Interview with Brigitte Gabriel
By Roger Aronoff
Transcript of an interview on
The “Take AIM” show on BlogTalkRadio, June 14, 2012.
You can also download the podcast.

Danish translation: Interview med Brigitte Gabriel
Source: Accuracy in Media, July 9, 2012
Published on myIslam.dk : August 10, 2012

Roger Aronoff: Good morning, and welcome to Take AIM, Accuracy in Media’s talk show on BlogTalkRadio. AIM is America’s original media watchdog, and every week we point out biased coverage and bring you the stories the mainstream media ignore. I’m Roger Aronoff, Editor of Accuracy in Media and of The AIM Report, which you can subscribe to at aim.org, where you can also sign up to receive our daily E-mail so you can keep track of what the media are up to. We have a great show today. Our guest is Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of ACT! For America and author of the books They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, and Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America. Brigitte is one of the leading terrorism experts in the world. She serves on the board of advisors of the Intelligence Summit. She has given briefings to everyone from the Australian Prime Minister to Members of the British Parliament, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Special Operations Command, and the FBI. Ms. Gabriel will share her knowledge about global Islamic terrorism and her firsthand experience with Islamofascism as a young girl living in Lebanon. We will discuss relevant current events, and the impact and the reach of the forces of radical Islam, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. One more thing before we get into this—I want to mention that ACT! For America, the nonprofit organization that she founded, will be holding its annual conference and legislative briefing in Washington, D.C. on June 27th through the 29th. You can learn more about the event, and ACT! For America, by visiting the website actforamerica.org. Good morning, Brigitte! We’re very glad to have you with us today on Take AIM!

Brigitte Gabriel: Good morning, Roger! I’m delighted and honored to be with you!

Aronoff: Thank you so much! Why don’t we start out telling our listeners more about your journey. How did you become an activist and author? Give us a little of your background.

Gabriel: As a child, I was born and raised in Lebanon, which used to be the majority Christian country in the Middle East—the only majority Christian country in the Middle East. We were open-minded. We were fair. We were tolerant. We were multi-cultural—we prided ourselves on our multi-culturalism. We had open border policy—we welcomed everyone to our country from the Arabic countries surrounding us because we wanted to share with them the Westernization which we had created in the heart of the Middle East. Muslims used to send their children to study in our universities from all the surrounding Arabic countries because we had built the best universities in the Middle East. We built the best economy—they graduated, then worked in our economy. In the ’60s, Beirut became known as “Paris of the Middle East” and the banking capital of the Middle East. Unfortunately, Roger, all that began to change after 20, 30 years of our independence. By that time, the minority Islamic population in the country became the majority simply because of the way they multiplied, compared to people like us, who come from a Judeo-Christian background—they have multiple marriages, they have many children out of each wife. We had the situation contained until the 1970s, when Lebanon accepted a third wave of Palestinian refugees. The majority of them were Muslims, they put their heads together with the Muslims in Lebanon, declared war on the Christians—and that’s when my 9/11 happened to me, and my life turned upside-down.

Aronoff: My first trip to the Middle East was in 1975. I was in Beirut just about two months before the civil war—which ended up lasting fifteen years—broke out. It was just a magnificent city—as you say, the Paris of the Middle East.

Gabriel: In 1975, when the war started, the radical Islamists blew up my home, bringing it down, burying me under the rubble, wounded, as they shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” That’s when my 9/11 happened to me. I ended up in a hospital, wounded, for two and a half months, and, later, ended up coming and living in a bomb shelter with my parents. For the next seven years of my life, I lived in an underground eight-by-ten room, basically fighting to survive. When I would ask my parents, “Why did they do this to us? Why did they bomb our home? Why am I wounded and lying in a hospital bed?” my father would tell me, “Because we are Christians, the Muslims consider us infidels, and they want to kill us.” So I learned, since I was a ten-year-old little girl, that I am wanted dead simply because I was born into the Christian faith. Whether I practiced it or not was irrelevant in my enemies’ eyes—because in the Middle East, they look at religion as a race. So the Christians are the Christians, the Jews are the Jews, and the Muslims are the Muslims.

Aronoff: One of the things you talk about in your book Because They Hate is the act that led to the Israeli Operation Litani. It was sort of your first engagement or involvement with the Israelis, and it was an awakening for you. Describe what happened in Israel that led to this Operation Litani, how that affected you, your interaction with the Israelis, and what influence that had.

Gabriel: When the war began in Lebanon, we, the Christian minority, were surrounded by the radical Islamists in southern Lebanon. We were only two Christian towns side-by-side, we were surrounded to be slaughtered, and we knew what our fate was going to be because we’d heard stories from those who’d escaped and come to hide—Christians who’d escaped their cities and come to hide in south Lebanon were telling us about the massacres that were taking place, the killing, the murders, et cetera. So we were surrounded on three sides by the radical Muslims who were basically waiting to slaughter us. Our back was to Israel—we lived on the border of Israel, in a town called Marjayoun in southern Lebanon. So we Christians, and the town, were faced with either being slaughtered at the hands of the radical Muslims and Palestinians, or going to the Jews, going to the Israeli border, and begging for help. Even though, at the time, Israel was considered the “enemy,” we Christians knew that if we went to the Jews and begged for help, the Jews were not going to slaughter us—we had more shared values with them, as Christians, than we had with the Muslims.

So a few people from my town went to Israel and begged for help. Israel started coming in the middle of the night, between 1976 and 1978, bringing in food for the military, bringing in bomb shelters for those who did not have bomb shelters, bringing in ammunition, bringing in food for the children because the Palestinians and Muslims had cut off all food supplies. That became our lifeline. They would come in the middle of the night, from twelve midnight to about four o’clock in the morning, and bring all that stuff, then disappear back into Israel during the day. The radical Islamists did not know what was keeping the Christians alive. This went on until 1978 and Operation Litani, when, basically—I remember that night, a friend of ours stopped by and said, “Brigitte, I just want you to know that we heard on the radios that we’re going to be attacked tonight in a major attack by the Islamic forces. If I don’t see you tomorrow, I wish you a merciful death.” And he left. I remember, at the age of thirteen years old, putting on my Easter dress, my Sunday best, because I wanted to look pretty when I was dead, knowing that when they came to slaughter me, there would be no one to bury me. I remember sobbing to my parents, begging them, “I don’t want to die! I’m only thirteen years old!” There was nothing my parents could say to me. I remember sitting in the corner of our bomb shelter with my father reading from Psalms. We all sat together and he started reading, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” My parents told me, “When they come to slaughter us tonight, you just run towards Israel, and you never look back. We’ll create a distraction. You just save your life.” Thank God I didn’t have to make that difficult decision that night—that was the night when Israel came physically into Lebanon, established the Security Zone, kicked the Muslims and Palestinians away from our area, and set up artillery bases on the hills surrounding our town to basically keep them away from us so they wouldn’t be able to come and slaughter us.

We continued living like this for the next five years, until 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon. The reason why Israel invaded Lebanon was that Syria had come to Lebanon at that time as a peacekeeping force, supposedly to keep the Christians and Muslims and Palestinians from killing each other—and Syria was shelling Israel from Lebanese territories, calling it the “Lebanese resistance.” We had nothing to do with it! Basically, the Palestinians, the Islamic radicals, and the Syrians had all come together to Lebanon as a base from which to shell Israel. They wanted to drive Jews into the sea and kill them, and use Lebanese territories to do it. That’s what forced Israel to come into Lebanon in 1982, in the invasion where they went all the way to Beirut. Israel was working with the Christians to help the Christians take back their democracy, take back their country, re-establish the democracy, and have a peace treaty with Israel.

Up to that point, I knew the Israelis were keeping us alive—obviously, by that time, for seven years we’d been working with the Israelis. They were our friends. I had actually been into Israel before my mother was wounded and taken to the hospital—I used to go there on trips with friends of mine. But my mother became wounded in Operation Mivtsa Shlom HaGalil, “The Peace for Galilee,” in 1982, and we had to take her to Israel for treatment. That was the only time I was in Israel alone, with my unconscious mother, in a war scene where I saw the true compassion and true heart of the Israelis—they were able to treat their enemy with such a compassionate heart, something I had never seen, nor experienced, in Lebanon. I ended up being with my mother in Israel, in that Israeli hospital where she was treated for her injuries, for 22 days. Those days truly changed my heart, made me realize that everything that I heard on the radio, or heard on television, and everything that is said to Arab children all throughout the Middle East about Israel is nothing more than a lie. That’s when I decided, I want to move to Israel, I want to work in Israel, I want to adopt the values and the character that the Israelis have. I knew they had something even I did not have: They were able to love and forgive their enemies, the Palestinians, in a way that I wasn’t able to—and I was a Christian who was supposed to love like Jesus taught! That was truly a turning point in my life. Thankfully, I ended up moving back to Israel in 1984, living in Jerusalem, and becoming a news anchor for World News.

Aronoff: The event that led to that operation, Litani, was the hijacking of a bus, which you describe in the book. Tell us about that briefly. I think a lot of people are kind of removed from the sort of acts of terror that took place before Israel really secured its borders better.

Gabriel: The securing of the border happened before the Lebanese war, of course—

Aronoff: Right.

Gabriel: —and the Palestinians—who have no compassion towards children, no compassion to people, because when you’re raised, being taught that a certain group of people are basically beneath animals, and deserve to be killed, you lose all sense of consciousness, and sense of conscience, to feel any remorse when you kill those people—attacked a bus carrying students, actually, in northern Israel, so Israel had to begin fortifying its northern border and defending it. But what started the Israeli involvement in southern Lebanon, and them coming into southern Lebanon, was that operation. It made the Israelis realize that they needed to partner together with the Christians in the south and create a buffer zone which would keep the Palestinians and Muslims from basically entering Israel illegally and committing suicide operations within Israel—that began a partnership between the Israelis and the Lebanese Christians in the south which later extended to the Christians in Beirut, the capital. At one point, Israel would take the Christians from Lebanon and train them in Israel—for seven days they would go through military training, and then would go back into Lebanon to fight, because the Christians in Lebanon didn’t know how to fight. That created a partnership that lasted for years.

Aronoff: Okay. In your book, They Must Be Stopped, you make a distinction between the values of Judeo-Christianity and those of Islam—you call it the “Sword of Islam.” Tell us your view on that, the difference between these two.

Gabriel: There is a huge difference, because we Christians and Jews have reformed our religion. In the Old Testament we have violent verses—you know, “A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye”—yet you do not see any Jews today strapping bombs on their bodies, going to mosques, and blowing themselves up in order to kill other human beings in revenge for suicide bombings in Israel, for example. In Christianity, Jesus said, “Whoever slaps you on one cheek, you turn the other.” Christianity is all about forgiveness, about doing unto others what you want others to do unto you. “Do not judge others lest you be judged.” So we as Christians and Jews have reformed our religion. We know that we live in a different world today. We value human life. There is nothing in the Bible, in Christianity, that sanctions the killing of another human being. This is why those we would consider even our most radical pastors, like Pat Robertson or former Jerry Falwell, any of these type people, when the abortion clinics were happening in the ’80s, American pastors considered radicals by mainstream Christianity—by the Catholics, for example—came out condemning the killing of doctors or the bombings of abortion clinics, even though they themselves disagreed with abortions. Yet they knew that there is nothing in the Bible that sanctions or justifies the killing of another human being regardless of what the excuse is. That’s the difference between Christianity and Islam. Under Islam, killing of infidels, or non-Muslims, not only justified, but encouraged, but praised under the Qur’an. A Muslim is only guaranteed an entrance into heaven when they commit to martyrdom fi sabilillah—in the cause of Allah. While Christians and Jews can do good deeds or good work and buy themselves forgiveness that will enable them to get into heaven, in Islam it does not exist. Under Islam the Qur’an is very clear about what to do to the infidels—cut off their heads, cut off their fingers and toes, smite them on their heads because they disobeyed Allah. The Qur’an’s sura 9—they go verse after verse, sura after sura, encouraging Muslims to kill infidels, kill apostates, kill those who do not believe in Allah or have gone against his path. This is why when we see the radicals come up against the moderates in a debate, when the moderates say, “Islam is a peaceful religion, Islam does not call for the killing of others,” the radicals begin quoting chapter after chapter and verse after verse—because the law is on their side. That’s why they leave the moderates silenced, unable to come back with a response: Islam in itself, as a religion, approves and encourages the killings of infidels.

Aronoff: I want to talk about some of the current events, particularly the so-called “Arab Spring.” I noted the irony last year, at the same time as the Egyptian revolution started—really Lebanon, your country of birth, had that Cedar Revolution, and it really appeared to be going back to 2004 and 2005, the first country really to become democratic and peaceful. It was looking that way and then, of course, with the assassination of Hariri went through all of these changes. But the day that the Egyptian revolution started last year, in January, was the day that Hezbollah basically took over control of Lebanon. I thought that was quite ironic. I mean, really, it was sort of the end of the Arab Spring in Lebanon and sort of the start of it in the rest of the world, but—

Gabriel: Here’s what led to that.

Aronoff: Yeah.

Gabriel: Lebanon is a republic exactly like the United States of America. From its foundation in the ’40s, Lebanon has been nothing but a republic, just like the United States of America. There are two democracies in the Middle East: The state of Israel, and Lebanon—because the majority of Lebanese were Christians by the time we got our independence from France. This is why Lebanon and Israel became the only two countries in the Middle East that were able to prosper without having any oil: We prospered based on our intelligence, our contribution to math, to science, to education. We educated men and women in the same way because we did not believe that women are secondary to men. This is why Lebanon became Paris of the Middle East, and this is exactly why Israel is the incredible amazing country that it is today. The reason why Lebanon fell into war is because our enemies, the Islamists, were able to use Lebanese democracy to topple our democracy, and we allowed them to do it because of our open-mindedness and our multiculturalism. We refused to read the writing on the wall. We refused to believe our enemies when they would say, “We want to kill you because we hate you.” So when Islamic forces started going into Lebanon, like Syria—I know in Western countries people don’t look at Syria as a Muslim country, but in the Middle East, when you are minority Christians and Jews, all the countries surrounding us are basically part of the ummah, the Islamic nation. They relate to each other as one family against the infidels. And it’s ironic when you look at the Arabic countries surrounding Israel and Lebanon—basically, it’s a one-man dictatorship. You can identify every country with one man or one religious leader. I write in my book, “When you look at the Arabic world you are looking at tribes with flags. They’re not necessarily countries like we look at countries in the West.” So when the so-called revolution happened in Beirut in 2004, it was basically a response of the Lebanese Christians and the Sunni Muslims in Lebanon taking to the street exercising, or trying to exercise, whatever was left of their freedom or their democracy. They were empowered by President George Bush, who went into Iraq and showed people in the Middle East that America was willing to stand behind those who are pushing for democracy. The Christians in Lebanon felt that while America is standing with Iraq, America had a powerful ally in the White House, George Bush, who would be able to pressure Syria to leave Lebanon and pressure Hezbollah to disarm. Unfortunately, because America failed to show strength after that, that’s why Hezbollah was not disarmed. Syria had left Lebanon on its own, fearing that America’s was going to react, but when they saw that America did not react like in 2006, Syria came back into Lebanon—because by that time it was apparent to the world stage that America had become a paper tiger, and America did not stand by those who are true democratic forces in the Middle East, standing up for democracy. America left them to be slaughtered and that’s why democracy, or the attempt of basically reviving Lebanon back, failed.

Aronoff: So what about in Egypt, in Libya—there was such hope that they were going to overthrow these tyrants, these dictators. Very different—[Hosni] Mubarak and [Muammar] Gaddafi, of course—but in both cases we seem to have arrived at a Muslim Brotherhood government. What are the implications of that? Are we really—

Gabriel: Exactly.

Aronoff: —accepting them as, “Now a moderate force in the world,” or—

Gabriel: Well, here’s a good point you brought up—

Aronoff: —how do you see all this?

Gabriel: Here’s a good point you brought up: What about the Egyptian revolution? After the revolution in Lebanon in 2004 and 2005, when American failed to back—disarm Hezbollah, or really truly stand up with the true forces of democracy, the radical Islamics learned a very important lesson—that America has become a paper tiger—but it gave the opportunity, especially after 2006, when Hamas came to power in Gaza, and they did it democratically, using the so-called “America wants democracy in the Middle East” to come to power, the Islamic radicals in the rest of the Middle East thought, This is our opportunity to use the West’s thinking by basically saying the words, the buzz-words, that the West will relate to, that we want to democratically change the regime against dictators. That’s how they organized, and that’s how they started rising. In Tunisia, which led the Islamic Revolution, what started as a true revolution because they wanted change, wanted a better economy, they learned very quickly that the radicals were much more organized, and the radicals took over. We saw the same thing happen in Egypt. In Egypt, while the revolution started with good intentions, by young people wanting jobs, and who knew how to operate Facebook and Twitter, they learned very quickly that the radicals took the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood—because after everything was said and done, and Sadat and Mubarak stepped down, the Muslim Brotherhood had the money, while the new young activists did not have any money, who started the revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood had already candidates in government, and had political training. The young revolution—the young ones in the streets did not have even a spokesperson on their behalf. They did not know anything about politics. They did not know how to run a campaign. They were the youth, while the Muslim Brotherhood were the educated lawyers, the doctors, the engineers. This is why the Muslim Brotherhood had everything in line to be able to truly organize a movement, have a seat at the power table—and look what’s happening right now. I mean, they’re very well organized. They have their candidates, they have the money, and the young people who started the revolution are nowhere to be found.

Aronoff: Today the world’s attention is focused on Syria. Considering that Syria is an ally of Iran, and of Russia, it would seem like we would want Assad to fall. Yet, once again, who or what would he be replaced with? How do you see this situation? What do you think the West, the U.S., should be doing? Should we get involved? Should we not? How do you see this situation?

Gabriel: The situation in Syria is a no-win situation regardless of the outcome. [Bashar] Assad is not a friend of the United States, but he certainly is much better off than those who are trying to topple him, because those who are trying to topple him are the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood tried to rise in Syria in Hama back 30 years ago—remember when Hafez Assad, Bashar’s father, massacred 30,000 of them in Hama? These are the same people who are now rising because they believe that the Assad regime is not Islamic enough, is not devout enough, is not supportive enough of the Islamic agenda, is too Westernized. This is why they’re rising up against him, and they are feeling empowered by what they saw in Egypt. Now, him being a very strong dictator, Assad the son is holding onto the throne, and as you mentioned, he is supported by Iran. Iran actually sent its proxy Hezbollah army from Lebanon to fight with the Assad regime, and to keep him in power, because it’s in Iran’s best interest to keep Assad in power. But Iran is going to win no matter who wins. If Assad is toppled and the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, they are so radical—they are just like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is why we are very concerned about who’s going to replace Assad. It is better for the United States and the West for Assad to stay in power than for the Muslim Brotherhood to win the election or to be able to topple Assad and take over, because then you’re going to have a very organized, very radical, very-hateful-towards-the-West Islamic movement rising throughout the Middle East that will empower the rest of the radical Islamists throughout the world, not only in the Middle East. That’s a major problem for the West.

Aronoff: So the dilemma is, while watching all the slaughter going on and then sitting by and saying, “Well, we’re not going to do anything,” especially after Obama, when he finally went into Libya, stood up there and said, “We don’t sit by while people are being slaughtered.” That’s exactly what’s happening there today, yet you’re suggesting it makes sense, and we don’t really want to help the opposition, because if they come to power, it would even be worse for us, strategically, than it currently is with Assad.

Gabriel: Exactly. And the hypocrisy in our country—I mean, since when do we actually give a care about who’s being slaughtered? Two million Sudanese were slaughtered in Sudan, you didn’t hear a blurb out of the United States. Thank God for Charles Jacobs and a few organized Jews who sounded the alarms and demonstrated at the U.N. about the massacres of the Sudanese. What about all the massacres in Congo? Since when does America care about the slaughter of innocent people? America only cares about the slaughter of innocent people when it serves America and is up there on the news. That’s why Obama is talking the way he’s talking, trying to show strength. You know, it is unfortunate that we have such collective memory and collective caring in this country. But the slaughter in Syria is something that we should not get involved with. We have much more strategic places in the world to worry about and care about, that will affect directly the United States much more than what’s happening in Syria right now.

Aronoff: The time’s going fast. We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes, but I want to cover a number of things, so: In this country we have what’s generally been called a War on Terror. How do you define it? “War on Terror”? “War on Terrorism”? “War Against Radical Islam”? What are we engaged in and how are we doing in that engagement?

Gabriel: We are engaged in a war with radical Islam. The war has been declared against the United States by the radical Islamists. They initiated it. We’re not fighting a “War on Terror.” Terror is only a tactic. The radical Islamists are rising throughout the world. As I’m speaking with you right now, Roger, there are 44 conflicts around the world between Muslims and non-Muslims, regardless of what nationality these non-Muslims are, or what language they speak, what passport they hold, or what region of the world they live in. 44 conflicts. Look what’s happening in Djibouti. Look what’s happening in Chad, what’s happening in Mauritania. Americans don’t even look at these countries. It’s not even on our radar screen. So a war has been declared on the West by radical Islamists who want to bring back the Islamic Caliphate. They are empowered. The revolution started with Iran in 1979, with the coming of [Ruhollah] Khomeini, who birthed, basically, life into the Islamic radical movement worldwide. The sooner we wake up and identify the enemy we are fighting—how they think, what their goal is, what’s their strategy, who are the key players in this war, who are the financiers of this war—that’s when we’re going to be able to make progress and come up with a plan where we can actually defeat our enemy. But President Obama, right now, is in the process of deleting from the lexicon anything relating to radical Islam out of our counterterrorism strategy, whether at the FBI, whether at the Pentagon, whether at the CIA, whether at the State Department. I mean, they are doing it now down to the local first responders’ training. They are taking out words such as “Islamic jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamic radicalism.” How can we fight a war declared on us by a group called Islamic Jihad if we’re not courageous enough to even identify them by name so we can win the war? This is why I encourage people to join us—go to our website, actforamerica.org. We are now putting pressures on members of Congress to stop this insanity, to make sure that we do not mess with changing the training manuals at the FBI and for our first responders. Let’s not insert political correctness into our counterterrorism strategy. Otherwise, we are endangering the lives of millions of Americans in the name of political correctness, because we are afraid to identify our enemy. This is the time to act and take action, so I encourage our listeners to go to actforamerica.org. Sign up to get our E-mails and Action Alerts so we can reach you when there’s an important legislation coming down, or an Action Alert where we need you to pick up the phone and call your elected officials, where your voice matters most.

Aronoff: So you attribute this to political correctness, why we are removing these terms—jihad—from the government handbooks and things. Go into that a little bit more. What is the real motivation here? Why are we removing that language? Why aren’t we trying to wake people up to what threatens this country?

Gabriel: Because we have foreign forces and Islamic front groups representing the Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United States that has infiltrated our society on every level—including government—who are now influencing policy. To give you an example—ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America. They are now advisors to President Obama about foreign policy. Is it any wonder why President Obama is throwing Israel under the bus, for example? Now, why we should be so concerned about the groups like ISNA and CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations]—because they are mentioned in The Muslim Brotherhood Project, which was presented as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, which is the largest terrorism trial ever in the history of the United States, where the United States took to court the Holy Land Foundation, where our government handed down 108 “Guilty” verdicts against Muslim-Americans or Muslim-American organizations who were raising money in the United States and sending it to the Middle East to fund terrorist operations in the Middle East. In that lawsuit our government introduced evidence called the “Muslim Brotherhood Project,” which is a 100-year plan for radical Islam to infiltrate and dominate the West. In the Muslim Brotherhood Project, the last page of the project lists 29 front Islamic organizations set up in the United States by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to “sabotage the miserable house of America from within,” according to their words. Part of the names mentioned in that project are ISNA, Islamic Society of North America; the MSA, the Muslim Student Association; NAIT, the North American Islamic Trust, which owns the deeds to the majority of mosques in the United States; IAP, the Islamic Association for Palestine, which later became CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. So what we have right now is, these groups who are our enemy, groups set up in the United States with the specific purpose of sabotaging America from within, are now consulting with the media—you always see CAIR on television giving interviews as supposedly the spokespeople on behalf of the Muslim community, ISNA advises President Obama about Middle East policy, MPAC and other organizations like this are putting the pressure on our government to clean up this type of language from our counterterrorism training manuals and threatening lawsuits if we don’t: That’s the reason why we are changing the language.

Aronoff: And why do you think, for instance, President Obama brings these people in as advisors, as consultants? What is his motivation in doing this?

Gabriel: That’s a very interesting question. I cannot answer what’s going on inside President Obama’s head, but I can tell you one thing: Actions speak louder than words, especially when you are the President of the United States and you are making decisions whether to protect your own citizens and put the interests of your own country before anybody else in the world, or whether you listen and are influenced by foreign forces that you know for sure are in our country to do our country harm. Obviously our President has regular intelligence briefings. I cannot imagine our President not being briefed on the Muslim Brotherhood plan, or the Muslim Brotherhood Project in the United States, and about the Holy Land Foundation trial, which took place in Dallas, Texas in 2007 and 2008. Obviously he knows the information, he knows what these organizations are—and for him to know all this information and still bring these types of shady characters and hire them as his advisors, to work with him on coming up with our foreign policy and our policy in the United States on counterterrorism, is something very concerning, to say the least—very alarming to put it, to put it mildly—because right now, we have a President who is practically endangering the lives of Americans by putting foreign interests first, before America, while ignoring what needs to be done in order to protect and secure the United States of America, the same country he took an oath to protect—he’s not doing the job. As a matter of fact, he is sabotaging the job of protecting the United States, and that is very, very alarming, and I do hope that people this November will take into account all the information that is out there—whether on the Internet, whether through blogs, whether through radio, whether through national security organizations like ourselves—and make an informed decision before they go to vote, because the future of our country depends on their vote this coming election.

Aronoff: How do you view the media’s participation or involvement in this? Are they keeping us well-informed on this infiltration, the influence of these Islamist groups? How do you see our mainstream media’s involvement in this?

Gabriel: Well, certainly the mainstream media is not going to give us the news that you and I are sharing right now on this broadcast!

Aronoff: Why not?

Gabriel: You know—you read my books, Roger—

Aronoff: Right—

Gabriel: —and you know in my book I discuss how the media has been influenced, starting in the college, by all the influx of the money flowing from Saudi Arabia and the Islamic countries into our universities, brainwashing our students, setting up Middle East policy, Departments of Political Science department, and appointing professors who are anti-Israel and anti-America, who basically have been brainwashing our students for the last sixteen, twenty years, graduating out of our universities into believing America is bad, Israel is evil, and the Islamic world is under pressure by American imperialism. So what we have today is a new generation of Americans who are the decision makers when it comes to media—who are the news anchors, the news writers, the opinion shapers, the opinion makers, the foreign policy makers—and this is why, when you watch CNN or any of the mainstream media, they are very sympathetic to the Islamic world, they are very sympathetic to the Islamic cause, they bend backwards and forwards accommodating Islamic radical groups and their views, like CAIR, for example. You always see CAIR interviewed on CNN and MSNBC—I mean, even Fox News! But at least with Fox News, you get fair and balanced debate. But when it comes to CNN and ABC and MSNBC and CBS and NBC, basically, you are not getting nothing but a whitewashed version of the truth, and many issues are not being covered. But again, that’s why the media is at this point, because our enemy has been very smart, and they began at the university level and brainwashing the students. We’re paying the price today. And what’s scary, Roger, is they’re doing the same thing right now in middle and high school, changing the Islam curriculum and inserting their own view of how Islam is being taught at the middle and high school, which is going to impact the next generation of Americans. I discussed this in my book They Must Be Stopped, but Act for America Education just came out with a report that is now posted on our website—our sister organization, actforamericaeducation.com—on how Islam is being portrayed in public schools in sixth and seventh grade.

Aronoff: And with your Act for America, why don’t you tell people about your conference coming up, what they could expect if—will they be able to view it online, or do they have to attend? Also, what your group does is, they go into different states and get involved in these efforts to keep sharia law from being considered as part of the American justice system—tell us about that.

Gabriel: A great question, Roger.

Aronoff: Okay.

Gabriel: A great question. Thank you. You and I have known each other and have, you know, talked before on different broadcasts. You and I understand that there’s a lot of information out there about radical Islam. When I started speaking out a few years ago, when I started, ten years ago in 2002, I would speak to groups from 100 to 10,000 at a time, and the same question kept coming up: Now that I am informed, what can I do? Now that I’m educated—just like people who listen to us on this broadcast—now that I know all this information, I’m more frustrated. What do I do? Give me something to do. I learned very quickly, Roger, when I heard this question over and over again, that while education is important, education is not sufficient. Education must be coupled with action. That’s when I launched ACT! For America. ActforAmerica.org is now the largest national security grassroots movement in the United States. We have 230,000 members nationwide, 700 chapters nationwide, and a full-time lobbyist on Capitol Hill. We are actually creating the NRA of national security. We are creating the most powerful citizen movement dedicated to national security that will put pressure on elected officials to do the right thing. In our upcoming national conference on the 27th, 28th, and 29th of June, we have eighteen elected officials coming to speak on our conference about national security—what they are doing behind the scenes, legislations they are working on—and the reason why they’re lining up to come speak at our conference, because they know we have become the most powerful national security organization in the United States. Our members tackle issues and legislations coming down for a vote. We monitor the votes and the bills coming down on Capitol Hill. We send an E-mail out to our members telling them, “Tomorrow there is a bill coming down, H.R. 1640 sponsored by Congressman Such-and-Such or So-and-So, this is what the bill says, we want to make sure we alert you so you can call your elected official and express your opinion—either ‘Vote for it!’ or ‘Don’t vote for it!’” We give them the information and we empower them to make a phone call. At certain times we have had over 30,000 phone calls go to Capitol Hill, to a certain Congressman’s office in one day—which shut down their phone system. That’s the type of people power that our government needs to see in order for our elected officials to do the right thing by the American people. Our philosophy is this: If our elected officials are not willing to see the light, we’re going to make them feel the heat because the only language they understand is pressure, and getting reelected—and that’s exactly what we’re doing. So we have our chapters nationwide, who get involved, who are very organized, who meet with their elected officials, who do events in their community, who monitor what’s happening in their community, and they are very, very active. To give you an idea of the type of activities that we do, for example, ALAC—American Laws for American Courts—which is a legislation that will ensure that only American laws will be considered in American courts, and no foreign law will be applied when it contradicts our Constitution. Right now we have introduced this bill in twenty states and we already passed it in three states, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arizona. Now it has been introduced in six other states in the Republican Party platform, as a topic the Republican Party’s going to push for. So that’s the type of things that we do. I encourage people to come and learn more about us at our national conference in Washington, D.C. on the 27th, 28th, and 29th, and for more information and details, you can go to actforamerica.org—make sure you sign up to receive our E-mails and Action Alerts. We want to be able to reach you, to empower you to make a difference for our country.

Aronoff: Our guest has been Brigitte Gabriel. The time has gone very fast. Again, her two books are They Must Be Stopped and Because They Hate, and she’s just given the information on Act for America. What about websites for the books? Of course, Amazon and the usual, but is there any other website you want to give us before we sign off here, Brigitte?

Gabriel: Thank you Roger. Yes, the books are available in all bookstores nationwide, as well as with any bookstore online. Both books are New York Times Bestsellers. They are also available in audio CDs, on Kindle, and everything else, so that you can find them very easily. I encourage you to get the books, read them—and donate them to a library in your community! Help me educate others about this issue. You can also go to our website, actforamerica.org. You can get the books through the website for a donation, and I encourage you to do that, because we can certainly use your help much more than Barnes and Noble, so you will not only be able to be getting the book, but you will also be able to help us financially, in order for us to continue doing the work that we do. I’m so grateful for U.S. And, Roger, I’m so grateful for your having me on your show, and giving me the time to share with your audience the important information that we just discussed.

Aronoff: Thank you so much for being with us. We will have this as a podcast, and a complete transcript of this interview will be up sometime next week on our website at aim.org. Again, I want to thank Brigitte for being with us today. We will be back again next week. We have Senator Tom Coburn to discuss his book The Debt Bomb next Thursday—look forward to then, being back with you. Brigitte, thank you so much.

Gabriel: Thank you. Have a great day.