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Hamas defector slams ‘death worship’

‘Green Prince’ Mosab Hassan Yousef says terror organization’s goal is an Islamic state built on the rubble of other civilizations

Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.

Mosab Hassan Yousef during an interview with CNN, July 2014. (screen capture: YouTube/Yaron Haklai)
Mosab Hassan Yousef during an interview with CNN, July 2014. (screen capture: YouTube/Yaron Haklai)

A high-profile Hamas critic, and son of one the group’s leaders, struck out at the terrorist group for its “worship of death” and its plans to establish a global caliphate, in a recent interview.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Hamas defector who worked for 10 years as an informer for the Shin Bet, explained to CNN last week that, for Gaza’s rulers, human life is of no consequence.

“Hamas does not care about the lives of Palestinians, or the lives of Israelis, or Americans; they don’t care about their own lives,” Yousef said. “They consider dying for their ideology a way of worship.

“Hamas is not seeking coexistence and compromise; Hamas is seeking conquest,” he added. “The destruction of the state of Israel is not the Hamas final destination.”

Hamas, Yousef asserted, wants to build an Islamic state “on the rubble of every other civilization.”

Yousef, who converted to Christianity and was disowned by his father, West Bank Hamas leader Hassan Yousef, recalled that the extreme indoctrination is preached in mosques at young children.

“In the mosques, Hamas told us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology we will not be able to build an Islamic state,” he said. “At five-years-old, that is what they were feeding us.”

Yousef gained fame by going public about his experiences in a book, and more recently a film, “The Green Prince.”

Israel has claimed that Hamas is using Gaza civilians as human shields to protect its military infrastructure during the ongoing Operation Protective Edge aimed at stemming rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli cities and destroying cross-border tunnels used to launch terror attacks.

Yosef’s father Hassan was arrested last month as part of the massive search to find three Israeli teenagers — Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gil-ad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, 19 — who were abducted in June as they hitchhiked near Hebron. The teens’ bodies were later found in a field near the city.

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