The other day the New York Times ran a rave review by Larry Rohter about a new documentary on a Palestinian collaborator and his Israeli handler. The story began in stirring terms:
On newspaper front pages around the world late last month, a photograph from Gaza showed masked Hamas gunmen about to execute bound, kneeling prisoners suspected of collaborating with Israel. That same fate would probably have befallen Mosab Hassan Yousef, the protagonist of the new documentary “The Green Prince,” had this secret been discovered: For nearly a decade, he was an informant for Israel, operating at the highest levels of Hamas itself…
The piece concluded just as stirringly, saying that the relationship between Yousef and his Israeli handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak, is a model for relationships between Palestinians and Jews:
“Not all Palestinians and Israelis are going to become brothers,” [Ben Yitzhak] continued, citing the example of Hamas. “But it means when people get together, they can find a way. It’s not going to be easy, but when people watch the movie, they will understand: There is a different way.”
Somewhere in between those uplifting paragraphs, the piece did note that Yousef “has renounced Islam and converted to Christianity,” and that he believes that ISIS and Hamas are two sides of the same coin:
With the rise of Hamas in Gaza and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and “all these radical Islamic groups, it’s not an accident,” he said. “I know how they recruited those people, because they tried to do the same with me, they tried to do the same in the mosque.”
But if you google Yousef you find that he is an Islamophobe. On rightwinger Mark Levin’s radio show, for instance, he said that Hamas doesn’t want peace with Israel under any circumstances. Hamas is not a political party or a national party. It is a “cancer” and a “radical foreign strange body” that needs to be “uprooted” by Israel with American support:
Hamas has global religious ideological agendas that are very very dangerous… their goal is to conquer the globe and to build an Islamic state on every inch of our globe… And anyone who disagrees [Hamas has a right to kill]… Now they are using women and children as shields… Hamas is coming. Sooner or later. And the United States of America, its people, its values, everything that this nation stands for is a target for Hamas movement. Hamas movement inspired all terrorist movements in the world, including Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda learned from Hamas… Israel in the Middle East is fighting on behalf of the free world. … All they [Hamas] care about– to conquer. They want to have the superiority above all other fellow humans. They think they are clean and everyone else is unclean.
Haaretz reported two years ago that Yousef has adopted an evangelical Christian world view. Shayna Zamkanei wrote:
he also immersed himself in an evangelical environment. He joined the Barabbas Road Church, named America’s “Church of the Week” by Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” which is more “pro-Israel” than most American Jews.
Yousef’s shift in politics appears to correspond with his most recent theological shift. About Christianity and Jesus, Yousef expresses much love and compassion. He praises Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” a movie criticized by Jewish and Catholic scholars for unambiguously blaming the Jews for Jesus’s death. About Islam, Yousef uses fear-mongering and scare tactics (“The real nature of Islam is built on terrorism” ).
And this is the guy the NYT lionizes in its art section. And — nobody seems to have noticed. Maybe nobody pays attention to the Times?
P.S. In fairness to the NYT, Haaretz has also done this recent valentine to Yousef.
Thanks to Donald, who supplied much of the thinking for this post.
Was on Morning Joe on Thursday or Friday morning. He was asked a question about possibly suffering from Stockholm syndrome…..Rebranding effort going strong….no way to put the facts and truth back in the bag. Can muffle it but not going away. Where is Susie Kneedler’s piece that was up this morning about Wednesday at O.U’s student senate meeting. Was up now down
An autobiography of the “green prince” entitled “Son of Hamas” was published in 2010. I do not believe that it was written without guidance, censorship and quite possibly extensive ghostwriting by the Israeli secret service, on which the author has been totally dependent (even for his life) since his defection. All the same, read with care it is quite revealing. The “prince” was trusted in Hamas on account of his father, who headed Hamas on the West Bank, but he lacked the toughness needed in a resistance fighter. While in prison he agreed to work for the Israelis because he dreaded the tortures they had in store for him. Whatever ideological justification he later thought up for himself was just a way of putting a good face on that raw circumstance. I am sure that he too hates Israel for what it did to him, although he is not free to express it. I think we should have compassion for people like him — they too are victims of Zionism.
The Kapo characterized another ideal relationship between the exalted and the oppressed.
If you replaced Gaza/Hamas with North Korea/military junta, the article wouldn’t read as badly. The problem is that those two situations seem similar to many people.
I hope that one of the Monoites here will offer some psychological answers, for me at least, on why any Arab would go over to the Zionists. What can Israel offer you, aside from money? And what good are you doing for your people? A Jew involved in Palestinian solidarity can argue that equality for all is the goal, but what can Zionism offer any non-Jew? At best you will be treated as an oddity to be paraded out like a zoo animal. The contempt that Jewish Israel has for these people is reflected in the fact that when they are unmasked in the West Bank Israel relocates them not to Jewish towns but to Arab ones. When have we ever seen these people lionized by the Jewish public as example of what Palestinians should be? I think they see these people as the traitors that they are.