The 1978 South Lebanon conflict (code-named Operation Litani by Israel) was an invasion of Lebanon up to the Litani River, carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in 1978 in response to the Coastal Road Massacre. The conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,100–2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, 20 Israelis, the internal displacement of 100,000 to 250,000 people in Lebanon, and the PLO forces retreating north of the Litani River. It led to the creation of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force and an almost complete Israeli withdrawal.

Though it took the form of an Israeli military incursion into Southern Lebanon, Operation Litani was grounded in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From 1968 on, the PLO, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other Palestinian groups established a quasi-state in southern Lebanon, using it as a base for raids on civilian targets in northern Israel, as well as worldwide terror attacks on Israeli and other targets. This was exacerbated by an influx of 3,000 PLO militants fleeing a defeat in the Jordanian civil war and regrouping in southern Lebanon. Israel responded with damaging attacks against PLO bases.

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Brigitte Gabriel (a.k.a. Nour Saman, born October 21, 1964), is the pseudonym of a Lebanese American journalist, author, and activist. Gabriel says that Islam keeps countries backward, and that it teaches terrorism. To promote her views, she founded the American Congress For Truth and ACT! for America so that others may "fearlessly speak out in defense of America, Israel and Western civilization."

She frequently speaks at American conservative-leaning organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, Christians United for Israel, Evangelicals and Jewish groups.

Stephen Lee, a publicist at St. Martins Press for Gabriel’s second book, has called her views "extreme". Gabriel claims she gives 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."

Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjayoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian family when her mother was fifty-five and her father was sixty as their first and only child after over twenty years of marriage. She recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8'x10' bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.