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→Popularity: Mosab Hassan Yousef
Palestinians inspect homes destroyed near the border with Egypt in Gaza, 2009.
Palestinians inspect homes destroyed near the border with Egypt in Gaza, 2009.
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==Mosab Hassan Yousef==
The revelation that Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder and leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, had spied for Israel for 10 years, and that he had also converted to Christianity, sent reverberations through the Middle East. Mosab worked alongside his father in the West Bank from the second Intifada to the current stalemate, and during that time he became one of the top spies for Israel's internal security arm, the Shin Bet.
The younger Mr. Yousef's disillusionment with Hamas and Islam came as a result of his continued exposure to Hamas cruelty in prison. In 1996, Mosab was arrested by the Israelis for buying weapons, and while he was beaten and tortured badly in custody, he was more shocked by the way the maj'd, Hamas's security wing, dealt with other prisoners in the Megiddo prison in northern Israel. By agreeing to work with the Shin Bet, he got out of prison early..
"Every day, there was screaming; every night, torture. Hamas was torturing its own people!" he writes. The Muslims he met in jail "bore no resemblance to my father" and "were mean and petty . . . bigots and hypocrites."
The Shin Bet approached him in prison after his arrest and asked him to spy for Israel, and being a double agent appealed to him as a way of gaining revenge on Israel from the inside. He accepted and stayed on Shin Bet's payroll for a decade, and in the early years they encouraged him to study and be a model son.<ref>[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html#printMode Matthew Kaminski, ''They Need to Be Liberated From Their God''], Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2010</ref>
According to a review by [[New York Times]] best-selling author Joel C. Rosenberg of Mosab's book, ''Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices'',
<blockquote>
Mosab hated the Jews. He cheered when Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, and was disappointed when Israel wasn't destroyed. He wanted Hamas to seize back all the land of "Palestine" from the Jews. But in 1996, at the age of 18, he was arrested by the Israelis for buying automatic weapons to kill Jews. He was sent to an Israeli prison. There he was stunned at what he saw: Muslims torturing Muslims. "I had never heard a human being scream like that guy did. What could he have done to deserve that." (p.97)
Months later, after being released from Israeli prison, Mosab was walking past the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. Someone [a British cab driver] -- not knowing who he was -- invited him to a Bible study. Curious, he attended. They studied the New Testament, and gave Mosab a copy to read for himself.
</blockquote>
{{cquote|
I began at the beginning [in the Gospel According to Matthew], and when I got to the Sermon on the Mount, I thought, Wow, this guy Jesus is really impressive! Everything He says is beautiful! I couldn't put the book down. Every verse seemed to touch a deep wound in my life. It was a very simple message, but somehow it had the power to heal my soul and give me hope. Then I read this: `You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.' (Matthew 5:43-45)....I was thunderstruck by these words. Never before had I heard anything like this, but I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all my life." Five years earlier, I would have read the words of Jesus and thought, What an idiot! and thrown the Bible away....But now, everything Jesus said on the pages of this book made perfect sense to me. Overwhelmed, I started to cry." (p.122-123)}} <ref>[http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AG1A043PNTPX7/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview Joel C. Rosenberg, ''Love Your Enemies? How The Son Of The Founder Of Hamas Went From Jihad To Jesus'', review]</ref>
"I converted to Christianity because I was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love. I didn't leave [the Islamic] religion to put myself in another box of religion."<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html#printMode</ref>
After the deceased PLO chief [[Yasser Arafat]] turned down the Israeli offer of 90% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital of a new Palestinian state, a outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 led to Mosab being fully activated as a spy.
In an interview with the [[Wall Street Journal]], Matthew Kaminski reported,
<blockquote>
Mr. Yousef tells me that he was horrified by the pointless violence unleashed by politicians willing to climb "on the shoulders of poor, religious people." He says Palestinians who heeded the call "were going like a cow to the slaughterhouse, and they thought they were going to heaven." So, as he writes in the book, "At the age of twenty-two, I became the Shin Bet's only Hamas insider who could infiltrate Hamas's military and political wings, as well as other Palestinian factions."
The motivation, he says, was to save lives.
"I'd seen enough killing. I was a witness to lots of death . . . Saving a human life was something really, really beautiful . . . no matter who they are. Not only Israeli people owe me their lives. I guarantee many terrorists, many Palestinian leaders, owe me their lives—or in other words they owe my Lord their lives."
His handler—a "Captain Loai," now retired from the Shin Bet—corroborated many of these stories to Haaretz. The paper said the Shin Bet considered Mr. Yousef "the most reliable and most senior agent."<ref>[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103481069258868.html#printMode Matthew Kaminski, ''They Need to Be Liberated From Their God''], Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2010</ref></blockquote>
Gideon Ezra, formerly deputy leader of Shin Bet and now a member of the Knesset for the Kadima party, told BBC World Service that Mosab had been one of its agents. Mosab Hassan Yousef was considered Shin Bet's most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname "the Green Prince". One of his Israeli "handlers" told the paper that he had saved many lives, with one of his insights "worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts" "The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money".
Mosab Hassan Yousef converted to Christianity, and he later moved to the United States in 2007.<ref>[bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8533952.stm?ad=1 BBC NEWS ''Hamas man's son was Israeli spy''] February 24, 2010</ref>
The United States is currently in the process of determining whether he qualifies for political asylum, as Islam requires the death of those who convert.
In an Associated Press interview, Mosab stated,
<blockquote>
"To be honest with you, being killed is not the worst thing that can happen." "I know this is very dangerous and this will offend many people. The more you follow the steps of the prophet of Islam and the God of Islam, the more you get close to being a terrorist." Later adding, "Muslims are good people. But their God is absolutely bad."</blockquote>
Sheik Hassan Yousef said in a letter that his family had renounced "the one who was once our eldest son, who is called Mosab."<ref>[http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrgjmmb3eX8TDEIAXEcp-TOfWpnAD9E7HI480 The Associated Press, ''Hamas spy unafraid, criticizes Islam'] Mar 3, 2010'</ref>
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==External Links==