Israel no longer in Palestinian’s sights

Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Of all the people who travel the national lecture circuit, Walid Shoebat stands apart.

Start with his name. Some publications insist it's a pseudonym. He won't comment. And where does he live? "Somewhere on this globe," he says.

The shroud of secrecy might well be justified.

He's a former Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist who now embraces Zionism and Israel's right to peacefully co-exist with its Arab neighbors in the Middle East.

Shoebat brought his message to town Thursday, speaking at Caesars Palace to the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas. In an interview beforehand, Shoebat predicted that terrorists will attack on United States soil again within the next five years. But he said he didn't think Las Vegas would be one of their highest targets.

"The terrorists are looking for a grand finale that will cripple the economy," Shoebat said. "Doing something in Las Vegas would not be a grand finale, but it would cripple Las Vegas. Las Vegas would not be as high a priority as New York or Los Angeles. But if New York or Los Angeles goes down, there will be no more customers coming to Las Vegas."

Las Vegas tourism slumped after the 9/11 terrorist attacks but rebounded within a year, quicker than other American cities. The federal government responded with tighter security at airports and closer scrutiny of telephone conversations and bank transactions here and abroad. Despite complaints that the closer scrutiny violates civil liberties, Shoebat said the United States hasn't gone far enough and has "full right to look at potential terrorists."

As he put it: You can have someone intercept "your phone conversation with your girlfriend or you can blow up in midair. Take your pick This is a war. This is not a civil rights movement."

As part of the war on terrorism, Shoebat - a former Muslim who converted to Christianity - said the United States should do more to infiltrate the American Muslim movement, including its mosques, to track financial support for Islamic jihad activities abroad.

"Terrorism starts with spiritual indoctrination," he said.

And the United States should also "stop purchasing our oil from the Saudis," Shoebat said. "George Bush was right when he said that we're addicted to oil. We should do more with alternative energy."

Shoebat, author of the book "Why I Left Jihad," and a lecturer sponsored by religious organizations and universities, was born in what was then the Jordanian town of Bethlehem. His father, a Jordanian, and his mother, an American from Eureka, Calif., met at a college in California.

He said he was indoctrinated as a child to hate Jews and Israelis. After Israel captured his home town and the rest of the West Bank - land that used to be part of Jordan - in the Six-Day War in 1967, Shoebat became a Palestinian. As a young man in the mid-1970s, he joined the PLO.

His terrorist acts in the West Bank included bombing a bank, in which no one was injured, and participation in a group assault on an Israeli soldier who managed to escape. For his acts, Shoebat spent time in an Israeli prison.

At the urging of his mother, he moved to the United States in the late 1970s, where he hooked up with militant Muslims in Chicago and the Islamic Association of Palestine.

But by the early 1990s, Shoebat, in an effort to convert his American wife to Islam, did some theological and historical research and came to the conclusion that he was the one in need of a conversion. He began shedding his anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli beliefs.

Today, he so fervently supports Israel's right to defend itself that he expressed outrage at the United Nations resolution that ended this summer's conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The U.N. resolution was a bunch of baloney," Shoebat said. "It was ridiculous because Israel had a chance to take out Hezbollah once and for all."