In a thought-provoking interview, Douglas Murray spoke with Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder.
Yousef discussed his upbringing, highlighting the pervasive culture of hatred towards Jews and non-Muslims.
Youisef said, “Jewish hatred, this is not a secret thing. Hatred toward the Jewish people, toward the infidels, towards the Christians; it’s part of the Islamic common teaching. … It’s in the air; it’s in the book (Koran), it’s in the mosque; it’s in the school, and people think it is normal just to preach hatred towards other people because they are different or because they don’t agree with Islamic principles.”
“It’s not only in Hamas charters, it’s in fact, a desire not only for Palestinian-Islamic movements like Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad … but it’s also the non-Islamist movements that praise Jewish slaughter. And this was the biggest problem that I had in the 90s during the suicide attacks before and after the Second Intifada. People used to celebrate,” he continued.
He emphasized the celebration of violence against Israelis and his personal moral conflict with this mindset.
“A majority of the Palestinian population celebrated, praised suicide bombing attacks even though it targeted civilians. … In fact, people would celebrate more when the death toll would be greater, even though we had Arabs, foreigners, who died in those attacks, children, women, elders, all types of people, and this is where from the early beginning I had this moral conflict. How can you celebrate and enjoy the suffering of people like this?” he lamented.
“At the beginning you think that the Israelis deserve that; ‘They took our land. They killed our people. They are against our God; they want to destroy us.’ You get to a point where you see your enemy down you celebrate that. But then — for how long you can lie to somebody before they start questioning the truth and the reality?” he exclaimed.
Youisef recalled, “From a very early age I had my problem with the culture. I did not like the abuse; I did not appreciate the beating. I did not appreciate the rigid, rough discipline. Don’t expect to beat up a child because they did not follow the religious protocol and this child is not going to question what that was for? … I survived it; many people get broken in the beginning.”
“This hatred against the Jews that is attracting many Westerners who might have something in common: that they are all anti-Semites. And this is what’s bringing the Islamists and the Communists and could be the socialists, even, to work together; they have something in common and that is their hatred toward Israel. But what many Westerners are not understanding is that this is not only anti-Israel; it‘s anti-success and it’s anti-civilization. It‘s pro-chaos,” concluded Youisef.
Yousef also detailed his transformation, including his time in prison and his questioning of the belief system.
“Thankfully I got arrested before I carried out a terrorist attack, I was not that far. … We had guns and we were looking for targets. … Hamas in prison proved to be barbaric; they killed so many people; they tortured so many people, our own people, for suspicion of collaborating with Israel with no evidence. Hamas did not have evidence. … Dozens were killed in a short period of time. Hundreds were tortured in the worst possible way. This was the time when I started asking the question: What if Hamas succeeds in establishing a Palestinian state? Are they going to do this to our people?”
“One of the things in the Koran, that Allah hates the Jewish people for being disobedient,” he explained.
“Hence many of those jihadists think that they are the sword of God on Earth, that they are actually manifesting the punishment against the Jewish people for being disobedient. And this is why I personally question the belief system itself. I thought it was not enough to work in counterterrorism shooting down terrorists or trying to stop a suicide bomber before they reach their target; after 10 years of this operation I came to realize we were fighting a ghost because we did not deal with the belief system,” revealed the son of Hamas’ co-founder.
He condemned the West’s reluctance to acknowledge the Islamist threat and emphasized the danger of anti-Semitic ideologies uniting various groups.
He concluded by stressing that the hatred against Jews is not only anti-Israel but also anti-success and anti-civilization, promoting chaos.
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