RAMALLAH, West Bank – An Iraqi journalist’s act of hurling of shoes at President
Bush yesterday has prompted excited reaction here from across the Palestinian
arena, with one senior terrorist declaring 2008 the “year of the shoe.”
“This is the main historic event of the year of 2008, the year of the shoe,”
Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and a top leader of the Popular Resistance
Committees terrorist group, told WND. He was speaking by cell phone from the Gaza Strip.
“There are people that go into history by their inventions, by their
martyrdom, by their sacrifices, but this guy went into history by his shoes,” said
Abdel-Al, praising Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist who shot to pan-Arab
stardom for his attack on Bush and his cry: “This is a goodbye kiss from the
Iraqi people, dog.”
Zaidi’s act dominated the talk in the Palestinian “capital” city of Ramallah
today, where 227 Palestinian criminals freed by Israel as a goodwill
gesture to the Palestinian Authority rejoined their families in a ceremony attended
by WND.
Muhammad Siale, the uncle of one of the released criminals, told WND, “One
Arab among 250 million Arabs and among billions of Muslims had the courage to
do what every one of us wanted to do.”
A second Siale family member commented, “We are celebrating this heroic act
in Iraq first and the prisoner release second.”
Abu Abdullah, a Gaza-based a senior leader of Hamas’ so-called military
wing, told WND by cell phone, “It’s important that this was from a journalist
and not a motivated resistance group. It’s from the average Arab person.”
The Committees’ Abdel-Al explained that in Islam hitting someone with the
sole of a shoe is the most humiliating act.
“Bush deserves no more than to be hit by a shoe,” he said. “When you hit with your
hand, you respect him, and he’s a rival for you. When hit with a shoe, it means
you have no respect for him and see him as dirt. In the West, protesters can
throw ice cream and tomatoes, but this doesn’t reflect the humiliation of a
shoe. This is the most original way to close Bush’s period in power with the
shoe.”
The terrorist warned, “If the successor of Bush will continue with America’s
policy of occupation and massacres of Muslims, then America and the West
will finish under the shoes of all the Arabs and Muslims.”
Abel-Al said his group, together with Hamas, will be holding a rally later
calling for the Iraqi government to release Zaidi, who reportedly is
being held pending an interrogation to determine whether anyone paid him to
throw his shoes at Bush. He also was being tested for alcohol and drugs, and his
shoes were being held as evidence, said an Iraqi official speaking to the
Associated Press.
The Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV channel said Zaidi should be freed because
he had been exercising freedom of expression.
Slow motion clips of Zaidi throwing his shoes at Bush were broadcast
continuously today on Al Jazeera and other Arab networks. Arabic commentators said
the act was a reversal of a more glorious moment for Bush when Iraqis were
filmed using their shoes to beat a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by U.S.
invading troops in 2003.
