Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

Yousef kept his father company in anticipation of their arrest. Yousef served only three months, but at the time of the book’s publication, his father was still in prison. When parliamentary elections occurred in 2006, Hamas very much wanted the well-respected Hassan to represent them on their ticket, even threatening Yousef to declare Hassan’s interest in running or else they would kill him. Even though he was in prison, “Hamas put his picture everywhere, tacitly encouraging everyone to vote the organization’s ticket. And on the eve of the election, Sheikh Hassan Yousef was swept into parliament, carrying everyone else along like so many burrs in a lion’s mane” (235).

Wondering about his future, especially as a Christian best known as the son of a Hamas leader, Yousef questioned,

What did I have to show for being the Shin Bet’s superspook? Were my people better off? Had the bloodshed stopped? Was my father home with his family? Was Israel safer? Had I modeled a higher path for my brothers in sisters? I felt that I had sacrificed nearly a third of my life for nothing, a ‘chasing after the wind’ as King Solomon describes it in Ecclesiastes 4:16 (236).

He announced his desire to stop working with Shin Bet and moved to the United States. When the officers kept trying to impose conditions, Yousef lost his patience and lived a quiet life at home for three months. Eventually, Shin Bet allowed him to go to the United States on the pretext of a trip to resolve a dental problem. After a complicated process, he was finally allowed to leave. He kissed his mother goodbye and left his prized Bible with a friend. Nervous that something could still go wrong, he was nonetheless able to pass into Jordan and then travel through France and to the United States. He felt like he would be “free—free to be myself, free of clandestine meetings and Israeli prisons, free from always looking over my shoulder. It was weird. And wonderful” (241). One day, Yousef ran into Hamas’s infamous bombmaker Maher Odeh in California, leading him to wonder if Hamas was running operations in the United States.

In 2008, an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz exposed Yousef as a Christian, crushing his family with disappointment. His father, learning the news in prison, cried so hard that those around him were likewise affected by the outpouring of emotion. Still, he refused to disown his son, and when some fellow prisoners smuggled in cell phones, they were able to speak cordially. Hassan assured him, “No matter what […] you are still my son. You are part of me, and nothing will change. You have a different opinion, but you still are my little child” (245). Yousef then confessed that he had worked for Shin Bet and told his father that he loved him. An editor’s note adds that Hassan did indeed disown his son in 2010.

Yousef hopes that his story can shed a hopeful light on a seemingly intractable conflict. He insists that he is not self-interested and not seeking money or attention. He is repudiating the kind of power he could have had as the son of a Hamas leader. Instead, it is “freedom, a deep longing for freedom, [that] is really at the heart of [his] story” (248). The message of Christ has opened his eyes to the freedom that comes from loving one’s enemies, praying for forgiveness for one’s sins, and seeking spiritual purity in spite of setbacks. Regarding the Middle East, Yousef insists that “religion is not the solution. […] Delivered from persecution, Muslims became persecutors” (249). Yousef implies that only Christianity, or at least a Christian ethic of forgiveness, can solve the problem of Israel-Palestine.

After learning in 2010 that his father disowned him, Yousef received a message from “Captain Loai,” actually named Gonen ben Itzhak, who was concerned that Yousef’s public conversion to Christianity would place his life in danger. Itzhak referred to Yousef as “brother” and promised to help him in any way possible, including financial support. Since Itzhak was no longer a Shin Bet employee, they could freely associate. The former handler visited Yousef in the United States, and they built a powerful friendship. This was despite the chance that “Gonen’s father likely signed the warrant for [Yousef’s] father’s arrest on more than one occasion” (256). With his status in the United States unsettled, Yousef decided to apply for political asylum, as returning to Palestine would likely lead to his death.

Customs officials were horrified that they let someone with Hamas ties into the country in the first place, and at first, his application was denied on the grounds that he was a potential national security threat. He hoped that a draft of his book would show that he worked against Hamas, but he was still regarded as suspicious. He called in Ben Itzhak to confirm the details of the story, which was risky since it would expose him as a Shin Bet agent. He decided to go public anyway, but before he could actually testify, the Department of Homeland Security withdrew its objections to Yousef’s asylum request. Itzhak was reprimanded by Shin Bet but not punished. While Yousef secured his own fate, he still regrets the consequences for his family, conscious of the fact that his siblings will severely struggle to lead normal lives.

The publication of Son of Hamas made Yousef a somewhat public figure, although he generally lives a quiet life and continues to work on being a better Christian. He worries that churches are becoming too “politically correct” and says that they must “understand the real nature of Islam and to speak the truth about it” (263). He believes that it is his mission as a Christian to speak out against Islam, as “unconditional love for the ‘other’ side and forgiveness for those who have hurt us are the only principles that will lead to healing and a better way for all” (266).