‘Son of Hamas’ visits New York

At 17, Israeli soldiers snatched Mosab Hassan Yousef off the street. Held captive and tortured because he is the son of a leader of Hamas, Yousef said the experience gave him personal reasons to hate Israel on top of his cultural predisposition.


But Yousef discussed his "crazy transformation" from hatred of Israel to work for the Israeli Security Agency and from Islam to Christianity at an event hosted by author Eric Metaxas in Manhattan on Thursday.

Yousef said he has paid a "high price" for publishing his story in the book Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices last March. His father, a founding member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, disowned him. He is accompanied by guards at public events.

"Worst case scenario, I run," he said to a security guard at Thursday's event. "I keep on running."


The event was part of a forum series Metaxas calls Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life. Yousef spoke to a crowd of around 200 people at the Union League Club in Manhattan and answered questions about his years as a spy for Israel, his faith and why he believes Islam drives people to kill.


Palestinian society works on a shame and honor system, Yousef said. If doing something wrong is honored, that is what everybody wants to do. That is why Yousef's family disowned him for doing what he considered the right thing. "Our problem is not with terrorists. Many times they are amazing people. But they are deceived. They are victims of their god and their country," he said.

Examining his own life—and the policies of his family and friends—turned Yousef into an informer. Eventually, his position as a valuable source of intelligence about Hamas allowed him to save his father's life by keeping him off the terrorist hit list. "He was protected by his enemies. He had no idea, by the way," he said.


In the book, Yousef reveals that as a spy for the Shin Bet, he helped Israel prove that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was using American aid money to fund terrorism. He helped investigate several suicide bombings which killed dozens to hundreds of Israeli civilians, and the information he provided to Israel led to the arrest of several leaders behind the attacks, such as Ibrahim Hamed, Marwan Barghouti and Abdullah Barghouti. Combined, these men have been sentenced to longer than 70 life sentences.


Yousef said that he worked with the Shin Bet, Israel's intelligence agency, to arrest high-level targets without killing them. "I didn't take sides. I took the side of humanity," he explained.

Although questions at the event focused on political turmoil in the Middle East, Yousef did not take a political stance. "When we have an ideological problem, we need an ideological solution," he said in the speech. "We cannot have a political solution to an ideological problem."


The ideology he criticized was the Islamic one. Yousef held up Muhammad and Jesus as the "highest example" of Islam and Christianity, respectively. The first drives people to kill and the other offers only love, he said. "Islam is not a religion of peace," he said, reminding the audience that he has authority to speak harshly about Islamic culture because he grew up in it. "This is my experience."


 Yousef said that his choice to write a book that reveals the inner workings of Hamas and admits to the extent of his work with Israeli intelligence was not a safe choice. "I am at peace because I believe I did the right thing," said Yousef of going public with his story. He laughed with Metaxas and joked with the crowd throughout his speech, perhaps providing the best evidence.

"I love this country," he concluded. "I'm enjoying my life."