Son of Hamas, by Mosab Hasan Yousef with Ron Brackin, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 264 pages, 2010.
By David Strom
SAN DIEGO — Human beings are complicated and because of this, life is interesting. If you are raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, grow up in an Orthodox community, go to Orthodox religious schools, play with and associate only with those who are also Orthodox, read only Orthodox material, listen and watch only Orthodox radio and TV, you will probably become Orthodox. Do you really have a choice to be something else? Or is life’s programming of you so powerful that you have little choice but to be Orthodox like everyone around you?
Your likes and dislikes will be similar to those you have primary contact with. You may hate certain people even if you don’t know them or have never met them in your daily life. You will have an affinity for others because they dress like you, listen to the same leaders, read similar books, pray the way you do, and share similar types of foods and dishes. Is there any need for people to venture from their zone of safety into the “other” world or worlds that exist? For most, the answer is no, but for a few, the scary and rewarding answer is yes.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, who will address the San Diego Jewish Book Fair on Wednesday, Nov. 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the Lawrence Family JCC, was born into the safe world of Islam.
Like the Orthodox Jew mentioned above and because of culture and society in which you live, Mosab had little chance of being anything other than a Moslem and a believer that Israel was his enemy. Mosab, a Palestinian, was dedicated to the cause of Palestinian statehood. His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of Hamas considered by many Americans to be a terrorist organization, was often in prison when Mosab was growing up.
Even though his father was a noted religious leader of Hamas, his mother and siblings, with all the media notoriety surrounding them, tried to live as normal religious Moslems dedicated to the Palestinian cause of independence and statehood.
Survival was difficult under Israeli rule. Israeli leadership, whether Likud or Labor led, believed “if they capture one of the leaders of Hamas, things would get better.” But, of course it did not.
“In late 1989, Amer Abu Sarhan of Ramallah had seen all the Palestinian deaths he could take. Since no one had guns, he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed three Israelis to death, in effect launching a revolution.” (Many Israelis call it terrorism or rebellion, but not revolution.)
Sarhan became an instant hero to Palestinians, young and old, including Mosab Hassan Yousef. Mosab, like many others around him, witnessed Israel seize land that many Palestinians had lived and worked on for generations. He witnessed classmates and friends rounded up, tortured or killed. He believed they were not terrorists by birth. “They were not terrorists by nature. They were just people who had run out of hope and options. Their backs were to the wall. They had nothing left and nothing to lose. They cared nothing for the world’s opinion or even their own lives.”
Going to school for children living under the Israeli rule, “became a real problem.” It was not uncommon for Mosab to walk “out of school to find Israeli jeeps driving up and down the streets, announcing an immediate curfew… “ If a curfew was announced and you were “on the street for any reason, you were shot. No warning, no arrest. They just shot you.”
When Mosab’s father was imprisoned, most of the Palestinian neighbors did little to help the Hassan Yousef family survive economically. After eighteen months in prison, after withstanding the prison torture, after inspiring other incarcerated Palestinians to stand up for their religion and values, Hassan Yousef was released. Life could, once again, hopefully return to “normal’.
Mosab watched his father try to educate his followers living under the occupation. After a fight between a neighbor and his cousin, the neighbor, Abu Saleem, tried to kill his cousin. When Mosab’s father learned of the fight, he immediately went to see Abu Saleem.
“You know that we are under occupation,” Mosab’s father said, “and you know we don’t have time for this foolishness. You’ve got to sit down and apologize to your cousin, and he has to apologize to you. I don’t want to see any more problems like this.”
Abu Saleem saw the wisdom in Hasan Yousef’s words. And so did many others in the community. Hasan Yousef was not only an imam at a mosque. He gave people hope and helped them resolve their problems. In the absence of any local government, he was the government. As a representative of Hamas, he had more authority than an imam and was like a general, as well. After three months of freedom, Hasan Yousef was arrested and returned to prison.
Palestinians took to the streets when Iraq invaded Kuwait. They cheered thinking their Iraqi brothers were coming to their rescue. After so many years of being pawns in the geopolitical game of power and control among and between Egypt, Jordan and Arab countries, Iraq was going to free them from Israeli domination. He hoped the scuds would devastate Israel. They didn’t. For young Mosab and many other Moslems living in the occupied territories, they were “angry and bitterly disappointed.” The scuds came and nothing changed.
In 1993, some in the middle-east conflict could see a ray of light. Israel and PLO’s Arafat were talking, negotiating. Arafat wrote a letter to Rabin “in which he officially recognized ‘the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security’ and renounced ‘the use of terrorism and other acts of violence’.” Israel formally recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.
Mosab’s father was against accords. “He didn’t trust Israel or the PLO and therefore put no trust in the peace process.” He explained how their Hamas leaders, ”… had their own reasons for opposing it, including the risk that a peace accord might actually stick!”
Peaceful coexistence could mean the end of Hamas. “It’s hard to achieve peace in a place where so many have different goals and interests.” Mosab saw and realized the hypocrisy of certain Palestinian leaders and organizations. The violence continued.
The Hebron massacre captured world attention and headlines on Friday, February 25, 1994. Dr. Baruch Goldstein entered Al-Haram Al Ibrahimi Mosque and murdered twenty-nine Palestinian worshipers and “wounding well over one hundred before he was beaten to death by the enraged, grief stricken mob.”
While watching the murderous scene on television, Mosab’s heart pounded with rage, a rage he “had never known before, a rage that startled and soothed me.” And he was not alone. It seemed to him that “everyone in the occupied territories” felt the deaths of their religionists personally.
Mosab and a lifelong friend, Ibrahim, despite a great deal anxiety and fear decided to purchase guns. They wanted to do their part in the fight against the Israeli occupier. They searched and were finally able to acquire some weapons.
Late one night Ibrahim called Mosab and angrily told him that the “guns don’t work!” That was enough to get Ibrahim and Mosab arrested and imprisoned. The Israeli security had caught up with him.
His father was in a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison and now he was in an Israeli prison. There was no one to look after his mother and the rest of the family. He already knew that they would be left on their own with little help from the extended family or Hamas.
Mosab was “handcuffed and blindfolded, stuffed in the back of a military jeep, trying to dodge rifle butts as best I could.” Placed in jail, he was harshly interrogated.
A guard came in and pulled out a dark green hood and placed it over his head. “The hood smelled like it had never been washed. It reeked of the unbrushed teeth and foul breath of a hundred prisoners. I retched and tried to hold my breath. But every time I gasped, I sucked the filthy cloth into my mouth. I panicked and felt like I would suffocate if I couldn’t get away from the bag.”
Yes, he was treated terribly. Mosab was tortured, but the imprisonment changed his life, possibly for the better. Initially he hated the Israelis and he would not cooperate, but pragmatically he thought he would cooperate with them, and then murder them. But while playing that game of pseudo cooperation he changed.
The Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service) secularly educated him. This helped give Mosab more space to explore and learn other approaches and ways of coping. As a pragmatic spy, he learned that some Shin Bet agents were wonderful people and trustworthy, others not. Life was no longer black or white, but it had shades of gray. His worldview was thus expanding.
The Shin Bet used Mosab’s transmitted information to capture many wanted “terrorists.” He informed the Shin Bet when certain anti-Israel actions were to take place, where and when. The Shin Bet prized Mosab’s being close to the Hamas leadership. Whatever information he gathered and passed along was important and accurate.
In the mid 1990’s, along with hundreds of others, Mosab was rounded up and placed in an Israeli prison. This time he was not mistreated. For his own protection, he remained a certain amount of time in prison so that it did not look like he was cooperating with the Israelis. Once out, Mosab returned home to be warmly welcomed by his family and friends. Mosab and his father, also out of prison, became closer.
When Sheikh Hassan Yousef had an important meeting to attend, Mosab, as the heir apparent, would accompany and drive his father. Mosab’s father once had an important meeting with Yasser Arafat, longtime chair of the PLO, and Mosab attended too. After the meeting was over, Arafat came over and kissed Mosab on the cheek. Almost instantaneously, Mosab wiped off his cheek. His father observed this action, quickly interpreted this as an insult to Arafat and never took Mosab to any other important meetings.
Working for the Shin Bet gave Mosab traveling privileges. It was less hassle traveling to and from Jerusalem. One day, while walking in Jerusalem with a friend, an Englishman approached him with some literature. The Englishman could speak Arabic and told Mosab about a Christian meeting at the YMCA. He went. And this changed his life radically.
Mosab was noticeably changed because of his encounter with the Shin Bet and other Israelis. Now this chance meeting with the Englishman would profoundly alter Mosab’s life once again. The Englishman, a Christian, encouraged Mosab to study and learn more about Christianity. And he did. In the slow evolving process Mosab became a Christian. He was eventually baptized.
Living in a closed world was very hard. Living in a cloistered Moslem world was extremely difficult. Do you stay in the closet as a secret Christian? Or do you announce to the world that you are a Christian?
Among the first to be told were his friends in the Shin Bet.
They, of course, did not care. What concerned them most was his spying activities. Would they continue? They did for awhile, but eventually they stopped. The Shin Bet was not happy that he no longer would spy for them. They tried convincing him to take time off from spying and travel to Europe. He turned them down. He quit the spy game.
His Christianity led him to believe it was wrong to kill or murder. Mosab understood and believed his former activities led to killing people. As a blooming pacifist in the Ghandian/King tradition, Mosab now considered killing as morally repugnant and the opposite of his understanding of Christianity.
How do you tell your Moslem family, with your father a revered Imam, that you are no longer a Moslem? Difficult, yes. Will father and family disown him? How will the Moslem community react?
After his family found out he had converted to Christianity, they were shocked and shamed in the community. He wrote his father a six-page letter explaining why he did what he did. Eventually he talked on the phone with his father. Mosab’s gentle and intelligent father remarked: “No matter what happened, you re still my son. You are part of me and nothing will change. You have a different opinion, but you are still my child.”
“I was shocked. This man was unbelievable.”
Since that time, however, the father publicly disowned his son, after the latter made it known he had spied for Israel.
Mosab’s story is incredible. He grew up hating and ended up loving all humankind. How many of us still live in the closeted world of Israel being always right? Or a world where America is always right, no matter how many unjust wars it fought/fights? Being in the closet is sometimes easier than facing the real world. But the real world is where the battle to achieve Tikkun Olam is at and that is where I want to be.
As Clarence Darrow said, “I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men, when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”
Many Israelis, Moslem Arabs and Americans are in the slow process of learning this truth, a truth that Mosab Hasan Yousef learned as a young man.
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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University