“I was a human shield child". That chilling statement by Brigitte Gabriel — right-wing political and social commentator radical-Islam basher and author of two best sellers about the dangers of Islam — basically sums up why she defends Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza. “The Palestinians have perfected the art of using children as human shields in order to garner admiration around the world and it began 30 years ago ” she related to Fox News last week. She told the story of how as a ten-year-old her home in the Marjayoun District of southern Lebanon was bombed out during the Lebanese civil war in 1975 how she lay unconscious for two months after being injured by shrapnel in that attack and how she and her parents were forced to live in an underground shelter for the next seven years with only a small kerosene heater no sanitary facilities no electricity or running water and little food. “We were nine neighborhood kids in the shelter and the Palestinians placed a rocket launcher above us to fire rockets into Israel knowing that when Israel would strike back we’d be in the headlines dead or alive.” Gabriel an American-Lebanese Christian Arab is probably the most outspoken public persona in the US today against the spread of radical Islam and one of Israel’s strongest supporters. Her citizen’s action network —ACT! for America (formerly American Congress for Truth) — claims 280 000 members across America and is the largest grassroots citizens’ organization in the US that promotes “national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam.” But it’s her two best sellers Because They Hate (2006) and They Must Be Stopped (2008) that give voice to “what many in America are thinking but afraid to say out loud for fear of being labeled a racist bigot Islamophobic or intolerant ” she writes.