In a powerful video statement shared across social media, Brigitte Gabriel — national security expert, terrorism survivor, and founder of ACT for America — broke from her regular political commentary to share the deeply personal story that forged her life’s mission. For many of her newest followers who know her primarily as a sharp-tongued analyst of geopolitical events, the revelation was staggering.

“I realized many of my new followers have no idea about my background,” Gabriel told her audience, “and why I am so passionate speaking the way I speak.”

Lebanon: The Paris of the Middle East — Before the Collapse

Gabriel opened her account with a portrait of a Lebanon few in the West remember. “I was born and raised in Lebanon, which used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East,” she said. “We were open-minded, we were fair, we were tolerant, we were multicultural — we prided ourselves on our multiculturalism.” Beirut had earned its reputation as the “Paris of the Middle East” and the banking capital of the Arab world. It was, by her account, a model of Westernized pluralism planted in a turbulent region.

Then came the Palestinian refugees.

“We had open borders, we welcomed everyone,” she said. “Unfortunately, all that began to change when we accepted a wave of refugees into our country — people who did not share our values, but wanted to use Lebanon as a launching pad to kill the Jews and drive them into the sea.” Lebanon was, she noted, the only Arab nation to accept the third wave of Palestinian refugees. The result was catastrophic. “They ended up destroying our country.”

A 10-Year-Old Girl, a Hospital Bed, and a Question

In 1975, the year Lebanon’s civil war erupted in earnest, Gabriel was ten years old. A Palestinian Islamist attack destroyed her family home, burying her beneath the rubble. She was pulled out wounded and spent two and a half months hospitalized, hooked to IVs. From her hospital bed, she asked her parents the question that would define her life. “Why did they do this to us?” Her parents’ answer was blunt: “Because we are Christians, they consider us infidels and they want to kill us.”

“I learned since I was a 10-year-old little girl that I am wanted dead simply because I was born into the Christian faith and lived in a Christian town,” she said.

When she left the hospital, home was no longer home. The family retreated to an eight-by-ten-foot underground bomb shelter — no electricity, no running water, critically low food. For the next seven years, from age ten to seventeen, that shelter was her world. “I was robbed of my youth,” she said plainly.

‘I Wanted to Look Pretty When I Was Dead’

The most haunting episode Gabriel recounted occurred when she was thirteen. A Christian militia fighter arrived at the shelter with intelligence from radio intercepts: they believed a massacre was coming that night. “He said to me, ‘Brigitte, if I don’t see you tomorrow, I wish you a merciful death,’ and he left.”

What followed is difficult to read and impossible to forget. Facing what she believed was her final night alive, Gabriel went to her Sunday best — her Easter dress. “I wanted to look pretty,” she explained, “because I knew that when they come to slaughter me, there would be no one to bury me, and I wanted to look pretty when I’m dead.” Her mother combed her long black hair as she sobbed: “I don’t want to die. I’m only 13 years old.”

Her parents made a plan. When the attackers came, they would create a diversion. Gabriel — their only child — would run. The destination was deliberate. “Run towards Israel, run towards the Israeli border and don’t look back,” they told her. The reasoning was stark: “We knew if we run to the Jews and beg for help, the Jews are not going to slaughter us, because we had more shared values with them than we had with the Muslims.”

She never had to run. That night, Israeli forces moved physically into Lebanon, establishing a security zone around her town. “That’s how we survived for another five years,” she said.

Israel’s Role — and a Life Rebuilt

In 1982, Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, working alongside Christian forces to dismantle a network of eleven Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the country, including the PLO. Yasser Arafat and his leadership were expelled to Tunisia. The Gabriel family came out of the shelter. “That’s how we came out of the bomb shelter and back to rebuilding our lives,” she said.

In 1984, Brigitte Gabriel moved to Israel, where she became a news anchor for world news in the Middle East. The experience cemented her mission: to understand how hate of such magnitude is cultivated — and to fight it. “I wanted to make it my life’s mission to fight evil, to understand how can people hate so much to commit such atrocities,” she said.

Her Warning: ‘What Starts in the Middle East Doesn’t End There’

Gabriel was clear that her video was not about relitigating old grievances. She offered it in the context of watching events unfold in Israel — events that she said transported her back to her childhood terror. “This week has been so difficult for me watching what’s happening in the Middle East,” she said.

She drew sharp moral lines. “Barbarism done in the name of any people, of any religion, is not acceptable,” she said. “Barbarism is when you shoot babies in their cribs. Barbarism is when you decapitate babies. Barbarism is when you rape women and kill them. Barbarism is when you kidnap old grandmas and children and put them in cages with the sole purpose of torturing them and killing them.”

She extended prayers to all civilians caught in the conflict — Jews, Palestinians, and Lebanese alike — while placing moral responsibility squarely on Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. “I don’t hate anybody,” she insisted. “I pray for the Middle East.”

Her closing call was unambiguous: “We need to fight to win. We need to stand up with Israel to win. This is our fight and we must win it.”