Son of Hamas Quotes

“I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“But Hamas was not alone in its cover-up and self-serving deceptions. Despite what it displayed on its own news footage, Al-Jazeera continued to broadcast the lies.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Palestinians no longer blamed Yasser Arafat or Hamas for their troubles. Now they blamed the Israelis for killing their children. But I still couldn't escape a fundamental question: Why were those children out there in the first place? Where were the parents? Why didn't their mothers and fathers keep them inside? Those children should have been sitting at their desks in school, not running in the streets throwing stones at armed soldiers.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“The fact is, few Westerners can come close to understanding the complexities of the Middle East and its people.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“As long as we continue to search for enemies anywhere but inside ourselves, there will always be a Middle East problem. Religion is not the solution. Religion without Jesus is just self-righteousness. Freedom from oppression will not resolve things either. Delivered from the oppression of Europe, Israel became the oppressor. Delivered from persecution, Muslims became persecutors. Abused spouses and children often go on to abuse spouses and children. It is a cliché, but it’s still true: hurt people, unless they are healed, hurt people.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“we must love people—on all sides of the world—unconditionally.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Then I read this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). That’s it! I was thunderstruck”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“I asked myself what Palestinians would do if Israel disappeared—if everything not only went back to the way it was before 1948 but if all the Jewish people abandoned the Holy Land and were scattered again. And for the first time, I knew the answer. We would still fight. Over nothing. Over a girl without a head scarf. Over who was toughest and most important. Over who would make the rules and who would get the best seat.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Our enemies are ideas, and ideas don’t care about incursions and curfews.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Truth and forgiveness are the only solution for the Middle East. The challenge, especially between Israelis and Palestinians, is not to find the solution. The challenge is to be the first courageous enough to embrace it.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“As long as we continue to search for enemies anywhere but inside ourselves, there will always be a Middle East problem.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Hamas, on the other hand, Islamized the Palestinian problem, making it a religious problem. And this problem could be resolved only with a religious solution, which meant that it could never be resolved because we believed that the land belonged to Allah. Period. End of discussion. Thus for Hamas, the ultimate problem was not Israel’s policies. It was the nation-state Israel’s very existence.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Many people in the West who stereotype all Muslims as terrorists don’t know about the side of Islam that reflects love and mercy. It cares for the poor, widows, and orphans. It facilitates education and welfare. It unites and strengthens. This is the side of Islam that motivated those early leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, there is also the other side, the one that calls all Muslims to jihad, to struggle and contend with the world until they establish a global caliphate, led by one holy man who rules and speaks for Allah.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“كان واضحاً أن عرفات يريد ان يكون بطلاً يُكتب عنه في كتب التاريخ. ولكن كلما عرفته أكثر، كلما اقتنعت بأن كتب تاريخنا ستكتب عنه بالتأكيد، ولكن ليس كبطل، بل كخائن باع أبناء شعبه ليتسلق على اكتافهم لتحقيق مآربه. وعلى عكس روبن هود، فهو نهب الشعب الفقير ليصبح غنياً. وكخنزير سافل، اشترى مركزه على حساب دماء الفلسطينيين”
― مصعب حسن يوسف, ابن حماس

“Then I read this: “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). That's it! I was thunderstruck. Never before had I heard anything like this. But I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all my life. For years I had struggled to know who my enemy was, and I had looked for my enemies outside of Islam and Palestine, but I suddenly realized that the Israelis were not my enemies. Neither was Hamas, nor my Uncle Ibrahim, nor the kid who beat me… nor the ape like guards... I saw that enemies were not defined by nationality, religion, or color. I understood that we all share the same common enemies. Greed, pride, and all of the bad ideas and the darkness of the devil that live inside us. That meant I could love anyone.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“I saw that enemies were not defined by nationality, religion, or color. I understood that we all share the same common enemies: greed, pride and the all the bad ideas and the darkness of the devil that live inside us. That meant that I could love anyone. The only real enemy was the enemy inside me.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Israeli intelligence, on the other hand, relied mostly on human resources—had countless spies in mosques, Islamic organizations, and leadership roles; and had no problem recruiting even the most dangerous terrorists. They knew they had to have eyes and ears on the inside, along with minds that understood motives and emotions and could connect the dots. America understood neither Islamic culture nor its ideology. That, combined with open borders and lax security made it a much softer target than Israel.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Being a revolutionary is all about purity and rigidity. But governing is all about compromise and flexibility.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“The PA had some fairly sophisticated electronic eavesdropping gear that had been provided by the CIA.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“In the first two and a half years of the Second Intifada, Saddam Hussein paid thirty-five million dollars to the families of Palestinian martyrs”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Palestinians were back to the all-or-nothing mentality of the past. And now it was Hamas rather than Arafat that was fanning the flames.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Yasser Arafat and the other PA leaders had been determined to spark another intifada. They had been planning it for months, even as Arafat and Barak had been meeting with President Clinton at Camp David.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“on July 25, 2000…Barak had offered Arafat about 90 percent of the West Bank, the entire Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as the capital of a new Palestinian state. In addition, a new international fund would be established to compensate Palestinians for the property that had been taken from them. This “land for peace” offer represented a historic opportunity for the long-suffering Palestinian people, something few Palestinians would have dared imagine possible. But even so, it was not enough for Arafat. Yasser Arafat had grown extraordinarily wealthy as the international symbol of victimhood. He wasn’t about to surrender that status and take on the responsibility of actually building a functioning society.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“The trouble was that the central organizing premise and goal of Hamas was an illusion. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt had repeatedly tried and failed to drive the Israelis into the sea and transform its lands into a Palestinian state. Even Saddam Hussein and his Scud missiles failed…Hamas was like Sisyphus of Greek mythology—condemned eternally to roll a boulder up a steep hill, only to see it roll back down again, never reaching the goal.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“Without a constitution to maintain some semblance of order, religious law becomes the highest authority. And when everyone is free to interpret and enforce the law as he sees fit, chaos ensues.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“could have been a hero and made my people proud of me.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“Many people in the West who stereotype all Muslims as terrorists don't know about the side of Islam that reflects love and mercy. It cares for the poor, widows, and orphans. It facilitates education and welfare. It unites and strengthens.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“I want to give you something that has helped me to survive so far: all the guilt and shame I have carried for all these years is a small price to pay if it saves even one innocent human life.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas

“I could have been a hero and made my people proud of me. I knew what kind of hero they were looking for: a fighter who dedicated his life and family to the cause of a nation. Even if I was killed, they would have told my story for generations to come and been proud of me forever, but in reality, I would not have been much of a hero.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas