Different Worlds, Different Values
Remarks of Brigitte
Gabriel
to be 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 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 waking 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 versus
civilization. It’s democracy versus dictatorship. It’s goodness versus
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 every
where 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” or
“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.
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