Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat, which his website states is a pseudonym to protect him from retaliation, describes himself as a former Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist, born in Bethlehem, who was imprisoned, by Israel,Jerusalem's central prison for incitement and violence against Israel. He is listed by the Hasbara Speakers' Bureau of Aish International. He has spoken frequently in the U.S. about the danger of Islam, as well as written several books.

PLO and related activities

"After his release, he continued his life of violence and rioting in Bethlehem and the Temple Mount. After entering the U.S, he worked as a counselor for the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago and continued his anti-Israel activities." The dates of some of these events are not explicit in the biography on the web page. An article in the Jerusalem Post suggests that his terrorist activities would have had to have been in the early to middle 1970s, since he agrees to have come to the United States around 1977. Specifically, the Post describes his most significant account as an attack, when he was 16, on a branch of the Bank Leumi in Bethlehem, after being recruited by a PLO operative named Mahmoud al-Mughrabi. "At six in the evening he was supposed to detonate a bomb in the doorway of the bank. But when he saw a group of Arab children playing nearby, he says, his conscience was pricked and he threw the bomb onto the roof of the bank instead, where it exploded causing no fatalities." The Post investigation found that "Shoebat" is not a pseudonym and it found relatives in Bethlehem. "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...he 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.

In a telephone interview, "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. "

Conversion

"In 1993, Walid studied the Tanach (Jewish Bible) in a challenge to convert his wife to Islam. Six months later, after intense study, Walid realized that everything he had been taught about Jews was a lie. Convinced he was on the side of evil, he became an advocate for his former enemy."

Books

His book, Why I left jihad, is sold, from his website, along with a video of his presentation to Christians United For Israel. The book is published by Top Executive Media; it is listed by Barnes & Noble. According to the Jerusalem Post, a notice on the page states that for "security reasons," the money will not be debited to his foundation, but to Top Executive Media, firm that the Post identified as a subsidiary of 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. Not on the website is the book God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, also published by Top Executive Media. and Why We Want to Kill You: The Jihadist Mindset and how to Defeat It, also from Top Executive Media.

Public speaking

In 2007, he spoke to an evangelical Christian rally, called BattleCry led by Ron Luce, saying, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Islam was a 'satanic cult' and described how he eventually accepted Jesus into his heart."

The New York Times reports that he and two other ex-Muslims, Zak Anani and Kamal Saleem, were paid to speak at the United States Air Force Academy in 2008, to give what was “...unique perspective from inside terrorism,” according to an Academy Spokesman. "The conference is to result in a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials, he added. Members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group suing the federal government to combat what it calls creeping evangelism in the armed forces, said it was typical of the Air Force Academy to invite born-again Christians to address cadets on terrorism rather than experts who could teach students about the Middle East. 'This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues,'" said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member. The paper reported that "Shoebat had claimed to have planted plant 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. Prof. Douglas Howard, who teaches the history of the modern Middle East at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., heard Mr. Saleem speak last November at the college and said he thought the three were connected to several major Christian evangelical organizations.

In an interview with the college newspaper, Howard said "The History Department was asked to help sponsor this speaker, and so I looked into him a bit and saw some red flags. I advised the history department to decline to sponsor. "I went to the sponsors of the event and said ‘I think he’s a fraud, we should cancel,’” said Howard. “I presented the evidence I had, but they were not convinced. We have had a lot of crazy speakers here at Calvin, and that’s fine, but it was the fraudulent part that bothered me.” "

The Times quoted Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman, as saying "Their entire world view is based on the idea that Islam is evil. We want to provide a balancing perspective to their hate speech.”

Daniel Pipes has spoken with him and believes him to be authentic.