“You boast, ‘We have entered into a covenant with death, with the realm of the dead we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.” (Isaiah 28:15)
Son of Hamas author Mosab Hassan Yousef recently underscored Hamas’ fundamental commitment to death and dying.
“They consider dying for the sake of their ideology a way of worship, and how can you continue in that society?” Yousef told CNN’s Don Lemon in a July 24 interview. “They were preparing us from the age as young as 5 years old … Today when I look at the children of Gaza, and I know what they’re fed, I know that they have no choice.”
Yousef was born in Ramallah into this same ideological training ground. His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, was not only a founding member of Hamas but “one of its favorite members.”
”Honestly, it is impossible, almost, for anyone to break through and see the truth of—and real face of—Hamas, and be able to leave at some point,” Yousef said. “In my case, I had to lose everything just to say ‘no’ to Hamas.”
Yousef was involved for years in Hamas’ political activities “while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status … and power,” writes the description of his 2011 autobiography, Son of Hamas. This role would have involved targeting civilians as a method of war.
Hamas’ ideological warfare goes beyond killing the Israelis next door, as anti-Semitic incidents have arisen in great number across the world in recent weeks, often associated with the Gaza conflict.
The goal of Hamas is the creation of “an Islamic state on the rubble of every other civilization,” Yousef told Lemon.
He said Hamas’ ideology is diametrically opposed to the Judeo-Christian ideal.
“In the mosques, Hamas taught us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology, we wouldn’t be able to build an Islamic state,” he emphasized. “Hamas is not seeking coexistence and compromise. Hamas is seeking conquest and taking over.”
Mosab Hassan Yousef is a Palestinian and son of a Hamas founder and leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef. From 1997 to 2007, he worked undercover for Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet, supplying information that prevented dozens of suicide attacks and assassinations of Israelis.
In a 2011 Deutsche/Israel Kongress speech, Yousef foresaw the consequences of that takeover: “If Israel fails in the Middle East, western civilization will fail.”
Despite this zeal for conquest and their military tactic of putting civilians in the line of fire while launching rockets from schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods, Hamas is receiving worldwide support, led by Qatar who labels Hamas a humanitarian organization.
Yousef’s memoir was recently adapted to film, and on July 24, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opened at the Castro with a showing of “The Green Prince.” Festival attendees gathered early “in fear of protesters,” writes SFGate.com, casting “nervous glances around the sidewalk outside” due to the rise in anti-Semitism worldwide that has put people attending Jewish gatherings at risk.
Despite their fears, the festival aimed to encourage “all to consider what each of us can do, big and small, to help repair this world.” The audience’s applause for “The Green Prince” reached the muse himself, as Yousef walked on stage after the film to greet the audience.
The documentary reveals how Yousef came to reject Hamas and become involved with Israel’s Shin Bet, serving the secret-intelligence service undercover for a decade. During that time, in 1999, he met a British missionary, who shared Yeshua with him.
Six years passed before the son of Hamas publicly shared his faith in the Messiah and was baptized in Tel Aviv. Later, from the United States, Yousef wrote his story, describing “his belief that the Christian mandate to ‘love your enemies’ is the only way to peace in the Middle East.”
