1
Editor's Letter
A Hero; No Terrorist
H
is father was a founder of llamas, Israel's archenemy
and now the ruling party of the Gaza Strip. So Mosab
Hassan Yousef, the eldest son of Sheik Hassan Yousef,
grew up hating Israel and revering Hamas.
Ironically, the younger Yousef became one of Israel's best
friends while working as a spy in his native West Bank for the
Jewish state's Shin Bet security service. The Palestinian Muslim
was called "The Green Prince referring to his Hamas pedigree
and Hamas' signature color. Shin Bet
recruited Yousef in 1997 during his 16-
month imprisonment for buying guns.
He changed his attitude once exposed to
Hamas' brutalities in prison.
Over 10 years working on Israel's
behalf, Yousef posed as a terrorist to get
inside information into Hamas' plans
and operations. His intelligence averted
several terrorist attacks, including on
Robert Sklar
Israeli President Shimon Peres and ex-
Editor
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.
Yousef, 32, moved to California in
2007; he required medical treatment and was seeking asylum.
He already had converted to Christianity because he felt Islam
taught people to hate and kill. Fearful of Islamist sympathizers,
he now lives in hiding.
Despite his heroics, America incredibly sought to deport him
after denying his asylum request in 2009. Under the Convention
Against Torture, America is obligated by international treaty not
to return people to lands where their lives would be in jeopardy.
In bringing deportation proceedings, the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security claimed that in his book Son of Hamas,
released in March, Yousef included passages that tie him to aid-
ing Hamas, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
It's hard to believe U.S. immigration authorities initially
rejected Yousef's bid for asylum apparently because he wrote
that he worked for Hamas; he did so, of course, as an Israeli
spy! Is not proving "loyalty" to the infiltrated network essen-
tial to spying? Our government maintained that Yousef "was
potentially a danger to the security of the United
States?' Had his roots blinded us to his valor?
:
statement that he and his wife as well as their other children
had disowned Mosab. In contrast, Stern, the mother of three
grown children, including a son, a daughter and a daughter-
in-law all studying in Israel, said: "I feel like he's one of my
children; there's nothing I wouldn't do for him. In his e-mails
to me, he signs,`Your Jewish son!" Yousef proclaimed that Stern
had no motive other than defense of freedom over terror.
Lighting The Way
After learning about the publication of Son of Hamas, Stern, a for-
mer staff member of the Zionist Organization of America and the
World Jewish Congress, located Yousef through her EMET hon-
oree contacts. She not only pitched giving him the annual Speaker
of the Truth Award at EMET's Rays in the Light of Darkness din-
ner on June 23, but also pitched helping him fight deportation
back to the Middle East.
That fight proved fortuitous.
Stern secured three letters that Yousef's lawyer, Steven Seick,
told JTA turned the legal tide in Yousef's favor. The evidence
was strong. It included a letter from Israel's Knesset Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee chairman, who thanked Yousef
for acting with "resolute determination ... personal cour-
age, reliability and dedication" to save lives, and a letter from
former CIA director James Woolsey, now an EMET advisory
board member, who said deportation would be "an incredible
travesty" and an "inhumane act" that would harm America's
recruitment of anti-terrorism agents and "set us back years in
the war on terrorism."
Those letters were powerful enough.
But U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., a co-honoree with
Yousef at the June 23 dinner, got 21 House colleagues to sign
a letter urging Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
to "take into account all the evidence particularly Yousef's
"cooperation with Shin Bet at significant risk to his own safety
and life."
Unusual Friendship
Yousef's former Shin Bet handler for nine years, Gonen Ben-
Yitzhak, signed an affidavit in support of Yousef's
character and espionage skills. Ben-Yitzhak declared
that the heralded operative had saved Israeli and
Getting It Right
Palestinian lives. Courageously, Ben-Yitzhak went
At a U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office
public with his name and identity in order to testify
for Immigration Review hearing in San Diego on
for his once-sworn enemy but now friend.
June 30, the U.S. government changed its con-
Mosab Hassan Yousef risked it all to expose the
fused mind — thank God. It dropped its call for
strands of Islam that embrace and promote terror.
deportation and said it would grant asylum to
"It is only through brave people such as Mosab,
Yousef following a background check and finger-
who come from within Muslim or Arab society and
printing, presumably by mid-August.
find the courage to speak the truth about the nature
The government's sharp turn on the wheel
Mosab Hassa n Yousef of the Muslim and Arab worlds from which they
of justice was due in large part to the persever-
hair said EMET's Sarah Stern, "that we will ever win
ance of Washington-based EMET: Endowment for Middle East the war that radical Islam has waged on the West."
Truth, a small, but growing-in-influence Jewish organization.
Yousef found a resonant morality beneath the veneer of pro-
Sarah Stern founded EMET four years ago as a vehicle to
paganda, incitement and carnage. And the Middle East, tinder-
showcase the candor and courage of people who have publicly
box that it is, is a little safer because of him.
challenged Islamism, a form of Islam that finds justification in the
Koran to rain terror on non-adherents. EMET also helps assure our
0 • Should Mosab Hassan Yousef
1—
congressional lawmakers understand what threatens Israel.
have been deported?
(I) w
"The first thing my mother taught me was to say 'thank
1
— 0
Z Z Is political asylum an appropriate
you," Stern told JTA. "The first thing we as Jews are taught is to
OD American tool?
say 'thank you These people need to be thanked."
o. a
Sheik Yousef, imprisoned in Israel since 2005, said in a July
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