In the ranks of Hamas, the name of Sheikh Hassan Youssef, one of its co-founders, is now infamy. “If Hamas does not release the hostages within the stipulated time, Israel must execute the top Hamas leaders held in its prisons.” These words were not uttered by an Israeli official, but by one of the sons of the influential preacher, Mosab Hassan Youssef, in a video broadcast on X at the end of November. “When I talk about executing top leaders, I make no exceptions. This includes my own father, the co-founder of Hamas,” he added. The video went viral.
After the bloody attack of October 7, this forty-year-old, exiled since 2007 in the United States, made numerous notable media appearances (The Free Press, Fox News, the British talk show Piers Morgan Uncensored) and the shocking sentences on X (formerly Twitter) to say all the bad things he thinks about the terrorist group. Recently, the latter even went so far as to appear in Khan Younis, the former main bastion of Hamas, posing in front of an Israeli military vehicle in shirt sleeves, bulletproof vest, and black special agent-style glasses. “Sinwar [le chef du Hamas à Gaza] counts his last hours. Consider him a dead man,” he wrote in the caption of the photo posted on X.
Anyone who is not familiar with the story hidden behind this surprising antagonism will perhaps see here the provocations of a devious son, a kind of settling of scores like we find in fiction. For those who know Hamas’s difficulties in exporting its narrative to the West – to the point of publishing, last January, a document multiplying nods to the woke left – the name of “Hassan Youssef” has the potential to curb ambitions of normalization of the terrorist group in the West.
Spying
It is a story that Hamas would like to forget. More than fifteen years ago, in 2008, Mosab Hassan Youssef revealed in the left-wing Israeli daily Haaretz his conversion to Christianity then, two years later, his collaboration with… the Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service. The whole thing was told in detail in an autobiographical work, a best-seller worthy of a spy novel entitled The Green Prince (2010, Denoël). Where we learn, among other things, the genesis of this betrayal, a bitter setback for the image of Hamas.
At the end of the 1990s, Mosab Hassan Youssef was arrested by the Israeli services for possession of a weapon while he was still a student. During his incarceration, the Shin Bet offered him the opportunity to become a “mole”, an infiltration spy within Hamas. The young man agrees – he secretly plans to turn around later and take revenge on Israel. This was without counting what he will witness, in an Israeli prison, where he remains for a few months so as not to betray anything of his collaboration with the enemy. Mosab Hassan Youssef then discovers the methods of Hamas, which tortures and kills those suspected of being traitors (in particular members of the terrorist group).
For ten years, from 1997 to 2007, the man who was destined to take over from his father informed the Israeli security service, while continuing his activities within Hamas. According to his testimony, he even went so far as to foil several anti-Israeli suicide attacks during the second Intifada, and encourage the arrest of certain senior leaders. At the time of these revelations, Sheikh Hassan Youssef had publicly disowned the cursed son. Reason: “the apostasy of the man named Mosab from God and his prophet, his betrayal of Muslims, his collaboration with the enemies of God and the damage inflicted on our people and our cause.”
Double betrayal
The story could have ended there, been forgotten over the years. But now in 2019, another son of the sheikh, Suheib, also takes a tangent. From Asia, where he went into exile, he gave an interview to Israeli television in which he sharply attacked Hamas, of which he was one of the leaders in Turkey. Corruption, espionage, luxury meals… Everything is there to deal a fatal blow to the terrorist group. “I grew up in [sein du] Hamas, I worked for Hamas but after what I discovered, I understood, I cut ties,” he declared at the time. “They [les dirigeants du Hamas] live in luxury hotels and towers, their children attend private schools and they are very well paid. They get $4,000 to $5,000 a month, and they have guards, swimming pools, country clubs.”
More seriously, Suheib Hassan Youssef also revealed some secrets, including the existence of “security centers from where they [le Hamas] use advanced listening equipment, to listen to people and leaders [palestiniens] in Ramallah”, or the exchange of information with Iran in return for financial aid. Here again, Hamas then mobilized to counter the scandal. In addition to messages from sympathizers of the group posted to the channel on social networks , a demonstration was also organized in support of Sheikh Hassan Youssef, patriarch betrayed by his family and having spent many years in prison. According to information from CNNthe latter was arrested again in the West Bank in October.
Meeting at the United Nations
Ineffective, if we judge by the Arab Barometer figures revealed by the magazine Foreign Affairs at the end of October. In addition to the fact that only 29% of Gazans had confidence in Hamas before the bloody attack of October 7, more Gazans attributed their food difficulties to poor management of the group (31%) than to an external blockade decided by Israel and Egypt (16%). The poverty rate in Gaza increased from 39% in 2011 to 59% in 2021 according to the World Bank.
If Suheib Hassan Youssef is now more discreet in the media, there is no doubt that the interventions of his brother, Mosab, will not help Hamas’ affairs in the West. The latter was also seen in November during the United Nations Security Council meeting, behind the Israeli ambassador to the UN. In the space of a year, Mosab Hassan Youssef has multiplied his number of subscribers on X by more than 21. He has 107,000 to date.
The reasons for this success in the West – and particularly within the “anti-woke” fringe – may also be due to the criticism he reserves for activists who refuse to condemn Hamas’ crimes. In early December, Mosab Hassan Youssef described them on X as “cowards, hiding behind moral masks, conspiring against the children of Gaza, giving the savages a lifeline, legitimacy and validation in the name of peace”.
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