Walid Shoebat

<youtube size="tiny" align="right" caption="CNN investigates Walid Shoebat 2">74Tzz51VYXg</youtube> <youtube size="tiny" align="right" caption="CNN investigates Walid Shoebat 1">j399KFHtgUo</youtube> Walid Shoebat is a self-proclaimed "former Islamic terrorist" who has established a career as a staunch critic of Islam and as a supporter of Israel. He is the offspring of a Palestinian father and an American mother. Many of his claims about his past terrorist activities and subsequent imprisonment have proved false.

Background

The biography on his website states that he was 'Born in Bethlehem of Judea, Walid's grandfather was the Muslim Mukhtar (chieftain) of Beit Sahour-Bethlehem (The Shepherd's Fields) and a friend of Haj-Ameen Al-Husseni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and notorious friend of Adolf Hitler.' Between the ages of 16-18, in the 1970s, Shoebat immigrated to the US to become a computer programmer. He converted to Christianity in 1993. Shoebat claims that he engaged in a terrorist action, he was imprisoned, and upon his release he converted to Christianity and became an ardent zionist. However, according to the Jerusalem Post most of the these claims are unsubstantiated. For some time Shoebat produced a radio program broadcast from a settlement near Ramallah, but has since moved to the United States where he is a regular lecturer or speaker on 'jihad ideology' and the anti-semitism of those critical of Israel. Shoebat now even has a "publicist" and "agent", Keith Davies who also is the Executive Director of the Walid Shoebat Foundation.

Public Speaking

Shoebat is much in demand as a public speaker in the pro-Israel and evangelical Christian circles. However, in recent years, he has also spoken in front of counter-terrorism and law enforcement officials. Between his speeches, books and video sales, he earned over $560,000 in 2009 alone, according to tax records obtained by CNN.

Promoting Islamophobia

In his own words, Shoebat has been "spreading the word about the dangers of Islam" since his conversion to Christianity in 1993. In 2011, CNN reported on a typical event at which Shoebat speaks. In this case a gathering of Homeland Security officials for which he was paid $5,000:

Terrorism and Islam are inseparable, he tells them. All U.S. mosques should be under scrutiny. "All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them," he says...

During Shoebat's presentation, he criticized Muslim organizations and told audience members to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students and mosques.

To support his case, CNN reports, Shoebat also fabricated evidence:

"Now, we aren't saying every single mosque is potential terrorist headquarters. But if you look at certain reports by the Hudson report, 80 percent of mosques they found pamphlets and education on jihad. So they're in the mosque, the mosque in accordance to the Muslim brotherhood is the command post and center."

The conservative Hudson Institute said it never issued such a report and has no idea why its name was invoked.

Shoebat has also encouraged the profiling of Muslims:

Shoebat warned that making special accommodations for Muslim beliefs was a step toward establishing Islamic religious law. And he recounted how he wore a T-shirt that read "Profile me" on a trip to the airport and approached the screeners at the security checkpoint.

"I got tapped down, I got checked, I got all these different things," he said. "I say it's wonderful."

Zionist Activist

Walid Shoebat and Pamela Geller 11 October 2006

On his website, Shoebat writes:

The Israeli Arab Conflict is not about geography but about Jew hatred; Throughout the Islamic as well as Christendom’s history Jews have been persecuted, the persecution of Israel is just the same as the old Antisemitism.

Greater Israel

Sheobat opposes a two-state solution and is a proponent of Greater Israel. According to the Jerusalem post

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."

Neocon endorsements

In Shoebat's website one finds an endorsement by Frank Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy:

In the 25 years I have been in Washington I have never heard anything so extraordinary and the truth so eloquently told by someone like this [Walid Shoebat].

Walid Shoebat books

False Claims

Nom de Guerre

On his website Shoebat claims that "Walid Shoebat" is an assumed name adopted to protect him from reprisals by his former terrorist allies, whom he says have put a $10 million price on his head. However, as the Jerusalem Post reported, 'His relatives, members of the Shoebat family, are mystified by the notion of "Walid Shoebat" being an assumed name...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.'

Terrorist Past

Shoebat has claimed that when he was 16, he was recruited by a PLO operative named Mahmoud al-Mughrabi to carry out an attack on a branch of Bank Leumi in Bethlehem, an attack he aborted when he saw a group of Arab children playing nearby. Instead, he claims, he threw the bomb onto the roof of the bank where it exploded causing no fatalities. However, the Bank Leumi has no such record of this purported bombing 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...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.

A CNN investigation has since shown that Shoebat has fabricated the whole incident:

The Tel Aviv headquarters of Bank Leumi had no record of a firebombing at its now-demolished Bethlehem branch. Israeli police had no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held "for a few weeks" for inciting anti-Israel demonstrations says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.

The Jerusalem Post noted further contradictions in Shoebat's account. When asked if the bombing made news at the time, he replied that "I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for the next three days." However, in 2004 he had told the 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." The claim is also denied by Shoebat's family who still live in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem.

Walid Shoebat Foundation

Shoebat solicits donations to a Walid Shoebat Foundation -- "An organization that cries out for the Justice of Israel and the Jewish people" -- to help fund his work and to "fight for the Jewish people." The Foundation according to Shoebat is registered as a charity in the state of Pennsylvania. However, the the Pennsylvania State Attorney's Office has no record of such an entity. Shoebat runs the foundation (one among many) and three linked websites with his business partner Keith Davies under the umbrella of the Forum for Middle East Understanding. Tax records obtained by CNN show that the Forum for Middle East Understanding reported total earnings from speaking engagements, videos and book sales of more than $560,000 in 2009 alone. Asked about the details of his operation, Shoebat told CNN: "None of your business." CNN also revealed that Shoebat's name doesn't appear on any of the paperwork, and though referred the journalist to Davies for details, who offered to provide a copy of the group's tax returns, but none was provided. It also noted:

When asked who served on the foundation's board of advisers, Davies gave "Anderson Cooper 360" the name of a former pilot, who didn't return phone calls. But he could not name the high-ranking military officers he said were on the board.

Affiliations

• Obsession Interviewee in this Islamophobic film | Forum for Middle East Understanding | Endowment for Middle East Truth – Advisory Board

References, Resources and Contact

Statements, publications and interviews by Shoebat

• Some of Shoebat's statements about Islam can be found in the Answering-Islam website (viewed 29 Nov 2006; NB: much of it is quite offensive).
• The Shoebat.com website home page contains a number of disturbing and offensive statements

2004

• Dennis Prager interviews Walid Shoebat (MP3 audio), 23 May 2004 (available 29 Nov 2006). (remarkable interview in terms of its offensiveness; it harps on the theme that Palestinians and Islam are inherently anti-semitic, and that Islamic anti-semitism has rubbed off on Palestinian Christians).

2005

• Walid Shoebat, Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam, Jan. 2005. (ISBN 0977102114) No Publisher specified.

Shoebat's book

2006

• Walid Shoebat press release: Shoebat Fights for Muslim Dissident's Freedom, Journalist on Trial Today, 16 Nov 2006. (It is certainly curious that Shoebat has issued a statement about Shoaib Choudhury because the campaign for the release of Choudhury has been spearheaded by the American Jewish Committee. Choudhury's alleged offense is that "... his writings, which are critical of the rise of terrorism and call for peace and understanding between Muslims and Jews".)

External Resources

Exposes

• Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston, 'Ex-terrorist' rakes in homeland security bucks, CNN AC360, 14 July 2011
• Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston, Terror training fraud, pt. 2, CNN AC360, 15 July 2011

Media Appearances

• On CNN
• On Fox
• On Fox (from 2005)

Media Accounts about Shoebat

• Raffi Berg, Palestinian militant turned peacemaker, BBC Online, 26 Jan 2004.
• David Quinn, "Ex-PLO member warns against Islamic militants", Irish Independent, 16 Oct 2004.
• Deaglán de Bréadún, "Palestinian bomber who changed sides in the conflict", The Irish Times, 26 Oct 2004.
• Dany Horovitz, "Terrorist turned Zionist speaks at Concordia", The McGill Tribune, 18 Mar 2004.
• Chip Berlet, Islam-Bashing Bigots Train Counterterrorism Agents, Huffington Post, 29 December 2010.

Uncritical uses

• Arutz Sheva, From PLO Terrorist to Lover of Zion, 27 Jan 2004.
• Alyssa A. Lappen, The Ravages of the Jihad-Occupied Mind, FrontPageMag.com, 17 Feb 2004.
• Alyssa A. Lappen and Jerry Gordon, Former Terrorist Speaks, FrontPageMag.com, 2 April 2004.
• Keith Davies, "Shoebat Showdown", New Voices, Oct. 2004.

Contact

Website: www.shoebat.com

Alternative website: www.answering-islam.org/Walid/index.htm

email: : walid@shoebat.com