Brigitte Gabriel's recent remarks, delivered at the Duke University Counter-Terrorism Speak-Out on Oct. 14 are worth a quoting. "As someone who was raised in an Arabic country," said Gabriel, "I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world."
And what is that heart, according to Gabriel?
"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 or drive them into the sea," she explained.
Gabriel grew up in South Lebanon. Her father was a regional administrator and businessman. During Lebanon's Civil War, in which Muslim Arabs joined with Palestinians to attack Christian Arabs, Gabriel's home was destroyed and her family lost everything. In the midst of the war, Gabriel was surprised to find that the hated Israelis demonstrated "respect, humanity, compassion and generosity that she didn't know existed beyond her immediate family."
According to Gabriel, the Muslim Arabs began to massacre Christian Arabs in 1975. "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." The "Christian" West did not intervene to save the Lebanese Christians. "It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon," Gabriel said. When her mother was wounded and lying in an emergency room, Israeli doctors treated her mother before they treated a wounded Israeli soldier. "They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation; they saw people in need and they helped."
The Muslim world does not share the values of the West. Through firsthand experience Ms. Gabriel discovered that Israel was not the evil country depicted in Arab propaganda. The Israelis were not "devils" bent on destruction. It was the Muslims who were the authors of destruction. The call to slaughter Israelis, heard throughout the Arab countries, closely resembles Hitler's call to eradicate the Jews from Europe. Muslim propaganda against Jews, in fact, borrows heavily from the Nazis. "I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government about the Jews and Israel that was so far from reality," said Gabriel. "I knew for a fact that if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown to the ground as shouts of joy ... would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets."
These are the words of an Arab journalist about Arab Muslims. It is testimony to the fact - a fact many of us have long suspected - that one side in the Arab-Israeli conflict lacks that spirit of reasonableness necessary for the healing of wounds, for the building of a mutual life - in short, for making peace. What is significant for Americans, what must be admitted despite all the wishful thinking in Washington, is the way the Arab mentality has been shaped by ideological hatred. The religious and ethnic bigotry mobilized against Israel is also being mobilized against the United States. Reading the words of Ms. Gabriel, the foolishness of Europe in this matter should also be apparent. No one is so clever as to appease blind hatred. As Yossef Bodansky explained in his book, The High Cost of Peace, "The grassroots outbursts of hatred and violence [in the Middle East] accurately reflect ... preparations for war and sponsorship of terrorism." According to Bodansky, the Arab world never had a change of heart about Israel. They do not accept the existence of the state of Israel. Bodansky, in fact, blames former U.S. President Bill Clinton for making the Arab world "even more virulently radicalized and uncompromisingly hostile to the U.S.-led West." It is always dangerous to admit a point at issue with dangerous fanatics. It is bad policy to negotiate with people who dream of your destruction. Whatever agreement you make, it will be turned against you. The very hope of peace is a weapon in the hand of the fanatic who is determined on war. The Arab Muslims seek the destruction of Israel. The peace process cannot deliver this, and all the Arab leaders know this. "Hence, the key to the survival of the current Arab leaders, and of their chosen heirs and successors, lies in the waging of jihad - the next Arab-Israeli War," Bodansky stated.
Once Israel has been eradicated in a war of mass destruction launched by the Muslim powers of the region, Islam will turn its attention on a centuries-old enemy - European civilization. When Europe awakes from its slumbers, after importing millions of Muslims as cheap labor, it will be compelled to desperate measures. The economic dislocation destined at the point of this inevitable historical turning will be unprecedented. It is now foreseeable that revolutions will sweep Europe. Multicultural utopianism will be eliminated from the continent's political lexicon. If anyone doubts this, they simply haven't read enough history to know that some differences are irreconcilable; and the line between Muslim and non-Muslim, in the way Muslim ideology has evolved into a fully deployed ideology of hate, can only bring war. Europe's annoyance at U.S. policy in Iraq is ultimately founded on the dearly held illusion that European and Arab culture can be melded, peacefully, into a vast and prosperous economic commonwealth. In their weakened state, the Europeans do not want to admit that their policy is headed for disaster. Washington is also reluctant, and desperately clutches at the straw of forming an Arab democracy in Iraq.
Brigitte Gabriel's warning to Americans echoes Bodansky's analysis: "The difference between Israel and the Arab world is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism versus civilization. It's democracy versus dictatorship. It's goodness versus evil."
This is a striking statement from an Arab journalist, and one that Americans should heed. If the Muslim world has, in its heart, legitimated violence against civilians, against Christian Arabs, against Jewish women and children, against aid workers in Iraq, against Americans in New York and Washington, then the Muslim world stands condemned by the very standard that civilization has set; the standard that defines civilization. There is no way around this. Either the Arab Muslims are opposed to terrorism, in their heart of hearts, or they are in sympathy with it. Either the majority in the Muslim world favor peace with the West, or they favor jihad. And given the news out of Pakistan, out of Iraq, out of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Americans and Europeans have reason to fear the worst.
