kenpo tiger
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Another take on the Middle East:
Brigitte Gabriel Speech at
see below:
Brigitte Gabriel Speech at
see below:
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I received the information from an extremely reliable source. To belabor the point a bit further, my neighbors are Israeli. Two have French first names, the third a Hebrew one, and their last name is a common American name that you will find hundreds of in the phone book. I assume she - Brigitte Gabriel - is married, or that her name is just uncommon for a Palestinian.Melissa426 said:Is this really true? The only reason I ask is because Brigitte Gabriel doesn't sound like a Lebanese name. Yes, I realize Barak Obama doesn't sound like an American senator, but it's true. So I am just wondering. No offense meant.
Another excellent book on the subject of women in Muslim country is by a woman named "Souad."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446533467/qid=1107191335/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-1247248-5471229
It's about a 18 y.o. who got pregnant by her neighbor and her own family tried to burn her to death . It's considered a crime of honor and fairly commonplace in some MiddleEastern Muslim communities. She actually survived as did the baby. So the rest of the story tells about her life after the burning.
Peace,
Melissa
Many thanks for posting that speech. :asian:kenpo tiger said:I received the information from an extremely reliable source. .
A Survivor of Palestinian Tyranny Defends Israel
By Brigitte Gabriel
FrontPageMagazine.com
(Below is Brigitte Gabriel's speech delivered at the Duke University Counter Terrorism Speak-Out, held Thursday, October 14, 2004. Her original speech can be viewed at www.phyllis-chesler.com. -- The Editors)
Im 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 Muslims 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 that came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Muslims shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Muslims, 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 didnt see religion. They didnt 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 never have shown to its 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 listen to the media. I realized that I had been 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 Rinas sons 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 others 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 Muslim 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. Its barbarism versus civilization. Its dictatorship versus democracy. Its evil versus goodness.
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 , a plague of terror which has been authored and perfected by the Palestinians for the last half century .
They blame suicide bombing on "desperation from occupation." But 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 Israels 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. It is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the desperation from 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. Its time for all of us to stand up and support and defend the state of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.
October 15, 2004
http://www.standforisrael.org/
Tgace said:I do agree with issue of legitimization of terrorism. How the intentional killing of school children and busloads of civilians can be acceptable, tolerable, or understandable from any group is beyond me.
Hi all,heretic888 said:*shrugs* If you want.
It wouldn't be the first time a discussion topic has been revisted here. I've had to have debated the Historical Jesus thing, like, five times in this place.
I'm not sure where your "perfect example" comes from, given that both Palestinian and Israelis have behaved from both sides of that line from well before the formation of the Israeli state until present times.GAB said:This is a perfect example of freedom or tyranny...We should always support freedom and condem tyranny...
PeachMonkey said:I'm not sure where your "perfect example" comes from, given that both Palestinian and Israelis have behaved from both sides of that line from well before the formation of the Israeli state until present times.
Good guys and bad guys, I am not sure that is always the criteria for the different wars that have been fought. It is pretty hard to put that judgement.heretic888 said:Which is exactly the point I was trying to make here. The delineation between 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in this little war is far from clear-cut.
Personally, I think both sides are motivated by little more than ethnically-driven tribalism and ethnocentrism --- mythologies of blood and soil and 'divine right'. Very scary stuff.