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She frequently speaks at ] ]-leaning organizations such as ], ], ] and ] groups.<ref name=Gabrielp205>{{harvnb|Gabriel|2006|p=205}}</ref> She frequently speaks at ] ]-leaning organizations such as ], ], ] and ] groups.<ref name=Gabrielp205>{{harvnb|Gabriel|2006|p=205}}</ref>


Stephen Lee, the publicist at ] for Gabriel’s second book, called her views "extreme".<ref>{{cite news| url=http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/a-radical-islamophobe/?apage=2#comments | work=The New York Times | title=A Radical Islamophobe? | first=Clark | last=Hoyt | date=2008-08-21 | accessdate=2010-04-26}}</ref> Gabriel said she gives voice to "what many in America are thinking but afraid to say out loud, for fear of being labeled a ], bigot, ], or intolerant."<ref name=Gabrielp205/> Brigitte Gabriel has been also called "deranged". Omar Baddar called her anti-Semite based on viewpoints she expressed during her speeches. Stephen Lee, the publicist at ] for Gabriel’s second book, called her views "extreme".<ref>{{cite news| url=http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/a-radical-islamophobe/?apage=2#comments | work=The New York Times | title=A Radical Islamophobe? | first=Clark | last=Hoyt | date=2008-08-21 | accessdate=2010-04-26}}</ref> Gabriel said she gives voice to "what many in America are thinking but afraid to say out loud, for fear of being labeled a ], bigot, ], or intolerant."<ref name=Gabrielp205/>


==Early life== ==Early life==

Revision as of 23:43, 12 February 2012

‎

Brigitte Gabriel
Born (1964-10-21) October 21, 1964 (age 60)
Marjayoun, Marjeyoun District, Lebanon
Other namesNour Saman
(alternative nom de plume)
Occupation(s)Author
Activist
Years active1986-present
WebsiteAmerican Congress for Truth, ACT! for America

Brigitte Gabriel (a.k.a. Nour Saman, born October 21, 1964) is the pseudonym, of a Lebanese American journalist, author, and activist. Gabriel says that Islam keeps countries backward, and that it teaches terrorism. In order to promote such views, Gabriel founded the American Congress For Truth and ACT! for America so that citizens may "fearlessly speak out in defense of America, Israel and Western civilization."

She frequently speaks at American conservative-leaning organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, Christians United for Israel, Evangelicals and Jewish groups.

Stephen Lee, the publicist at St. Martins Press for Gabriel’s second book, called her views "extreme". Gabriel said she gives voice to "what many in America are thinking but afraid to say out loud, for fear of being labeled a racist, bigot, Islamophobic, or intolerant."

Early life

Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjayoun District in Lebanon to a Christian family.

Gabriel recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and bombed her home, and consequently she and her parents were forced to live in an 8'x10' bomb shelter underground for seven years with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water and little food. To get water she states that she had to crawl in a ditch alongside a road to a spring in order to evade Muslim snipers. She also said her home was destroyed by a shell in a militant attack, and that the bomb shelter was all that remained.

In 1978, Gabriel says a man warned her family of an impending attack on Christians by militias. She says that her life was saved that night when Israelis invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and was taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel noted the humanity of the Israelis in contrast to the propaganda against the Jews she says she saw as a child.

Critics of Gabriel say that her biographical account is riddled with factual inaccuracies, and that she misrepresents the conflict in South Lebanon as a Muslim war against Christians when it was in fact much more complicated - Muslims and Christians were represented both among the Palestinian secular nationalists and their supporters who used South Lebanon as a base of operations against Israel, and among those who collaborated with Israel to put an end to the Palestinian influence and presence there. While Gabriel claims that she lived for seven years in a bomb shelter, her former neighbors in Marjayoun recall that her family, like others in the village, might have spent a few nights in their shelter or basement at times, but that they otherwise lived relatively normally. Gabriel also used to tell audiences that Hezbollah was the group that terrorized her family for the seven years between 1975 and 1982. She stopped making this claim after people objected, pointing out that Hezbollah was formed after she left Lebanon, as a direct result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of 1982.

After graduating from high school, Gabriel completed a one-year business administration course at a YWCA in 1984.

Career

Using the name Nour Saman, Gabriel was a news anchor for World News, an Arabic-language evening news broadcast of Middle East Television, a Marjayoun-based station that was run by the now defunct SLA and funded by Israel. Broadcast in Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, through her work there, Gabriel covered the Israeli withdrawal from central Lebanon, the Israeli Security Zone (occupied South Lebanon), and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. Gabriel moved to Israel before immigrating to the United States in 1989 where she founded a television production, marketing and advertising agency.

According to the Center for International Policy (CIP), Gabriel, "has made a post-9/11 career out of roundly denouncing Islam, decrying 'political correctness,' and promoting the concept of an existential clash of cultures. The CIP aso states that, "Her pro-Israel, anti-Islam spiel, coupled with her compelling personal history, has made her a popular speaker, writer, and general 'expert.' She appears sometimes as a commentator on television news and radio programs, often speaking out for the rights of Muslim women."

ACT! For America and American Congress for Truth

Gabriel is the founder of ACT! for America, a non-profit issues advocacy organization. ACT! for America has hundreds of chapters across America and members in 20 countries outside of America. She is also the founder of American Congress for Truth, a non-profit organization which denounces Islamic fundamentalism.

Other affiliations

Gabriel is also a member of the Board of Advisors of The Intelligence Summit and lectures nationally and internationally on Global Terrorism. She has addressed former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, Members of the U.S. Congress, The Joint Forces Staff College, The United States Special Operations Command, the FBI and members of the House of Commons in London.

Gabriel is listed as a member of the Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau, a pro-Israeli advocacy group, on their website; but has denied being a member of that organization.

Authorship

Gabriel is the author of two books: Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, and They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It. She is a regular guest analyst on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC and various radio stations daily across America.

Because They Hate

In her first book Gabriel discusses her experiences as a Maronite (Eastern Catholic) Christian living in Lebanon during the civil war in the 1970s. She describes the story of her family and her childhood, hiding in a bomb shelter. She details her opinions that her country's inherent multicultural acceptance of all faiths and cultures including the then dominant Lebanese Christian phalangists, led to Lebanon's ruin by the continuous attacks from indigenous Muslims, other Christian groups and migrant Palestinians.

Gabriel comments that "anyone who voices his or her opinion contrary to 'politically correct think' is immediately tagged" a "racist" or "bigot" and that this has resulted in a "social paranoia which discourages free thought and expression." Moreover, she states that societies and cultures must be held accountable for their actions and that "by not judging others... we have helped create the monsters we are dealing with today."

The book made The New York Times hardcover best seller list. According to the introduction of the 2008 edition of Because They Hate, the book was put on the reading list at the FBI Academy and was assigned as mandatory reading for Navy SEALs heading to the Middle East.

They Must Be Stopped

"We, as infidels in the eyes of our enemy, need to understand the danger we face: A totalitarian ideology — whether its origin is mainstream or marginal — threatens to enslave, dominate, and murder us in order to realize its vision for global conquest."

Viewpoints

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Criticism of religion
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Opinions on Islam

Gabriel is critical of Islam and believes that "the degraded state of Arab societies is caused by Islam", and that Arab Muslims are "lagging behind" because of social and religious values. She considers "Islamic terrorists" simply as devout followers of Islam, following an example set by Muhammad's behavior. According to the New York Times, she portrays Islam as "thoroughly bent on destruction and domination" and her message is anti-Islam.

It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be.

— Because They Hate

Deborah Solomon of the New York Times Magazine, who interviewed Gabriel in August 2008, described her as a "radical Islamophobe."

Gabriel is critical of Americans who "find all sorts of things wrong with America", who "badmouth and put down our culture, government, and country", while having "never experienced life in an oppressive culture or under an oppressive leadership such as is found in the Middle East." She believes that Americans should "acknowledge that our Western culture is.. better than others."

In viewing America as "a powerful and great nation" possessing "superior.. culture and values", Gabriel sees the entitlements that American Western culture has bestowed through "the Judeo-Christian value system" and the ideals of the Founding Fathers, who "worked to establish rights for the individual, rights that did not exist under other forms of government at that time."

According to Gabriel, since Radical Islam views the destruction of Israel alongside the United States as "a parallel strategic objective", she therefore sees the survival of Israel as being of paramount importance as a vanguard of Western culture and as "the only Western-style nation in the Middle East, one that Arabs despise, feel threatened by, and vow to destroy."

In a symposium held in January 2009 titled "Homegrown Jihadis" by FrontPage Magazine, she stated Islam itself "promotes intolerance and violence", and that "Moderate Muslims must organize and engage those enlightened, educated and westernized Muslims in the community to begin a dialogue to discuss the possibility of reform in Islam just as Christianity and Judaism have been reformed."

Arab-Israeli conflict

Gabriel views the Arab-Israeli conflict as being "intractable because the Arab world refuses to accept the right of a Jewish state to exist." This animosity, having once been rooted in Pan-Arabism has evolved, according to Gabriel, into the more sinister spectre of "radical Islamic supremacism" which now appears to seek "bigger game in the West." She cites examples such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas as bringing to the forefront radical Islamic ideologies that are rooted in "religious hatred, humiliation, and resentment" of Israel and the West.

Gabriel believes this can be seen in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict where, in her view, Palestinian nationalism has largely been replaced by "holy obligation" motivating adherents to commit "terrorist murder." She states that the legitimization of Palestinian suicide attacks within Israel has now evolved to where, "Islamists believe that they may commit mass murder anywhere in the world to advance their holy cause." As a result, she believes the world now suffers "from a plague of Islamic terrorism... authored and perfected by the Palestinians."

With regard to the two-state solution, Gabriel states: "Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to work unless the Palestinians first are forced to clean up their act and eliminate hatred from their schoolbooks, teach tolerance to their people, and preach acceptance of Israel and the Jews as a neighbor."

Controversy at speaking engagements

When Gabriel was invited to speak as part of a lecture series organized by Duke University's Jewish community in October 2004, many in attendance were angered by her referring to Arabs as "barbarians." The Freeman Centre for Jewish Life at Duke University later apologized for her comments. Following her speech at women's campaign event for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa (JFO) in November 2008, many in attendance registered their protests, leading Mitchell Bellman, president and CEO of the JFO, to write a letter in which he acknowledged that Gabriel made, "unacceptable gross generalizations of Arabs and Muslims," distancing his organization from her views.

In 2007 at the Christians United For Israel annual conference, Gabriel delivered the following speech:

The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It's the difference between good and evil .... this is what we're witnessing in the Arabic world, 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.... because our God is the God of love.

— Christians United For Israel annual conference 2007

This speech was subsequently criticised by journalist Bruce Wilson as being "hate speech" and stated that Brigitte Gabriel "paints a wide swath of humanity as subhuman", comparing her to Goebbel's Reich.

In March 2011 while being interviewed by Eliot Spitzer on CNN, Gabriel defended the speech stating:

I was talking about how Palestinian mothers are encouraging their children to go out and blow themselves up to smithereens just to kill Christians and Jews. And it was in that context that I - that I contrasted the difference between Israel and the Arabic world, was the difference between democracy and barbarism.

She further added:

How easily journalists, or people and comments especially now with the Internet age, can take few words and either paste them together or edit them together to basically express their own point of view.

See also

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References

  1. ^ LAURIE GOODSTEIN (2011-03-07). "Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message". New York Times.
  2. Gabriel 2006, p. 9 "...my tenth birthday, October 21, 1974..."
  3. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 189 "It kills self-expression, self-improvement, and empowerment because the religion demands that Islam be the center of one's life and existence, and it dictates how you should be, how you should live."
  4. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 188 "hey have an ingrained corruption that runs throughout their societies. They respect craftiness and deceit over honesty and virtue. They are consumed with hate for one another."
  5. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 202 " was a warrior who preached violence and the slaughter of thousands in establishing and spreading Islam."
  6. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 203 "he prophet Mohammed, a successful military leader who led his Muslim army against non-Muslims, is an inspiration to almost a billion people around the world."
  7. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 205 "Islamic terrorists are really just very devout followers of Muhammad. They are following his example and doing exactly what the Koran teaches and their mullahs exhort them to do with a daily diet of righteous jihad."
  8. "American Congress for Truth". Mission Statement. American Congress for Truth. Archived from the original on 2008-03-24. Retrieved 2008-04-19. One of the 7 mission statements.
  9. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 205
  10. Hoyt, Clark (2008-08-21). "A Radical Islamophobe?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
  11. Gabriel 2006, p. 44
  12. Brigitte Gabriel Heritage Foundation speech, YouTube, October 18, 2006
  13. "Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America". Heritage Live - Events. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 2008-03-09. Brigitte Gabriel lost her childhood to militant Islam. – speaker profile from lecture series
  14. ^ Lamb, Franklin (6–12 March 2008), "Al-Ahram Weekly", AL-AHRAM (887 ed.), Cairo, retrieved 10 February 2010 {{citation}}: Text "Focus" ignored (help); Text "Lost from Lebanon" ignored (help)
  15. ^ Michael Young (11 March 2011). "The Dark angel Gabriel". NOW Lebanon.
  16. Gabriel 2006, p. 95
  17. LAURIE GOODSTEIN (2011-03-07). "Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message". New York Times.
  18. ^ "ACT! for America". About Ms. Gabriel. ACT! for America. Retrieved 2009-11-05. About Ms. Gabriel.
  19. ^ "Americas Program Profile: Brigitte Gabriel". Center for International Policy (CIP). August 23, 2007. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  20. "Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau". Israelactivism.com. Retrieved 2010-03-07.
  21. Gabriel 2006, pp. 4–6
  22. Gabriel 2006, pp. 13–16
  23. Gabriel 2006, p. 216
  24. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 186 "... stand up and lift your head and be proud of what America and Western culture stand for."
  25. "Hardcover Best Seller List". The New York Times Books. The New York Times Company. 17 November 2006. Retrieved 2008-03-09. The author (who describes herself as an Arab Christian and victim of radical Islam) presents her view of Islamic Terrorism.
  26. Gabriel, 2006, p.xx of the 2008 edition.
  27. Gabriel, 2008, p. 7.
  28. ^ Gabriel 2006, pp. 185–186
  29. ^ Mira Sucharov (December 18, 2009). "Use the anti-Semitism test". Jewish Independent.
  30. ^ Gabriel 2006, p. 184
  31. Gabriel 2006, p. 169
  32. "FrontPageMagazine.com". Symposium: Homegrown Jihadis. FrontPage Magazine. Retrieved 2009-05-09. Symposium held in January 2009.
  33. Gabriel, 2006, p. 173-174.
  34. Gabriel, 2006, p. 181.
  35. Gabriel, 2006, p. 182.
  36. DEENA YELLIN (2009-06-25). "An inside ally". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
  37. ^ Bruce Wilson (15/08/2007). "McCain and Lieberman Frolic At CUFI's Festival Of Hate". Talk2Action. Retrieved 2010-05-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  38. ^ CNN.com Transcripts (2011-03-08). "Brigitte Gabriel's Anti-Islam Message on Radical Muslims". CNN. Retrieved 2011-06-15. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Bibliography

External links

Video

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