Last month, Media Mouse reported that Michigan State University’s (MSU) chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is bringing Walid Shoebat to speak at the college in March. Recently, Talk to Action published an article titled “Autobiographical Accounts of USAF-paid ’3 ex-Terrorists’ Challenged” that further scrutinizes Shoebat:
“Walid Shoebat and his “former terrorists”, converts to fundamentalist Christian zionism Christianity (apocalyptic premillenniallist dispensational Christianity to be exact) have been traveling around the US, around for several years now, beating the drumbeat for a full-blown religious war between the United States and the entire Islamic world. Shoebat and his associates claim that, because of their alleged background as former terrorists in the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah, they knew what Islam is really about: killing Christian and Jews. Along with a large cohort of Christian Zionists and other speakers and publicists, NeoConservatives and Israelis tied to the Likud Party, Walid Shoebat has been part of an ongoing PR campaign seemingly bent on to whipping Americans into a frenzied panic about the alleged menace of militant Islam.”
According to the article, Shoebat and his two “ex-terrorists” have received increased scrutiny after being invited as paid experts on terrorism at a United States Air Force Academy. Along with this, there has been new criticism of Shoebat’s background:
“Now, a woman who says she has tracked down and talked to one of Walid Shoebat’s Palestinian-American relatives–who supposedly has said Walid Shoebat’s story is fraudulent–has now called Shoebat out to the extent of refusing to retract her story, which contradicts Shoebat’s story of having been a major PLO terrorist, despite a lawsuit threat from Shoebat’s agent.
As reported by Eileen Fleming, on her blog, a relative of Shoebat’s told Fleming that:
“The biggest act of ‘terror’ he ever committed was to glue Palestinian flags on street posts. But, when he was in jail he met someone who invited him to join a group against Israel. In 1977 Walid and his friends put packages behind a bank, but there were no explosives in it. That year he also met some Jehovah Witnesses and joined them for a while.”
As Fleming’s account, of this alternative and somewhat drab alternate chronicle of Shoebat’s past, continues it descends to a sad, tawdry level:
“Walid came to the U.S. in 1978 and met an Afghani friend and they went into business together, but it didn’t work out, so he moved to Chicago in 1981 where many cousins live and asked for help. He went to Loop College [now Harold Washington College] and was appointed as a foreign student advisor; a position offered him so he could pay his tuition.”
“The repo man took Walid’s truck and after that he went back to California. He met a Palestinian girl there and they got married and had a son. But, he beat his wife and that marriage broke up.”
It is also worth noting that Kamal Saleem–one of the “three ex-terrorists”–spoke at Calvin College in Grand Rapids last fall. Since that time, he has been examined by Doug Howard, a history professor at Calvin College. Howard said that he suspects that Saleem–an associate of Shoebat–is a fraud and advised the college against hosting him.
Related posts:
Hi from eileen fleming
On Feb. 6, 2008 after my article had been published for less than 24 hours, I received an email from Keith Davies, Walid’s handler who wrote:
“Below is an article written by Mr Shoebat that refutes everything you say. We can produce numerous documents to prove every word of Mr. Shoebat’s story.
“To avoid a lawsuit you need to contact us by email within 24 hours, it is now 1 a.m. aprox EST, so you can issue a full apology and retraction. We will provide instructions once you contact us. If you do not we will use the full weight of the law so that the integretity of Mr. Shoebat’s story is protected. The choice is yours”
Walid’s epistle is published in part on my blog of Feb 7th-with my repsonses- and he titled it:
I WAS A TERRORIST IN DEFENSE OF MY IDENTITY, STORY, AND CREDENTIALS, By Walid Shoebat
My email reply to Walid and company:
Hi Keith,
No apology and no retraction will come from me. The issue for me and the point of my article which Walid and you ignore is:
Walid’s brand of Christianity has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus who promised it is the peacemakers who are the children of God and not those that bomb, torture, starve or occupy others.
Walid’s brand of Christianity defies that “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment.” 1 John 4:16, 18
Walid’s brand of Christianity as professed by anti-Christ’s [against the teachings of Christ] such as John Hagee and Tim La Haye’s Left Behind nonsense is the epitome of the spirit of the anti-Christ: fear of the other that drives one to violence.
Walid’s brand of Christianity thrives on fear and Jesus said: “FEAR NOT! You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
Walid’s brand of Christianity leaves behind all the non-negotiables for those who claim to be a Christian; which is you must forgive, bless and love your enemies.
The problem is not with Christianity but that too few have done it the way Jesus taught and modeled: to always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion and forgiveness, as Jesus did when nailed to a cross and he prayed: “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”
St. Paul who never hesitated expressing his freedom of speech warned, “Do not judge the non-believer, it is none of your business. But, when it comes to the believer, provoke one another to good works.”
God knows the motivations of Walid’s heart, but as Rev. Awad warned, “Christians are called by God to prayerfully use the gift of discernment.”
Discernment and good intelligence is what our troops need, and that is not what they are receiving on February 6, 2008 at the USA Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the heart of the western Bible Belt.
“You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.”-Tom Petty
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes With Vanunu”
NEEDLESS to say, i never heard another word from Walid and Keith.
The “Three Ex-Terrorists” will be speaking next week in my home state, i will attend and report on WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Here’s another article on Shoebat and the “3 ex-terrorists” at the US Air Force Academy:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41299
Some of the interesting points:
“…it is their relationship with political leaders and organisations across the right-wing Christian spectrum that seems to have elicited the greatest concern from critics.
“These men are frauds, but that is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims,” wrote former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges in a widely circulated online essay.”
“The relationship between the evangelical Christian Right and 3-X runs deep, with connections to Reverend John Hagee’s Christian-Zionist Christians United for Israel (CUFI), as well as Focus on the Family, part of the para-church organisations that promote social conservative public policy in the U.S., and have maintained close relations with the George W. Bush administration.
Shoebat says claims to be a former Palestinian Liberation Organisation operative who attacked Jews, planted bombs in Israel, and in 1993 converted to Christianity. He released a book in 2007 entitled “Why We Want to Kill You”, and appeared in a purported documentary film called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”
The film was marketed in part by self-described “pro-Israel” groups, and featured interviews with Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, dubious “investigative journalist” Steve Emerson, Itimar Marcus of the Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch, and Daniel Pipes, a controversial scholar of medieval Islamic history whose website campuswatch.com sparked criticism in 2002 for its alleged McCarthyesque attacks on Middle East studies professors.”
Thank you both for the excellent comments and supplementary information on Shoebat!