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In print · 2010
Son of Hamas
by Mosab Hassan Yousef
Yousef was the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding leader of Hamas, and was raised to carry his father's legacy in a movement responsible for suicide bombings across Israel. Instead, from 1997 to 2007, he secretly informed for Israel's Shin Bet — work he says he undertook because he had come to see the attacks as immoral, at the risk of his life and his family's. Somewhere inside that double life he also became a Christian, a decision as dangerous to disclose as the espionage. He eventually left the movement, his family, and the region, and told the whole story — the informing and the conversion both — in Son of Hamas (2010).
Why Mosab Hassan Yousef became a Christian
Arrested by Israel as a teenager in 1996, he watched Hamas inmates in prison torture fellow Palestinians they suspected of collaborating. He went to work for Israel’s Shin Bet, read the Bible, kept coming back to Jesus’ command to love your enemies, and was baptized in 2005.
What it cost
His father, a founder of Hamas, publicly disowned him from prison, and an al-Qaida-linked group called for his death. His years working for Israeli intelligence had as much to do with that as his faith.
AP and JTA, 2010
Common questions
- Why did Mosab Hassan Yousef leave Hamas?
- What he saw in an Israeli prison in 1996 and 1997: Hamas inmates torturing other Palestinian prisoners they suspected of collaborating. He then spied on Hamas for Israel’s Shin Bet for about ten years.
- Is Mosab Hassan Yousef a Christian?
- He was baptized in 2005 and spoke publicly as a Christian from 2008. In a December 2025 interview with Piers Morgan he reportedly said he no longer identifies as one, and called his baptism symbolic.
- Is Mosab Hassan Yousef credible?
- His Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak, went public in 2010 to confirm that Yousef spied for Israel for a decade and “prevented so many attacks.” His family and Hamas called his account lies.
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Fei Ch’i-hao · 1903
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