[Mb-civic] Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel

[Michael Butler]

Pamela Surtees sent this:


  Because They Hate
By Brigitte  Gabriel
<http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=2779>
 FrontPageMagazine.com | February 20,  2006
 
[Editor's Note: Below are selected excerpts from Brigitte Gabriel's speech
delivered at the Intelligence Summit  in Washington DC, Saturday February
18, 2006]. 
  

  
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 ³Allah Akbar!² 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 one 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 Islamists¹ 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 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  ³engage² our terrorist enemies,
that we must ³address their  grievances². 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, America¹s 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.
  
 

 
 

Brigitte Gabriel is an expert on the Middle East conflict and lectures
nationally and internationally on the subject. She's the  former news anchor
of World News for Middle East television and the founder  of
AmericanCongressforTruth.com.