[Editor's Note: Below are selected excerpts from Brigitte Gabriel's speech
delivered at the Intelligence Summit in Washington DC, Saturday February 18,
2006].

We gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not
merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of
military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be
understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been
wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim
extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.

I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the
rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators
shouted "Allah Akbar!" My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a
Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word
"infidel."

I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb
shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold,
drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13 I dressed in
my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the
age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed by Muslims. We were not
Americans living in New York, or Britons in London. We were Arab Christians
living in Lebanon.

As a victim of Islamic terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up
on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves "Why do they hate us?" The
psychoanalyst experts were coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did
we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and the West were paying
attention to the Middle East they would not have had to ask the question.
Simply put, they hate us because we are defined in their eyes by one simple
word: "infidels."

Under the banner of Islam "la, ilaha illa allah, muhammad rasoulu allah,"
(None is god except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) they murdered
Jewish children in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed Copts in
Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India, and expelled almost 900,000 Jews
from Muslim lands. We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now
infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference and
shortsightedness.

Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It
earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the
weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms
the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading us to our
demise.

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up
and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Wahabbi and Salafi Islam
as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are
wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of the irrational
eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a
Danish newspaper. From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those who mock
Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared for another holocaust, those
pictures have given us a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News
pictures and video of these events represent a canvas of hate decorated by
different nationalities who share one common ideology of hate, bigotry and
intolerance derived from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is
awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its wrath against the
infidel and dominate the world. An Islam which has declared "Intifada" on
the West.

America and the West can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of
overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental disease are starting
to attack the body, and if they don't take the necessary steps now to
control it, death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand the
nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry of snakes. They slither
and they hiss, and they would eat each other alive, but they will unite in a
hideous mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam on the world.

This is the ugly face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting a
powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic human instincts. An
ideology that can turn a mother into a launching pad of death. A perfect
example is a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian Territories
who raves in heavenly joy about sending her three sons to death and offering
the ones who are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that is
capable of offering highly educated individuals such as doctors and lawyers
far more joy in attaining death than any respect and stature, life in
society is ever capable of giving them.

The United States has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred and
terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East ring with shrill prayers
and monotonous chants calling death, destruction and damnation down on
America and its people. The radical Islamists' deeds have been as vile as
their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis, more than three thousand
Americans have died in a terror campaign almost unprecedented in its
calculated cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide. Even
the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice
at their deaths as well the deaths of their victims. This intentional,
indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American citizens is
justified and glorified in the name of Islam.

America cannot effectively defend itself in this war unless and until the
American people understand the nature of the enemy that we face. Even after
9/11 there are those who say that we must "engage" our terrorist enemies,
that we must "address their grievances". Their grievance is our freedom of
religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our
democratic process where the rule of law comes from the voices of many not
that of just one prophet. It is the respect we instill in our children
towards all religions. It is the equality we grant each other as human
beings sharing a planet and striving to make the world a better place for
all humanity. Their grievance is the kindness and respect a man shows a
woman, the justice we practice as equals under the law, and the mercy we
grant our enemy. Their grievance cannot be answered by an apology for who or
what we are.

Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and
hatred wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30 years, has
empowered and strengthened our enemy to launch a full scale attack on the
very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of
life on our civilization.

If we don't wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action
against the terrorists within it, if we don't believe in ourselves as
Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to,
we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children
and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent
of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America's learning curve since
the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we
lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect.
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