The son of a Hamas co-founder has boasted about his life of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” after he moved to Hollywood.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, 46, was born the son of Hassan Yousef, leader of the Palestinian Islamic militant group in the West Bank.
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Known as the Green Prince after the color of the Hamas flag, he defected to Israel before being granted asylum in the US.
Writing in a new memoir titled From Hamas to America, which was released today, Yousef details how he ended up in Hollywood.
He previously wrote a best-selling book, Son of Hamas, in 2010, in which he claimed to have been a source for the Israeli security agency Shin Bit for more than a decade, since he was 17.
He claimed to have foiled a 2001 plot to assassinate Shimon Peres, the then-Israeli foreign minister who later became president.
After the success of Son of Hamas, Yousef began receiving offers from Hollywood to turn it into a film.
He writes that he suddenly found himself as a “young, very single man” who had Porsche, Ducati and Harley Davidson motorbikes and a six-figure bank account.
After initially living in San Diego and Santa Barbara, California, and Scottsdale, Arizona, he eventually settled in Los Angeles and moved into the historic Hollywood Tower apartment building in Tinseltown.
At first, Yousef writes that he lived simply.
“I went out and bought a Ford Mustang,” he said of one of his first big purchases in America.
So, “after all the drama of the asylum hearing,” Yousef says he stopped by a Porsche dealership and traded in his new Mustang on a whim to celebrate.
“The bank was nearby, so I went there, came back with a cashier’s check, traded in my new Mustang, and within half an hour I was off in my new Porsche,” he said of the ordeal.
“People assumed I bought it for the prestige,” he said.
However, Yousef revealed that this was the last thing on his mind.
“I could afford it. I bought it. No problem,” he wrote.
He also acknowledges that he “partied a little”.
“Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll – check, check, check. Going to a party can mean one night or three,” he writes.
Yousef says his newfound fame has made “actresses, Playboy bunnies, wannabes… with lots of fake boobs” suddenly want to know, “Who the hell is this guy?”
He says he felt like Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, because he was shrouded in a “certain mystery.”
He also reveals that drugs were freely available at the parties he attended.
But the only drug he stayed away from was cocaine, saying that if he had tried it, “I wouldn’t be writing this book.”
Yousef’s first book was eventually turned into a documentary, The Green Prince, which won the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
But despite its success, the film was not nominated for an Oscar, and Yousef suggests he was disillusioned by the whole experience.
“The great lesson I learned is that no film, no book, no ten books can convey the truth, but only the shadow of the truth,” he writes.
HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR
Since the October 7 attack, which saw nearly 1,200 people murdered in Israel and another 200 captured, the country has launched a massive counterattack against Hamas.
Since then, Israeli attacks have killed more than 39,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, injuring another 91,000 – with more than 70 percent of the reported victims being women and children.
Israel blames the large number of civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing it of using innocent Palestinians as “human shields”.
Hamas, on the other hand, accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Both Israel and Hamas have been accused of war crimes by top prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, but both countries deny the charges against them.
Rising tensions in the Middle East
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Tensions in the Middle East have long been a fluctuating and dangerous area of global concern.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and on Israeli territory itself is nothing new.
Iran and Israel have also been in conflict for a long time.
But after a brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli soil in October last year, things entered a new phase.
Israel reacted like never before, unleashing nearly ten months of ground war and airstrikes on the decimated enclave in an attempt to destroy Hamas and rescue its hostages.
The Iranian-backed terrorist group killed around 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 more in the heinous October 7 massacre.
The UN estimates that at least 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the new war broke out.
This number includes data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is under the control of Hamas and has raised concerns from authorities about its accuracy.
Now, after nearly ten months of war in Gaza, tensions appear to have reached a whole new level following a series of deadly attacks and high-profile killings in late July and early August.
On Saturday, July 27, a rocket attack fired from southern Lebanon hit a football field in the Golan Heights – a Druze village occupied by Israel – killing 12 young people, including children.
Both Israel and the US said Hezbollah, the largest of Iran’s proxy terrorist groups, which operates from Lebanon, was responsible for the deadly attack.
On Monday, July 28, the IDF launched an airstrike in an area of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, killing Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, Fuad Shukr.
Less than two days later, at around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, July 30, Israel killed Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, while he slept in Iran’s capital, Tehran.
Israel has not yet explicitly claimed responsibility for the attack, but after promising to eliminate all of Hamas last year, they are believed to be behind it.
US officials have also said they suspect Israel of being behind the killing.
On the morning of Thursday, August 1, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that an attack on Khan Younis in southern Gaza had killed Mohammed Deif on July 13.
Dief had worked as head of Hamas’ ruthless military wing, the al-Qassam brigades, since 2002.
It marked another major loss for Iran’s proxy terrorist groups in the region.
Early reports this week suggested that Ismail Haniyeh was shot down in a precision strike when a rocket was fired from a drone outside his window and detonated inside the room.
Then a New York Times investigation suggested that a bomb had been planted in his room at the military complex where he was staying and detonated remotely.
Unnamed Iranian officials also shared the explosive theory with The Telegraph, further confusing the murky details surrounding Haniyeh’s death.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) concluded its investigation into the humiliating security breach on Saturday, August 1, and said he died after a “short-range projectile” was fired from outside the building.
A statement broadcast on Iranian state TV said a 7kg rocket warhead was used in the attack.
Iran and its proxy groups; Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have vowed to take revenge on Israel for Haniyeh’s murder.
Then, on the night of Saturday, August 3, Hezbollah fired about 30 rockets from Lebanon toward Galilee in northern Israel.
Tel Aviv’s impressive Iron Dome Defense system went into action, destroying “most” of the missiles, and no one was injured.
But the UK, US and France have urged all their citizens to evacuate Lebanon as fears of a wider war breaking out in the region continue to rise.
In January, the United Nations’ top court formally accused Israel of genocide, a charge the country’s leadership vehemently denies.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains under pressure at home over his handling of the war, sparking mass protests across the country calling for his resignation.
Netanyahu and President Biden also haven’t exactly agreed on the war in Gaza, with Biden clashing with the prime minister over his resistance to allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza and over a temporary pause in the delivery of certain weapons.
But Netanyahu will not relent and insists he will not stop the war or allow a pause in the fighting until Hamas is destroyed and all 116 remaining hostages are returned home.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
