Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat (Arabic: وليد شويبات‎) is a Palestinian American Christian convert from Islam who lectures on the dangers of Islamic radicalism and is a strong supporter of Christianity and the state of Israel. Born to a Jordanian Muslim father and a American mother, Walid lived in the Occupied Terretories during the early part of his life in the village of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. Walid claims to have been a former PLO militant, responsible for firebombing an Israeli Bank. A CNN investigation of Walid Shoebat's background was unable to locate any PLO^{[citation needed]} or Israeli government records to corroborate his affiliation or participation in any violent acts against Israel. Shoebat has responded in detail to CNN's claims.

An apostate Muslim convert to Christianity, Walid Shoebat became a frequent guest on cable news talk shows, where he speaks about the dangers of Islam while supporting the state of Israel. Critics, including investigative journalists with the Jerusalem Post^{[citation needed]} and CNN have questioned his alleged PLO affiliations, which he cites as the grounds for his authority on the subject of militant Islam.These claims have been answered by Shoebat on his website.

Shoebat is also a frequent speaker at Biblical prophecy conferences comparing End Times eschatology in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic sacred texts. Videos of his speeches are easily accessible via the Internet.

Shoebat's account of his life

According to the biography on his official website (http://www.shoebat.com/bio.php), Shoebat was born in Bethlehem, the grandson of the Mukhtar of Beit Sahour, whom Shoebat describes as an associate of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. Shoebat says he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in his youth, and was involved in an attack against an Israeli bank. Shoebat has been widely criticized for this because no evidence of this attack has ever been found.

Shoebat says that upon his release, Shoebat continued his anti-Israeli activism until going to the United States, where he became involved with the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago.^{[citation needed]} Shortly afterwards Walid worked as a software engineer and became a US citizen. In 1993, Walid converted to Christianity.

Lack of Evidence Supporting Shoebat's Autobiographical Account

Shoebat claimed that he threw a bomb at Bank Leumi, an Israeli bank, in Bethlehem. However, the bank has no record of the incident. Also, Israeli newspapers at that time did not report any such incident. The authenticity of Shoebat's account has been disputed by many sources.

The Jerusalem Post also disputed the authenticity of Shoebat's account of his terrorist history. The paper stated that the bombing claim made by Shoebat has been rejected both by Bank Leumi, which claims no such attack took place, and by Shoebat's own relatives. The Post said that Shoebat had contradicted himself on this matter. When, in 2008, the Jerusalem Post asked him if there were news reports about the bombing, he said,

I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for the next three days.

But, 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.

During a telephone interview with the Post, Shoebat was unable to recall the date or time of year of the attack. While Shoebat says he was pressured by teachers to adopt an extreme Islamic philosophy, the Jerusalem Post article reported that his uncle, who still lives in Bethlehem, said religion did not play a major role in his education, and that he had actually left Bethlehem by age 16.

On April 9, 2008, Shoebat responded to the Jerusalem Post's skepticism on that paper's op-ed page. He wrote that the Jerusalem Post had been duped. According to him, the sources who disputed his own account of his upbringing (including his relatives) were themselves involved in terrorism. He claimed they want to see him discredited. He also claims that reputable witnesses who could confirm the bombing operation of Bank Leumi were not interviewed. He also posted a response on his website.

Shoebat also addressed the specific accusations above in a YouTube video created to refute similar accusations made on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. A textual refutation of the CNN report links to an U.N. document which mentions two bombings in Manger Square where Shoebat claims the bank was located at the time.

Appearances

Shoebat has appeared in several interviews, documentaries and radio programs. Most notably in the documentary OBSESSION: Radical Islam's War against the West. A comprehensive list is detailed on his foundation's website "Shoebat.com"

Views on Israel

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Shoebat became an active advocate against Islamism and a fervent supporter of the State of Israel.

Shoebat is the founder of the Walid Shoebat Foundation, an organization that claims to "work to fight for Israel in the Media [sic]."

Shoebat believes Israel should retake the Gaza Strip, as it is Jewish by right, saying, "If a Jew has no right to Gaza, then he has no right to Jaffa or Haifa either." He advocates that Israel deport anyone who denies its right to exist, "even if they were born there."

Views on Islamism and Sharia

Shoebat has appeared on mainstream media around the world, and has been portrayed as an expert witness on a number of documentaries on Islamism.

Shoebat gives lectures to local police departments regarding his belief that "most Muslims seek to impose Sharia in the United States. To prevent this, he said in an interview, he warns officers that "you need to look at the entire pool of Muslims in a community.'" According to the Washington Post:

"When Shoebat spoke to the first annual South Dakota Fusion Center Conference in Sioux Falls . . . he told them to monitor Muslim student groups and local mosques and, if possible, tap their phones. 'You can find out a lot of information that way,' he said."

Views on Islam and Nazism

Shoebat argues that parallels exist between radical Islam and Nazism. He says, "Secular dogma like Nazism is less dangerous than Islamofascism that we see today ... because Islamofascism has a religious twist to it; it says 'God the Almighty ordered you to do this'.... It is trying to grow itself in fifty-five Muslim states. So potentially, you could have a success rate of several Nazi Germanys, if these people get their way."

Criticism and Allegations of Fraud

Critics such as Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Council on American-Islamic Relations have questioned Shoebat's background story, along with others like him, saying they "belong to an 'industry' that is often perpetuated by fundamentalist Christians" and aren't former Muslim terrorists.

Skeptics have also questioned why Shoebat has been able to retain his US citizenship if it is true that he was involved in acts of terror, despite being repeatedly told that in 1977 (when the bombing allegedly took place) PLO was not yet declared a terrorist organization by the US, and the incident took place in a foreign country, against a foreign bank, with no American victims or interests harmed.

One well known Conservative blogger, Debbie Schlussel accusses him of being a fraud and plagerizing one of her works.

The Jerusalem Post states that Shoebat has profited from his story that he was formerly a Muslim terrorist, but has rejected Islam for Christianity. When the Post asked Shoebat whether the Walid Shoebat Foundation is a registered charity, he said that it was registered in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania State Attorney's office said it had no record of such a charity. When asked again, Shoebat claimed it was registered under a different name, but that he was not aware of the Foundation's registered name, nor any other details, which were known only to his manager. Dr. Joel Fishman of the Allegany County Law Library in Pennsylvania expressed doubts about Walid Shoebat Foundation's donation process. He noted that 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 the contrary, Shoebat says that Daniel Pipes has supported him and his claims. Here is the website for his foundation.

On July 13, 2011, CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" reported an investigative piece into Walid Shoebat's claim to authority based on being a former terrorist. The report found that according to Israeli government officials, the bank that Walid Shoebat claimed to have attacked, and his own relatives, no record of his supposed terrorist history existed. A two-week prison term in an Israeli jail, another of Shoebat's claims was also unsubstantiated, with Israel having no record he was ever jailed. His cousin, interviewed in the report, stated that he had never known Shoebat to have ties to any movement, and that his claims of being a former terrorist were "for his own personal reasons".

These claims have been addressed in detail on Shoebat's website including the Anderson Cooper 360 report. Shoebat frequently points out that sources quoting certain family members fail to note their own connection to terrorists:

FACT: CNN failed to ask Daood Hassaan Shoebat if he had any links to terrorists. He did. How could Daood Shoebat, the uncle of famed terrorist Arin Shoebat and Raed Khalil Awadallah Shoebat be a credible witness since both terrorists can be verified without a shadow of doubt. Arin Shoebat was the renowned mastermind of the dual Operation Reshon Letzion in which Issa Bdeir detonated a bomb, killing him along with innocent Jewish civilians. Arin survived, hesitating to kill children, a similar account to that of Walid's, who published his story years prior to Arin's activity. Raed Khalil Awadallah Shoebat is on the list of official martyrs. Anyone can use google translate in Arabic can confirm both links in which these names match 100%.

Concerning his time in jail which CNN reported it could not confirm, Shoebat wrote:

2) Even if Mr. Griffin did check prison records, he was searching the wrong name. Had CNN examined our records that were offered to them, it will prove beyond doubt that Mr. Griffin made an error. When Mr. Shoebat was arrested he turned in his U.S. passport and not his birth certificate or I.D. card. His U.S. passport had a different last name.

Bibliography

• "Dear Muslim, Let Me Tell You Why I Believed"
• Israel and The World's Mock Trial - details anti-Semitism in Islamic and secular Western countries.
• Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam
• The Culture of Death: Coverage of testimony given by Shoebat.
• From Hate to Love: Discusses the anti-semitic indoctrination of Palestinian children.
• Walid Shoebat: A Testimony of Faith to Redemption
• Why We Want To Kill You: The Jihadist Mindset and How to Defeat It (2007)
• In Satan’s Footsteps
• The Forgotten Ally
• Arabs Speak Frankly
• HomelandSecurityUS.com http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/5067

See also

• Criticism of Islam
• List of former Muslims

Documentaries Involving/Featuring Walid Shoebat

• From the River to the Sea
• First Comes Saturday Then Comes Sunday
• The Forsaken Promise
• Walid Shoebat: The Culture of Death
• The Silent Exodus
• Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West
• Islam: What the West Needs to Know

External links

• Shoebat.com The home page of Walid Shoebat
• BBC News Palestinian militant turned peacemaker
• The Telegraph: I only wanted to kill Jews
• World Net Daily Editorial: The Unmaking Of A Terrorist by Joseph Farah
• New Voices Magazine: The Changeling by Josh Nathan-Kazis
• Live Blogging Walid Shoebat in Milwaukee
• A Terrorist Who Turned To Love by Jamie Glazov at FrontPage Magazine
• Critique of Claims of Walid Shoebat
• Former terrorist fuels controversy
• Pro-Israel ex-terrorist denied entry into Canada
• Walid Shoebat tells his story to hundreds in Winnipeg
• Former terrorist speaks against violence
• Former terrorist has changed his ways
• YouTube link to the Fox News interview
• Shoebat: From Palestinian Terrorist to Lover of Zion?
• Walid Shoebat interviewed on Dr. Blogstein's Radio Happy Hour

Videos

• Walid Shoebat: God's War on Terror TV Broadcast on WVCY-TV
• Walid Shoebat: From Terror to Truth TV Broadcast on WVCY-TV
• Walid Shoebat – A Palestinian's Journey
• Critical Study of 'Walid Shoebat'
• Walid Shoebat on Fox News
• Interview on God's Learning Channel
• List of Walid Shoebat online media
• Walid Shoebat, Zak Anani and Ibrahim Abdullah on CN8, subtitled in French
• The Mind of a terrorist
• Interview of 3 ex-terrorists
• Making of a Martyr Bonus Features – Walid Shoebat: Part 1, Part 2.
• Walid Shoebat – "Islam Prophecied In The Bible" (7 videos) – Koinonia Institute's 2008 Strategic Perspectives conference in Southern California hosted by Dr. Chuck Missler
• Walid Shoebat – Major series (22 videos) "What The Bible says about Islam" Southern California Prophecy Conference 2008
• Walid Shoebat – Exposed