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R o o m f o r J e s u s K i n g o f G l o r y • H A S T E N N O W H I S W O R D O B E Yon top of my face. Blood was pouring over my faceand into my mouth. By the time I was rescued by myparents and taken to a hospital the next morning at8am I was on my last breath. I was put on a benchin the emergency room and operated on withoutanaesthesia. As the nurses held me down thedoctors cut my flesh with scissors and sawed intomy bone to get out the embedded shrapnel. As Ifaded in and out of consciousness, between myscreams, I prayed to God to stop my torture. I endedup in the hospital for two and half months.While there, I would ask my parents why thishappened to us, they would say because we wereChristians and the Muslims want to kill us. So Iknew ever since I was 10 that I was wanted deadsimply because I was born a Christian.When I returned home my new home was nolonger the one that I knew. We ended up living ina bomb shelter underground without electricity,water and very little food. Little did I know that thiswould become my life for the next seven years. Ourbomb shelter was an eight by ten feet cinderblockroom buried underground, that my father used as astorage room for our restaurant.FP: What is life like under the threatof Islamic terror?Gabriel: We borrowed life one day at a time.After sleeping in cardboard boxes for a month thathad been stored in the bomb shelter, thinking thiswill be over soon, we realised this situation isgetting worse and worse. We finally furnished thebomb shelter with two old mattresses from ourgarage. My mum and I slept on one and my dad onthe other. To get food my mother and I would goout around the shelter in between the bombings tofind different types of grass and dandelions to eat.My mother would soak chickpeas, rice, lentils andbeans overnight so we could eat something duringthe day. My father couldn’t get out because in thebombing of our house, he lost his hearing and hecouldn’t hear the sniper’s bullets or the bombscoming so he could hide. He had to stay put whilemy mother and I went out. To get water we wouldcrawl in a ditch under snipers’ bullets to a nearbyspring. Every time we’d leave we would say our lastgoodbyes because we didn’t know if we would comeback alive. My mother would use her stocking on topof the bottle to filter all the worms and the debrisso we could drink from it. Then we would crawlback with bullets flying over our heads. Sometimesit would take us hours just to crawl 100 feet backinto the bomb shelter.One day when I was 13 one of our soldierswarned us that we are no longer able to fight andwe are going to be attacked viciously that night. Hewished us a merciful death as he left. Knowing wewere going to be slaughtered that night, I put on myEaster dress because I wanted to look pretty when Iwas dead, knowing that there would be nobody toprepare me for burial. I stood in my dress in frontof the mirror crying as my mother combed my longhair and tied a white ribbon in it. I told her, “PleaseI don’t want to die! I’m only 13!”FP: Discuss your intellectual journey aboutyour view of Jews and Israelis, from whatyou were told in your childhood to when youstarted questioning whether it was true, towhat you think today.Gabriel: My town was two and a half miles fromthe Israeli border. We in our Christian town werefaced with the combined Muslim and Palestinianforces waiting to slaughter us. We knew our fate,knowing what they had done to other Christiantowns and cities in the rest of Lebanon. To our backwas Israel. The enemy, Satan, the demon possessedJews. We had nowhere to turn but one way, to thedevil Israel. After all, we knew the Jews wouldn’tslaughter us because we had more shared valueswith them than we had with the Muslims. Under thecover of darkness, a few men from our town wentto the border, flagged down an Israeli border patrol,explained the situation and begged for help.Knowing we weregoing to be slaughteredthat night, I put on myEaster dress becauseI wanted to look prettywhen I was dead.Israel agreed to help the Christians. Israelbecame our lifeline. The Israeli military would comeduring the night and bring food and ammunition tothe military and milk for the children. They wouldtake the Christian men, anyone from age 13 to 70and train them to fight; most of them had never helda rifle before. Most of the Christian men had degreesthat decorated their walls, but all the degrees in theworld cannot defend you when an enemy is facingyou with a gun, wanting to kill you by what yourenemy believes is an order from God.The only reason we stayed alive is becauseIsrael came into Lebanon and drove the Muslimsaway from the surrounding hills and set up positionsin our town to protect us. Things got worse asSyrians, Libyans, Iranians and Egyptians becameenraged and flocked into Lebanon to fight the infidelChristians and Jews.The Muslims had one vision, to take control ofthe only Christian country in the Middle East andthen attack Israel. Syria, with its military alreadysuffocating the Christians, Iran with its militiaHezbollah, the PLO with the number one worldterrorist Yasser Arafat, and all the other Muslimzealots on a holy mission, were using Lebanon asa terrorist breeding ground, exporting terrorisminto the rest of the world. Under the auspices of apeacekeeping force in Lebanon, Syria shelled Israelalong with Hezbollah, the Iranian financed “holywarriors”. The world press which was getting itsinformation from the Muslim controlled areas inBeirut were saying that Israel is occupying Lebanonand the poor Lebanese were fighting back to kickthe Israelis out.By 1982 Israel was fed up with Syria’s repeatedattacks on its northern border. They invaded Lebanondeclaring war on the terrorist infrastructure, goingall the way into Beirut. During the first two days ofthe invasion as the Muslims were retreating theyshelled us frantically. In their last artillery barrage,they scored a direct hit on the front of our bombshelter. My mother was seriously wounded andwould die without immediate medical attention.My father was too old and weak to take her to thehospital, the responsibility fell on my shoulders.We had to take her to Israel for treatment. For herit was a life saving experience. For me it was alife changing experience. It was my first lesson inthe difference between the Arabs and the westernworld particularly the Jews.Before we left my father gave me $60 dollarsin case I needed some money since we were goingto Israel for treatment. We took her first to theLebanese hospital in town which was vacant andbombed out. There was an Israeli doctor on dutyfor first aid situations. He gave my mother firstaid and we put her in an Israeli ambulance anddrove her under the bombs to the border. It wasabout a ten-minute drive. The driver was a friendof the family.When we got to the border we changedambulances. The Lebanese driver asked me if I hadany money for the ambulance fee. Like an innocentteenager who never handled money I took it out ofmy pocket and handed it to him and asked him howmuch did he want?He said: “Give me 30 dollars,” which was halfthe money I had. I thanked him for driving us withtears dripping down my face and got in the Israeliambulance and we drove off.The drive to the hospital inside Israel was anhour long. The driver was a middle-aged soldier.He treated me like his own daughter with suchrespect and compassion. He listened to the radioand explained to me how the war was going inLebanon. I felt alone and afraid. My mother wasfading in and out of consciousness and moaningfrom pain. We got to the hospital and I walkedaround the ambulance to pay him the fee. I tookthe money out of my pocket thinking, [God I’m surethis is not going to be enough for this man] — ifthe 10-minute drive cost me 30 dollars I’m sure thisis going to be much more.I extended my hand with the money asking himhow much I owed him. He looked at me surprisedand said: “You don’t owe me anything. Theambulance ride is a free service from us to you.Keep your money, I wish everything goes wellwith you. I wish your mother health and speedyrecovery.”I thanked him from the bottom of my heart andthought to myself: what an honest man! What anethical man! He could have taken my money andpartied all night and I would have not known thedifference. Yet he didn’t.And all of a sudden I felt this anger towards theLebanese driver who was supposedly a friend of thefamily. I realized that he actually stole my money.I didn’t have to pay a fee for the ambulance. Hebasically robbed me. I felt violated. I thanked theIsraeli driver from the bottom of my heart for hishonesty and help.We went into the emergency room and Iwas shocked at such a scene. There were manywounded people lying all over the place. Israelisoldiers, Lebanese Muslims, Christians and even15