From Lebanon with Hate: The Dark Maid from Marjayoun

By Franklin Lamb - Marjayoun, Lebanon

""The difference, my dear Christian friends, between Israel and the Arab world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. It's the difference between good and evil and this is what we're witnessing in the Arabic and Islamic world. I am angry. They have no SOUL! They are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call "Allah," which is very different from the God we believe in, because our God is the God of love." - Brigitte Gabriel, speaking at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel Convention, July 27, 2007.

One imagines that all Americans, and people from every part of the globe and of sundry faiths, are touched emotionally upon encountering the natural beauty of the northern Biblical Holy Land that is South Lebanon. With its rugged vegetation-covered hills and valleys and more than 500 picturesque villages, many quite ancient and populated by warm, devout, and peaceful people, the area is hypnotic.

So it is for this observer, visiting Marjayoun ("meadow of springs" in Arabic), one of Lebanon's most stunning towns and the home of the historic Cathedral of Saint Peter as well as beautiful historic mosques. A lovely, modest, bucolic town of roughly 2,300 residents in winter and 3,500 in summer, Marjayoun sits majestically on a hill facing Mount Hermon to the east, Beaufort Castle, the 1,000-year old Crusader Castle above the Litani River and overlooking Mount Amel (jabal amel) to the west. Marjayoun's fertile plains, some of the richest in the Middle East, extend southward into the Galilee and Syria's Golan Heights.

Shia and Sunni Muslims, Greek Orthodox and Maronite Christians, and Greek Catholics had lived in Marjayoun, mainly in peace, for more than ten centuries until the invading Israeli forces in 1978 installed near the town center its proxy militia, the so-called South Lebanon Army (SLA).....

Preaching her repellent idea of patriotism and American values, while condemning nearly 20 percent of humanity as subhuman, Brigitte Gabriel appears oblivious to the fact that she is among the last people who should be lecturing America on subjects as patriotism and loyalty to one's country given her intense collaboration with Israel during and since its occupation of Lebanon.

If anyone is a terrorist sympathizer—if anyone is disloyal to her country for religious or ideological reasons—surely it is Brigitte Gabriel, the Dark Maid from Marjayoun.

Her former neighbors could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps she suffers from a virulent form of Stockholm Syndrome, wherein she identifies with and supports decades of Israeli terrorism against her country, her people, and her religion.

Her message of hate, ridicule, and incitement to action against Islam is akin to shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre, and constitutes egregious and condemnable hate speech. Her rantings are fundamentally un-American, un-Lebanese, and un-Christian. Her campaign should be vigorously rejected by all people of good-will, including those seeking simplistic explanations and solutions for the consequences of a catastrophic Bush Administration Middle East policy, which has caused so much death, destruction and desperation across the region."