Hassan Youssef is a Palestinian-American academic, author, journalist, and political activist. He is the author of the book, Son of Hamas: My Life as a Palestinian in the Middle East, and a regular contributor to the New York Times bestseller. In this episode, we talk about his life and how he became a rebel.
00:01:24.260Okay. So I just asked him, I just asked Basab, first, we just did niceties. Hi, how are you? And then I said, is your accent a Palestinian accent? Because, for example, we're Lebanese Jews, and there are a lot of similar accents between the Lebanese Jews and the Syrians and some Palestinians. And he said that his accent is one from Ramallah.
00:01:45.280Okay, maybe we could start, Basab. You have an incredible story, your life story. Can you give a quick five, ten minute summary for people who don't know your work, what your trajectory in life has been?
00:01:58.020It has been a challenge since day one. And whatever truth we have, how do we convey such a paradox or even metrics in some situations?
00:02:16.020It's a complicated situation. I made very difficult choices. You can say I'm a rebel in nature, but I'm not always in a fight, even though since October 7, you say that I came with vengeance.
00:02:35.400I did not want this. I did not want this. I did not want to talk about the Middle East, period, because it doesn't make sense for anyone who is outsider. But I think this is my dharma. It's my moral responsibility.
00:02:48.740It was not just enough. It was not just enough to deflect from Hamas and draw the line that even though I was brought up in a conservative Muslim family, they believe that they are Palestinians, Arabs, nationalists, whatever it is.
00:03:08.740I made very different choices. Because I don't think violence can bring peace to anybody in that region.
00:03:22.420I did not believe in suicide bombing attacks, especially suicide bombing attacks, which was widely considered as a form of resistance.
00:03:30.780Even today, after October 7, people have the audacity to actually say what happened on October 7 was justified or a form of resistance.
00:03:39.260And I think this is the moral dilemma of the children of this conflict and now a new generation, a global generation that is joining the conflict.
00:05:10.300It was nonsense and suicidal mission, especially for someone who was familiar with Hamas leadership, not only Hamas leadership, its military wing.
00:05:24.460In fact, I was in Yasser Arafat's meetings.
00:05:29.920In fact, I brought the information that condemned Yasser Arafat after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:05:42.740I, the one who brought the information of his direct connection to suicide bombing attacks.
00:05:49.160And that was very serious, you know, to see just the double face of what's so called the revolutionary guards or the masters of the Palestinian cause, and how they have been deceiving everybody.
00:06:15.380And this is a very sensitive issue because I witnessed so much bloodshed during the first Palestinian Intifada, and I always ask myself why.
00:06:26.900And the widespread narrative on the Palestinian streets was, you know, because of occupation, colonialism, apartheid, the same broken record that so many people around the globe actually have been repeating.
00:06:45.380So, but how long you can lie to somebody that all our suffering, our problems, our corruption, our abuse of women, of children, of power, stealing from public money, and using children as human shields.
00:07:04.060Or during the first Intifada, Yasser Arafat was sitting in luxury, and other Palestinian leaders, and they wanted the children to confront tanks and the modern army, so they can show the world a wrong image of what's going on.
00:07:22.580So, this nonsense of irresponsible, and not only irresponsible, they are criminals.
00:07:32.820This entire revolution is the most corrupt revolution led by the most dangerous can artists of all time who have been actually trying to globalize the chaos and the violence.
00:07:50.380And so, basically, this background did not mean that I would submit to the religion, to the belief system, to the political system.
00:08:02.780And I followed my moral compass, but I had to disconnect from that world.
00:08:11.540I mean, you cannot be just one leg in and one leg out to say, you know, the Palestinian cause, but reject violence.
00:08:24.780Somehow, it depends on violence, it's a violent cause, it has been like this, even those who tried to make peace, it was a tactical thing for the Palestinian Authority, after the first Intifada, that they weren't sincere, actually, in their peace approach.
00:08:47.280To them, it was tactical to just return, then continue from there.
00:08:52.860So, I don't like hypocrisy, and I don't like when people lie, especially if it is going to lead to enslaving generation after generation after generation for how long, and for the sake of what.
00:09:10.480So, I lost my faith in what's so-called revolution, because what I came to realize from early age, that the revolution was only for the sake of revolution.
00:09:21.580It was not a revolution with a moral, ethical, fundamental compass that the revolution knew where they are heading.
00:09:35.000So, basically, I can go on and on for hours, what actually made me make the change and reject the environment of my early life conditioning.
00:09:51.500But was it, I mean, was there a catalyst, you know, you witnessed, you know, episode XYZ that really flipped you and, you know, made you realize things?
00:10:03.700Or was it a gradual thing where at five or six years old, you were, you know, I tell, for example, the story of how when we grew up in Lebanon, and, you know, we'd go to the synagogue on Saturday morning, and I would ask my father, you know, why are we now standing?
00:10:18.160Why are we chanting this? Why are we doing this? And then he would answer, you know, just shut up and do, don't ask questions.
00:10:24.860And that, to me, even as a five, six-year-old, intellectually inquisitive boy, didn't sit well with me.
00:10:32.000What do you mean I just get up and sit? I don't just follow, explain to me.
00:10:36.320And so, already there, I started having doubts about, you know, the organized rigidity of religion.
00:10:42.260So, in your case, is it something that you could say, you know, I was seven, eight, nine, ten years old, already having doubts?
00:10:48.220Or it's only when you became heavily involved at a later age, as the son of the co-founder of Hamas, that these things came to, you know, to be clear to you?
00:10:59.220Look, of course, I did not have the realizations that I have today.
00:11:04.080Somehow, I knew them deep in my consciousness.
00:11:12.640And people want to reduce my life experience with all the adventures in it, in the public world and in the secret world of terrorist organization and the most powerful intelligence service out there.
00:11:27.880They want to just reduce me to a victim, somebody who's got, like, issues with his father or someone who's got issues with Hamas.
00:11:40.060They don't understand that this is a sole purpose.
00:11:44.660And their lies, their false narrative, their false accusations, all attempts to discredit my life journey will go in vain.
00:11:59.500And hence, I stand firm in my truth, because what I witnessed since childhood led me to this point.
00:12:08.460When we talk about society that justify honor killing, how can we blame this on Israel or on the United States, on the colonizers?
00:12:27.040This is a failing attempt to export all our problems, including social problems and cultural problems, on some hypothetical entity that we did not know about.
00:12:40.740So, in principle, this I did not like.
00:12:45.040I did not like to see a father hitting his daughter in the city square with a metal pipe on her head again and again and again until she died, while the public were watching and nobody did something about it.
00:13:25.840And in fact, there is no punishment for the honor killing.
00:13:30.060So, a father can kill his daughter or a brother can kill his sister.
00:13:34.900Then after that, there is no punishment.
00:13:36.960They just give the gun to the Palestinian Authority police station and they don't spend even one night in prison.
00:13:43.560So, now, when we are dealing with such brutality, you know, where the rape victims being punished equally as a rapist, and that's protected by the belief system.