Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former Hamas member known as “the Green Prince” leveled on Tuesday scathing criticism at President Donald Trump’s decision to pause the joint Israel-U.S. operation against Iran.
“We could have finished the job. You stopped. You don’t know what the hell you are doing. Total arrogance. Then when you came to the picture, you dragged us into this rabbit hole. And now you’re throwing us under the bus,” Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, said during a panel discussion at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, in remarks meant for Trump.
“I did not want Trump’s involvement in this war. Because he has been a disadvantage,” said Yousef, who has renounced Islamist extremism and has written a best-selling autobiography titled Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices.
Yousef said Trump’s plans were incompatible with how war is waged in the Middle East. As a result, “he killed the opportunity” for victory.
“But anyway, who does go to war on a schedule? When you go to war, especially against such powerful enemy, you don’t say: ‘I want to finish it in five weeks.’ Nobody goes to the war on a schedule. And when you go to war, you better be ready, not only for winning, defeat is possible, death is possible. You don’t go to war only thinking about winning and victory,” Yousef said.
Yousef shared the panel with Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, who underlined Yousef’s message to the audience, which received Yousef with applause and a standing ovation.
“What Mosab just said now has been a thesis of the way a Middle Eastern expert, indigenous to the region, understands political culture, understands the way it works in the Middle East,” Diker said.
He told the panel chair, Sarah Stern, the founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), that he was “not optimistic” about the future of Israel’s security situation vis-à-vis Iran.
But Yousef added that he had a “clear message to those who think that they can annihilate Israel: Behind Israel’s existence is the Creator. Israel is not coincidental.”
He added, “I try not to use God, because God could mean anything for anybody. But if they think the Israeli survival has been an accident for 5,000 years, they better think again.”
Yousef also responded to a remark by Trump from earlier this month, in which he seemed to take credit for Israel’s survival.
“Israel’s existence is not negotiable, and it does not depend on superpowers or the public opinion,” Yousef said. “If they keep pushing Israel to the corner, they are the ones who are going to suffer the most. Israel has not used everything that it has. And Israel, on purpose, did not expose the advanced weapons that it has for very important reasons: We don’t want the enemy to know what we are having. And now at this point we are just playing around.”
Speaking on June 16 alongside Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at a G7 conference in France, Trump said: “Without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did. Israel would have been blown up a long time ago, had I not gotten involved.”
