Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

In 1996, eighteen-year-old Yousef was approaching a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah when a group of Israeli soldiers stopped him, pulled him out of the car, and beat him. Zip-tied and blindfolded, he was taken to a military base and, after a quick medical examination, packed into another jeep, where he was routinely struck in the head by rifles. He worried about his mother, as his father was already in prison, so Yousef would lose the opportunity to provide for his family before he had even finished high school. In severe pain, he was unable to speak, but he thought, “Why are you doing this to me? What have I done? I am not a terrorist! I’m just a kid” (3). He hung on the brink of consciousness and wondered if he was going to die.

Yousef introduces himself as “part of one of the most religious Islamic families in the Middle East” (5). His grandfather Sheikh Yousef Dawood was the imam for the Palestinian village of Al-Janiya (near Ramallah). Living under Jordanian rule and then Israeli occupation beginning in 1967, Al-Janiya was nonetheless an idyllic place where the imam was a beloved leader of the community. He prepared his son Hassan for a similar role, and after receiving an education in Jerusalem, he prepared to assume the duties of an imam in Ramallah. However, the bigger city was far less pious than the small village of his upbringing, and his efforts to spread the faith were ignored. Nonetheless, impressed by his son’s efforts, Dawood sent Hassan to study in Jordan. Yousef notes that “the people he met there would ultimately change [his] family’s history and even affect the history of conflict in the Middle East” (8).

Taking a quick detour to explain some basic facts of Islamic history, Yousef explains how the Turkey-based Ottoman Empire had ruled much of the Islamic world for centuries. By the 20th century, however, a combination of misrule from distant Istanbul and Westernization had led to widespread corruption, poverty, and immorality. In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Society of Muslim Brothers, which was dedicated to restoring a more authentically Muslim society. In its early days, this occurred mostly through charity and other forms of social work. However, after an abortive coup against the Egyptian government in 1948, the Brotherhood joined several other Arab armies in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the newly created state of Israel from claiming holy Muslim territory. As a result of that conflict, three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees fled their homes, many of them remaining in United Nations-supervised camps to the present day.

The Egyptian government cracked down on the Brothers, but its popularity endured. By the time Hassan came to study in Jordan, he found them to be “encouraging renewed faith among those who had strayed from the Islamic way of life, healing those who were hurt, and trying to save people from the corrupting influences in society” (11). He wanted to be one of them. However, in Yousef’s view, there is another side of Islam, where he imagines a relatively small but utterly dedicated group of fanatics at the top of the ladder. He believes that they succeed by encouraging otherwise moderate Muslims to climb the hypothetical ladder with the aim of living their faith, to such extreme degrees that they could eventually “[kill] women and children for the glory of God” (11). Yousef wishes that he could go back to that time and warn his father of where his supposed path to piety would lead him in the hope of stopping him.

Hassan came home to Palestine with his good friend Ibrahim Abu Salem, a major figure in the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, the brother of Hassan’s wife, and Yousef’s mother. In 1985, when Yousef was seven years old, the family moved to Ramallah, and Hassan became the imam at a nearby refugee camp. He inspired many of the downtrodden people to develop a renewed interest in their faith. Hassan was a relatable preacher with an infectious sincerity to his faith. He took another job teaching at a private school in 1987 and began to see less of his wife and, by then, six children. The family lived near a mosque, and Yousef dreamed of being an imam like his father and grandfather.

One day, upon entering the mosque for noon prayers, he saw a body prepared for burial. A crowd carried the body to the nearby cemetery, and the imam discussed how the man would soon encounter angels, who would beat him and send his soul back to earth for further torments if he failed to profess faith in the correct God. Horrified and fascinated by what he heard, Yousef routinely went back to the cemetery to watch burials, and “when no one new came, [he] walked among the tombs and read about the people already buried there […] the cemetery became [his] playground” (18). Around that same time, the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine (especially Gaza) became more active and politically charged. Some wanted to confront the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza violently, while others, like Hassan, wanted to work through existing political channels. Hassan would soon change his mind, and he and several others co-founded the group known as Hamas at a secret meeting in 1986. The group sought to “awaken, unify and mobilize the Palestinian people and make them understand their need for independence under the banner of Allah and Islam” (20).

In December 1987, four workers from the Jabalia refugee camp were killed in a traffic accident. Rumors swirled that they had been murdered, and after a young protestor was killed by an Israeli soldier, Palestine exploded in a series of protests that would become known as the First Intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic). Violence was widespread, and many people—often young individuals—were buried at the cemetery near Yousef’s house. Yousef and his friends started throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, who, in their body armor and heavy weapons, “seemed like aliens from another planet” (21). One day, they threw stones at what they thought was a bus full of Jewish settlers, only to hit an Israeli armored vehicle. It immediately returned fire, luckily not hitting any of the boys. They fled to a nearby mosque, where soldiers followed them and disrupted the worship, trying and failing to find the culprits.

Yousef was thrilled to have gotten away with his action, and so he threw a stone at a settler van on another day. The driver stopped and tried to pursue Yousef into the cemetery while armed with an automatic rifle. He escaped by falling into an empty grave, but the driver saw him again shortly afterward, caught him, and brought him to the nearby settlement. The soldiers there took his shoes and forced him to walk home, promising to kill him if he ever threw stones again. Young Yousef struggled to understand why Israel was so upset about stones when Palestinians had very few deadly weapons. One night, after his father arrived home late for dinner, someone knocked on the door and asked Yousef if his father was there. They revealed themselves to be Israeli soldiers, who promised that they only wanted to talk to Hassan for a few minutes; however, 40 days later, Yousef’s family had no information on his whereabouts. Yousef would later learn that his father was being tortured by Israeli intelligence, the Shin Bet, but that “he remained silent, never giving the Israelis any information that could hurt Hamas or his Palestinian brothers” (28).

Despite imprisoning much of Hamas’s leadership, the Intifada only grew more violent with time; many Palestinians attacked Israeli civilians, and in response, Israeli soldiers imposed curfews with shoot-on-sight rules of engagement. Palestinian factions were also fighting with one another, and Hamas began to gain the upper hand over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was an umbrella organization composing of several nationalist groups, mostly secular. From Yousef’s perspective, “Hamas was largely animated by religious fervor and the theology of jihad, while the PLO was driven by nationalism and the ideology of power” (33). Adding to the confusion, anyone could put on a mask and pretend to be a militant for their own purposes—with some of Yousef’s fellow students dressing up in order to get exams cancelled at school. Yousef’s family struggled with his father in prison, with others refusing help on the mistaken grounds that the family of a Hamas leader must have plenty of money. One day, his uncle saw him trying to sell baklava for extra money. After the uncle came to the house and confronted Yousef’s mother, he never went out to sell baklava again. Yousef “wondered if the real reason [people] would not lend a hand to [their] family was that they were afraid […] [that] the Israelis thought they were helping terrorists. But [they] weren’t terrorists. Neither was [his] father. Sadly, that would change too” (37).

After eighteen months, Hassan returned home, and his family enjoyed a considerable boost in comfort and status, even as the Intifada still raged in their neighborhood. One day, Yousef watched two cousins engaging in a knife fight, and Hassan helped resolve it and restore some unity to the community. However, the same Israeli soldier from the first arrest came back to their house late one night and once again took Hassan away. After three months, the family finally found out his location and visited him, two at a time, once a month. He was eventually released again, and Yousef “felt proud as [he] watched the obvious admiration and respect people had for [his] father, but at the same time, [he] was angry. Where had all these people been when he was gone?” (43). Suddenly, the Israelis came back to arrest Hassan once more.