Palestinian bomber who changed sides in the conflict

Tue, Oct 26, 2004

MIDDLE EAST:  It is something of an understatement to describe Walid Shoebat as controversial. The former Palestinian bomber and fanatical Islamic fundamentalist whose main, unrealised ambition was to kill an Israeli with his bare hands has become a convert to Christianity and fervent supporter of the Israeli cause, writes Deagl?n de Br?ad?n , Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Born and brought up in the Occupied Territories, he now lives in California but travels widely to spread his message. He claims the Palestinians are in the grip of a hateful anti-Semitic ideology and that the best solution to the conflict is a Greater Israel with internal autonomy for Palestinians, rather than the two-state solution favoured by the international community in the Road Map.

For the last 11 years he has put forward these views in England, Canada and the US in churches, synagogues and universities. Six months ago he gave up a career in computers to take up his mission full-time. He has a sophisticated website at www.shoebat.com. Last June, he was refused admission to Canada for a speaking engagement, but whether it was because of his past or due to pressure from pro-Palestinian elements was a matter of dispute. He visited Canada three times previously and hopes to do so again.

Here in Ireland, he has addressed Christian and Jewish groups in Dublin and Cork as well as meeting the Department of Foreign Affairs and visiting Leinster House. During an interview in Dublin, he told The Irish Times he funds his activities with fees for speaking engagements. "Not a penny" comes from the Israeli government. "I am telling you the truth," he says. "The English are the same, they ask the same questions. Who is financing you? Who is paying you?"

He doesn't like giving personal details about himself "because there's been threats", but admits to being 44 years old. Born in Bethlehem in 1960, he spent his childhood years in Jericho where his father was a teacher in a refugee camp. Jericho and the entire West Bank were part of Jordan at the time and people considered themselves Jordanian, not Palestinian, he recalls.

"Before the Six-Day War I remember the Jordanians came to do a drill. And everybody was chanting that they are going to destroy the Jews. And I remember we were singing in kindergarten, 'Arabs are beloved, Jews are dogs'." The young Shoebat inquired: "What is a Jew? Who are the Jews? What's this?" And he says the replies were always the same: "The Jews are descendants of monkeys, monkeys and pigs, the Jews are our enemy."

He only saw a Jewish person for the first time during the Six Day War in 1967. "They knocked on the door. They asked everybody on the loudspeaker to put a white flag on the door and [ said] your house will be spared, they will not harm you. My father took my sister's shirt, he hung it on the door and the Israeli soldiers came, knocked on the door and I remember I learned my first Hebrew word, 'Shalom'. My father was upset because he'd been listening to the Jordanian and Egyptian news as the war was going on and the news media was saying: 'We have cleansed Jerusalem of the Jews, we are winning the battle.' Propaganda, you know."

At first people were scared of the Israelis. "Neighbours were fleeing." There were 42 students in Shoebat's class at school before the war. "When I went back to class there were only nine students left." But his father was now getting two incomes as a teacher, his original Jordanian salary and a new, Israeli one. "Prices fell," says Shoebat. "I remember watching the Israeli soldiers opening some of the stores because the people were hungry. They were taking the food and giving it to the people." It was the first time that his acquired prejudices were confronted by the facts.

Shoebat became involved with a unit of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation when he was 16. He was recruited in a Jerusalem prison, where he had been taken after a riot. "Every single riot there was, I was right at the head of the riot." Released from prison, he was sent on an operation to blow up the Bank Leumi Israel in Bethlehem. An explosives charge was assembled for him by one of his associates and he was told to plant it at the door of the bank at six p.m.

"At five to six I saw some Arab children running around the bank. I said 'My mission in life is not to kill Arab children.' So I decided to toss it on the roof of the bank, hoping that the explosion caused the bank to collapse. As I started walking away, the thing exploded, made a huge explosion. I looked behind me, there is this big black cloud of smoke coming out of the roof of the bank. And later on, I thought about it: I said 'If I was there 6 p.m. exactly, I would have been a suicide bomber.' So this guy timed it, where an Arab dies [ planting] this bomb."

He broke off with the unit he had just joined because of this. "It was either carelessness or there was a different agenda." But he remained active, his main ambition to kill his first Israeli. "It's like the African and his first lion." He and his friends snatched an Israeli soldier during a demonstration. One of the boys had a club with a nail in it: "He was plunging the nail into this guy's head." But the Israeli soldier broke free, "he ran away, he escaped". He never did get to kill an Israeli in the end, he says.

Shoebat went to the US in 1978 and enrolled at a college in Chicago, where he continued working for the PLO as a translator and co-ordinator of publicity for fundraising events on and off campus. Within a few years, he had moved away from secular nationalism towards a radical Muslim ideology. He claims to have received underground training from Islamic fundamentalists with a similar outlook to Osama Bin Laden, in preparation for jihad, or holy war, in the US. This was the time when the idea of jihad in the West took root and he claims Chicago was the hub for this development.

He says some of these people are still in the US and none of them was detained in Guantanamo Bay. When I asked if he had given their names to the authorities, he declined to answer. But asked if these people ever did anything violent in America, he replied: "Not that I know of."

He began to question his beliefs when he visited the West Bank in 1991 and saw elderly Jews being stoned at a bus-stop near the settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron. Suddenly a Palestinian crowd appeared and started heaving stones at the settlers.

"I wasn't astonished because of what I saw, I was astonished because I began to feel for these guys, these poor people, old women, old men, rabbis. This is not soldiers." He recalls that "the stones were like locusts, flying like cannonballs, the noise of them hitting the bus was so loud".

He thought to himself: "I don't feel good about this." He began to question his beliefs: "Our war was with Zionists, we hated Zionism, but yet we stoned Jews."

He also became "very tormented" over the death of a cousin who was shot dead trying to plant a bomb in Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street. "He was such a nice boy," he recalls. "I hated the Israelis for killing my cousin. But I asked myself the question, wait a minute, who killed my cousin? The Israelis simply shot him because he had a bomb. The ones who killed my cousin were the teachers, the same teachers that I went to school to, the same mullahs, the same muftis, that he went to [ and heard at] the mosque. And, I finally started realising, they are what's called drugpushers, if you will, basically they push at you this agenda, this ideology, the culture of death, that you should die. We were willing to die, we wanted to die!"

He bought a Bible for ten dollars and read it. He began to research Jewish culture, particularly music and art. He started learning Hebrew. "In 1993 I converted to Christianity and being a supporter of the Jewish cause." His family regarded him as a traitor but he says he was just practising "tough love" towards his people.

He regretsthe Israeli attacks in Gaza, for example, where Palestinians get killed. "These are my people, I don't hate my people." But he insists that, "It's always a reaction" to Palestinian attacks.

He opposes the two-state solution set out in the Road Map and favours instead a Greater Israel with internal autonomy for Palestinians. "There has not been a single Arab state that has been democratic." He doesn't believe a Palestinian state would be any better or that its political and religious culture would allow him to express his views: "If I go back to my village now, I am lynched in five minutes."

© 2004 The Irish Times