March 25, 2004
CBN

Walid Shoebat was once a Palestinian Muslim terrorist, but his spiritual journey led him to become a Christian and a supporter of Israel. Shoebat grew up near Bethlehem, and was recruited by Yassar Arafat's faction. He once was given a bomb on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, to explode in a Bethlehem bank. Shoebat said, that for Palestinian Muslims like himself, the hatred of Jews starts from birth, and he said it has a Nazi parallel that cannot be imagined by people living in free societies. In part one of this two part interview, Pat Robertson recently spoke with Shoebat to discuss his incredible testimony.


PAT ROBERTSON: Walid Shoebat joins us now to tell us more about his remarkable transformation. Walid, welcome to the 700 Club. How old were you when they began to indoctrinate you?

WALID SHOEBAT: Well, Pat, at six years old, in kindergarten, I remember the first song we had
was 'Arabs are beloved, and Jews are Dogs.' And we sang this every morning.

ROBERTSON: You're a six-year-old, and you're singing 'Jews are Dogs'?

SHOEBAT: Yes sir, 'Jews are Dogs.'

ROBERTSON: Now, who put together that little ditty?

SHOEBAT: Amazingly, that was under the Hashimite kingdom (Jordan).

ROBERTSON: Really?

SHOEBAT: Just before the Six Days War. And I remember, right after the Six Days War, seeing Israel triumphant.

ROBERTSON: Well, what's the deal now? It looks like a group from Tunisia have been parachuted in to take control, and the Palestinian area is really occupied, not by Israel so much as by Yassar Arafat. Is that true?

SHOEBAT: That is true. In fact, the charter, Arafat's charter, the P.L.O. charter, does not include Judea or Samaria, until the Six Days War happened. It was under King Hussein. And Gaza was under Egypt. So, only after Israel got the land, did Yassar Arafat want to make the state of Palestine in Judea.

ROBERTSON: Well what were the Jews thinking? They apparently armed the Palestinian militia. Did they honestly think that those people were going to be honest policemen?

SHOEBAT: Ah, I don't think so. As a matter of fact, there were 40,000 machine guns given by Israel to start a police force, and it all turned out against Israel, as well. And it is time for the world, for the West, and for Israel to learn that you can't really deal with terrorism in such a fashion. All guns will turn against you.

ROBERTSON: What kind of freedom do you have in the West Bank, or did people have?

SHOEBAT: There is no freedom of religion, thought or anything in the West Bank. You are either under Yasser Arafat's party line, Hamas' party line or you're in the coffin. You can't walk the streets of Judea. You can't go to Bethlehem. You can't go to Ramallah, you can't go to Hebron and declare what you feel, what you believe if it's contrary to their thinking.

ROBERTSON: Well, as a kid, you were taught something, not only to hate Israel. What else were you taught? Did you go to Muslim school? Was it an Islamic school?

SHOEBAT: Everything was the most Nazi form of education that you can think of, Pat. It was the extreme, from religion, from social studies, from arts, from songs. All the songs that we memorized were evil songs calling for the death of the Jews. Even in eschatology, Islamic eschatology in high school, we learned that the day of judgment shall not come to pass until the tribes of Islam defeat the tribes of Israel.

ROBERTSON: What does defeat mean?

SHOEBAT: It means kill them. Even the stones will cry out, and the trees will cry out, "There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come, oh Muslim, come, oh slave of Allah. Come and kill him until not one Jew is left."

ROBERTSON: At what point did you personally think that giving your life as a suicide bomber or in the cause of Islam was a good thing? When did that take place in your life?

SHOEBAT: Mostly right from Kindergarten all the way to high school. Every single day in school we have been trained that. So right around high school, I decided to give my life to martyrdom, because in our education, religious education, that the way to salvation is by your own death -killing the enemy. So you take your life to yourself, and you kill yourself as you kill your enemy. And that's the way of salvation that we learned. So suicide bombing, bombing buses, killing Jews in the streets. It is incredible, Pat.

ROBERTSON: But did you believe that stuff about the 72 virgins?

SHOEBAT: The 72 - it's not only 72 virgins, Pat.

ROBERTSON: Oh, what else do you get?

SHOEBAT: Seventy-two rooms with 72 sheets in each room, and each sheet has 72 virgins.

ROBERTSON: Man, that's a lot of virgins.

SHOEBAT: A lot of virgins.

ROBERTSON: Are you serious?

SHOEBAT: Dead serious.

ROBERTSON: Seventy-two times 72?

SHOEBAT: Yes. As a matter of fact . . . .

ROBERTSON: Oh, my goodness.

SHOEBAT:. . . . a lot of people started to refute this. [Al Lazari] University declared emphatically that this is the Islamic legislation, that you get 72 virgins.

ROBERTSON: Well, at one point did you yourself offer to be a suicide bomber?

SHOEBAT: Right around high school.

ROBERTSON: High school. And what were you going to do? What was the course of action?

SHOEBAT: Well, I was going to go and bomb Bank [Loomis] right in Bethlehem. So I carried the explosives to the Temple Mount, and I ran into a bomb maker. And on the Temple Mount, I walked with the explosives down to a staircase, went to Bethlehem to [Loomis] Bank and I saw some children running around the bank. I didn't want to kill any children, Arab children especially. So I decided in the last moments to put the explosives charge on the roof. And it went off and made a huge explosion. And then for three days I was all terrified, because thinking that I've killed somebody.

ROBERTSON: Well, how did you get explosives past the Israeli checkpoint?

SHOEBAT: Well, from the Temple Mount, the walk allowed us to go into the Temple Mount. And we smuggled from the Temple Mount - there was a staircase on the wall of Jerusalem. I walked down to the walls of Jerusalem, stood on Golgotha, the bus stop. And from Golgotha, I went to Bethlehem. And all this to stare at Golgotha, Pat, wondering what this place is, never knew. I went to Rachel's tomb school by Rachel's tomb in high school. I never knew who Rachel was until many, many years later. I never understood the topography of the land. The whole time that land spoke Hebrew.

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