Last week I was invited by a friend to attend a Torah Academy of Minneapolis 2005 annual banquet. The featured speaker was Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist member of the PLO, and now an outspoken supporter for the Israeli cause and a guest speaker for the Jewish school fundraiser?! I was intrigued. Before attending the dinner, I visited his website and was very pleasantly surprised by what I saw, as well as by the materials posted on the linked Arabs for Israel site. So I was looking forward to the event not only to have a dinner in the company of good friends accompanied by a glass or two of Yarden merlot, but also to validate for myself if Walid Shoebat is indeed what he’s been presented to be. I am a pretty skeptical person by nature, and growing up in the country where doubletalk was the norm taught me a couple of things on how to tell the difference between the genuine and a forgery. In my little less than 50 years on this Earth, I have been also blessed with meeting and talking to some extraordinary people. By extraordinary I specifically mean that the views, achievements, and/or approaches of these people were somewhat different from the established and commonly accepted views of the majority. I would like to think that most of the times I was accurate in judging whether these people were sincere, or whether they were just pushing “the Emperor’s New Suit”.
I strongly believe that Walid Shoebat is in fact an extraordinary man who is extremely sincere in his intentions. I also felt a kind of a special bond to the person who was born in a “prison of hate” and was able to break free. I do not want to regurgitate his story and his views – you can read about that on his website. However, I would like to share with you one of the key insights about the Jewish community that Walid Shoebat, an outsider, shared with us.
He started by referring to one of the well-known traits of the Jewish people – our unwavering optimisms. He continued by pointing out that while in general it usually helps to be an optimist, in the current realities of the Middle East, this overly optimistic approach in reality is hurting Israel’s chances for a peaceful settlement. According to Mr. Shoebat, in the Middle East in general, and in the Arab world in particular, “might makes right” is still very much the law of the land. Mr. Shoebat has also suggested that the peace effort will be better served by trying to make sure that Israel’s enemies respect her power, and that “your friends can count on your support and strength rather than by making one concession after another to your enemy without getting anything back in return”. He also pointed out that the Jewish desire and hope for peace has blinded Jewish community and is playing against us by forcing us to see a mirage of goodwill and reciprocity, when in fact there is nothing of such kind. Based on his personal experience and familiarity with the education system in Arab countries, Mr. Shoebat insisted that there will be no real peace until the whole system of education in Arab countries is dismantled and rebuilt. Providing more concessions to the terrorists will only affirm their belief in the legitimacy of their actions.
There was nothing particularly new in anything that Walid Shoebat told his audience. Most of us were well aware of the incitement being taught daily in the Arab schools, but it sounded even more convincing when it came from a person who was the product of this system himself and knew it first-hand.
As if to prove of Mr. Shoebat’s point about Jewish unjustified optimism, somebody from the audience asked a very long and somewhat confusing question about the growth of democracy (or lack thereof) in the territories, and “what is his opinion on the possibility that an Iraqi democracy will show Palestinians the way to it”. Somehow, Hannan Ashrawi’s name also got tangled into the web of the question. Mr. Shoebat’s response was pretty straightforward: the Israeli military rule (a.k.a. “occupation”), and the absence of democracy on the Arab side, are two orthogonal issues and do not have much in common. He pointed out to a well-known fact that there was no democracy in the Arab-controlled part of Palestine before 1967 and, as a matter of fact, neither was there any democracy there before 1948 as well. While this point is also common knowledge, I thought that it won’t hurt us to reflect on our own experience in this area as people that lived in the conditions of limited self-rule for almost two millennia. I am not claiming to be an expert in Jewish history, but I’ve read some books, and nowhere was I able to see any references to the limitations of Jewish self-rule in the medieval Europe (a.k.a. as the ghetto) as a justification for the corruption and abuses of power by the Jewish officials. Interestingly enough, this week’s Torah portion -- Pekudei -- talks about checks and balances that were instituted by Moshe Rabbeinu to prevent the abuse of power: two people supervising any fundraising activities and at least three people to supervise the funds distribution. Pretty impressive, not only in conception but in implementation as well, especially considering the historical context when most populations were subject to totalitarian rule with NO shared authority.This brings me back to what was, from my point of view, the most interesting theme of Mr. Shoebat’s speech: why are we, Jews, so willing to give our adversaries not just the benefit of doubt, but very often much more than that? Why are we so acquiescent of their abuses even when our own experience as people tells us plainly that there is no reason to do so? Why are we so willing to condemn ourselves so eagerly and easily, when in reality we have done nothing wrong to merit this? Mr. Shoebat strongly believes that peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors won’t come from Israel and Jewish weakness, but from our strength. Coming from a person like Walid Shoebat, this sounds pretty convincing and as a very validated point. We urgently need to start listening to the good advice.
Nonie Darwish visiting Minnesota
