It is with a heart full of gladness that I wish a happy birthday to the America that I love. I had been worried for a while there, that the America that my  father  and maternal grandmother had both come to, fleeing Cossacks and Nazis, as so many other millions of other immigrants had come to before them, fleeing religious prosecution, had suddenly disappeared.

I was afraid it had been swept up in the current tidal wave of moral equivalency and political correctness and been replaced by a nation where cozying up to despots and dictators seems to be more politically expedient than long lasting alliances between friends who share common values.

In a long, personal struggle for one of my newest and dearest friends, the America that stands for freedom against tyranny triumphed this week.

At least in the following case, the America that I believe in has not disappointed me. However, the battle between the two America’s with two very distinct , conflicting philosophies remains strong, and we have to be vigilant about preserving the sort of America that many, if not most Americans of good will want to believe in.

My newest and dearest friend is Mosab Hassan Yousef. Mosab was born to a family of aristocracy within the world of radical Islam.  His grandfather was a radical Imam in Ramallah, his father a founder of Hamas.

When Mosab was 18, he participated in a youthful operation that landed him in an Israeli jail for many months. It was while serving out time in an Israeli prison that this extremely intelligent and idealistic young man was first forced to confront the sadism and cruelty within Islamic society. This is because Israel allows prisoners within the various terrorist organizations, (Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad), to live amongst themselves and develop their own internal power structures.

From a neighboring cell, Mosab could hear the constant nocturnal screams of Hamas members who were from poor, rural or otherwise not well connected families, being tortured as “Israeli collaborators” by those who were better connected. He realized that his tortured Hamas brothers had been singled out arbitrarily, and came to the conclusion that there is a deeply rooted sadism and cruelty within Palestinian society. He was also impressed by the relative compassion and humanity of his Israeli captors.

Mosab further concluded that Hamas has nurtured and exploited this sadism and cruelty for their own political muscle and hegemonic aspirations. This cruelty and sadism, according to Mosab, who has lived within the world of Islam, and is in a position to know a great deal more about it than those of us in the West, has its roots directly within the Koran.

It was from within the walls of an Israeli prison that Mosab then decided that there was something fiercely wrong with the society in which he was raised and nurtured, in which everyone he knew and loved  deeply had lived.  He began to secretly work for the Shin Bet, simply to save lives, irrespective of whether or not they were Israeli or Palestinian.  A while after that, he secretly converted to Christianity.

This was not an easy decision for the young man to have made. Mosab still feels an empathic love for his family and the people living within the culture in which he was reared.  He doesn’t blame Muslims. He simply feels that they have been misled and exploited by the teachings of the Koran, and that according to his words, (not mine), “The God of the Quran is a God of hate…I chose a God of love over a God of hate.”

For almost ten years, Mosab worked hand in hand with his Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben Yitzchak, developing an extremely close friendship. They describe one another as “my brother”. In Fact, Gonen Ben Yitzchak , himself, has acted quite heroically, risking criminal prosecution by coming to the United States and revealing his identity publicly in order to vouch for his friend. (This is something that goes against the legal guidelines of the Shin Bet, and although Gonen has been out of the Shin Bet for four years, the statute extends to five years since retirement.)

According to Ben Yitzchak, “Mosab gave us an insight into the workings of Hamas we would never have had without him. He saved hundreds of lives, both Israeli and Palestinian…He didn’t care if it was in imam or a Knesset member, as long as he saved lives.” (Although Mosab modestly interrupts him and says,  “Don’t exaggerate..I know I thwarted dozens of suicide attacks…but we will never know exactly how many lives would have been killed…so we can’t say exactly how many I saved”)

It was Mosab’s work that had led to the capture of a Hamas terrorist and his handler, just as his handler had given the would-be- bomber  his suicide belt in the Manara Square , Mosab had warned the Shin Bet, who immediately moved in to arrest them.

In another operation five Hamas terrorists came knocking at Mosab’s door because their contact had been arrested, and had figured someone from his family would naturally want to help them. They requested money, tea and a ride to a Hamas safe house. He gave them what they had asked for and then proceeded to tip off the Shin Bet, and thwarted another suicide explosion.

Mosab had been responsible for capturing and bringing to justice the Hamas terrorists who had been responsible for the Hebrew University Cafeteria bombing of July 31, 2002, in which four Israelis and five Americans had been killed.

In 2007, Mosab began to grow tired of constantly living a life of duplicity and of struggling with profound conflicting loyalties and loves.  He came to America on a tourist visa and sought political asylum.

It is an absolutely categorical fact that if Mosab had been returned to anywhere in the Middle East that would have been the equivalent of immediately sentencing him to the death penalty. That is because he had committed three cardinal sins, according to Islam: 1.) Collaborating with Israel, 2.) Converting to Christianity and 3.) Publicly criticizing Islam.

It is an also categorically undeniable fact that heroic young men like Mosab would be terrific role models for anyone growing up within the tyranny of radical Islam. He is living proof that an intelligent person can transcend the culture of incitement and propaganda to hate and to kill, and to penetrate through to the core of what makes us all truly human. He chose a path of love for the sanctity of human life, irrespective of the accident of one’s birth.

In 2009, Mosab came out with a book, “Son of Hamas” documenting his incredible life’s story.

Unfortunately, some people from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with either tunnel vision or another agenda entirely, (which we shall later discuss), had read discreet passages from Mosab’s book and had taken them entirely out of context.

Mosab’ s attorney, Steven A. Seick had reported that the lead attorney from the DHS that was working on Mosab’s case , Kerri Calcador had sworn that if Mosab would have won his case on June 30^th, the DHS would appeal, and continue to do so.

She said that this was not her own decision, “but came from orders from above, directly from Washington.”

Why had there been so much effort to deny political asylum to someone so incredibly worthy of it?

Some investigative journalists, such as Richard Miniter have traced the difficulties that Mosab encountered with the DHS back to the time that Arif Alikhan had been appointed by President Obama as a leading official in the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Alikhan had recently spoken at a fundraiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, (MPAC) an organization with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the founders of MPAC is Dr.Muhar Hathout . Dr Hathout credits Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization that was founded in Egypt in 1928, as being his primary teacher .[1]

Hassan al Banna is famous for the two extremely revealing quotes:  “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”  [2]

“God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Quran our Constitution, Jihad our way, and dying for God our Supreme Objective.”[3]

MPAC along with CAIR, (The Council for American Islamic Relations), have become very excellent in the art of concealing their true intentions, and have masqueraded themselves as simply American Muslim Civil Rights Organizations.

Yet neither of these two groups have ever met a terrorist incident that they have not blamed on the root cause, which is the existence of the state of Israel.

Neither would ever blame the true root cause: the constant incitement for hatred of the Jew and the Christian, and the elimination of the state of Israel and its replacement with the state of Palestine, which Mosab personally experienced growing up as a young Muslim growing up in Ramallah and attending UNRWA schools that use every opportunity to preach such hatred.

It is certainly understandable that someone who was the featured speaker at an MPAC dinner would be threatened by the surgically incisive statements that Mosab Hassan Yousef dared to utter about Islam, coming out of the mouth of someone who had personally lived it and experienced it.

We seem to forget that radical Islam, the Islam of Hassan al Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared war on the United States on September 11, 2001, and that  American GI’s are dying today at the hands of radical Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our embracement of political correctness and moral equivalency tends to blindside us to the very pernicious philosophy that is at the very root of many of the organizations such as CAIR and MPAC that many Americans would like to embrace as “mainstream”.

It is with a great deal of gratitude to some remarkable individuals, such as James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, Rep Doug Lamborn of Colorado and twenty one other congressmen, and Tzachbai Hanegbi, Director of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee who wrote letters on Mosab’s behalf. All of this might have contributed to the fact that on June 30^th at the hearing concerning Mosab in San Diego, his request for asylum in this country was granted by the government.

What worries me profoundly, however, is that the America that was born out of a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of Western liberalism, ensuring religious liberties for all, is being eclipsed by an America that allows people into positions of great authority who might, at best, simply overlook or ignore the odious teachings of the founders of organization such as MPAC or CAIR, or at worst, secretly concur with them.

If we do not remain vigilant, we are in danger of losing the America which has been that beacon of religious freedom for the generations of immigrants that brought many of our ancestors to these shores.

In the meantime, however, let’s savor the sweet victory of my newest and dearest friend, someone whose friendship I will always cherish, as a victory not only for Mosab, personally, but for the America that most of us love.

---

[1] Investigative Project on Terrorism, “Behind the Façade: The Muslim Public Affairs Council,” pg 7, accessed 7/8/10 online at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/358.pdf

[2] Ibid.  pg 5.

[3] Ibid.  pg 5.

Tags: Add new tag, Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef, Sarah Stern, Stealth Jihad, U.S Policy