He has also written books, including one called "Why We Want to Kill You."

A former terrorist who is now an ardent supporter of Israel sat down over lunch last week at the Radisson Hotel to talk about his life.

Walid Shoebat was in town to speak at the Tulsa International Prophecy Conference.

He has written several books including, "Why I Left Jihad" and "Why We Want to Kill You."

He has spoken at Harvard, UCLA, Brandeis and many other universities and venues. He also has appeared on all three television networks, many cable news channels and the BBC.

Shoebat was born in 1960 in the town of Bethlehem, then under Jordanian control, to an American mother and a Arab father who met when his father was studying in America.

From an early age, he said, he was taught to hate Jews.

Anti-Semitism permeated his education, his Palestinian society, and particularly his father's family, many of whom were terrorists/freedom fighters going back for generations.

From his early teens, he was engaged in terrorist activities.

As a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, he printed fliers, organized demonstrations and confronted Israeli troops.

Once, he and a gang of Palestinian youths beat an Israeli soldier nearly to death. Another time, he tossed a homemade bomb onto the roof of an Israeli bank. No one was hurt.

He was arrested for rioting and was imprisoned in the Russian Compound, a prison in Jerusalem for political prisoners, but was released after a short time and continued his violent activities.

His mother was unhappy living in the Arab world but was a virtual prisoner in her husband's community, Shoebat said. She was always trying to escape to America with her children. As they grew older, Shoebat and his siblings sided with their fa ther and, along with neighbors, frustrated her attempts to leave.

When Shoebat was 18, he came to the U.S. to further his education.

He enrolled at what then was Loop College in Chicago, where he became president of the Palestinian Students Association and worked to raise money and recruits for the cause.

"We were doing secret meetings, preparing for jihad in America, jihad in Israel," he said.

"We'd rent a hotel, all the windows would be covered, doing karate, chanting 'Death to America.' "

He later moved to California and married a Catholic Mexican-American woman. It was her influence that led to changes in his life.

Trying to convince her to become a Muslim, he argued that the Jews had corrupted the Bible, he said.

She challenged him to prove it, and to do so, he bought and began to read the Bible.

"I fell in love with it," he said.

"The Bible has respect for women. The Quran says a woman's testimony is half the testimony of a man. The inheritance of a woman is half the inheritance of a male."

Eventually, his reading led him to consider Christianity, but he was afraid to convert, knowing it would cost him everything.

One night about 2 a.m., alone, as he flipped though television channels, he heard a preacher say, "God is calling you for a reason, and he's asking you to accept him." He responded.

After his conversion, he said, his marriage changed.

"Every day, I fought with my wife like cats and dogs.

"Since I became a Christian, we never fight. We have a good marriage."

As he feared, his Arab family disowned him, and property he owned near Bethlehem was forfeited. He since has brought his aging parents to the United States.

He has grown to love Israel and the Jewish people, and is now an unabashed Zionist.

"And for the first time in my life, I really began to love America," said Shoebat, who is an American citizen. "There's no place on Earth like America."

Shoebat has been a controversial figure as he speaks around the country, drawing fire from Muslim organizations and what he calls the liberal media, which, he says, try to cast doubt on the truth of his story.

Bill Sherman 581-8398
bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com

Walid Shoebat: ‘Jihad is blackmail’

Walid Shoebat holds strong, often controversial opinions on current affairs:

On terrorism: “Terrorism is a form of blackmail. Jihad is blackmail.”

On Islam: “Islam is not just a religion. It is a constitution. It includes not only law and government , but a global government . Islam does not only include Muslims, but the non-Muslim world as well.

On the Iraq war: “I would never have gone into Iraq, because Saddam Hussein wasn’t the major problem. Iran was. We cried wolf on the wrong guy. Saddam held Islamic fundamentalism at bay. Every dictator in the Middle East holds Islamic fundamentalism at bay.

“Now that we’re in Iraq, we shouldn’t pull out. The answer is somewhere in between. We should keep a military presence in Iraq, but take our children out of harm’s way.”

On America’s image: “America needs to get rid of its image as a bully, as a supporter of dictators.

“How do we get rid of that image? “By getting out of oil in Saudi Arabia.

“We should call Saudi Arabia what it is, a terrorist state. The head of the snake. Yet the U.S. government does not recognize Saudi Arabia as a terrorist state because of the oil. Let’s confess that oil is the major issue in the Middle East.

“We don’t disagree with liberals that oil plays a role. We disagree with liberals about drilling in Alaska.” world, as well.”