A Terrorist Who Turned To Love
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FrontPageMagazine.com | July 9, 2004
Fronpage Interview’s
Walid Shoebat
FP: Mr. Shoebat, it is a privilege to have you as a guest. Welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Shoebat: Thank you
FP: Tell us a bit about the violent culture you come from.
Shoebat: This question requires an entire book to respond to fully, but simply put, one must never forget Nazi Germany. Nazism was the process of robbing the religious institutions, arts, media, and the social fabric of the German society. Likewise, in the Middle East, one can find the same elements as Nazi Germany, with a crucial difference:
1 - This form has a religious twist to it – Islamic fundamentalism.
2 - This goes beyond one country as Germany. Islamic fundamentalism is attempting to spread itself throughout 55 Muslim states.
But like Nazism and Communism, it has no respect for national borders and the end justifies the means.
Now, what type of a child can a system like this produce?
So I was taught day-in-and-day-out: Jew-Hatred. In the mosque, songs, social life.
Hatred develops like drug addiction, from stone throwing to Molotov cocktails to ending up planting a bomb.
FP: Why is it so vital for Palestinians to hate Jews?
Shoebat: Once the disease has been identified in my lines above (Islamo-Nazism), it would be easy to respond to your question with a question - why do Muslim fanatics behead Americans on TV?
Well... they hate Americans, but is it only Americans? Koreans die as well as even other Muslims.
The response to this question has been well documented in history - why did Nazis destroy 6,000,000 Jews by public shooting and extermination camps? And even Germans who didn't agree were exterminated as well.
Cult-like hatred. Nazism is a cult, a process to brainwash an entire society to believe that Nazi Germans are more special then others. The Arian special race in Nazism was one of these methods. In other words, an unhealthy dose of extreme national pride can go too far. Evil in Nazism didn't have to outwardly say "kill Jews" right from the start, but simply made Germans think in such pride to say "you are a special people, better then anyone else". From that point, the rest was history.
Similarly Islamism, the process of saying that Muslims are better then others, that we need to Islamize the world by the sword. This cult has gone as far as to kill and behead people in front of a camera, carry body parts in Ramallah and praise Allah in public view for the whole world to see.
It is one thing if a private cult practiced some sick idea, but when the entire city of Ramallah openly carries body parts and praises Allah for the death of Jews?
The difference is that the first is condemned by the others. Yet this is not the case in "Palestine" and much of the Arab world who paraded the death of almost 3,000 Americans who died in 9/11.
Very few dare to object (besides public officials for the media’s sake), they would be branded as traitors and publicly lynched. One can see several photos of public lynchings in "Palestine" and they are done openly with the blessings of entire populations.
What were the crimes of the victims?
They didn't follow the party line. Period.
These are the things you rarely hear or see in the media today.
FP: Do you agree that the yearning for murder and suicide in Palestinian culture - and in Islamic-Arab culture in general -- would not disappear even if Israel and all Jews disappeared from the face of the earth?
Shoebat: I agree. Even if every Jew is dead it would make no difference. As I responded previously, they kill anyone who is not like them. The goal is "Islam to the world." This is the banner you see them carry all over their demonstrations.
Palestine and its cause is hardly a secular one, it is far from being multi-ethnic or multi-religious.
The Palestinian charter is calling for an Arab state (with no Jews allowed) and Islam as a the official state religion. It is crucial to ask ourselves: why? Why are Jews not allowed to exist in this state? Why Islam a state religion? I had thought that we are living in a world of tolerance. Not so in the Arab world with a culture that has a short fuse.
Arafat was always kissing Sheikh Yassin for his own survival. He knew that if he diverted too much from the main line of Islamism that he would die. Much of the Arab world is still calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. The only difference between Hamas and the PA is the dose of Islamofascism. If Hamas introduced 1000 mg, 500mg Sharia law (both government and secular), and 500mg Jihad, Arafat would introduce 250mg Sharia (Islamic civil law) and 500mg pure Jihad.
FP: Tell us the significant stages that led to your decision to reject your culture and its terrorism.
Shoebat: I had to go through a self-detoxification program. A daily dose of questioning everything I believed in. It started in 1993 and progressed by studying the Jewish Bible, arts, and history. It was sparked by a question my wife asked me in the process of me Islamizing her - "Show me the bad things the Jews did in the Bible?"
In the Bible, all I found was that the Jews were on self-defense mode throughout Bible history, and even until now. From Babylonians, Assyrians, Amorites, Philistines, Edomites... always in self-defense mode.
While I learned in my Islamic study that when the Jews come back to the land, that we will kill them, and the trees and stones will cry out: here is a Jew hiding behind me, come O Muslim, come and kill him.
One is on self-defense mode, and the other on the attack. Why?
Then I started on the arts, songs, movies, culture.
I began with Fiddler on the Roof. This was Jewish culture 101. I watched it over 350 times.
Then came Jewish songs, with not a single song that had the words "kill", "war" or "death".
After I expressed my findings, my enemies accused me of transforming from one extreme to another. They accused me of being racist.
When I was a terrorist I was labelled "freedom fighter", but for loving Jewish culture, Jewish religion, Jewish preservation, I was called a racist.
Then I made a trip to the Holy Land, stopped with shock in Hebron when I saw Palestinians stone the Jewish bus in Qiryat Arba'a. The taxi I was sitting in wanted to leave and I asked him to stop. I wanted to see this. The Jews took the stones without a single word of anger. Quietly entered the bus. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
Why I asked?
Not why they stone Jews, but why it's making me so sad to see Arabs stoning Jews.
I had thought that we hated Zionism and not Jews. Why were Jews not allowed to exist in Arab villages, yet Arabs exist in Israel proper?
This and thousands of questions. I realized that I was being infected with all of these feelings. I concluded that if love was an "infection" I prayed to God that I get plagued with it, and that I never recover. Is this my sin? That I began to love Jews? As well as Hindus, Buddhists, and Moslems?
To love life is a sin? To want to preserve both Jewish children and Arabs is a sin?
I was so hurt when my cousin Raed was killed on his way to plant a bomb in Ben Yehuda Street, yet I also felt bad for the kids he was about to kill. I realized that he was infected with a Nazi like cult just as I was.
To love ourselves is easy. To love our children is easy, but the deepest love is to love other people's children as well. Adoption was made null and void in Islam, yet I saw in the Judeo-Christian culture that adoption is a beautiful thing.
Hatred is a cancer that spread. I know that they say that Islamism is only 15% of the Muslim world, but it's a cancer, and it's spreading. We are not winning fanatics into the fold, but loosing secular Muslims to the fanatics. We need to put on a fight. Extracting cancer is painful. The scales began to fall from my eyes a year later and documenting everything.
I decided to convert to Christianity as a result and fight for justice for Jews everywhere. It's a myth that Palestinians are the underdogs, it's not an Israeli-Palestinian war, but an Arab-Islamofascist war. Once we get the big picture, we can see who the under-dog is - the Jews. There was only one reason we called for the destruction of Israel, and one reason alone - we simply hated Jews.
FP: What do you think of Western leftists who demonize Israel and exonerate Islamic-Arab terror? What is their psychology?
Shoebat: I am not into modern psychology and at times I have clashes with "psychoanalyzing" everything. How do we psychoanalyze Hitler? Can we psychoanalyze evil? Some try. But since you asked me to do so I will try.
There are two types of "leftists". One is naive and believes in his cause out of what he thinks is love. These are a group of people who think they are dreaming of peace but view it through tunnel vision.
Peace cannot be obtained in a vacuum without using truth and justice. This group unfortunately dominates much of the Jewish community and the western world.
With the Jewish community, they allowed their enemy to put a wedge called "Palestine". Now the Jewish community is divided either pro or against a Palestinian state. I am not against such people, at least we all need to unite to SAVE Israel and Jewish existence.
At least this group should adjust and stand for a "democratic Palestine", a "multi-cultural multi-religious Palestine." Yet they are blind to what is the intention of Arafat and Hamas. This is the group who had hopes in Oslo. They condemned me for saying that Oslo will bring more dead Jews. This was in 1993. Today not one single member of the "lightly breaded lefties" say the Oslo indeed brought peace. They all realize that if Arafat had his way, they too will be deep fried.
The other type are these groups that attack Israel in their claim to love the world, yet are silent towards the real issues, silent when over a million Sudanese are butchered. Silent when Christians die in Indonesia, or Cypriots are killed by Turks. Silent regarding women's rights abuses.
You never hear a peep. But when Israel defends itself, and in the process they kill attackers. They are too quick to point their fingers in isolating Israel as the world villain.
To this group, if they saw the unprovoked stoning of Palestinians against the minority Jews in Hebron as I did, they will always conclude that the Jews must have done something to deserve this. That it takes two to tango. To these I have but a simple question – what did the Jews do to tango in Nazi Germany? The Jews of Hebron at one time were all exterminated with the men's testicles cut off, women raped, their breasts cut off, and babies slashed to death. This happened way before the so-called occupation when Haj Amin Al-Husseni called to "kill them were ever you find them and rape their women" as he collaborated with Hitler to rid the Muslim world of Jews and even organized an SS Khanzar Muslim division for the service of Adolf Hitler and literally Islamo-Nazism.
No one talks about the Hebron massacre, and everyone talks of Jenin, forgetting that many Israeli soldiers were killed in their attempt to dismantle bomb making houses. When does the world blame the law for a drug bust?
These are lead by wolves in sheep's clothing. But even wolves can be transformed into sheep. Nothing is impossible in my view. After all, I myself was once a wolf.
FP: Walid Shoebat, thank you for joining us today. You are a truly courageous man and we wish you all the best.
Shoebat: Thank you Jamie. *