Hamas is engaging in massive efforts at damage control, after a blistering expose of the group was issued by the second son of the terror group’s co-founding fathers.
Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef’s son Suheib has reportedly fled the territory to safety in an unidentified Asian country, from which he granted a searing interview with Israel’s Channel 12. Saying that he was speaking out in a bid to help the Palestinian people by exposing the true face of the corrupt terrorist group, Suheib Yousef said “The problem in Gaza is that Hamas hangs on to power by force. If Hamas gave up power, there would be no problems.”
The radical Sunni organization was established in 1987, with the stated-intention of establishing an Islamic state in an annihilated Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Suheib Yousef blasted its leadership for using the people of Gaza as cannon fodder to serve their own ambitions, saying there was no benefit whatsoever from its attacks on the Jewish State. He then posited that Hamas “is a racist terror organization that is dangerous for the Palestinian people.”
Suheib is the second of Sheikh Hassan Yousef’s sons to have defected from Hamas. His eldest brother Mosab Yousef – and father’s ‘heir apparent’ – became disillusioned over what he described as Hamas brutality against civilians and children to achieve its own goals. Mosab Yousef worked as an undercover agent for Israel’s internal Shin Bet security service from 1997 to 2007, to prevent dozens of Palestinian suicide attacks and assassinations of Israelis. He converted to Christianity in 1999, fled to the United States on a quest for political asylum in 2007, and published a 2010 autobiography detailing Hamas atrocities, entitled “Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices.”
Channel 12 referred to the affect the latest Hamas expose is having on Palestinians as “an earthquake.” The Gaza-rulers have been joined in efforts to denounce the revelations by their longtime bitter rivals, the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – from whom they seized the Strip in a bloody 2007 internecine civil war.
Despite the longstanding feud between the two Palestinian groups, Qassam Barghouti, the son of former Fatah’s paramilitary leader and convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, issued an appeal on Twitter for Palestinians to unify over their shared struggle against Israel.
Other shows of support reportedly include the holding of rallies in both the West Bank and Gaza, as well as a mass-media campaign on multiple platforms, in attempts to discredit the latest scathing testimony to emerge from the offspring of Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef.