Mossab Hassan Yousef worked alongside his father Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders and leaders of the terrorist group Hamas. Among other activities, he joined in rock throwing uprisings and became privy to Hamas's inner workings. In time, an internecine rivalry arose with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The groups accused each other of collaboration with Israel, resulting in the murder and torture of each other's members. Enemies abounded: Israel on the one hand and adversarial Palestinians on the other.
Yousef was arrested on weapons charges by the Israelis, who beat and tortured him. According to Mathew Kaminski in The Wall Street Journal, he was sent to the Megiddo prison. Here, he found Hamas operatives brutalizing their own people. "Every day, there was screaming; every night, torture. Hamas was torturing its own people!" The Muslims he met in jail "were mean and petty...bigots and hypocrites."
Disillusioned, he was recruited to become an agent for Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency. He was released from prison, put on Shin Bet's payroll and "encouraged...to study and be a model son for several years. His code name was the Green Prince: green as in the color of the Islamist Hamas flag, and prince as the offspring to Hamas royalty."
During this period he met a cabdriver who gave him a copy of the New Testament and invited him to a bible study. Yousef "found that (he) was really drawn to the grace, love and humility that Jesus talked about."
In 2000, Yasser Arafat refused an offer of Palestinian statehood from Israel. Yousef was called into action by Shin Bet and found that "Arafat decided he needed another uprising to win back international attention." A pretext arose and the uprising was fomented. Yousef "was horrified by the pointless violence unleashed by politicians willing to climb 'on the shoulders of poor, religious people' who 'were going like a cow to the slaughterhouse, and they thought they were going to heaven."
He "converted to Christianity because (he) was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love." "It's a beautiful thing to see my God exist in my life and see the change in my life. I see that when he does exist in other Middle Easterners there will be a change."
"I'm not trying to convert the entire nation of Israel and the entire nation of Palestine to Christianity. But at least...you can educate them about the ideology of love, the ideology of forgiveness, the ideology of grace. Those principles are great...and...we can't deny they came from Christianity."
These are inflammatory ideas and Yousef has received death threats. He is resigned to it. "Palestinians have reason to kill me. Some Israelis may want to kill me. My goal is not to defeat my enemy. It is to win over my enemy."
And so a faith that isn't even a central player in the conflict provides hope in the face of hopelessness.
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