Interesting story of a man who left his violent and prejudiced upbringing to settle down and develop peaceful roots:
“My whole dream was to die as a shaheed [martyr]. At demonstrations I would open my shirt hoping to be shot – but the Israelis would never shoot at the body, so I never succeeded,” he said.
One day, in the middle of a riot, Walid was part of a group which snatched an Israeli soldier who was trying to quell the violence.
They beat him senseless and tried to lynch him, before he was rescued by troops and the group fled.
“We ran to a monastery where the nuns protected us – even they hated the Jews!”
Walid was eventually caught and imprisoned in the Muscovite Prison in Jerusalem, but was released after a few weeks.
He returned to violence straight away, bombing an Israeli bank in Bethlehem.
The story credits a visit to the US, higher education, and falling in love with a non-militant woman of a different faith as his path to redemption.
“I chose to speak out because I was a victim, as a child I was a victim of this horror. Now I see other victims, millions of them, kids.
“I was taught songs about killing Jews. You need to get rid of the education system where they are teaching this type of thing and get rid of the terrorist groups. It will take a generation, but until then, there’s not going to be peace, it doesn’t matter what kind of land settlement you have.”
A militant-turned-peacemaker, Walid wants to meet the Israel soldier he tried to kill almost 30 years ago.
His voice cracking with emotion, Walid said he would offer the soldier his hand and say to him: “‘Please understand, we were just children, brainwashed to kill you, to hate you.’ I would seek his forgiveness.”
With regard to the TTB fallacy from a few days ago, this illustrates why a universal definition of “grave moral consequences” is so hard to pin down if you try and account for people who carry deep prejudice in their heart. Remove the prejudice and it becomes much easier to see genuine threats to common values of humanity.