Now living in the U.S., Yousef is further risking his neck to tell his tale. He has just published a memoir, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue and Unthinkable Choices. In a phone interview, speaking fluent English, he says it "reads like a novel" but "this is a true story."
Islam, terrorism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and hopes for peace in the Middle East
Written with the help of journalist Ron Brackin, Yousef's 265-page book reads with the page-turning ease of a great thriller. Its bombshell news about his work for the Israelis broke just last week, a few days prior to publication. That comes on top of his disclosure in 2008 that while working with Hamas he had quietly converted from Islam to Christianity. In his multi-faceted telling of what he calls his "unlikely journey," Yousef challenges layers of conventional wisdom (and the entire weave of State Department and White House thinking), to offer his insider insights into Islam, terrorism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and hopes for peace in the Middle East. Whether you are inclined to agree with him or not, he deserves a wide hearing.
Now 32, Yousef is the eldest son of one of the founding members and leaders of Hamas, Sheikh Hassan Yousef--an accused terrorist currently serving six years in an Israeli prison. The younger Yousef, "son of Hamas," was raised in the West Bank as a devout Muslim. He became heir apparent to his father's high rank within Hamas, founded in the 1980s as a purist, Islamic alternative to the corrupt and basically secular Palestinian Liberation Organization.
As Yousef describes it, Hamas "Islamized" the Palestinian problems, taking them down a road on which there could be no peace with Israel--only full-blown terrorist opposition to its existence. At the age of 18, busy buying weapons, he was arrested by Israeli security forces. They beat him, interrogated him and imprisoned him with other members of Hamas.
During that stint in prison, he saw Hamas leaders torturing their own people in ways worse than anything the Israelis had done. Hamas had its own disciplinary forces, demanding strict compliance with Islamic law, keeping score and meting out horrible punishment for infractions. They often targeted the lowliest and weakest among their ranks as suspected collaborators with the Israelis and forced bizarre confessions from them while shoving needles under their fingernails or melting plastic trays onto their bare skin. Yousef writes, "Every day there was screaming, every night, torture. Hamas was torturing its own people!"
He began to question where Palestinian leaders were taking their people. Yousef already had no love for Yasser Arafat, whom he saw as "A cheap ham, who bought his place in the limelight with Palestinian blood." Arafat, he writes, was never interested in reaching a real peace; he had grown rich "as the international symbol of victimhood," and "wasn't about to surrender that status and take on the responsibility of actually building a functioning society."
Yousef began to question Islam. He compares it in his book to a tall ladder--a deadly ladder--with prayer at the bottom, charity and good works on higher rungs and jihad as the highest rung. He describes traditional Muslims as dwelling at the foot of the ladder, "living in guilt for not really practicing Islam." Higher up are the moderates, whom Yousef sees as dangerous because you never know when they might take that next step: "Most suicide bombers began as moderates." And, "At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur'an."
Yousef gives an eyewitness account of the launch of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in 2000. He says it was a cynical scheme of Arafat, abetted by Hamas, to thwart chances of a peace that would have put them all out of business. He describes the rock-throwing Palestinian children hurt by Israelis, and asks, where were their mothers? Why weren't they in school? "Why were those children out there in the first place?"
He deplores the promise of heavenly rewards to the martyrs of Islam, saying this is not about truth, or theology, but "about Islamic leaders drugging their people with lies to make them forget the pain those leaders were causing them."
In eye-opening detail, Yousef recounts how step-by-step he became convinced that the best way he could serve his own people, and protect innocents on all sides, was to accept an offer from the Israelis to work as a spy within Hamas. He also describes his growing interest in Christianity, which he came to see as a religion offering the forgiveness and tolerance he found missing in Islam.
He asked himself what the Palestinians would do if Israel vanished. He concluded, "We would still fight. Over nothing. Over a girl without a head scarf. Over who was toughest and most important."
Yousef provides loads of cloak-and-dagger anecdotes about his work with the Israelis. Code-named the Green Prince, for his position as a scion of Hamas, he clandestinely helped the Israelis disrupt terrorist plans, foil suicide bombers and capture some of the Hamas ringleaders. At one point, he says, he arranged for a communications link between the West Bank and a Hamas leader, Khalid Meshaal, in Damascus. Unknown to Meshaal, he writes, it was "a party line with the Shin Bet listening in."
But the most important dimensions of his tale involve his explanations of why he did it, why he ultimately converted secretly to Christianity and why in 2007 he finally left it all to seek a more normal life in America.
The corruption of the Palestinian Authority, the stupidity and cruelty of Hamas
At the heart of his story, he writes, is "A deep longing for freedom." As a prince of Hamas, he had "money, power and position, but what I really wanted was freedom … that meant, among other things, leaving behind hate, prejudice and a desire for revenge." He was in great danger of being found out and murdered. And after years of trying to curb the violence around him, he was exhausted by "The corruption of the [Palestinian Authority], the stupidity and cruelty of Hamas, and the seemingly endless line of terrorists who had to be taken out or put down." Likening the endless peace deals to trying to "splint the arms and legs of a cardiac patient," he writes that the only real way to peace is "truth and forgiveness."
For telling his own truth, Yousef has already paid a high price. He begins his book with a poignant note to his family: "I know you see me as a traitor; please understand it was not you I chose to betray, but your understanding of what it means to be a hero."
Near the end of the book he describes the distress of his family when they learned in 2008 that he had converted to Christianity. His father was urged to disown him but did not. "My father knew that if he disowned me, Hamas terrorists would kill me."
This Monday, with the news just out that he had worked for years for Israeli security, Hamas Web sites reported that Yousef's father has now disowned him.
On the phone Yousef explained that his family had no choice. He said, "This is the real face of the God of Islam." Speaking of his father, whom he both reveres and laments as a man of noble intentions wedded to deadly beliefs, he said, "When he obeys his God, he will end up a terrorist, he will end up disowning his son, he will end up a killer."
Does Mosab Hassan Yousef expect to pay with his life for telling his story? He has already received threats. He says, "I am not concerned. This is a cheap price if we can build a new generation."
