From Islamist to Christian Missionary
Dissidents are the exception in fundamentalist movements. This also applies to the Palestinian-Islamist Hamas organization. Although the thirty-two-year-old Palestinian Mosab Hassan Yousef was never an official member, his personal fate was linked to the organization in a most particular way, which, in the end, led him to become one of its most bitter and, until now, most strident opponents.
As the oldest son and intermittent assistant of Hamas co-founder Sheik Hassan Yousef, he took advantage of his position to serve as informant for the Israeli internal security service Shabak (Shin Bet), providing information on Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank.
For the past three years, he has been living in the USA, where, in early March, his autobiography "The Son of Hamas" was published amidst a flurry of media excitement. The book is now making its German debut. Just as the original American version (published by Tyndale House Publishers), the German translation is also being printed by a denominational publisher (SCM Hänssler, Holzgerlingen). Both companies belong to the Evangelical religious spectrum of the publishing industry.
This is hardly a coincidence. The book does not only contain the confessions of a Palestinian spy in the service of Israel. It is also the history of the author's conversion to Christianity.
As an enthusiastic Christian, Mosab Yousef now openly campaigns against the Muslim God and condemns Allah as a "terrorist." At the same time, he invokes the commandment to love one's enemies, which is also supposed to justify his role as an informant.
In the long shadow of his father
His missionary promoters have managed to fit Yousef into the corset of what is almost a caricature – the successfully converted militant Muslim. It is an image particularly useful in times such as these, however, when converts in the other direction are frequently paraded in the public eye as Al-Qaida terrorists.
Perhaps this is why the German publisher added the subtitle "My Life as a Terrorist," which is lacking in the original English version. Yet, this almost negates what was in essence a humane motive for Mosab's informant activities – he claims that through his collaboration with the security service, numerous terrorist attacks on Israel were prevented and many innocent lives were saved. And, when possible, the lives of the terrorists were spared from what would have been certain death.
He constantly asserts that he was never a terrorist. Neither, he claims, was his father, who couldn't even hurt a fly and that it was only pressure from Hamas that forced him to agree to suicide bombers.
Mosab's father casts a shadow over the work, with the prodigal son still praising his father's love of mankind. As such, the book is also an attempt by Mosab to defend his father and family, to which he remains lovingly attached, although they have since declared him to be a traitor and have disowned him.
The convert, who originally was meant to become an imam like his father and grandfather before him, makes clear, and not only between the lines, that his most painful experience was breaking the family bonds.
This admission is meant to boost the authenticity of the conversion story. It also requires the obligatory crucial experience. This is provided by the author's encounter with Hamas henchmen in an Israeli prison.
The role of a double agent
Growing up in Ramallah as a stone-throwing child of the Intifada, the young Mosab had already gotten off lightly after being abducted by Israeli settlers. This experience didn't prevent him in his youthful folly from participating in weapons procurement, which resulted in his detention and torture by the Israelis.
He avoided a long-term prison sentence by yielding to the pressure of his Israeli captors and agreeing to collaborate with Shabak. Apparently, his initial intention was to assume the role of a double agent to work against the Israeli security service from the inside. He nonetheless had to spend many months in the Israeli Megiddo prison, a time that opened his eyes. Assigned to the sector for Hamas prisoners, he experienced how Islamists would torture those fellow prisoners that they, for the most part, groundlessly suspected of collaboration.
The good and humane image of the organization, which the then eighteen-year-old Mosab associated with his idolized father, was shattered. The author does not even consider that the Israelis may have speculated on such a reaction. Instead, he prefers to believe the version offered by Loai, his Israeli contact officer, that the months of detention were necessary to prevent suspicion of espionage.
Once freed, Mosab Yousef regularly provided valuable information to his Israeli patrons, who gave him the code name "Green Prince." The information, it seems, was not only restricted to the activities of Hamas. Mosab succeeded in exposing the co-founder of the then obscure "Al-Aqsa Brigade" terrorist organization as a member of Yassir Arafat's "Force 17" personal security force. And in numerous other cases, Mosab was responsible (so he claims) for foiling planned suicide bombings and helping to find the bomb makers.
Without knowing the identity of the targets, the "Green Prince" also prevented assassination attempts on the life of Shimon Peres and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Yet, he never managed to gain any real insight into the internal workings of the Islamist organization's leadership.
He discovered purely by chance, for instance, the cooperation between Hamas and Fatah in the orchestration of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, when he accompanied his father on a meeting with the then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Nor was any further insight into the functioning of the organization gained by the author through telephone calls that he had with Khaled Meshal, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, while representing his frequently incarcerated father.
The spectre of Fatah
Even the Hamas leader Hassan Yousef is said to be only poorly informed about the terrorist infrastructure of his organization. This, at any rate, is the claim of his son, who also says that he discovered exclusive information about the underground activities of Islamists in the West Bank. A number of activists supposedly assumed the cover of office workers at a centre for Islamic studies in Ramallah, thereby inconspicuously transferring funds to the military arm of Hamas.
This was supposedly nothing new to both the Israeli security service as well as Arafat's Autonomy Authorities. Although his former contact officer recently praised Mosab's unusual espionage talent in the newspaper "Haaretz," the account provided by the author indirectly tends to convince the reader that Yousef somewhat overrated his value as an informant. This is also the view of Yossi Melman, the "Haaretz" expert on security service activities.
The reader should also keep in mind that Mosab Yousef is not starry-eyed despite following his Christian missionary goal. This is seen in his severe warning against the dangers posed by Hamas, although he still regards Fatah as the real enemy. The author can hardly disguise his loathing for the secular opponent and thereby presents himself even today as the true "son of Hamas."
Correspondingly, the Fatah-alligned Palestinian press views Yousef's revelations as just a further attempt by Israel to discredit Mahmud Abbas' organization as corrupt and hated by the population.
For its part, Hamas denies that Yousef junior could ever have had even a glimpse into their decision-making process – and perhaps they have a point. The American publisher has let it be known that translations of the book into Arabic and Hebrew are already underway.
Joseph Croitoru
© Qantara.de 2010
Mosab Hassan Yousef: "The Son of Hamas," Tyndale 2010
Translated from the German by John Bergeron
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de
Qantara.de
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