"My family supports terrorism and murdering Jews," Dor Shahar begins by telling me from his home in Israel, where he lives with his wife and infant son, who demands his attention constantly throughout the interview. Dor moved to the Jewish State as a teenager, after fleeing the Gaza Strip where he was subjected to hateful indoctrination, torture - from his own father - and constant humiliation. After a few years, he converted to Judaism, a path that his wife, of Hungarian origin, would also follow.
Dor did not want to kill Jews. He wanted to be a doctor and have a normal life, something that, as he would later realize, was going to be impossible in the environment he lived in.
Unfortunately, Dor witnessed the worst monstrosities from a very young age. "At the age of three, I remember going with my mother to the market to buy candy and one day I saw a head rolling on the ground like a ball, which belonged to someone suspected of collaborating with Israel." And that was not all, he also said he witnessed how "they cut people into pieces" and how "they tied people to light poles and electrocuted them" and even how "they tied people's legs to a vehicle and dragged them until they died." Yes, they were all considered collaborators of the Zionist enemy.
When it came to education, Dor talked about what is already an open secret: UNRWA schools - run by a UN agency that was put in charge of helping Palestinians, indoctrinate children and teach them to hate Jews. The young man, who currently goes around giving motivational speeches, remembers that a well-dressed man once came into the classroom and said there was going to be a "special class." "But he started saying that Jews are murderers (...) that they had stolen our grandparents' land. He said all of Israel is Palestine, that blood must be shed to get our land back, that the Jews had once been Muslims and became infidels, that Jews have three legs, and that the most important commandment is to kill a Jew," he said.
He wasn't only a victim of indoctrination at school, but also in his own home. Dor said that he used to play soccer with Israeli soldiers, and one day one of them gave him a piece of candy. When he returned home with the wrapper in his hand, he asked his father if he could buy him more, but the answer was not what he expected. "He got very angry. He threatened me and he told me not to take another piece of candy from the Jews because they could poison the candy."
Dor decided to stop going to school, but he didn't tell his family. However, when his father found out, he decided to punish him by mercilessly torturing him. "He wrapped a rope around my neck with a hanging knot, he turned on the gas and held out a knife. He told me, "I'm going to murder you." And, unfortunately, that was not the last time his father inhumanely punished him.
Some time later he decided to go to Israel, where he began to work taking care of construction sites in a neighborhood with large houses. There he met a religious Jew who invited him to a Passover dinner. He began to learn about the meaning behind that holiday. And although he did not know Hebrew, he told his host in her language: " I want to be Jewish."
One of his neighbors in Israel helped him with the entire process of converting to Judaism, which took seven years, during which Dor went through all kinds of extremely tough situations.
During an outbreak of violence against Israelis, the government decided to remove Palestinians from Israel. Dor was detained in the Jewish State for being in the country illegally and during his stay in prison he was beaten by other Palestinians who considered him a traitor for wanting to convert to Judaism.
He was then released and returned to Gaza, where he was interrogated and tortured by Palestinian Authority security forces for having lived in Israel for seven years. "They hung me upside down, they put cold water and hot water on me and they electrocuted me," he said.
He later returned to Israel, where he was arrested again because he was on parole. Then he went to testify in court, where he tearfully told his story to the judge, who decided to release him.
Once he became an Israeli citizen, Dor received his enlistment letter from the Israel Defense Forces. However, he was ultimately not accepted because he refused to evacuate Jews during the 'Israeli Unilateral Gaza Withdrawal Plan' - also called the 'Disengagement' - in 2005, since, as he declared at the time, "Israel was going to be hit with missiles in return."
Dor claims that the terrorists' objective "is to murder Jews," but warns that "Christians will be next." According to him, this is not a territorial conflict. "It's a war on religion."
Regarding the Israeli response in Gaza after the October 7 attacks, Dor points out that it is not aggressive enough. "What was done in more than a month, should have been done in three hours." The Israeli speaker claims that Israel is paying the price with the lives of its soldiers to prevent harm to the civilian population of the Strip, but emphasizes that the vast majority of civilians "support terrorism." "If it were a smaller percentage, as they say, we would have killed off the terrorists in one day. But since 99% support terrorism, the war will not end quickly."
