Former terrorist Tass Saada, who now lives in the Kansas City area, believes the Israel-Hamas war is preparing many Muslims in Gaza to become Christians. He told Israeli-American journalist Joel C. Rosenberg during an interview that aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network over the weekend that he believes the scale of violence and destruction roiling the Middle East is “not normal” and an indication that the “end of time” is quickly approaching.
But Saada also has hope that the conflict is causing many Muslims in the region to become disillusioned with Hamas and radical Islam, thereby leading them to be more open to the gospel. As a former Palestinian Muslim born in Gaza, Saada is preparing to move back to Gaza after the war is over to be part of the “harvest.”
“Hamas is an ideology that is spread among many people, not only in the Gaza Strip but all over the world,” he said. “However, God has a plan. And I believe the Arabs’ and the Jews’ plan is also part of that, and that is where my hope is.”
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Saada, who wrote the autobiographical “Once an Arafat Man,” recounted in how he became consumed with rage toward Jewish Israelis and others following the 1967 Six Day War. After his family moved to Saudi Arabia and Qatar when he was still young, he eventually ran away to join Fatah and fight under Yasser Arafat, the former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He would become a sniper, an assassin and Arafat’s personal driver.
“After the Six Day War, I felt as if I was having a nervous breakdown, and my hatred just grew and grew,” Saada said. “I did not understand how we could lose so many wars against Israel. We were bigger than Israel in numbers and size, we had more equipment — everything we had was more than they had, but still, we lost the wars against them.”
After his family found him and forced him to return to Qatar, repeated violence and legal troubles led his father to urge him to continue his education in the West. Saada traveled to the United States in 1974, where he married an American woman and met a Christian named Charlie, who shared the gospel with him after befriending him for nearly 20 years. Since becoming a Christian, Saada and his family founded Hope for Ishmael, an evangelical outreach to Muslims, and Seeds of Hope, a humanitarian nonprofit that provides necessities to impoverished people in the Middle East.
Saada told Rosenberg that many non-Christians in the region are encountering Jesus in dreams and that his sources on the ground now ministering to Palestinians in Gaza anticipate that the spiritual harvest “is going to be huge” in the wake of the conflict.
“That is why I am back in the Holy Land, to move to the Gaza Strip and take part in rebuilding,” he said. “I believe with all the destruction, with all that happened, with the hardship the Palestinians have gone through, they cannot sit back but will ask, ‘Why?’ God is going to do a lot of work, and I want to be a part of that.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
