A Question of Motivation

Mosab Hassan Yousef is once again in the news.  We last heard of him at the launch of his book Son of Hamas , detailing his experiences as a Palestinian spy working for Israel’s Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).  Lately, he had been busy fighting a deportation attempt by the U.S. government on the basis that Mr. Yousef consorted with terrorists.  Since then he has been granted asylum.  Aside from the deportation attempt, the story of Mr. Yousef raises questions that have not been asked by the media covering the case.  What really caused him to flip?

Intelligence handlers will tell you that it takes profound and very personal motives to leverage a betrayal and to convince someone to become an agent despite the fatal risks involved.

Mr. Yousef is no run of the mill young man.  He is the son of the founder of Hamas, and was raised in a very closed Arab Muslim society where one is a member of a social group first, where family, status, honor, religion and culture define you as a person.  Maintaining one’s honor and that of your family is everything.  You are an individual only secondarily.  In such a close knit environment, betrayal has only one fate: death.  In order to motivate someone to commit a betrayal of this magnitude, a HUMINT source operator must rely on a very, very strong motive.  In this case it could be any social deviation, for example a sexual one, or committing a dishonorable act.

Mr. Yousef enjoyed special status and was the heir apparent to head Hamas; money does not seem to have been an obvious motivator.  According to his book and to reports, the recruitment took place in prison where at least among the Palestinian prisoners his status would have been very high and would have garnered him a certain level of protection and respect.  Yousef claimed to have been ‘shocked’ by the Hamas behaviors he saw in prison yet these were people he had grown up around.  He had been groomed to be a terrorist.  He was privy to the stories and exploits of Hamas members including de facto ex-prisoners of Israeli prisons.  It seems unlikely that anything he saw of his fellow inmates would have been a revelation and further, that what he learned about Hamas there rendered him a traitor.  (Side note: his conversion to Christianity occurred after his cross over to the Israelis.)

The explanations he provides in his book and interviews about his reasons for flipping, seem not to hold water, specifically to those who understand the society and close familial structure in which he operated.  These explanations may satisfy a western audience as plausible but are not convincing to professional HUMINT operators and/or to those who come his background.

Mr. Yousef acknowledges that he “was a traitor, to my family, to my nation, to my God.  I crossed all the red lines in my society.  I didn’t leave one that I didn’t cross.”

The intensely strong motivation that would fuel his willingness to betray everything in his life, may not yet or ever be identified.  One wonders why Yousef hasn’t yet been assassinated by Hamas for this phenomenal betrayal.  It may be that the circumstances that fueled his willingness to betray is the very thing protecting his life.  Perhaps killing him would reveal the circumstances that – in and of themselves – are far more damaging to Hamas and his family.