of mutual interest to the Bush administration, Israel, and the Lebanese Forces.

Brigitte As Student of American History

One can just forget about Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine, the Bush Administration invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its threatening much of the world, Brigitte sees a jihadist campaign against her adopted country going back to the very day America was founded. While Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Washington and Madison considered the Barbary pirates, who had operated for centuries along the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, “nothing but petty tyrants” and “nests of banditti,” Brigitte knows better.

In her view, the founding fathers were simply duped because the Muslim pirates were in fact serious Jihadists using a promise in the Koran of Paradise and virgins if they warred against infidels, so they became pirates.

Nor is Brigitte, who lives not far from Monticello, Jefferson’s birthplace, impressed by Jefferson’s liberal views about religion. It may be recalled that the author of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Act for Religious Freedom was most proud of his role as a resistance leader against British occupation:

“Where the preamble [to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom —Ed.] declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment that was proposed for the insertion of the words ‘Jesus Christ’ into the preamble was specifically rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu, and Infidel of every denomination.” (Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom)

Jefferson might have had people like Brigitte in mind when he wrote:

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

While religious tolerance and the existence of other religions did not pick Jefferson’s pocket, they are filling Brigitte’s as she panders to the uninformed, the bigoted, and the xenophobic.

Brigitte attracted attention from this observer, who previously had not heard of her, when she posted her July 2006 ‘Thank You Israel!’ letter expressing “heartfelt gratitude” for Israel’s attack on Lebanon. According to a former colleague of hers, this was drafted at Virginia Beach while working on her suntan in a period during which much of her birth country was being destroyed. Having arrived in Lebanon during the war, this observer was curious whether this Lebanese-born woman was somehow unaware of the carnage caused by more than 16,000 Israeli attacks on more than 7,400 targets, whose toll looks like this:

* More than 500 villages destroyed or damaged

* 30,000 private homes totally destroyed

* 32,000 homes with major damage

* 70,000 homes with minor damage

* 137 bridges and overpasses bombed

* 26 fuel stations and 3 main fuel-storage tanks destroyed

* 950 large businesses and 2,800 smaller ones obliterated

* 23 large factories—milk and candy producers among them— destroyed

* 330 main and secondary water distribution networks bombed

* 186 purification, chlorination, storage and pumping stations bombed

* 150 electrical transformers bombed

* 50 health-care facilities destroyed or severely damaged

* 150 km of coastline contaminated with oil

* 350 schools damaged or destroyed

* 950,000 of her countrymen displaced

* Almost 1,450 killed and 4,500 wounded

* And, according to Amnesty International, as many as 40 people, including 27 civilians and 13 de-mining personnel, have been killed by Israeli fired cluster munitions since the end of the war, and more than 240 people have been injured.

Perhaps a good way to help inform ourselves about Brigitte’s current views and concerns is to consider excerpts from her stump speeches and Act for America website culled over the past several months (excerpted below).

* “Thank you Israel!’ Brigitte proclaimed in an open letter. “We urge you to hit Lebanon hard and destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure… On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we also ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport to thousands of volunteers in the [Lebanese] diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism.”

* “As I watch what is happening in Lebanon, it is absolutely necessary to support Israel to kill the cancer that has spread and is killing the Lebanese body. Israel is not targeting civilians. Israel is targeting terrorists. Israel has launched 3000 air strikes on Lebanon since the beginning of the Operation and inflicted only 122 casualties. If Israel’s intention was to kill civilians you would have seen many more civilian deaths than only 122. That is nothing. They are being extremely careful, even dropping flyers and urging civilians to leave before they bomb. No country meets Israel’s high standards and Purity of Arms. These “civilian casualties” are terrorists and terrorist families and terrorist sympathizers. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists!”

* “I am speaking with the Lebanese Christians in Lebanon and they are all fine. Israel is not bombing them or their towns. Israel is bombing the Shiite radical strong-holds. This is what the news is not telling you. The airport was used to bring support to Hezbollah and that’s why Israel bombed the infrastructure. It is also in Lebanon and Hezbollah where these terrorists are developing the roadside bombs used on our marines and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those same terrorists have cells in America and ready to unleash suicide bombing here in America within the hour if ordered to do so.” (CNN, 7/18/06)

* “Most Americans in Lebanon [who were trying to flee US bombs dropped by Israel during the July 2006 war —Ed.] support Hezbollah and US taxpayer money should not be used to help them return home.” [In other words, let Israel kill them —Ed.]

* In nearly every speech, Marjayoun’s Maid routinely mentions the essential reminder that Israel, with its estimated 250-plus nuclear weapons and superpower military, needs more US money and servicemen to die in order to protect the apartheid regime from the fantastic threats from the Lebanese resistance and its supporters, which include a majority of her fellow Lebanese Christians.

Brigitte instructs us: Why Hezbollah has better sex. It’s the Jihad, Stupid!

Not your run of the mill democrat, Brigitte regularly complains to her audiences that:

“Hezbollah’s Shiite extremists began multiplying like rabbits and are outproducing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five years later they have produced enough people to vote themselves into 24 seats in the Lebanese parliament and now are a majority in Lebanon. Hamas is doing the same thing with the Palestinians as part of their ‘Resistance to Occupation.’ Yes, sex for them is simply a form of Jihad. It all boils down to a war of Islamic Jihad ideology [genitalia! —Ed.] vs. Judeo-Christian Westernism wherein our men are too stressed to do it much anymore. Muslims, who are now the majority of Lebanon’s population, support Hezbollah because they are part of the Islamic Ummah-the nation. Sex as Jihad is the taboo subject everyone is trying to avoid but it needs to be exposed for what it really is.

This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon to bomb Israel. They have cells in over 100 cities in the United States. Hamas has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away.”

When asked for a source for her claims, Gabriel’s Virginia Beach office replied: “Its common sense! Why can’t you grasp that?”

Gabriel spoke as part of a lecture series organized by Duke University’s Jewish community to provide ‘counter-programming’ after the fourth Palestinian Solidarity Movement student conference was held there in October 2004. She angered many members of the crowd when she referred to Arabs as “barbarians” and Duke’s Freeman Center for Jewish Life later apologized for her comments.

Recently Brigitte has been telling her audiences about a Des Moines, Iowa imam who not long ago offered the prayer to open the Iowa legislature. In this prayer the Muslim gentleman made a plea for “victory over those who disbelieve,” i.e., those who are atheists. That John Hagee and his ilk and countless rabbis say the same thing every day does not appear to have dawned on Brigitte.

While reassuring her audiences “that Islamic terrorism is, of course, a serious, global threat that we must — repeat, must — defeat,” Brigitte has recently been seeing another dark penumbra on the horizon: “But there is another threat to our safety, security and liberty that we must also defeat and that is the increasing threat of Cultural, Social and Civilization Jihad aided by the forces of American political correctness”:

“I am very troubled that in the name of tolerance and educating American children about the Muslim empire in history liberal American teachers get away with giving beginning Islamic teaching which may cause many to perhaps one day become Muslims. We have reports that in some classes teachers are allowing students to use calligraphy to copy parts of the Quran in Arabic as an enrichment activity. This has got to stop!

I am very concerned with books like History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond volume published by the pro Muslim Teachers’ Curriculum Institute in California. The upsetting part is not only do they go into the real history which is ok, but they teach Islam. … Moreover, the books one page referencing Jews is only to convey that they were tortured by Crusaders to get them to convert to Christianity. It fails to mention that the biggest persecutors of Jews throughout history and still today are Arab and Muslims. It gives four only one-liner references to the Jews being wrongly blamed for the plagues and problems in the land. How can the writers of this text get away with this?”

(Bert Bower, founder of TCI, said not only did his company have experts review the book, but the state of California and many experts in California also reviewed it, and have approved it for use in public schools).

More samples:

“Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to. The total time for annihilation takes centuries, but once Islam is ascendant it never fails. The host culture disappears and becomes extinct.” (“Well what are we waiting for let’s bomb Iran before they get us!!” someone in her audience often bursts out at this point in Brigitte’s talk.)

“We, as patriotic Americans must be willing to give up more liberties in this time of war against Islam — non-Muslims are not frustrated by time-consuming, privacy-invading airport screenings, phone monitoring, surveillance, and other measures — only Muslims are affected by it, because they are the ones doing all the terrorism!”

Westerners must mount a united front against Islamic law!

“I believe that the way Sharia will insinuate itself into our law would be through arbitration and mediation of domestic and financial disputes through an extra-judicial arbitration system condoned by our courts. That would entail setting up separate a Sharia law section of the American Arbitration Association overseen by Islamic law panels. Many agree with me and this should be a warning to all about how Sharia will spread through the proverbial legal back door.”

Brigitte urges Americans not to allow mosques to be built and suggests that if citizens observe one being constructed, it should be immediately reported to the FBI. Brigitte has joined Daniel Pipes and the thought-policing and silencing actions of AIPAC and its Zionist affiliates and instructs students that “if a college professor or public figure criticizes U.S. policies you have a patriotic duty to report this un-American activity to the Dean, or alert the media and authorities.”

During her talk at a Hillel House–arranged event, and without giving a source, Brigitte claims that up to 25 percent of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are “radicals who have their eyes against the West, and are willing to become suicide bombers like Muhammad Ata.” One sarcastic young lady in the audience interrupted: “Holy cow Brigitte, that’s roughly, ah let me see…ah,…. 440 million Muslims suicide bombers coming after us! Could you help us just a little bit with a source for your claim when you get a chance?” Brigitte glared and refused to continue her talk until the audience hilarity subsided.

And this:

“We used to think, ‘Al-Qaeda [is] the only problem; Al-Qaeda is the only terrorist organization that is causing problems for the rest of us.’ Well I am telling you that way of thinking needs to be changed because Al-Qaeda is an umbrella organization where many different organizations come underneath it, such as Hamas, such as Hezbollah, such as Fatah . . . many different people that share the same ideology and that is Islamofascism [sic], and they have their eyes on the West.”

Practically every schoolchild in Lebanon knows that Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Salafist Al-Qaeda are mortal enemies, with Hezbollah protecting UNIFIL’s back from Al Qaeda–inspired groups in the south Lebanon.

For her Valentine’s Day message this month Brigitte warns that “We must start doing more than exposing or resisting the advances of Islamofascism — we must go on the offensive to roll it back and fight for the bedrock values that made America the beacon of hope to the world. … The only real question is: Do we have the will to do what is necessary to stop Islamofascism, in whatever form it takes? Because, simply put, if we do, we will. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s it. Bottom line.”

Brigitte has exhibited little hesitancy in boldly lying to her audiences when pressed with inconvenient questions. For example, she is prominently displayed as a member of an arm of the Israeli propaganda ministry known as the Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau, from whom she gets lucrative speaking engagements. Her photo appears just above the pictures of Dori Gold and Caroline Glick, well know Arab-phobes. However, during the Q&A section of a recent talk at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, she was apparently not prepared to be so easily and thoroughly exposed as a Zionist shill whose main loyalty is to Israel:

Brigitte Gabriel: You can not trust having a Muslim in office when he has to make a decision to either be loyal to the United States or be loyal to Islam.

Audience member: Ma’am, thank you. I’d like to point out that I’m an American soldier and practicing Muslim, served the U.S. Army for the past 19 years very proudly [a rebuttal to your previous point]. … Two questions. Are you a member of Hasbara Fellowship?

BG: What’s Hasbara Fellowship?

AM: A fellowship in Israel. [An] organization—

BG: No. No.

Brigitte’s writing and speeches are full of historical errors, including her recent statement that “The world protected the Palestinians after the PLO left from Lebanon in 1983” (she probably meant 1982 when the PLO evacuated Beirut only after repeated pledges by the US and Israel that the Palestinians refugee camps would be protected.) She denies that the pledges were not kept and that Israel organized the September 16-18, 1982, massacre at the Sabra-Shatila camp. She claims it has never been proved who caused “that greatly exaggerated incident, and we may never know. Muslims are always killing each other. Like what’s new, that is all they know.”

Brigitte’s book, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America claims she spent 10 years in a bomb shelter until rescued by the Israeli army. Recently, she mentioned it was actually 7 years. In a February 2008 update on her website, she writes:

“As many of you know, I have a unique perspective on the threat we face. I lived for seven years in a bomb shelter in my home in Lebanon. I am a victim of Islamic terror. Most of my friends were killed by Islamic militants. I watched helplessly as we lost our beautiful country to radical Islam — I am determined that nothing even approaching that tragedy happens to my adopted country.”

Brigitte used to tell her audiences that Hezbollah was the group that terrorized her family for seven years, between 1975 and 1982, until people started to object pointing out that Hezbollah was organized after she left Lebanon with Israeli escorts following their 1982 invasion. Hezbollah was created as a resistance movement as a direct result of and to confront the Israeli occupation until it drove Israel from most of Lebanon by May of 2000 — by then Brigitte was long gone and had never crossed paths with Hezbollah.

Her former neighbors in Marjayoun say she may have spent a few nights in her homes shelter at times, or more likely in her basement, as did many in Marjayoun, but to their knowledge Brigitte lived fairly normally in her family home, given ‘the situation’ of the Israeli occupation.

There can be little doubt that Brigitte Gabriel is on a rich roll with the Israeli lobby and various Zionist organizations as she spews anti-Arab and anti-Muslim venom, the likes of which America has never witnessed.

The Act for America and American Congress for Truth (ACT) sites packages its hate and scare tactics much like Ann Coulter and the right wing anti-Islam Human Events website. According to Campus Watch, Brigitte is modeling her career after Ann Coulter’s, but she wants to specialize not in simply harassing ‘liberals’ but to go after “real terrorists.”

Claiming chapters for her ACT advocacy group in all 50 states and Israel as well as affiliates in many countries, Gabriel is in the process of ‘going international.’ As part of her move to Europe, last week she reached out to endorse Susanne Winter, the extreme right-wing Austrian politician with the FPÖ party running for a city council seat in the city of Graz. Winter had blasted Muslims two weeks ago saying that “in today’s system” the Prophet Mohammad would be considered a dirty “child molester,” and that “child abuse is very common among Muslim men.”

“In 20 or 30 years,” she warned in an interview with the daily Osterreich a couple of weeks ago, “half of Austria’s population would be Muslim.” Winter claims it is time that Islam was “thrown back out of Europe behind the Mediterranean,” and alleges Mohammad wrote the Koran during “epileptic fits.”

While Austrian prosecutors are looking into the possibility of filing charges against Winters for incitement, Gabriel heaps praise on her across the Atlantic.

On February 12, 2008, Brigitte emailed her subscribers what she told them “may be the most important message I have ever emailed to you, our members.” She has decided to up the ante in order to maintain her position as the Jeanne d’Arc of the forces to liberate America from what God told her are the Islamofascists.

Lori Loves Brigitte

In addition to divine motivation, Brigitte has earthly concerns. Some of her friends are telling her that her ‘message’ is getting stale from overuse and shrillness and many of her ‘facts’ are increasingly being refuted (e.g. Hezbollah bombed her house, when in fact the modest damage occurred before Hezbollah was formed in the area and those who shelled her house were likely either Israeli artillery positions or their proxy Christian militia).

To use a term the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) leader in Philadelphia applied recently to Brigitte saying she is ‘hot,’ it may be that she has cooled a bit.

But, dear reader, don’t think for one moment that Lori Lowenthal Marcus, who runs ZOA-Pa., doesn’t still love Brigitte. She adores her! Far be it from this observer to ignite intra-Zionist movement tension between the Dark Maid from Marjayoun and the Light ZIO-ZOA Princess from the City of Brotherly (and presumably Sisterly) Love!

What is troubling and at the same time motivating Brigitte’s ‘makeover’ is the appearance of new young-guns on the street corner who she claims are encroaching hustlers and phonies, yet they are definitely cutting into her market share with her creators and benefactors in the Israel Lobby.

The subjects of her wrath, who publicly she praises as “colleagues and kindred spirits,” are Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem, and Zachariah Anani, to whom journalist Chris Hedges, author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, refers to as Curly, Larry and Mo — the three stooges.

Brigitte is livid! “Not only are these creeps Arabs, but two of them are Palestinians!” she explained to ACT staff during her appearance at the Christians United for Israel Conference in Washington, DC. And they are trespassing far too often into her private space, which primarily includes right-wing Christian audiences, Zionist gatherings, and American audiences with little knowledge of Islam, the Middle East, or the Question of Palestine.

Proving Brigitte’s claim that you can never trust an Arab (“Never! Never! Never!” she often adds for emphasis), these sneaky fellows have been ratcheting up their rants to get speaking engagements, some of which may have gone to Brigitte, and one of them is now telling audiences, according to Hedges, “that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims.”

Shoebat, the author of Why We Want to Kill You, recently chortled, “Let the spoiled brat from South Lebanon top that!” following an appearance on Tovia Singer’s radio broadcast.

For his part, Shoebat, notes Hedges, also promises to explain in 2008 the many similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, and how “Muslim terrorists” invaded America 30 years ago and how “perseverance, recruitment and hate have fueled attacks by Muslims.”

The way Brigitte sees it, according to a former colleague at ACT, she has got to “refresh” her own niche in this market because too many others are homing in and crowding the Islamic terrorism/Islamofascism racket. Brigitte has been running out of fresh material for her website and speeches. She has recently complained to friends that only a few months ago no fewer than 11 of the candidates for US president were trying to scare up votes using her Islamofascism material. Remember Giuliani, Richardson, Thompson, and the still running McCain (“the greatest threat facing the world is Islamic terrorism”), Clinton and Huckabee (“Islamofascism is the greatest threat this country has ever faced”)?

A gifted businesswoman, Brigitte knows a crowded market when she sees one and has recently increased her market share by moving into the Daniel Pipes Campus Watch lucrative territory and is mining the juicy resources of colleges, religious institutions, state legislatures, and government agencies—all the time endearing herself to the Israel lobby by tracking down would be Islamofascists.

Brigitte Plans Ahead

In a recent post on actforamerica.org, Brigitte poses a question to would-be donors:

“Do you want to see terrorists detonate weapons of mass destruction in America, killing tens of thousands of our people, destabilizing our government and plunging our economy into a deep recession? … We are preparing to launch a series of projects that, combined together, will put us on the offensive against the infiltration of militant Islam in America in a way that no other organization has ventured to even try. … I’m asking you to make a choice, take action, make a contribution, and help us do what needs to be done. We are prepared to launch this offensive—but we can’t do it without your financial help.”

The following wish list is truncated:

Legislative Action

* Commission a nationwide public opinion poll to assess voter opinion regarding these proposals, as well as other issues relating to the advance of militant Islam. Cost: $40,000

* Prepare a legislative agenda that we will take to our allies in the Congress. Travel expenses and related costs: $5,000

Grassroots Action

* We have identified a powerful way to disrupt the communication, training and recruitment of terrorists. We want to announce this on a nationwide telephone town hall by March 15th, with a goal of at least 2,500 of you participating. Cost for the telephone townhall: $3,000

* Educate and mobilize one million Americans … we can reach these Americans through a database of email addresses that will cost us a miniscule fraction compared to what mail and telephone canvassing costs. Cost of this nationwide education and mobilization program: $100,000

* To lobby Congress for our legislative agenda and achieve victory in the project described above, we have just printed 40,000 full-color glossy informational brochures to ship to our chapter leaders for them to distribute. … By April 15th, we would like to print 150,000 more of these brochures. Cost: $17,500

Congressional Voting Record Research

* We are poised to commission an extensive research study of the voting records of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on issues relating to national security, terrorism, and the advance of Islamofascism. … The total cost for these programs is $195,500. I know that sounds like a lot of money – But if you think about it, it’s a small price to pay for us to start rolling back the tide of Islamofascism. …

As Brigitte tallies her donations, she is facing a much more serious problem than three unconvincing Christian convert upstarts trying to crowd her in the Souk (marketplace) of hate speech. She is facing the application of US libel laws with the distinct prospect of spending a lot of time in courtrooms in the coming years explaining to American juries why her patently malicious and false writings and rantings should be protected speech under American law.

The problem legal specialists see is that Brigitte has opened herself up to countless libel suits by her outrageously false and malicious statements and actions aimed at inciting hostility against Arabs and Muslims as well as their supporters in America. While Islamophobes like Eric Cantor and Tom Tancredo are said to adore her, some in Congress are pulling back and counseling Brigitte to “cool it a bit.”

According to one source at ACT, who insists on not being named because the Maid “can be a little vindictive,” Brigitte has been distressed about this problem for more than a year, especially since her new book is being delayed by the same New York publisher St. Martin’s Press who issued her first book, and she is counting on the fire in this book to restore her ranking to #1 in the war against ‘American Islamofascism.’

Her editor has told her that the publisher is very nervous about the possibility of a raft of law suits for defamation and that it’s potentially a big problem.

A natural at “Legislative Solutions,” Brigitte contemplates a Congressional race in 2010

“Not to worry,” Brigitte cheerily explained following a huddle with some of her advisors, “the solution was right in front of our noses all the time. “Duh. We must change the law!”

ACT’s office manager replied, “no problem.”

If the dear reader will glance at Brigitte’s website, www.actforamerica.org, her “urgent messages” over the past three months make sense. Supporters of Israel have done Brigitte and her publisher a huge favor when they had Assemblyman Lancman and Senator Skelos introduce into the New York State Legislature just what the doctor ordered. It is called the Libel Terrorism Protection Act.

According to Brigitte’s website, the Libel Terrorism Protection Act legislation is as important as it is simple — “protect New York authors like me and publishers from lawsuits filed in foreign court jurisdictions that are intended to intimidate and silence exposure of terrorism and enablers of terrorism.” On her February 8, 2008, posting, Brigitte claims that “Our cherished rights of free speech and press are under assault by libel terrorism.”

Brigitte has begun circulating a petition to pressure Albany lawmakers to approve the measure. As of February 15, she claims 6,500 signatures but writes “that it would be so great to get 10,000 by March 5.”

The Legislation is designed protect Brigitte and she bets that her New York supporters would welcome her to the neighborhood if the legislation is found not to cover her in Virginia. Her friends assume that AIPAC can find her an available and safe district to run for Congress in 2010.

If “Brigitte’s Law” passes in New York, it is a done deal that the likes of Rep. Rita Lowery and Anthony Weiner will introduce it in Congress to try to make the protection national.

Quo Vadis Brigitte?

Preaching her repellent idea of patriotism and American values, while condemning nearly 20 percent of humanity as subhuman, Brigitte Gabriel appears oblivious to the fact that she is among the last people who should be lecturing America on subjects as patriotism and loyalty to one’s country given her intense collaboration with Israel during and since its occupation of Lebanon.

If anyone is a terrorist sympathizer — if anyone is disloyal to her country for religious or ideological reasons — surely it is Brigitte Gabriel, the Dark Maid from Marjayoun.

Her former neighbors could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps she suffers from a virulent form of Stockholm Syndrome, wherein she identifies with and supports decades of Israeli terrorism against her country, her people, and her religion.

Her message of hate, ridicule, and incitement to action against Islam is akin to shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre, and constitutes egregious and condemnable hate speech. Her rantings are fundamentally un-American, un-Lebanese, and un-Christian. Her campaign should be vigorously rejected by all people of good-will, including those seeking simplistic explanations and solutions for the consequences of a catastrophic Bush Administration Middle East policy, which has caused so much death, destruction and desperation across the region.

Franklin Lamb is author of the recently released book Syria’s Endangered Heritage: An International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect. He is currently based in Beirut and Damascus and reachable at fplamb@gmail.com. Read other articles by Franklin.

15 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Jim R. said on February 23rd, 2008 at 8:59pm #

    Why does the Talmud profess that the Jews are the only people to have souls and are of God, yet the back handed statement of Brigitte Gabriel to Christians. I’ve grown up around Jews that both consider we Christians filth or equals. Her discourse is of the former and she probably knew she was lying. That kind of statement is one that all 3 contemporary faiths reject.

    Thank you for showing her statement for what it is, trash talk from someone that considers all other faiths, people without a soul.

  2. jaime said on February 23rd, 2008 at 10:11pm #

    Well, well, well. Elsewhere here on the People’s Voice for the struggle for peace and social justice, Komrade Ray was giving this writer a hard time about whether the IDF reached the Litani River during the 2006 Lebanon war.

    He also insisted that Hezbollah “won.”

    If this above is winning…then it will be interesting to see what happens when they lose.

    * More than 500 villages destroyed or damaged

    * 30,000 private homes totally destroyed

    * 32,000 homes with major damage

    * 70,000 homes with minor damage

    * 137 bridges and overpasses bombed

    * 26 fuel stations and 3 main fuel-storage tanks destroyed

    * 950 large businesses and 2,800 smaller ones obliterated

    * 23 large factories—milk and candy producers among them— destroyed

    * 330 main and secondary water distribution networks bombed

    * 186 purification, chlorination, storage and pumping stations bombed

    * 150 electrical transformers bombed

    * 50 health-care facilities destroyed or severely damaged

    * 150 km of coastline contaminated with oil

    * 350 schools damaged or destroyed

    * 950,000 of her countrymen displaced

    * Almost 1,450 killed and 4,500 wounded

  3. Mulga Mumblebrain said on February 23rd, 2008 at 10:55pm #

    God, evil is instantly identifiable, is it not. The deranged, genocidal anti-Islamic hatemongering of this odious creature and the Judeofascist and Christian Zionist monsters who promote her, and everyone’s favourite shirtlifter, little jaime ithh his trademark luxuriating in the murder and destruction of Moslem untermenschen. The analogies with Nazism are myriad, and let’s face it, ideologies of extreme racial supremacism and the raising of mass murder to a quasi- religious obligation, are bound to be very alike in essence and execution.
    No doubt this deranged hatemonger will make a trip to these shores some time soon. The local Judeofascist establishment, with its media headquarters in Murdoch’s national daily and hate-rag ‘The Fundament’ specialises in this type of extreme hatemongering, so clearly preparatory to some explosion of mass murder and extermination. It is of course true that the forces of Israeli and US neo-Nazism have already killed millions throughout the Middle East and Africa, yet the blood-lust seems only to be growing. The myriad exhortations in the Old Testament to exterminate ‘God’s’ enemies down to the last woman and child seem to be in danger of being put into ghastly practice. Little jaime will really cream his jeans then.

  4. Hue Longer said on February 24th, 2008 at 2:37am #

    wow jaime…

    you have a moral and intellectual inability to see how victory can look anything different than mass murder. It’s like listening to a goulish US American hating the resolve of the Vietnamese to push the invaders out, comforting his ego by bragging about the attrition and destruction the people suffered.

    Is there anyone smarter than you in your household who can caution you on your idiocy which hurts your cause? You’d be a much better apologist were you to just keep it simple and lie.

  5. Michael Kenny said on February 24th, 2008 at 10:24am #

    Ms Gabriel is, or was, a Maronite and the Maronites are Catholics, Mr Lamb’s rather odd formulation (“Greek Orthodox and Maronite Christians, and Greek Catholics”) notwithstanding. Indeed, the Maronite Partiarch is a cardinal!

    Ms Gabriel’s reference to “Allah, which is very different from the God we believe in” runs flatly counter to the teaching of the Catholic Church. “Allah” is nothing more than the Arabic word for “God”, just as “Dieu” is the French word, and I was taught in Catholic school that all Abrahamic religions worship the same God. There is a small band of American Catholic dissidents who espouse the line adopted by Ms Gabriel, but they are totally out of sync with the Church, not just worldwide, but even within the US.

    “God is love” is a classic Catholic idea, and I don’t know enough about Islam to comment on Islamic morality, but I never cease to be shocked by the essentially hate and vengence-driven morality of those who base themselves primarily or exclusively on the Old Testament. I don’t see the logic of Catholics associating with such people!

  6. jimmy ray said on February 24th, 2008 at 4:07pm #

    i have read this article with disbelief at the amount of disinformation and factual ignorance of lebanese history both ancient and recent. in fact the material is so unreal that one has to wonder what motivates lamb to say what he says. being of lebanese origin allows me to be better informed about lebanon and all the local and regional players in this deadly game . it really has nothing to do with metaphysics at all. it is about totalitarian hegemony in the name of some diety, aparthied based on religion rather than skin color and most basically raping looting and pillging in the name of said diety figure. the hatred due to the intensive brainwashing is enormous and unparalleled in any other ideology. the violence is a way of life and yet the lamb lambastes the victim and victimizes the centuries ongoing perpetrator. what folly . the left had always played a dirty game in the middle east . millions of people were killed in egypt iraq and other countries back in the fifties and sixties under communists or socialist outfits before the new wave of allahy killings started in the nineties mostly but also in eighties in lebanon which was and still is a forerunner of things to come.
    shame on you lamb for this fact twisting peice of smear journalism. you do a great disservice to lebanon and frankly your hatred and prejudice show through and through

  7. Ray Ralph said on February 24th, 2008 at 4:45pm #

    In 2006, the Israeli Air Force flew repeated bombing raids over Lebanon which caused the horrible carnage and mass murder of the innocent Lebanese civilians described in the article above. Despite the commission of these terrible and criminal acts, the IDF was not able to get sufficient ground forces five miles into southern Lebanon, however, so that they could seize control of the Litani River and divert its waters to Israel (this was one of the main motivations, perhaps the main one, behind Israel’s criminal attack). The IDF’s attempt to penetrate Lebanon with sufficient force to carry out their nefarious scheme. They were repelled (defeated!!) by Hezbollah! What Israel did win from its bad behavior was continuing status in the eyes of most of the world’s people as a criminal and pariah nation.

  8. hp said on February 25th, 2008 at 9:01am #

    Standard issue for the IDF now is piss proof under wear, when further conflict with , or even the mention of the name Hezbollah, arises.

  9. Pierre said on February 25th, 2008 at 9:50am #

    The primary objective for the war was to dismantle Hizbollah completely, and instill large demographic changes.
    Given that Israel failed to export the war to enemy territory and keep it out of Israeli territory, rockets were still falling in the hundereds during the last day of the “ceasefire” and that the war lasted for 33 days, much longer than any of Israel’s previous “wars”, than yes Israel did not achieve its goals.

  10. Shabnam said on February 25th, 2008 at 1:17pm #

    Shame on those illiterate Zionists who do not know who killed so many people in the name of fighting against communism in the Middle East and elsewhere. They have already forgotten that majorities of the states in the middle east were under control and influence of the US and its puppets who were carrying orders including killing their own citizens to support the “prosperous west” which has been continued to the present. Over 30,000 Iraqi people were killed by the puppets installed and influenced by the colonial and imperials powers and their war criminals residing in US, Israel, Britain and France. Thousand of people were killed with the same excuses under directorship of grand war criminals such as Kissinger, McNamara, Clark, Holbrook, Albright, Sharon, and ……….
    It is interesting to see people can not belief their own brutality and act of terrorism when it is presented to them since the population of these states benefits from deaths of others and they prefer to stay in the state of denial not to face the challenges against their way of life which is based on robbery and act of terrorism against others.
    Why don’t you read another article about the same Zioneofascist, Brigitte Gabriel, which was posted last year on this site? The author wrote:
    “Ms. Gabriel has made a decadent living over the years, selling herself out to zioneocon “think-tanks,” and commands the highest of fees for her apparent ability to hold unassuming and gullible audiences captive with her well-scripted and well-rehearsed black propaganda and bald-faced lies about Arabs, Muslims and Middle Eastern history and politics.1 It should therefore come as no surprise that she is also a regular contributor on FOX and CNN as a “Middle East expert”.
    https://dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/brigitte-gabriel-on-terrorism-it-takes-one-to-know-one/

  11. Made in America said on February 25th, 2008 at 7:57pm #

    You’re a moronic muslim delusional lunatic.

    Your terrorist radical world view will disappear with the rest
    of your terrorist slaves.

  12. Hue Longer said on February 26th, 2008 at 1:33am #

    trollific!

  13. hp said on February 27th, 2008 at 9:43am #

    Maybe he just got it backwards, Jaime.
    I mean, actions speak louder than words..

  14. Shir Sayed said on March 21st, 2008 at 2:26pm #

    I cannot believe the venom of this writer, Mr. Franklin Lamb, against a woman calling her dark maid!!!! a brave Arab American, who speaks her heart out after 3000 fellow Americans were killed by the same people who are terrorizing the Middle East and the whole world. Is Mr. Lamb unaware of what the whole world is suffering from? Does he see the high price budgets of all countries around the world to fight Islamic (yes Mr. Lamb) Islamic terrorism. If Mr. Lamb calls Brigitte doing this for power and money of the Zionist Lobby, then he must be also doing the same favor to the Muslim and Arab lobby. If he accuses her of being paid by the zionists, then we can also accuse him of being under the Arab lobby pay roll. Shame on you Lamb you are more hateful in this article than anything Brigitte has ever said. I am an Arab American and not like Brigitte, a Christian, but a Muslim and I stand in support of Brigitte. As to you Mr. Lamb, you will never get it until you can live under the horrors of the Islamic State.

  15. Sali said on November 8th, 2008 at 12:19pm #

    Interesting article!let’s analyse the statements being made !
    im a bit delayed… i only received the link today but anyways. a

    The difference, my dear Christian friends, between Israel and the Arab world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. exactly arabs are know for their horrific acts which can be defined as barbarism! I’m impressed that you chose a quote from Mohammad’s hadith.. it must have been really difficult for you to find that quote. Good job.what about other quotes where he spreads the message of dying for the sake of Allah.isnt that a contradiction where mohammad supposedly is spreading the message of “peace” since Islam is the arabic root for salam which means peace.anyways thats not really important!

    the invading Israeli forces in 1978 installed near the town center its proxy militia, the so-called South Lebanon Army (SLA). now let’s go back in history. why did israel come to lebanon? it didnt invade lebanon. You have mentioned the Lebanese Forces. let me tell you more about them.
    The “Lebanese Forces” was created as a result of excruciating circumstances in Lebanon in late seventies when the Lebanese Christian community felt the need to defend itself against impending internal and external dangers and threats. These dangers were amplified by the fact that the government with its entire infrastructure proved to be impotent in containing the Palestinian military presence in Lebanon, which threatened Lebanon’ sovereignty and independence. The resistance forces consisted of several separate factions: the Phalangists, The National Liberal Party, Al-Tanzeem Party and the Guardians of The Cedars, who took a multi-lateral decision on August 1976 to consolidate the war efforts and to establish a unified resistance military council under the command of the late Lebanese president “Bashir Gemayel”.
    Their goal was to liberate the Lebanese Territory from all foreign troops.

    The PLO. Palestinian Liberation organization (Terrorists)
    seized many areas of Lebanon, where it brutalized the population and usurped Lebanese government authority.
    The torture that they implied on Christians was indescribable. They performed many massacres .. and by performing I don’t mean just killing! They used to get the mothers and daughters and rape them in front of the husband/father .. chop them into pieces and throw them. They used to bring a child , tie on leg to the father and the other to the mother and pull the parents till the child came apart. And every time they would murder a person, they would stab him with a wooden cross in the stomach and say “let your cross save you now”. These included the Damour massacre in which Palestinians massacred Christian inhabitants of the coastal town 20 miles south of Beirut, so the christians retaliated and the massacred around 3,000 Palestinian civilians and refugees during three days with Israeli forces’ knowledge and logistic helpWhile all this was happening, the only country that came to aid the Christians was Israel. Israel supported the Lebanese Forces and assisted them in the war by arming them and training their men. So the Lebanese Forces went to the Palestinian Refugee Camps – the “office” of the PLO and basically killed them. That’s when the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon.

    After all these events occurred. Israel moved out of Beirut to the South of Lebanon and many of the Lebanese Forces soldiers followed as it provided them with a shelter and money to fulfill their daily needs.AND we have moved on to a more peaceful Lebanon, till HEZBALLA was created! Hezballa is an Iranian . Syrian terrorist organization, they wanted to apparently kick Israel out however their main goal was to make Lebanon a muslim shiite country. they are radical muslims, terrorists that want to take over everything by force!~ and their Leader have said personally that “the only solution for Lebanon is the Muslim Shi’i solution”
    They kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and declared war on Israel which resulted in the total destruction of Lebanon !

    “she has been organizing perhaps the most vicious hate campaign against Islam, Arabs, and Muslims ever witnessed in America”.— these are not hating campaigns, she is simply stating facts from her experiences and warning poeple! we christians sympathyse alot with others and as a lebanese christian, i am taught to love others and not to discriminate against them. but how can i not hate muslims? when i am raised in a society that is full of muslim terror, where poeple slaughter you just because you don;t agree with their radical muslim idelogy! im sorry my friend this is not hate campaigns, these are facts that the media does not show you!

    “The SLA and the Israeli army quickly constructed the notorious regional detention center just down the road at Khiam, where systematic torture has been 9documented ” do you know why the detention centre was established and who was tortured? Israel did NOT establish the SLA, the SLA was a group of soldiers from the Lebanese army sent to the south to control the area… from the time this group joined forces with israel , Israel has never thrown a rocket, never went past the south and never atatcked civilians! Hezballa used to send poeple to plant roadside bombs, bombs in cars ,attack the SLA and kill their children! and those who have been caught are the ones that were tortured in the dentention centre. Don;’t you think it is fair? thats the least they deserve when they decide to take someone;s life!
    “as a Lebanese she is totally Arab,” Incorrect my friend . Lebanese people are NOT arabs!The Arabs are the people who inhabit the Arab Peninsula (Kuwait, Arab Gulf emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen, even Jordan and Syria).
    The Arabic culture is the way of life the people of those countries live, their language, their traditions, their politics, their education and their religions.
    The majority of Lebanese people are not Arabs; they are the descendent of the Phoenicians. After comparing the DNA from a number of Lebanese and comparing it with the DNA collected from the Phoenicians, the latest research compiled by the National Geographic states that 75% of Lebanese are descendants of the Phoenicians.
    Lebanon is incorrectly considered as an Arab country, when historical facts are there to prove that the Phoenicians (the Lebanese ancestors) were the original inhabitants of the land. A civilisation, which roots go back to 6000 years ago.
    THE ANCIENT LEBANESE DID NOT ARRIVE FROM THE ARAB PENINSULA OR THE PERSIAN GULF OR THE RED SEA.
    And just because Lebanon joined the League of Arab States for political reasons, or signed the Taef record.. IT SHOULDNT BE CONFUSED AS AN ARAB COUNTRY.

    “carnage caused by more than 16,000 Israeli attacks on more than 7,400 targets” and you also claim the Hezballa freed the south and consider 2006 war a victory. Lots of bullshit i tell ya!
    we know what Israel did in the recent war with Lebanon, we know the amount of cluster bombs dropped on civilians. we know the number of civilians killed by Israel and the whole world watching, we saw the bodies, and we have seen the children who were killed or displaced or maimed, by Israeli arms.
    however who are we to blame? Hasan Nasrallah is the one who kidnapped the soldiers and he is the one that declared war. Hezballa are the ones who gave israel the “green light” to do whatever they wanted to do. they did not defend the country in any possible way… they simply brought all the problems towards us! did not do anything… they claim to have kicked Israel out… please we will know that Israel withdrew itself not for the sake of hezballa.. and 2006 was not a victory- IT IS SIMPLY …. A GREAT LOSS TO LEBANON AND TO ALL LEBANESE

    FRANKLIN LAMB- as an advice from a lebanese person. don’t write just for the sake of writing. YOU ARE NOT IN LEBANON AND SIMPLY CANT SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. GOOGLE IS NOT THE GREATEST SOURCE TO GET FACTS…. THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT OCCUR THAT WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MENTION!

    PEACE TO ALL !