Mosab Yousef, 46, the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding leader of Hamas who heads the terrorist group in Judea and Samaria, defected to Israel in 1997 and worked as an Israeli spy for the Shin Bet until he moved to the United States in 2007. On Saturday, he warned that Israel must not “rejuvenate” the terrorist group by releasing its most dangerous members—including his father—as part of a hostage deal.
Yousef told The Telegraph: “The only card in Hamas’s hands today is the hostages – they want the release of hundreds if not thousands of mass murderers from Israeli prisons.”
He noted: “The most dangerous Hamas leaders today are not in Qatar or Turkey – they are in Israeli prisons. That includes my father. And Hamas wants to force Israel – using the international community and the global pressure – to release mass murderers of the caliber of Sinwar. They want them released back to the streets, can you imagine?”
“We are talking about some very dangerous people – even if they are released abroad they can continue forming and creating terrorist cells and attacking Jews worldwide,” he warned.
In 1999, Yousef met a British missionary who introduced him to Christianity. Over the next year, between 1999 and 2000, he gradually embraced the faith. In 2005, he was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv by an unidentified Christian tourist. Two years later, in 2007, he left the West Bank for the United States, settling for a time in San Diego, California, where he became a member of the Barabbas Road Church.
In August 2008, Yousef publicly announced his conversion to Christianity and renounced Hamas and Arab leadership. This decision put his life at risk and exposed his family in Ramallah to potential persecution by Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups. Yousef has stated that his ultimate goal is to contribute to peace in the Middle East and hopes to return to his homeland once peace is achieved.
In 2016, Yousef stated that Islam, as a whole, is comparable to Nazism and must be defeated. At a 2012 event, he declared, “Islam is not a religion of peace.”
He tweeted, “If I have to choose between 1.6 billion Muslims and a cow, I will choose the cow.” He has also remarked, “I have zero respect for any individual who identifies as a Muslim.”
In 2021, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused Yousef of being Islamophobic.
Last month, Yousef spoke at the Oxford Union during a debate on the motion: “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” He recounted being “mobbed, insulted, and intimidated” as he entered the debating chamber, adding: “Some people were making signs to cut our throats, we were accused of ‘treason,’ and called bad names in Arabic.”
Yousef said the experience triggered flashbacks to his time in the PA: “All of a sudden I realized, am I back in Ramallah? Am I back in a Palestinian territory where I am condemned to death?”
