Reporting Live from the Princeton Ex-Terrorist Event

The full context of this story is here: Princeton Censors Ex-PLO Speakers; Likely to Hire PLO Professor

I am currently at the Princeton Radisson press conference with the panel of three ex-terrorists (Walid Shoebat, Zak Anani and Ibrahim Abadallah).

It is chilling. I have just shaken the hand of a man who has killed 223 people during Lebanon's militia violence. Hearing them talk about what they have done and the zeal with which they recount their former Jew-hatred is completely unsettling.

Each of the ex-terrorists have either killed or seriously injured people. Each of the ex-terrorists has had attempts on his life. One of the panelists mentioned he has been attacked 15 times and has had his daughter injured as a retaliation for his speaking. One of the panelists (Ibrahim Abadallah) was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan.

Each of the panelists agree that recruitment by terrorist organizations was not significant to their having become terrorists. Rather, terror is part of the "fiber of the culture" and joining terror organizations was organic and natural. They agreed that terror indoctrination permeates Muslim society. Fortunately, they were all able to deprogram themselves, primarily through conversion to Christianity.

Here are some quotes from the panelists:

Walid Shoebat: "There is no wall in the area where I grew up that was not filled with grafitti, with slogans such as 'we knock on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Jews.'"

Zak Anani: "The problem is not land. It is generations of hatred passed from one generation to the next."

Ibrahim Abadallah: "My hatred for the Jews permeated my heart. I hated the Jews with all my heart, my soul and my passions. Anything I could do to harm the Jewish state, the Jewish people, I would do."

[Ironically, Abadallah had attended a Quaker school in Dearborn.]

"The text [Koran] tells you who your enemy is. The Jew first, then the Christian. Hence the hatred for America."


I just asked a question to the panel about the recent reports of the Palestinian election of a Fatah member named "Hitler" in Jenin and the fact that at least 25 PLO members go by the name of Hitler or Abu Hitler. Could any of them comment personally about how Nazism was perceived?

Walid Shoebat: "Mein Kampf has been a best-seller throughout the Muslim world. Haj Amin Husseini, who was a guest in my family's home, was nicknamed the Fuhrer of the Muslim World."

"There was never any excuse given for Nazis for their hatred of Jews. When it comes to Islamic terrorists, we make all the excuses in the world"

Ibrahim Abadallah: "Most Arabs consider Hitler a hero precisely because he killed 6 million Jews."

Shortly after the press conference was a lecture. I will hopefully write up my notes later. Right now, however, I am feeling shock over what I witnessed and amazement that such people have the possibility of redemption.

Update (Dec. 9): Now that I have been able to sleep, I am still in shock, but I have had time to figure out why. I have been intimately involved with the Middle East for all of my adult life. I understand the problem of Islamic extremism intellectually, but I am at heart a Westerner. My core belief in living a constructive life is reflected throughout Western society. In years of living in Israel I have never had a serious encounter with anyone who does not want to peace for the benefit of Arabs as well as for Jews.

Over and over, the speakers emphasized that they were entirely suffused with hatred and motivated by the desire for vengeance. While Shoebat was a polished speaker, it was the American Abadallah who was the most disturbing. His English was obviously perfect and he spoke in a reserved way using Western terms like "belief system." At times, though, he would switch to talking about his former hatred and he would appear possessed by a different spirit entirely. The words were, of course unsettling. Over and over he would say some permutation of "I hated the Jews with all my heart, my soul and my passions." But the experience of seeing how his body behaved when he said those words was thoroughly disturbing, because they were totally foreign.

Walid Shoebat gave many disturbing examples, including a long list of names of his extended family members who were involved in terrorism. On the day that his cousin had been killed by Israeli security in foiling his attempt to bomb the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall, his Aunt Fahima distributed the traditional wedding candies to celebrate her dead son's marriage to the 72 virgins awaiting him.

Walid related how, as children, they were taught in a mosque about teachings of a great war in the "end of days." The boys asked many questions about the details of raping the women who would be captured, and the imam calmly reassured them repeatedly of its permissibility.

He described how one night a man announced to his neighbors that he would "cleanse the honor of his family" by killing his wife in public. Many people arrived at the appointed time to witness the murder. He related how his friends were giggling in school the next day as they related the details of her decapitation, including how the head was only connected to the body by a small strip of skin. After the Israelis arrested the man, his entire community contributed to a fund to bail him out of prison.

The highlight of the evening was during the question period. Walid Shoebat dealt with the pre-written question:

What can be done? What can we do? How can we live in peace?

He said to the diverse audience: "This question could have only been written by a Jew." The author admitted that was true and everyone laughed. He answered that it is a Jewish tendency to rush to seek a peaceful solution, but that he felt the question was backwards. He admonished the audience to stop asking what the solution is and to start seeking to understand the problem. The problem has never been understood, which is why the attempted solutions have failed. The problem is Islamofascism, he explained. The problem is the utter brainwashing, the hatred that is literally taught from birth. The problem has nothing to do with land, or with jobs, or any of the other explanations that he heaped contempt upon throughout the presentation. I, who understand that problem better than most, can never understand the problem at an emotional level. And that frightens me.