Appearing on this week’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Brigitte Gabriel of ActforAmerica.org is mad that Barack Obama told the Muslim world that America has made some mistakes in their dealings with the Middle East. When Bill Maher pointed out to her that we had put the Shah on his throne in Iran, propped up other ruthless dictators, and killed an awful lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ms. Gabriel responded (with a giant, toothy smile), “Yeah, but that’s recent.”
I actually wonder if she knows who the Shah was. She certainly should know since she was born and raised in Lebanon and writes books about radical Islam, but who the hell knows? All that’s certain is that she makes a good living going around the country and flaming the fires of Islamophobia.
The ignorance is embarrassing.
She’s a rotten person, she’s ignorant, and none of these things have prevented her from getting a foot into the neocon universe. Ignorance unfortunately may often guarantee success in these places.
Brigitte Gabriel is one of a growing number of professional Islamophobes, none of whom (including the numerous “disaffected Muslims” among them) is remotely an expert on the subject, who are feeding off the current anti-Islam frenzy, making their fame and fortune off the current status of Islam as the bogey man du jour. Brigitte is typical of this ilk in that she is utterly lacking in any real expertise in her subject. She has no academic or other background, is not remotely an Islamic scholar, and her only “credentials” are ignorance, bigotry, and hatred, which she eagerly shares with others in exchange for money and prominence.
These people are the scum of the scum.
“…her only “credentials” are ignorance, bigotry, and hatred, which she eagerly shares with others in exchange for money and prominence.”
Sums up the American right perfectly.
She seems to be a Michelle Malkin/Bachmann-style neocon-for-hire.
I don’t know why Maher had her on. I lost brain cells watching that segment that I want back.
I don’t think she is a neocon at all any more than the lying phony Walid Shoebat (who claims to be a former “terrorist” in spite of the fact that not one bit of his story checks out at all) or the odious Nonie Darwish (who falsely claims that all Muslims are taught that they must wage “jihad” against Christians and Jews) is a neocon. The neocons are merely a vehicle upon which they can ride. The neocons give them a convenient platform for their message of bigotry and hate.
All that’s certain is that she makes a good living going around the country and flaming the fires of Islamophobia.
so does Dennis Ross
Dennis Ross is in a different category.
She is evil and beneath contempt. Naturally, she is a neo-con.
Neocons aren’t the only ones who feel this way, though. I had an Iranian taxi driver recently praising the Shah and supporting how the CIA overthrew his democratically elected leader Mossadegh. It was very weird.
Imagine the Chinese had come in and forcibly removed George Bush. I might have been happy Bush was gone, but I wouldn’t have wanted to move to China to show my thanks, you know? Very bizzare.
Well, Lisa, of course your taxi driver story is simply evidence that Iranians are no more monolithic in their point of view than are Americans. Sure, there were Iranians who liked the Shah. There are also Iranians who are quite happy with the current regime. There were even Iraqis who thought Saddam was OK, and their numbers increased a lot after 2003 when Saddam’s time looked more and more like the “good old days”.
Actually, in a number of ways the Shah WAS good. And Saddam did a number of very positive things for Iraq, too. It’s never as simple as we want it to be.
That was my point, inaptly put. That not all people think the Shah was bad (I do, but that’s beside the point.)
She’s no different than the other Islamophobes. She’s ignorant, incredibly stupid, highly bigoted and good only at inciting hatred. Hate sells! I hate the way she shows all her teeth when she smiles. The woman is a predator-and it shows.
She is also a bloody liar. I would bet that at least 80-90% of her claims of personal suffering and repression at the hands of Muslims is utterly false. And if she and her family were rescued by the Israelis it is almost certainly because they were collaborators. It would not surprise me in the least to find that she and her family were and still are neck deep in the Phalange, which is, quite plainly, an organization of nice Christian fascist mass murderers.
The Phalange were the nice folks the Israelis recruited, sent in to “clean up” the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila weeks AFTER the PLO had left Lebanon, leaving behind only refugees of the 1948 Israeli ethnic cleansing and their families. That “operation” took place over a period of three days during which the Israeli military sealed the camps, communicated with the murderers, and lit flares at night to facilitate the massacre. The Phalangist muderers with the assistance of the Israelis, brutally murdered an estimated 2,000 men, women, children, and elderly who were kept trapped in the camps by the Israelis.
Robert Fisk, the great British journalist who lives in Lebanon, wrote extensively and in some detail about the Sabra and Shatila massacre. There is a good account of it in his book Pity the Nation, and I am sure many of his articles are available online for anyone who is interested in learning more.
Liars who get good media access often do so through connections to the intelligence community. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s a plant by some faction.