A Deal with the Devil

The latest character making waves in America's pro-Israeli Right demonstrates the special relationship between the "war on terrorism" and Israel's rabid supporters in the United States. During this "war on terrorism" that transformed America's legal and political landscape, it might be hard to believe that a Palestinian immigrant to the United States publicly confesses to being a former PLO activist and "terrorist" who personally attacked Israelis. This figure unabashedly repeats stories of his own vicious hatred and violence against Israelis during well-publicized speaking tours at universities and synagogues, and on radio and television shows.......

Regularly, during his talks, he describes openly his past crimes and his jailing by the Israeli authorities. He admits to stoning Jewish worshipers at the kotel (the western wall), having "worked with Fatah bomb makers in Jerusalem," and even going on a bombing mission to destroy a branch of Bank Leumi. Shoebat abandoned it after noticing that Palestinian children were nearby. He speaks of the time he and other rioters mauled an Israeli officer. They "clubbed and pounded his head with a nail-studded stick, until the officer became a bloody gore."

After immigrating to the United States, he continued to be a "hard-line PLO activist." He raised funds and recruited for the PLO on college campuses. In 1993, when most other Palestinians were optimistic about the prospects of the Oslo peace process, Shoebat converted to Christianity and began to support Israel's exclusive claim to that land, all of it. As he attests, his new wife (his third) "challenged me to find any mistakes in the Bible." After a "six-month journey to do that" he failed and decided to change religions.

Taking the word of the Bible as literal, he subscribed to the view that "the Jews have the Biblical right to the Holy Land, Israel." In his public campaign he not only defends Israel across the board, on every account, but espouses positions widely held as extreme. For instance, he told a crowd at the University of Toronto that Israel should "Please take back the holy Temple Mount" despite the obvious implication that such a total measure against a Muslim holy site would provoke a holy war......

http://www.counterpunch.org/youmans05052004.html

For those who don't know the temple mount is the location of the Dome of the Rock.