Brigitte Gabriel Biography

Brigitte Gabriel, born Hanan Qahwaji on October 21, 1964, in Marjayoun, Lebanon, is a Lebanese-American author, activist, and founder of ACT for America, a group focused on national security and opposing Islamic extremism.

Raised in a Maronite Christian family, her early childhood was marked by comfort and love as an only child, but this idyllic life shattered during the Lebanese Civil War. At age 10, in 1975, her home was destroyed by a rocket attack, leaving her injured by shrapnel. For the next seven years, she and her parents lived in a cramped 8-by-10-foot bomb shelter, surviving with scarce food, no electricity, or running water, often resorting to boiling grass for sustenance. Gabriel had to crawl through ditches to fetch water, dodging sniper fire. In 1978, a bomb trapped her family in the shelter for two days until they were rescued by Christian militiamen. Later, her mother’s severe injury led to treatment in an Israeli hospital, where Gabriel’s views on Israel shifted as she witnessed their care for all, regardless of religion or allegiance.

After graduating high school, Gabriel moved to Israel in 1984, working as a news anchor for Middle East Television under the pseudonym Nour Semaan.

She immigrated to the United States in 1989, where she founded a television production company and later ACT for America.

Her experiences fuel her controversial stance against radical Islam, though critics, including some Lebanese journalists, have questioned the accuracy of her accounts, suggesting exaggeration.

Publications

• Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (2006)

• They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (2008)