The son of a Hamas co-founder expressed shock and dismay at college protesters he sees as "misguided" and "misinformed" about the issues.
"They found an angry cause, and this is very dangerous to advocate on behalf of something they don’t understand," Mosab Hassan Yousef, known as "the Green Prince," told Fox News Digital in an interview. "They are not helping the situation. They are just making it worse."
Yousef, who was in Manhattan to address The Jerusalem Post New York Conference, is the eldest son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. The son defected to Israel in 1997 and worked as an undercover agent for a decade before moving to the United States. He previously told Fox News host Sean Hannity Hamas would "not hesitate" to kill him if they found him.
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He has called the terrorist group a religious movement "waging a holy war" under the guise of a political party. He has not shied away from criticizing the group in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack after seeing how some in the U.S. have responded with protests on college campuses and pressure in Congress to end the action in Gaza before Hamas has been eliminated.
"Bending to terrorists will have consequences," Yousef said. "We are sending the wrong messages. These people don't receive our statements or our action as a form of tolerance that we are trying to reach peace.They perceive it as weakness.
"The more we continue sending the wrong messages, the more we complicate the situation," he added. "We have to stand firmly regardless. … Hamas is a designated terrorist group in the United States, according to the American law, so it's a ridiculous thing of any lawmaker not to be able to distinguish this group.
"It’s very dangerous what they are doing," he insisted. "This is not a political issue. It’s a fundamental issue."
After Oct. 7, some argued the group’s vicious attack amounted to a "justified" defense after the treatment of the Palestinian people. Some labeled the Gaza Strip the world’s "biggest open-air prison," and others said the Palestinians — through Hamas — had no choice but to act.
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Yousef rejected such claims, noting that Israel left the Gaza Strip almost 20 years ago and that Hamas governed in that time "with an iron fist" while multiple governments worked to weaken it.
"Gaza was under the blockade, not only by Israel but also by Egypt and other international forces because Hamas did not agree to drop their guns and recognize Israel’s right to exist," Yousef explained. "That was the only reason for the blockade. It was a security blockade. It had nothing to do with the race or with nationalism.
"Everything’s wrong with this group," Yousef said. "There is nothing good or righteous about Hamas. They adopted killing, destruction, violence as the only method towards achieving their political and religious agendas.
"So what’s good about Hamas? Killing people indiscriminately? Killing Palestinians? Killing Arabs and Jews and Americans?" he asked. "They have blood on their hands. They have been using violence since the beginning of their movement as the only strategy, and they just crowned their violence with a genocide. So, what isn’t obvious about Hamas?"
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Yousef spoke alongside Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, who told Fox News Digital protesters have "weaponized" the First Amendment to "call for the genocide or mass murder of a community within the United States, which is, in this case, the Jewish community."
"It is really incumbent upon lawmakers and government officials, beginning with the president of the United States, President Biden, to establish and enforce not only Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but to really place … the good men and women of higher education in this country, the greatest system of higher education in the world … to hold them to account for codes of conduct," Diker said.
"If not, the Jewish students and other friends of the Jewish and democratic state are and will be placed in great physical danger on our campuses, and this is not something certainly that I’m sure the president would want."
