The Green Prince Debunks a Big Media Myth

Honest Reporting/Backspin
07 March '10

I'm very looking forward to reading Mosab Hassan Yousef's book, "Son of Hamas." Until I get my hands on a copy, I'm sufficing with interviews and reviews. The Wall St. Journal notes one important myth the "Green Prince" debunked.

Myth: The second intifada was a popular uprising sparked by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September, 2000.

Fact: This WSJ snippet speaks for itself:

A few months before at Camp David, the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat had turned down the Israeli offer of statehood on 90% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital. According to Mr. Yousef, Arafat decided he needed another uprising to win back international attention. So he sought out Hamas's support through Sheikh Yousef, writes his son, who accompanied him to Arafat's compound. Those meetings took place before the Palestinian authorities found a pretext for the second Intifada. It came when future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Mr. Yousef's account helps to set straight the historical record that the uprising was premeditated by Arafat.

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Radical Son

Stephen Brown
Frontpagemag.com
26 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

He is not his father’s son.

In a stunning revelation, the son of a Hamas founder told an Israeli newspaper this week that he once served as an Israeli intelligence agent. Mosab Hassan Yousef, 32, told the Israeli daily Haaretz that he spied for more than ten years on the Iranian-backed terrorist organization that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

In his role as Israeli informant, Yousef is credited with helping arrest high-ranking terrorists. Much more important, however, is that he also saved the lives of “hundreds of innocent people” with the information he provided the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet, about pending suicide attacks. “So many people owe their lives to him and don’t even know it,” Yousef’s unidentified Shin Bet handler told Haaretz.

Yousef’s Israeli handler went on to relate how the “Green Prince” – Yousef’s codename, taken from the color for Islam – personally picked out a suicide bomber in a Ramallah square and followed him until an arrest could be made.

Next week, Yousef’s memoir about his experiences in the terrorist organization will be published in the United States. Aptly named Son Of Hamas, the book is described on Yousef’s Facebook site as “a gripping account of terror, betrayal, political intrigue, and unthinkable choices.”

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Haaretz exclusive: Hamas founder's son worked for Shin Bet for years

Avi Issacharoff
Haaretz
24 February '10

(What a story!)

The son of a leading Hamas figure, who famously converted to Christianity, served for over a decade as the Shin Bet security service's most valuable source in the militant organization's leadership, Haaretz has learned.

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas founder and one of its leaders in the West Bank. The intelligence he supplied Israel led to the exposure of a number of terrorist cells, and to the prevention of dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts on Israeli figures.

The exclusive story will appear in this Friday's Haaretz Magazine, and Yousef's memoir, "Son of Hamas" (written with Ron Brackin) will be released next week in the United States. Yousef, 32, became a devout Christian 10 years ago and now lives in California after fleeing the West Bank in 2007 and going public with his conversion.

Yousef was considered the Shin Bet's most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname "the Green Prince" - using the color of the Islamist group's flag, and "prince" because of his pedigree as the son of one of the movement's founders.

During the second intifada, intelligence Yousef supplied led to the arrests of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures responsible for planning deadly suicide bombings. These included Ibrahim Hamid (a Hamas military commander in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti (founder of the Fatah-linked Tanzim militia) and Abdullah Barghouti (a Hamas bomb-maker with no close relation to the Fatah figure). Yousef was also responsible for thwarting Israel's plan to assassinate his father.

"I wish I were in Gaza now," Yousef said by phone from California, "I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done."

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