Brigitte Gabriel - Speaks the Truth at Duke University on 10-14
Posted: 10/22/2004 9:13:00 AM
Author: Brigitte Gabriel, Lebanese Christian
Source: http://www.standwithus.com


Remarks of Brigitte Gabriel

Delivered at the Duke University
Counter Terrorism Speak out
October 14, 2004

 I'm proud and honored to stand here today as a Lebanese speaking for
 Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised
 in an Arabic country I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the
 Arabic world.

 I was raised in Lebanon where I was taught that the Jews were evil,
 Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the
 Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

 When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in
 1975, they started massacring the Christians city after city. I ended up
 living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity,
 eating grass to live and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

 It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was
 wounded by a Moslems shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for
 treatment. When we entered the emergency room I was shocked at what I
 saw. They were hundreds of people wounded -- Moslems, Palestinians,
 Christian Lebanese and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors
 treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before
 they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion,
 they didn't see political affiliation.  They saw people in need and they helped.

 For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know
 my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values
 of the Israelis who were able to love their enemy in their most trying
 moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital.  Those days changed my life
 and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to
 television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government
 about the Jews and Israel that was so far from reality. I knew for a fact
 that if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital I would be lynched and
 thrown over to the grounds as shouts of joy of Allahu Akbar, God Is
 Great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

 I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers -- one
 in particular Rina, her only child, was wounded in his eyes.

 One day I was visiting with her and the Israeli army band came to play
 national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they
 surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started
 crying. I felt out of place and started walking out of the room, and this
 mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me.
 She holds me crying and says: "It is not your fault." We just stood
 there crying, holding each other's hands.

 What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old
 only child, and still able to love me the enemy, and between a Moslem
 mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a
 few Jews or Christians.

 The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in
 values and character. It's barbarism verses civilization. It's democracy
 verses dictatorship. It's goodness verses evil.

 Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell
 for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional
 murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian "armed struggle."

 However, once such behavior is legitimized against Israel, it is
 legitimized everywhere in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective
 belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the
 purpose of killing children in the name of God.

 Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering
 innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the
 whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York,
 from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan.  They blame suicide bombing on
 "desperation of occupation."  Let me tell you the truth. The first major
 terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten
 weeks before Israel even became independent.

 On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel's
 independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben
 Yehuda Street in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four
 people were killed and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab
 terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation," but by the VERY
 THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

 So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and
 done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and
 defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious
 bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up and support and defend the
 state of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

 Thank you

Good post.

Spoken by someone who actually knows something about the area vs...

the removed biased media.