Gambling with Children's Blood

Contributed by Declan I.M. Deady

On the evening of October 10th, over a hundred people gathered in the Science Center for a Salient-sponsored event featuring Mr. Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former member of Hamas, a current Israeli intelligence operative, and the author of the 2010 memoir Son of Hamas. Yousef’s experience comes from a split life: his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is the co-founder of Hamas and was a primary architect of the First Intifada, yet Yousef the younger, a Christian convert, has a fatwa decree on his head and spent years as an operative for Shin Bet, an Israeli intelligence organization. His remarks, informed by a lifetime surrounded by violence, revealed a longing for stability in his war-torn homeland.

As a child, Mr. Yousef watched as Hamas leadership planned the First Intifada in his home. In his remarks, he described the widespread belief among his father’s associates that the uprising would bring renewed freedom to the Palestinian people—a delusion that lingers today. Everything changed for Yousef when the violence began. The Yousef home was adjacent to a local cemetery, and he recalled watching more bodies come every single day—five, ten, fifteen. He remembered standing with widows who wept for their husbands and sons. He was ten years old. 

Abhorred by the violence, Mr. Yousef defected to Israel and began working with the Israeli intelligence community to identify suicide bombers, hoping to preempt further attacks. The work was meaningful and necessary, but it was also horrific. Mr. Yousef looked distant while describing the decade he spent informing on Hamas and watching video footage of terrorism: “I was cursed to see the footage the public didn’t see. I am still cursed.” He spoke with the voice of a man who cannot close his eyes without seeing blood and death. He understands the violence in a way that few ever will, and he pleads for people to understand, in some small way, the Palestinian culture of death.

“No one in Israel wants children to die,” he said, comparing this attitude to that of Hamas, whose leaders are “gambling with children’s blood” and which “does not differentiate between Arab and Jew…adult or child.” It is, he said, “a culture that has been praising death—sacrificing children for gain…[a culture where] the majority of people agree that it is a virtue to kill and get killed for the cause.” This is perhaps the greatest disconnect between the pro-Palestinian protestors and the people living through the violence. The protestors assume that independence from Israel is something that will stop the bloodshed—a movement to save an oppressed people from their oppressors. This might be a noble cause in theory, but it neglects the reality that Hamas and its related organizations will not stop at independence: instead, these radical organizations are governed by a mandate of violence against all non-Muslims.

The goal of the leaders of Palestine is, as Mr. Yousef revealed, nothing short of a new Caliphate, not unlike those that terrorized Christendom for centuries. Mr. Yousef described it as a “Nazi ideology,” one which wants to build a state on the rubble of Israel and then expand that state with the sword. Only when the bloodied crescent has dominated the world, Mr. Yousef indicated, will these people rest. He concluded his remarks with a final statement: “Justifying violence in Israel invites it here.” We cannot accept the proliferation of violence for the sake of violence. Blood begets blood, and it can be neither allowed nor endorsed.

A recording of the event is available here.