By:Jeff Lipton
We were taught [Jews] loved to kill Arabs, and that they dipped their matzoh in the blood of Arabs, Walid Shoebat told the students during his visit to the school, where he was invited to speak, on Friday, April 30. We would go to the zoo and see monkeys and say they were the descendants of the Jews.
The 43-year-old Shoebat, who lives in northern California, is a PLO militant-turned-peacemaker who has been touring the country on speaking engagements, saying he has grown to love the Jewish people and Israel and that the Arabs and Muslims are wrong. Despite having been disowned by his family and being the target of death threats by his own family and from fundamentalist Muslims who say he must die for abandoning Islam, he said he has no fear about speaking out and spreading what he believes to be the truth about Palestinians and Israelis.
He said his earliest recollection is of attending kindergarten as a 6-year-old and being taught songs that espoused hatred for Jews. He was taught that Jews were evil, and hatred of them was taught at home as well as in school, he said.
In the mid-1970s, as a teenager, he joined the PLO and became a local activist, printing fliers, organizing protests and confronting Israeli troops. He said that when he was 16 he blew up a bank in Bethlehem, throwing a bomb onto its roof. No one was injured in the explosion, for which, he later said, he was happy.
Shoebat also was part of a mob that beat an Israeli soldier in a village in Bethlehem, before the soldier managed to run away. He said that even 30 years later, he is searching for the soldier to apologize to him for his actions.
Shoebat said it was once his dream to die as a martyr, but the course of his life changed when his parents sent him to America to get a better education.
His life turned around in 1993, when he began reading the Bible. He said he had converted from Islam to Christianity and wanted to convince his wife that the Jews corrupted the Bible, but could not find any evidence of that. In fact, he said, he found no hatred at all, and no anti-Arab rhetoric.
Jews do not even have violence in their songs, he said.
He said that another episode that changed his life was when he was sitting next to an Israeli woman on a plane headed for Tel Aviv and struck up a conversation with her. Using his best American accent, he introduced himself as Bill from California, and found out that the woman had two daughters in the Israeli army. He asked her if she hungered for her daughters to kill Arabs. And she said she felt nothing of the sort, but was fearful that her daughters would be killed by Arabs.
I then began to understand what was going on, Shoebat said. A seed was planted, and then a bunch of seeds were planted.
He also said he owes a great deal of gratitude to Jews. My father was rescued by a Jew, my child was rescued by a Jew, he said, without offering an explanation. That-s why I must pay the debt and pay it in full, not just by speaking out at every opportunity that I get, but from the very Jews I-ve hurt I-m seeking forgiveness.
He added that Jews must speak out against the world media, which has painted Jews as the aggressors in the Middle East. He said Jews and Israel are always in a defensive mode and must be more pre-emptive. In addition, he said, Jews have remained too silent over the years. Why are Jews always so silent? he said.
Shoebat said the conflict in the Middle East is not about land; it goes way beyond that, to different ideologies.
Shoebat, who calls himself a pessimist, said there is no hope for peace in the Middle East because it would be impossible to change the Muslims- way of thinking. Israel should not give up an inch of land, he said.
Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, dean of Rambam Mesivta, said that inviting Shoebat to speak at the school is by no means the school-s way of condoning Shoebat-s behavior as a member of the PLO. He said the aim of the visit was to shed light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hopefully save lives.
