Dor Shachar grew up as Aiman Abu Suboh in a Muslim family of five in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis. At age 7, he was taught in school that he had to kill Jews. At the age of 12 1/2, he ran away from home and lived on a construction site in Israel. In an interview with The Epoch Times in Israel, Mr. Shachar tells his story.
I knew Jews who came to the market [in Khan Yunis] to shop. It was a time when there was no intifada, nothing; it was absolute quiet.
They told us in school that Jews have three legs, that they kill children, women, men, and the elderly. That once they were Muslims, but they turned into Jewish infidels, and the biggest commandment is to kill Jews. All the students in the class had to say, “In the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of Mohammed of Islam—kill Jews.”
I refused to accept this. All the kids in the class say “Itbah al-yahud,” or slaughter the Jews. I asked the teacher to go to the restroom to wash my face because I really didn’t feel well, and I just wanted to get out of that place. In response, he slapped me and took me to the principal’s room, where he whispered something in his ear about me. The principal asked me to stand facing the wall and hit me on the back with a rubber hose. Then he told me to ask my dad to come with me to school the next day.
The next day, my dad came to school for a meeting with the principal. After about 10 minutes, my dad entered the classroom. He started hitting me and said, “Yes! We need to kill Jews.”
My dad worked in Israel for 27 years. He made money, bought clothes, bought gifts—and he supported killing Jews.
Two weeks before Passover, he moved to the villa neighborhood where I worked. He invited me to the Passover holiday, and I didn’t know what that holiday was. He told me that the Jews were slaves in Egypt for 400 years and in the desert for 40 years and that God opened the sea for them, and the people of Israel crossed the sea, and all of Pharaoh’s soldiers drowned in the sea. He said the Israelis are the “chosen people.”
After hearing this, what came out of my mouth, even though I didn’t know Hebrew, was: “I want to be Jewish” in Hebrew. He couldn’t believe it. He asked me, “What do you want?” and then I repeated the same sentence. He told me, “No, no, no. A Jew remains a Jew, an Arab remains an Arab; you can’t change your religion, that’s how God created the world.”
He didn’t convince me. I went to the neighbors and asked them. They told me, “Yes, you can be Jewish.” I went back to him and said, “Yes, I can be Jewish because I asked the neighbors.” He said, “OK, we'll talk to the rabbis and everything will be fine.”
When I was 17, a Palestinian from Gaza murdered a girl from Bat Yam [a city in Israel]. Following this, there was chaos between Jews and Arabs in Jaffa and Bat Yam.
“The government decided to deport all Arabs working in the country to their homes in the Gaza Strip because there were no permits at that time; they would freely enter. After the murder of the girl, everything became a mess, and the government decided to grant permits to work in Israel only to those aged 40 and above. Anyone below the age of 40 was forbidden to stay in the country. It meant that I became illegal.
At the age of 19, I went to the police and said that I wasn’t legal. They arrested me and took me to court. In court, I said that I had been in the country for seven years and that I wanted to convert. My adoptive father brought 250 signatures from the neighbors to show that they knew me and that I truly wanted to convert. But the judge didn’t address it. He sentenced me to 45 days in prison plus 10 months of conditional release.
During the hearing before the judge, there were other Palestinians tied to me by our feet. We were linked to each other. They whispered in my ear, “Wait, wait, see what we will do to you.”
I knew what they were capable of doing. They have one goal—to kill Jews. They took me to prison in Be'er Sheva [a city in Israel] with the other prisoners. I suffered severe beatings because the other prisoners were told that I wanted to become Jewish. The prison guards separated me and took me to a cell with the Jews. After prison, they deported me to Gaza.
They deported me toward the Erez Crossing. There, the Palestinian police—at that time it was Fatah, PLO—those who detonated in the first and second intifadas. They received me.
I really didn’t remember anything. It’s like someone took away all my memory. Before I underwent torture, I didn’t remember anything from my time in Israel. I had no memory, and it was good that way.
They tied me upside down, legs to the ceiling and head down. They submerged me in cold water, hot water, electric shocks, cut my hands, and beat me on the stairs with fists, with sticks, and with kicks with their legs. For about half a year. Every day the same thing.
The interrogators brought a board, placed it under the center, to my throat, pushed me against the wall, and lifted me up. I choked and passed out. They released me. And then again. That’s how it continued over and over.
Only after half a year, they told me that they heard that I was in court in Israel and that I said I wanted to be Jewish and everything that happened in court. At that moment, all the memories came back to me. If I had remembered it earlier, I would have confessed, and they would have given me the death penalty. What I believe is that the Almighty erased my memory during that time.
Then I told them, “No, I’m Palestinian, I’m proud.” I lied. They decided to put me under house arrest in Khan Yunis, in my family’s house.
They told me that I wasn’t their son. They accepted me because they respected the Palestinian police, not me. They told me to sleep on the roof, so I wouldn’t talk to anyone. For a month, I was on the roof.
But after two months, I was arrested again because I wasn’t legal, and there was a conditional arrest against me. Again, they took me to court. I told the judge my entire life story. She listened and said, “I will release you, and I won’t put you under conditional arrest.” My adoptive father signed the bail, and they released me.
Since then, it took me seven years to get approval from the state to convert. After seven years, we applied to the Supreme Court, and they accepted my request. I became a religious Jew who observes Shabbat and fulfills commandments. I got drafted to the army.
Someone interviewed me for a TV program and asked, “If they send you to evacuate Israeli settlers, what will you do?” I answered that I was enlisting in the army to defend the country and its citizens and that I wouldn’t evacuate any Israeli settlers or synagogues and I wouldn’t remove any women and children from their homes. It’s a big mistake to do that. After that, I received a call from the army saying that I was exempt and that they wouldn’t enlist me.
Now, if you eliminate Hamas, the Islamic Jihad will come. If you eliminate Islamic Jihad, another organization will come. For all these factions, no matter what their names are, they have one common goal, and that’s us, the Israeli Jews. They don’t know how to distinguish between left and right. They don’t care.
In Israel, when someone dies, like what happened on Oct. 7, the whole country is in mourning. Everyone is crying. Everyone feels the same pain.
But with the people on the other side, it’s not like that. They think, “My son is in prison, he is a hero.”
Do you see the difference?
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