Son of Hamas
by: Mossab Hassan Yousef
http://www.amazon.com/Son-Hamas-Grippin ... 605&sr=1-1
As talented of a writer as he is, Tom Clancy himself could not in his wildest dreams write a book that is more powerful and gripping than this young man's fascinating and terrifyingly true story as the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founding members of the dreaded terror group Hamas.
Mossab grew up in the West Bank town of Ramallah in a devout Muslim family, and his father was one of the most respected leaders in the area. His father had been imprisoned many times over the course of the son's life, and at one point, both father and son shared the same prison cell.
As a child, he threw rocks at IDF forces during the first Intifada, and as he got older, acquired (ironically, non-functional) automatic weapons from a local arms dealer, an event that led to his arrest by Israeli security forces.
He endured beatings from the soldiers that arrested him, but while in prison he was approached by a Shin Bet captain code-named "Loai" who advised him that he was too young to be involved in such activities, that Israel was a small country and had to protect itself, and that this young man was definitely headed down the wrong road in life.
Loai gave the young Mossab a difficult choice; a position as a double-agent with Shin Bet (which would mean protection for his father)...or else. Shin Bet wanted to know about weapons, operations, and operatives within Hamas and the related splinter groups. As the son of a respected Sheikh, Shin Bet knew that Mossab was the only practical way to infiltrate Hamas.
Mossab reluctantly agreed, and in order to protect his new cover, he spent the next sixteen months in some of Israel's most notorious prisons. In his book he wrote, "I had never heard such screams before in my entire life". But he also wrote that it was not the Israelis who were doing the torturing at the infamous prison camp near Meggido, but it was the internal leaders of Hamas itself torturing and killing their own people. One horrifying account described a simple young farmer boy that nearly eviscerated himself on barbed wire trying to escape from one section of the camp to the other while begging the soldiers not to shoot him- he was not trying to escape from the camp itself, but was willing to risk death to simply escape the torture sessions of the internal Hamas camp interrogators.
After he was released from prison, he began working for Shin Bet as an operative. And then, wave after wave of suicide bombings began to occur, such as the infamous suicide bombings at the Dolphinarium night club which killed and wounded scores of young Russian emigres, as well as the Sbarro's pizza attack. Sickened by the carnage of innocent women and children in these attacks, and not to mention what they were doing to his own people from inside and outside of the prison system.
Loai, the Shin Bet captain eventually became a friend and almost father-like figure to Mossab during the ten years that he worked with Shin Bet, and in the process they collectively stopped countless numbers of operations planned by Hamas, and saved many, many innocent lives in the process.
One very strong thing that I could see from the book is how God Himself supernaturally protected Mossab from certain death on many, many occasions- far too many times to merely be coincidental- the odds are too high of getting killed in this line of work, and both he and Shin Bet made mistakes that could have easily cost Mossab his life, but God had other plans for him. There is even a chapter in the book called "Supernatural Protection"- and all of this happened before Mossab even converted to Christianity.
All in all, a very powerful book, which I read in one day (all 288 pages- could not put it down until I finished it) that I believe that almost anyone, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist would find spellbinding and it is also a true story. Fiction cannot possibly be this complex, and with this many twists and unexpected turns in the lives of so many people.
Here I have some suggestions just for you Robo!
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