Walid Shoebat author of "Why I left Jihad" was on CNN today. Ex-PLO

[in_cog_ni_to]

member who left the terrorism business because he figured out for himself that what he had been taught about Israel and Jews... his ENTIRE life, was a LIE. His book is available on Amazon if you're interested in an "inside" perspective of these militant groups.



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As a teenager in the mid-70s, Shoebat joined the PLO and took part in organizing demonstrations and printing fliers. His dream, he told the BBC, was to die as a shaheed (martyr). <3> One day during a riot, he and a group of other Palestinians attempted to lynch an Israeli soldier, who was rescued by Israeli troops. Shoebat was arrested and imprisoned for several weeks in the Muscovite Prison in Jerusalem. After his release, he admits to having bombed an Israeli bank in Bethlehem.

In an effort to secure an education for their son, his parents sent him to the United States, where he enrolled in Loop College in Chicago, becoming president of the Palestinian Students' Association. He later moved to California, where he met his wife, a Mexican Roman Catholic. They now have two children.

I wanted her to convert to Islam. I told her Jews had corrupted the Bible and she asked me to show her some examples of this corruption. At this point I had to go and buy a Bible and I started reading it and I saw the word 'Israel' all over it. I had to be brutally honest — the very word I hated the most was throughout this book! <4>
Shoebat has explained that he was raised in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. "From kindergarten we were taught that Jews were dogs. We were taught that Jews were the converts of monkeys, that Jews were Sabbath breakers and prophet killers. We even considered Arabs in pre-1967 Israel traitors because we could not understand how they could co-exist with Jews." <5>

After reading the Bible, he decided to renounce violence and convert to Christianity. His family denounced him and his brother threatened to kill him for abandoning Islam.

Shoebat previously worked as a software engineer, and now works full time lecturing and participating in discussions as a public advocate of peace and an opponent of "militancy as a way of solving the Palestinian problem." <6> He believes the only solution to the conflict is "the crushing defeat of all Palestinian military groups." <7> However, he has called for accepting Palestinians as fully fledged Israeli citizens.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walid_Shoebat