Taking down the Hamas regime is a necessity, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of
Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef told Channel 2 on Friday
night.
Ramallah-born Yousef spent his early years as a Hamas activist and
went through more than a few stints in Israeli prison. But for 10 years, Yousef
was “the Green Prince,” a code name given to him by the Shin Bet (Israel
Security Agency), with whom he worked to prevent dozens of terrorist attacks
during the second intifada, saving hundreds of Israeli lives.
In an
interview with Channel 2 from the US, where he now lives, Yousef addressed the
recent Operation Pillar of Defense: “I believe that the Shabak (Israel Security
Agency) did everything in their ability.
“Let’s not forget that our enemy
is a barbarian enemy and they are using women and children as shelter, and in
situations like this we [Israel] are very limited, because we care about our
citizens,” he added.
He said that Israel must work very hard to take down
the Hamas regime, which he described as a “necessity... not for the sake
of Israel only, but for the sake of humanity.”
“Hamas was born to
destroy, Hamas doesn’t know how to build,” he remarked. “The question is how we
do that without killing many innocent Palestinian children who have no idea
what’s going on and don’t see the whole picture,” he continued.
He opined
that the answer is to “win the moderate voices on the other side and not to
force everyone to think the same way that Hamas thinks.”
He asserted that
Israel has a responsibility to educate the Palestinian public.
“Why don’t
we have TV stations, radio stations?” he asked. “We need to expose these lies
and educate the Palestinians that Israel is not the enemy, Israel actually helps
the people of Gaza everyday more than anyone else,” he said, listing Israeli
provisions of electricity, money and humanitarian support.
“We need the
average Palestinian to see this clearly,” he stated, explaining that
miscommunication leads “the average Palestinian person” to listen to Hamas’s
lies.
Melanie Lidman contributed to this report.