Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Doctors in Haifa Work While Hospital Comes Under Fire; Former Terrorist Discusses New Book

Aired July 26, 2006 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: More Americans getting out of harm's way. Here's what we know about the crisis in the Middle East. More than 14,000 U.S. citizens have left Lebanon, but hundreds remain trapped by the fighting, and an intense effort is underway to get them out.
CNN's Ben Wedemen reports a number of them boarded a ship today in Tyre bound for Cyprus. That same city was the target of another Israeli airstrike. Warplanes destroyed a building said to contain the offices of a Hezbollah commander.

And the Israeli military says that eight of its soldiers were killed and 22 wounded today in Southern Lebanon. They were fighting in a Hezbollah stronghold. Israel just yesterday had said it controlled.

Now, in times of conflict, hospitals are supposed to be off limits, or at least they used to be.

Our senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has taken us inside damaged medical facilities in Beirut, and today, he goes inside the trauma center at the main hospital in Haifa, Israel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rambam Hospital, the largest hospital in northern Israel. Now, for the first time ever, in the target zone, doctors under fire.

(on camera): We're in the operating room suite at Rambam Hospital. I want to show you something that has really not been seen before, doctors who are actually operating under situations of conflict. While under attack themselves, they're responsible for saving others' lives.

(voice-over): There is a calmness here as Dr. Tony Karam operates. A few floors above, gurneys and ambulances waiting. Today they will all get used.

A loud thud and an explosion. Close. Too close. And then an increasingly familiar routine.

(on camera): You really get a sense of what's happen now here. You saw the ambulances take off after that thud, not even 100 meters away probably here. It is total pandemonium here, but everyone is getting ready. They're getting their gloves on, they're getting their garb on. They're waiting for any traumas that might actually come into the hospital. This is where they'll come from this particular area.

(voice-over): Within minutes, patients come pouring in, all of them civilians. Hard to say how badly wounded, but bloodied, banged up and certainly terrorized. Suddenly all those sirens and thuds come to life.

(on camera): Just to give you a sense here, you get the sense that there's been a lot of shrapnel injury here, probably some glass injury as well. Obviously a lot of bleeding here, there's no question, from the shrapnel.

(voice-over): Many of the injuries come from these vicious ball bearings packed into the rockets. I saw them firsthand.

(on camera): Take a look at these pellets. The rockets we've been talking so much about are filled with thousands, tens of thousands of these pellets.

I want to give you an idea of how much damage they can do. Take a look at this car. This is close to the blast site. Look at these pellets have gone straight through the body of the car, shattered out all these windows, through the car seat as well. This car has been completely devastated by these ball bearings. Imagine what they would do to the human body.

(voice-over): Today, no one dies from the missile strike. Quickly, breathing tubes are placed and the blood is replenished. Patients stabilized.

Rambam is one of the finest trauma centers anywhere in the world. Still, I saw it in Beirut and now here in Haifa. Hospitals are not immune in this war.

(on camera): We used to think that hospitals and ambulances and healthcare workers should be given some immunity from the war. But it doesn't appear the case this time around.

DR. TONY KARAM, RAMBAM HOSPITAL: Actually, it doesn't. You know, my daughter asked me some days ago when she was crying when the sirens went on, she asked me why do I continue to go to work. I told her that it was accepted usually in the whole world that no one sends rockets to hospitals. So I will be safe here, even safer than any other places. But it seems it's not the case anymore.

GUPTA: And as the operation continues, this is just another day in the life of Rambam Hospital.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Haifa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, help is on the way. Relief supplies are making their way into Lebanon. Jordanian military planes filled with medical supplies arrived at the Beirut airport today. They are the first planes to land there since Israel bombed the runways.

Also, a U.N. aid convoy left Beirut, headed for the Lebanese port city of Tyre. Ten trucks are carrying food, medicine and hygiene supplies. A U.N. spokesperson calls this a test of security for humanitarian missions.

Well, what makes a terrorist become a terrorist? Ever since 9/11 we have heard a lot about terrorism, mostly from analysts, scholars and government officials. But now a man who says he used to be a terrorist is giving us the inside story. He tells his life story in his new book, "Why I Left Jihad."

His name is Walid Shoebat, and he joins me now from Washington.

Walid, I appreciate your time today.

WALID SHOEBAT, AUTHOR, "WHY I LEFT JIHAD": Thank you for having me.

PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, I'm going to ask you the obvious. Why were you involved in terrorism and who recruited you?

SHOEBAT: Well, you have to understand the recruitment doesn't start at recruitment centers, basically. They start from the mosque. You go daily to pray or to the Friday prayers, whether you go to the temple mount, whether you go to the local mosque. And this is not only in the Palestinian areas, this is all throughout the Middle East. It has been going on from the eons of time.

And it is eschatological teaching regarding the destruction of the state of Israel, regarding the destruction of the Jewish people and basically an Islamic country that considers Israel as an Islamic country and once an Islamic foothold was there before in the past, it must never be occupied by a non-Muslim country. The eradication of the Jewish people is top in the eschatological norm, in the schools, in the mosques, in the centers, everywhere you go.

So, from all aspects of life, if you go walk in the streets and see the graffiti around you, things like we knock on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Jews, this is the kind of mentality they have. And I always ask myself the question, what does knocking on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Jews have anything to do with the political desire to establish a state called Palestine?

Palestine has become sort of a psychosis, in a way. This is why we have Hamas now. It's escalated to the point that it's growing its tentacles all throughout the Middle East, Iran. In Pakistan, the majority of Pakistanis want a Islamist state.

PHILLIPS: But when you were a teenager, I mean, you didn't know all this as a teenager. You were, what, 16 when you joined the PLO. Why did you want to join this organization and did you realize that you were about to get involved with a group that was going to kill innocent people?

SHOEBAT: Well, you have to understand, you join at 5 years old. Going to school, we sang the song -- all the schoolchildren sang, (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) which means "Arabs are beloved, and Jews are dogs."

So, right, even going to a Christian school we learned that Jesus was a Palestinian revolutionist. So from the Biblical perspective and the Koranic perspective, all the religion was used as a base for teaching revolution. This is the dogma that they teach.

So when you go -- by the time I went to high school, that's when we learned the eradication of the Jewish people, when the stones and the trees will cry out, there's a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. So it's really -- in a nutshell, the problem is a massive, racist ideology that is growing throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world.

PHILLIPS: So, tell me what you did and how active you got. I mean, what was the worst act of terrorism you committed while an active member of the PLO?

SHOEBAT: I planted a bomb in Bank Launi (ph) Israel in Bethlehem, nearly lynched an Israeli soldier, was in every demonstration from the Temple Mount and the streets of our village. Everywhere, you know. The whole community becomes imbued with this way of life. So, stonings and you name it.

I ended up in prison and then I was recruited to do a bomb operation of a bank. My recruiter put 15 explosive charges in Israel, and he was being bailed out by Israeli lawyers. As ironic as it sounds, that's how it was. Israel was a democracy, so it allowed even to get those prisoners out.

And my cousins also got involved in terrorism. They were also released with the U.N. deals and this kind of thing. So you have thousands of terrorists being thrown back into the streets with these U.N. agreements.

PHILLIPS: No, you -- so you remain this active life of terrorism overseas, but you also came to the U.S., and you were part of the Muslim Brotherhood in Chicago.

SHOEBAT: That's right.

PHILLIPS: Tell me how you were able to carry on terrorist activities and how did you do it here in the U.S.?

SHOEBAT: Well, in the U.S., we didn't -- I didn't do any terrorist activities, but the recruitment of the preparation for jihad in America. My recruiter was -- his name is Jamal Sayid (ph). He's a colleague of Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of Osama bin Laden.

Ironically speaking, Jamal Sayid is freed, in a mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois. The IAP started, as a result -- Islamic Association of Palestine. And after that I left that organization. And then after that, there was training. The head of the IAP was caught in training with car -- how to manufacture car bombs and things like that. So it was -- I have clips, homemade videos that if I show your audience, it will come out of Gaza or it will come out of Iran. I mean, this stuff was happening in the heartland of America, all over in Chicago, and DeKalb and Georgia. All over the United States, it was going on in the mosque and it's going on right now.

PHILLIPS: So did 9/11 surprise you?

SHOEBAT: No, as a matter of fact, in 1993, I was -- I started my first mission in 1993, speaking in churches and synagogues. And people didn't want to believe me when I said, they're going to blow up your buildings, these people are interested in decapitating Americans. And this was too much for us to fathom. Nobody was listening. After September 11, I started getting more phone calls.

PHILLIPS: Did you ever feel guilty?

SHOEBAT: Yes, I did. In 19 -- I started studying, basically, the history. You have to understand, in the Arab mentality in the Middle East, from the beginning of Mahmoud Abbas, who is considered secular, all to the way to the fundamentalists, the denial of the Holocaust is the premise of this education.

So, we denied the Holocaust ever exited. So when we're seeing the -- if we see the footage of the Holocaust in the Middle East, we say, well, how did they have such scrawny bodies? What kind of a diet plan were they on? Because the whole thing was an enactment. It wasn't reality. This is an enactment to establish, design a state. In Germany, it's illegal to deny the Holocaust, but yet in the Middle East, denial of the Holocaust is flourishing.

So the moment I started getting a good grip that the Holocaust was a historical reality, I started to understand that evil cloaks itself in nice, fabricated fashions. Evil cloaks itself, just like Nazism does, that it's a good cause. And Israel becomes a vermin. The Jews are vermin.

This is why Nasrallah doesn't apologize for killing Jewish children. He only apologizes when Arab children are dying in Israel, proper (ph) by his rocket launchings. Why is that? Why does Nasrallah apologize for killing all the Arab children? And the answer is very simple. The problem is racism. Racism on a pandemic scale all throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world, all the way to Pakistan, all the way to Indonesia, all the way to the Philippines, all the way in Jordan, all the way in Cairo, all the way in Syria, all the way to the...

PHILLIPS: So, Walid, let me ask you, you had an epiphany. You decided this isn't the way to go about finding peace. You decided to completely step away from any acts of terrorism or any organizations or any association. But when you look at all these groups -- I mean, whether it be Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraqi insurgents -- there are so many and it is so strong and it is all across the world, I mean, how do you reach those people? How do you -- how do you even gain the understanding that this is not going to achieve peace, acts of terror? SHOEBAT: We have to understand, terrorism is a cult-like education to convert masses of people to become remorseless killers. And it's like a drug addiction. It feeds on frenzy-like speeches. It galvanizes people in a euphoric fashion, where an Israeli, when he's killed, they come out with the blood and thy carry guts and hearts and kidneys and, you know, parade them in the streets of Ramallah.

This is a drug addiction that is permeating the teenagers of the Middle East. We have to treat it as such. We have to go to the drug pushers, we have to go to the source of the problem. We don't solve the problem by simply destroying Hezbollah only, but we solve the problem by going to the mosques where they're manufacturing of these -- this education is going on. We need to fire the clergy.

We need to understand that this type of Islam that's being taught in the Middle East and being taught in America, as well, is not a religion. Once it goes beyond that boundary, it becomes a government system. It becomes a civil code that wants to establish itself universally throughout the whole world. Once we understand that, we understand to deal with it just as we deal with drugs.

PHILLIPS: Walid Shoebat. The book is "Why I Left Jihad." fascinating perspective, Walid. I appreciate your time today.

SHOEBAT: Thank you for having me.

Well, some call him a typical teen. Police call him the prime suspect. Developments in the highway sniper shootings back here in U.S. Stay with CNN, your most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Sniper case shocker in Indiana. Seventeen-year-old Zachariah Blanton appeared in an Indiana courtroom today to face murder and criminal recklessness charges. Police say the teenager has confessed to firing on interstate traffic from highway overpasses last weekend. Shots were fired at multiple vehicles, traveling on both I- 65 and I-69. Police say the shootings happened after Blanton got into an argument with family members during a deer hunting trip.

Fanning fear in Phoenix, another attack is added to a long and troubling investigation. Police have been searching for two suspected killers behind 11 deaths and dozens of attacks. Now, they say a weekend shooting in nearby Mesa may be linked to one of the killers known as the serial shooter. A man was wounded while riding his bicycle. He is expected to survive, but police say the attacks suggest that the serial shooter may be expanding its operations to the suburbs.

Looks like something will go on somebody's permanent record. Two hundred and 40 vacationers were hurt last week when the Crown Princess took a sudden tilt, leading some passengers to fear the ship would tip over. Now cruise line officials say human error was to blame. Some crew members have been reassigned, but the blame apparently does not go to the top. Princess Cruises says it still has the utmost confidence in the ship's captain. It's burning up the blogs, and packing them into pews. Some people say that there's no end to all this talk about the end times. We're going to talk to a couple of guys keeping a close eye on the earthly hourglass. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, it's a boy band bombshell. Former 'N Sync member Lance Bass is out of the closet. Singer, dancer, actor/wannabe space tourist makes his sexual preference public in an exclusive interview with "People" Magazine. It's on news stands Friday. And he says, quote, "The thing is, I'm not ashamed. That's the one thing I want to say. I don't think it's wrong, I'm not devastated going through this. I'm more liberated and happy than I've been my whole life. I'm just happy." Bass also says he's in a committed relationship and working on a new sitcom based on "The Odd Couple."

Well, she is known for her womanly curves and hilarious punch lines, but actress Mo'Nique is not laughing about an experience that she had on a United flight at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. "New York Daily News" reports it started when her hairdresser, who had a seat in coach, tried to put Mo'Nique's hair dryer in a first class overhead compartment. A flight attendant questioned the actress and her entourage, threatened to throw them off the plane and then reportedly told them since 9/11, we don't play around. Mo'Nique was so agitated that she had to be escorted off the plane. Now she's calling for African-Americans to boycott that airline.

Well, who could forget that little cocktail dress that Audrey Hepburn made famous in "Breakfast at Tiffany's?" Now you can own it. Christie's Auction House will sell the black dress from the 1961 movie this December. The estimated final bid on the gown, $130,000. I hope this model was careful when she wore it for the photo shoot. Now proceeds will go to City of Joy Aid, a charity for poor children in India. I think that would make Audrey Hepburn pretty darn proud.

Straight ahead, holding on, holding out, one city burns but some people stay behind and play the hand that they were dealt. We'll check in with Bed Wedeman in Tyre Lebanon. Stay with CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICOLE LAPIN, CNN.COM CORRESPONDENT: We continue to cover the Middle East conflict from all angles, on ground, on the phone and, of course, online. Turn to CNN.com to get some details.

People from the United States, from Europe and all across the globe, even those inside the war zone are writing their emotional accounts of the conflict. You can read some of those online or even send us your own thoughts.

Also available online our correspondents rolling up their sleeves and adding in their analysis, but they're doing it in a lot more casual way. For instance, Anderson Cooper has a running blog that lets you chime in, as well. And if all this violence has you thinking, well, how can I help? We have a list of organizations that are assisting the region. Also, don't forget, CNN Pipeline because there you're going to find the latest video from the front line and you get to watch networks that even aren't available for broadcast in the U.S. All this and the latest info updated day and night, it's all at CNN.com/middleeast.

For the dot-com desk, I'm Nicole Lapin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well it's day 15 of the Middle East crisis and there's no let up in the violence. Here's what we know. You are seeing the aftermath of new Israeli air strikes on the Lebanese city of Tyre. The attacks leveled a 10-story building in the heart of that city. In the meantime, Israeli troops are engaged in a deadly ground battle in southern Lebanon. Eight of them have been killed in fierce clashes with Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil. Now just yesterday Israel claimed to have that city under control.

And the United Nations is demanding answers after four of its observers were killed by Israeli bombs in Lebanon. Lebanese sources say at least three precision guided bombs hit an observation post. Israel denies it was deliberate.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com