Zionists Out of the Peace Movement

Paid professional Muslim and Arab-hater Brigitte Gabriel was the focus of a softball interview in the August 17 New York Times by Deborah Solomon. I have already written in some detail about the flaws, gaps, and contradictions in Gabriel's personal story in "Report on Brigitte Gabriel Talk" and in less detail in "Islam-Basher Brigitte Gabriel to Visit Ann Arbor on 12/4." Below are parts of the recent interview with my comments interspersed in italics. Solomon's questions appear in bold and Gabriel's answers are in plain text.

As a Lebanese-Christian immigrant who spent her girlhood amid the bloody devastation of the Lebanese civil war, you have lately emerged as one of the most vehement critics of radical Islam in this country. Are you concerned that your new book, “They Must Be Stopped,” will feed animosity toward Muslims? I do not think I am feeding animosity. I am bringing an issue to light. I disapprove of any religion that calls for the killing of other people. If Christianity called for that, I would condemn it.

PM: So-called "radical Islam" is largely a response to global neo-imperialism spearheaded primarily by Christians and Jews. If you want to stop the resistance, you must stop the oppression. The West could start by ending its military occupation of Muslim and/or Arab countries, e.g. Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This would end the near encirclement of Iran, too. The next step would be to end the diplomatic, military, and, in some cases, financial support of undemocratic, repressive countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Persian Gulf emirates, and Pakistan.

Of course, the goal of Gabriel and her ilk are quite the contrary: To impose more subservient authoritarian regimes on the Muslim and Arab world and to decimate any regimes that cannot be brought into submission. Far be it for Solomon to actually delve into these subjects let alone question Gabriel's unbelievable personal narrative.

Questions Solomon should have asked: Isn't true that the US and Israel have killed far more people than "radical Islam"? Why did you write in FrontPage magazine that you drank your own blood to survive when you were a child in Lebanon, I mean, c'mon?

What about all the moderate Muslims who represent our hope for the future? Why don’t you write about them? The moderate Muslims at this point are truly irrelevant. I grew up in the Paris of the Middle East, and because we refused to read the writing on the wall, we lost our country to Hezbollah and the radicals who are now controlling it.

PM: French troops didn't leave Lebanon until 1946 and two years later some Lebanese troops joined with other Arab forces in the struggle for the "establishment of a unitary Palestinian State, in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, [and whereby] minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognised in democratic constitutional countries," as stated in the Arab League Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine. So, from the outset there was opposition within the "Paris of the Middle East" to the Zionist project of Jewish supremacism but for thirty pieces of silver the Maronite leaders (like the Hashemite Jordanian monarch) betrayed their Lebanese and Palestinian brothers and sisters in the fight against a larger, better equipped, better-trained, and better-led Zionist force.

Gabriel is a Maronite Christian who bemoans the loss of the domination of Lebanon by her people. It is not enough for her that, under the Taif Accord, Maronites are guaranteed, by quota, 34 out of 128 seats--the largest single bloc--in the National Assembly and currently are part of the majority March 14 Alliance.

In your new book, you write about the Muslim presence in America and bemoan the rise of Islamic day schools and jihad summer camp. Is there really such a thing? Yes. Instead of taking lessons on swimming and gymnastics, the kids are listening to speakers give lectures titled “Preparation for Death” and “The Life in the Grave."

PM: Gabriel is not a credible source on this and her answer provides zero evidence. On the other hand, as documented by Chris Hedges in "Summer Camp Teaches U.S. Teens To Fight Israeli Style" some Jews teach their kids who and how to kill. This kind of militancy includes a local synagogue here in southeast Michigan. Of course, the sins of Jewish parents don't justify the sins of anyone else but it's funny how you almost never hear about Jews teaching their kids to hate and kill.

You also lament the public foot baths that have been installed at the University of Michigan and elsewhere to accommodate Muslim students. I lived in the Middle East for the first 24 years of my life. Never once did I see any foot-washing basins in airports or public buildings. So why are they pushing them down the throats of Americans? ...

PM: Question Solomon should have asked: The government spends billions of American taxpayer dollars on that "shitty little country"--the Jewish state--where there is no separation of synagogue and state and you are complaining about foot baths? Not to mention state government-enforced kosher food laws in places like New York.

Are your parents still in Lebanon? I became an orphan at the age of 23. Both my parents are buried in Israel, on Mount Zion, with Oskar Schindler.

Why did you bury them in Israel? I wanted to honor my parents. After all, it is the Holy Land. And I wanted to ensure that both my children will know where my loyalty lies — with Israel, because Israel for me represents democracy, respect and human rights, something that no other country in the Arabic world offers.

PM: In fact, Israel is an apartheid state, check out these laws and consider also that for more than forty years Israel has forcibly ruled Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now totalling more than 4 million, who have no vote or rights as citizens with regard to the people who control major aspects of their lives. Then, too, there are 4.5 million UN-registered Palestinian refugees (figure includes refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza and outside Mandate Palestine) denied by Israel their human right to return to home.

And if Israel is such a grand place then why did so many former members of the Maronite-led, pro-Israel South Lebanon Army, living legally in Israel, want to leave the promised land and return to Lebanon? And why, just this month, are some them protesting the deprivation and discrimination they suffer in Israel?

Are you an agent of the U.S. government? No.

PM: Gabriel lived and worked in Israel for many years. It might make just as much sense to ask if she is an agent of the Israeli government. Whatever her formal relationship, she certainly functions as an Israeli agent.

Are you underwritten by the C.I.A.? No. Are you kidding? In 2000, I voted for Al Gore.

PM: As if voting for Al Gore (if she really did) means anything at all in this context. Gabriel has, in the past at least, been underwritten by the Rev. Pat Robertson, who has been thick as thieves with some of the CIA's minions. When I first heard Gabriel speak in 2006 I tried to ask her, "What is your relationship to Pat Robertson?" but that question was not approved by the screeners. At that time, the mailing address for Gabriel's American Congress for Truth was a post office box with the same zip code--23456--as Robertson's Virginia Beach media headquarters.

But I see that R. James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., serves on the board of American Congress for Truth, your educational foundation. We also have John Loftus, a staunch Democrat and former Justice Department prosecutor. We are not Red or Blue.

PM: From the web site of said "staunch Democrat" (as if that meant anything in this context):

"It is possible that John Loftus may know more intelligence secrets than anyone alive. As a former Justice Department prosecutor, Loftus once held some of the highest security clearances in the world, with special access to NATO Cosmic, CIA codeword, and Top Secret Nuclear files. As a private attorney, he works without charge to help hundreds of intelligence agents obtain lawful permission to declassify and publish the hidden secrets of our times. ...

"As a young U.S. Army officer, John Loftus helped train Israelis on a covert operation that turned the tide of battle in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. During the Carter and Reagan Administrations, he investigated CIA cases and Nazi War Criminals for the Attorney General of the United States. In 1982, his "60 Minutes" expose of Nazis on the US government payroll won the Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism.

"Born in Boston, Loftus now lives in St. Petersburg where he volunteers as the first Irish Catholic President of the Florida Holocaust Museum, the fifth largest in the world. Their goal is to end racism in our children's lifetime. After recovering from colon cancer, he is now completing his fifth book, a look at the Middle East through the life of Jonathan Pollard. ..."

The rest of the questions and/or answers were stupid and/or irrelevant.

Labels: Brigitte Gabriel, Islam bashing, Israel, Lebanon, Pat Robertson