Brigitte Gabriel - If you want to know what it's really like

Brigitte Gabriel is a Christian Arab from Lebanon. Arab Christians are no less indoctrinated to hate Jews than Arab Muslims are, but Ms Gabriel knows better these days. Why?

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 Muslim’s 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 didn’t see religion. They didn’t see political affiliation. They saw people in need and they helped.

I think one of the major problems for people who have never been in the Middle-East, Israel in particular, is that they have never actually experienced the difference in mentality. It exists, you know. There are a great many Jews nowadays who have strong personal reasons to hate Arabs, but still there is no collective hatred, no indoctrination, no stereotyping. On the Arab side, you can't find anything but.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It’s barbarism versus civilization. It’s dictatorship versus democracy. It’s evil versus goodness.

Ms Gabriel's is a rare voice (although its kind is ever so slowly being heard more often).
Please read.