Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: A Changed Man

WASHINGTON - "As a child I was a brainwash victim. I was taught songs
about killing Jews. Now I see millions of other children who are also
the victims of a fascist ideology," Walid Shoebat tells Ynet.
Shoebat, a former Palestinian terrorist from the town of Beit Sahour,
who almost lynched an Israeli soldier and planted explosive devices,
is now one of the State of Israel's best PR people in the United
States.
Shoebat is a one-man PR machine. He gives interviews to TV channels
and radio stations, delivers speeches across the US, and has even
written four books in which he recounted his past as a terrorist in
the mid 1970s, and the personal change he went through when he
converted to Christianity and became one of the most enthusiastic
preachers against radical Islam and in favor of the State of Israel.
His claim that there is no different between the Hamas and the al-
Qaeda organizations has enraged Muslims and Arabs, both in the US and
in the West Bank.
When a BBC interviewer attempted to distinguish between Hamas, "which
fights for legitimate rights," and al-Qaeda, "which simply likes to
kill people," Shoebat gives him a live history lesson, mentioning the
name of Mustafa Azzam, a Palestinian from Jenin, who was Osama bin
Laden's spiritual father and a source of inspiration for radical
Islamists in the West Bank. Shoebat views Hamas and al-Qaeda as
different expressions of the radical Islam which murders Christian and
Jewish atheists.
Offspring of Palestinian struggle leaders
Shoebat speaks from personal knowledge. As a youth in Bethlehem in the
1970s, young Walid was active in the PLO's military wing. After
leaving for studies in the US in the 1980s, he served as chairman of
the Palestinian students in a Chicago college, raised funds to finance
Palestinian terror in Israel and Lebanon, and was even joined the
Muslim Brotherhood.
"My recruiter in Chicago was preacher Jamal Said, who is still roaming
freely in Illinois. This is what is happening in mosques across
America," he said in a TV interview.
Walid's grandfather, Abdullah Ali Awad - who was the Beit Sahour
mukhtar (village head) and the colleague of Haj al-Amin Husseini and
Abed al-Kader, the leaders of the Palestinian struggle before the
establishment of the State of Israel - would probably turn in his
grave could he hear his grandson's remarks.
Shoebat's family raised a number of terrorists, some of whom were
involved in terror attacks in Israel in recent years, including at
attack in central Jerusalem. His relatives cannot understand how such
a traitor could have emerged from their family.
Shoebat was born in Bethlehem in September 1960, but could actually
have been born in the US. His mother Marilyn is a Christian American,
who visited the Holy Land with her Muslim husband and two brothers who
were two and five years old at the time. She couldn't imagine that her
husband and his family members would not let the children return to
the US and that she was about to be stranded in the Middle East for 35
years. She finally returned to the US in 1994.
'Rachel was a Jewish whore'
He grew up in Beit Sahour, where he was brought up on the notion that
"Jesus was a Palestinian revolutionist." Shoebat recounts that "the
learning material was brought from Jordan and the education was anti-
Semitic. My teachers were al-Azhar graduates and Muslim Brotherhood
members. The school was located nearby Rachel's Tomb, but no one
taught me who Rachel was. Years later I asked my uncle, who served as
an educational supervisor in Bethlehem, how it was possible that I
wasn't taught who Rachel was, and he replied: 'Rachel was a Jewish
whore'."
In an interview to CNN, Shoebat said that he had been brought up to
hate Jews from an early age. "Since you are five you learn to hate the
Jews. Over the years you also learn to deny the Holocaust and adopt a
racist ideology. Nasrallah apologizes for firing rockets that hurt
Arabs, but doesn't apologize for hurting Jewish children.
"It's like becoming addicted to a drug. Lynching two Israeli soldiers
in Ramallah and proudly presenting the Jewish blood on your hands."
Naturally, Shoebat, who grew up in an atmosphere of resistance to the
occupation, took part in distributing Palestinian flags, spraying
graffiti against Israel, and throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. In
May 1977, he was held for three weeks in detention in Jerusalem on
suspicion of inciting to violence.
According to Shoebat, unlike his friends who remained in detention for
a prolonged period, he was released following the intervention of the
US consul general in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the time he spent in
jail served as a life-changing experience for him that provided him
with a chance to meet other terror operatives. After his release, an
explosives expert named Mahmoud al-Mugrabi recruited him to the ranks
of the resistance groups.
Shoebat, who was then only 16, was sent by al-Mugrabi to blow up a
Bank Leumi branch in Bethlehem. He took a bus to the bank, but when he
arrived there he noticed several Palestinian children passing by, and
instead of placing the explosive device inside the branch he panicked,
threw the bomb on the roof and fled. The device eventually exploded
without causing real damage.
I was depressed and scared about what I had done, Shoebat said, but
added that he acted in accordance with what his father and his Muslim
environment expected of him: To kill Jews and become a shahid. He
continued his involvement in other activities, and on one occasion
beat up and stabbed an Israeli soldier with his friends. The soldier
eventually managed to call for help and was rescued by other troops.
Bible led to a transformation
Shoebat's mother, who was concerned his acts would lead to his death,
decided to send her son to the United States to study in 1978. This
might have been the decision that saved his life. The move to the US
did not bring about an immediate transformation though. He continued
to act for the Palestinian cause and later raise money to fund the
first intifada.
The change came about in 1993, after he started reading the Bible, in
an attempt to persuade his Christian wife to convert to Islam. For six
months he read and studied the Bible, and this led him to the
conclusion that everything he had been taught to believe about Judaism
was a lie. He converted to Christianity and turned from an enemy of
Jews to an ardent supporter of Judaism and Israel.
Shoebat began giving lectures in synagogues and churches across the US
and the world, appeared on TV shows and held lectures in universities.
Palestinian organizations in the US have been constantly trying to
discredit him, and his own family members claim that his stories are
false and that he is an Israeli agent. However, none of them can
explain why Shoebat is considered persona non-grata in Israel. "They
won't let me into Israel, because as far as the state is concerned I'm
a terrorist," he explained to Ynet.
Over the past year, Shoebat has been trying to obtain an entry permit
to Israel, which he wishes to visit with his family, but has been
denied repeatedly.
In the US, on the contrary, he is a very popular lecturer, who has
already been asked to speak before Congress, the FBI and the
Department of Homeland Security.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3527638,00.html


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632362598&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
When he was 16, says Walid Shoebat, he was recruited by a PLO
operative by the name of Mahmoud al-Mughrabi to carry out an attack on
a branch of Bank Leumi in Bethlehem.
....
This is the story that Shoebat, who converted from Islam to
Christianity in 1993 and has lived in the United States since the late
1970s, has told on tours around the US and Europe since 9/11 opened
the West's public consciousness to the dangers of Islamic extremism.
Shoebat's Web site says his is an assumed name, used to protect him
from reprisal attacks by his former terror chiefs, whom he says have
put a $10 million price on his head.
Shoebat is sometimes paid for his appearances, and he also solicits
donations to a Walid Shoebat Foundation to help fund this work and to
"fight for the Jewish people."
The BBC, Fox News and CNN have all presented Shoebat as a terrorist
turned peacemaker, interviewing him as someone uniquely capable of
providing insight into the terrorist mindset.
Now he and two other former extremists are set to appear along with US
Senator Joe Lieberman, Ambassador to the US Sallai Meridor and other
notables at an annual "Christians United For Israel" conference in
Washington in July.
The three "ex-terrorists" have appeared previously at Harvard and
Columbia universities and, most recently, at the US Air Force Academy
in Colorado, in February, at a conference whose findings, the
organizers said, would be circulated at the Pentagon and among members
of Congress and other influential figures.
Last year, Shoebat spoke to the BattleCry Christian gathering in San
Francisco, which drew a reported 22,000 evangelical teenagers to what
the San Francisco Chronicle described as "a mix of pep rally, rock
concert and church service."
The paper described Shoebat as a self-proclaimed "former Islamic
terrorist" who said that Islam was a "satanic cult" and who told the
crowd how he eventually accepted Jesus into his heart.
However, Shoebat's claim to have bombed Bank Leumi in Bethlehem is
rejected by members of his family who still live in the area, and Bank
Leumi says it has no record of such an attack ever taking place.
His relatives, members of the Shoebat family, are mystified by the
notion of "Walid Shoebat" being an assumed name. And the Walid Shoebat
Foundation's working process is less than transparent, with Shoebat's
claim that it is registered as a charity in the state of Pennsylvania
being denied by the Pennsylvania State Attorney's Office.
Shoebat's claim to have been a terrorist rests on his account of the
purported bombing of Bank Leumi. But after checking its files, the
bank said it had no record of an attack on its Bethlehem branch
anywhere in the relevant 1977-79 period.
Shoebat told The Jerusalem Post that this could be because the bank
building was robustly protected with steel and that the attack may
have caused little damage.
Asked whether word of the bombing made the news at the time, he said,
"I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for
the next three days." (In 2004, he had told Britain's Sunday
Telegraph: "I was terribly relieved when I heard on the news later
that evening that no one had been hurt or killed by my bomb.")
Shoebat could not immediately recall the year, or even the time of
year, of the purported bombing when talking to the Post by phone from
the US. After wavering, he finally settled for the summer of 1977.
The Sunday Telegraph described Shoebat as a man who "for much of his
life... was eager to commit acts of terrorism for the sake of his soul
and the Palestinian cause."
In that interview he described how he and his peers were indoctrinated
as children "to believe that the fires of hell were an ever-present
reality. We were all terrified of burning in hell when we died... The
teachers told us that the only way we could certainly avoid that fate
was to die in a martyrdom operation - to die for Islam."
But an uncle and a cousin of Shoebat, who still live in Beit Sahur in
the Bethlehem area, where Shoebat grew up, said that Shoebat's
education was rather mild ideologically, and that religion did not
play a dominant role.
The uncle, interviewed at his home, said he remembered little about
his nephew, because Walid left for America at the age of 16, and
because his American mother always kept a distance from the rest of
the family. The uncle and his wife both said firmly that there was no
attack on Bank Leumi.
When questioned on this discrepancy, Shoebat was adamant that he did
carry out such a bombing, and that his relatives deny it to cover up
for another cousin who was with him during the attack and still lives
in Bethlehem.
Shoebat evinced no particular surprise that his family could be
tracked down simply by asking Beit Sahur locals where they lived, even
though his Internet site claims that his is an assumed name.
Shoebat describes his conversion to Christianity as a transformation
"from hate to love." He told the Post that he believes "in a Greater
Israel that includes Judea and Samaria, and by this I mean a Jewish
state."
He argued that Israel should retake the Gaza Strip and rehouse Jews
there, regarding Gaza as Jewish by right. "If a Jew has no right to
Gaza, then he has no right to Jaffa or Haifa either," he said.
He advocates that the government of Greater Israel introduce a law
providing for the exiling of anybody who denies its right to exist,
"even if they were born there."
He has little sympathy for the PLO or Hamas. "The Palestinians have
not met a single demand from Israel," he said, and added, "Both the
PLO and Hamas have not given up the goal of destroying Israel."
"The Jews are not aware of the true threat," Shoebat said. "They are
still fighting dead Nazis. It is easy to fight dead people. But they
don't have the will to fight the living Nazis, the Islamic radicals."
He told the Post he had set up his Walid Shoebat Foundation to educate
Americans as to why the US should support Israel. Shoebat said the
foundation had reached out to over 450 million people. He said it held
events where he and others like him - whom he called "ex-terrorists"
who have become Zionists - spoke about their views to Jewish,
Christian and secular audiences.
A New York Times report last month on the Air Force Academy event,
headlined "Speakers at Academy Said to Make False Claims," noted that
"Academic professors and others who have heard the three men speak in
the United States and Canada said some of their stories border on the
fantastic, like Mr. Saleem's account of how, as a child, he
infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath
the Golan Heights. No such incidents have been reported, the academic
experts said. They also question how three middle-aged men who claim
they were recruited as teenagers or younger could have been steeped in
the violent religious ideology that only became prevalent in the late
1980s."
The Times quoted Prof. Douglas Howard, who teaches the history of the
modern Middle East at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as
saying after he heard Saleem speak last November at the college that
he thought the three were connected to several major Christian
evangelical organizations.
"It was just an old time gospel hour: 'Jesus can change your life, he
changed mine,'" Howard said.
The professor told the Times that his doubts about the authenticity of
the three grew after he heard stories like that of the Golan Heights
tunnels, "as well as something on Mr. Saleem's Web site along the
lines that he was descended from the grand wazir of Islam. The grand
wazir of Islam is a nonsensical term."
The newspaper said Arab-American civil rights organizations have
questioned "why, at a time when the United States government has
vigorously moved to jail or at least deport anyone with a known
terrorist connection, the three men, if they are telling the truth,
are allowed to circulate freely."
A spokesman for the FBI, the paper reported, said there were no
warrants for their arrest.
The Times said the three men were to be paid $13,000 for the Air Force
Academy event.
Visitors to Shoebat's Internet site are encouraged to make a donation
to his foundation to enable him to disseminate his message. However, a
notice on the page states that for "security reasons," the money will
not be debited to his foundation, but rather to a company called Top
Executive Media. The name Top Executive Media is used by a greetings
card firm from Pennsylvania called Top Executive Greetings, a company
with an annual turnover of $500,000. When one makes a donation through
the Shoebat Internet site, the Web address changes to
topexecutivegreetings.com/shoebat
.
This seems to be the only active page for the company; its homepage is
blank.
Asked by the Post whether the Walid Shoebat Foundation is a registered
charity, Shoebat replied that it is registered in Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania State Attorney's office said it had no record of a
charity registered under this name.
Questioned further, Shoebat said it was registered under a different
name, but that he was not aware of the details, which are handled by
his manager.
"I remain separate to the running of the charity so that I am not
constrained by church rules," he explained, adding that the
organization's connection to certain churches meant it would be
difficult for him to speak to secular audiences if he became too
involved in running it.
Dr. Joel Fishman, of the Allegany County Law Library in Pennsylvania,
expressed doubts about this donation process. If the money were being
given to a registered charity, the charity would have to make annual
reports to the state and federal government on how it was being spent,
he noted.
Shoebat insisted donations were not being misused, however. "I survive
by being an author," he said. "I only get paid for being an author.
All the money that is donated gets put back into events."
If the Bank Leumi bombing claim is unfounded, it is unclear why
Shoebat would have wanted to manufacture a terrorist past. True or
not, however, it has plainly brought him some prominence and provided
him with a means to speak in favor of Israel and be paid for doing so.
---------------------------
Nahum: C'e un miliardario Nigeriano che vorrebbe donare a Israele un
miliardo di dollari.   Tutto quello che gli serve e' il tuo n. di
carta di credito per trasferire i fondi :))))

 
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632362598&pagename=JPo.
..
dal che si apprende che Giorgino legge il Jerusalem Post, lo considera
fonte affidabile e/o ha un database in cui gli è facile risalire a
Walid Shoebat.
Chissà quale è il titolo del database. Qualcosa come: Arabi che hanno
detto palle, Raccolte di fondi a cui è meglio non partecipare,
Inchieste del Jerusalem Post sui crimini del sionismo....
Ammirevole, cmq. Chissà la mamma come sarebbe contenta.

 dal che si apprende che Giorgino legge il Jerusalem Post
e ti fa fare figure da fesso a ripetizione. Succede, quando si è
avvelenati dall'islamofobia.