The Jordan Harbinger Show - 407: Mosab Hassan Yousef | The Green Prince of Hamas

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Mosab Hassan Yousef grew up as the son of a Hamas co-founder, then worked undercover with Israel security service Shin Bet to root out terrorist plots. He is the author of Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Unthinkable Choices and is featured in the documentary The Green Prince. What We Discuss with Mosab Hassan Yousef: What it was like growing up in one of the first families of Palestinian terrorist group Hamas -- and why Mosab considers it "the greatest school of [his] life." The turning point when Mosab no longer saw Hamas as the "good" guys. How Mosab dealt with the loneliness of working undercover for Israeli intelligence against his former friends and family. What Mosab feels about the well-meaning but -- he believes to be misguided -- "free Palestine" movement. What prompted Mosab to get out of undercover work and chronicle his story for others to read (and watch on television). And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/407 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger show. The special forces on the ground got the green light from the intelligence that I am inside the house still. There were like a punch of Merkava tanks. Ten of them storming into the city. It's like an earthquake happening. It becomes like a war zone right now. So my family right now is cut up in the fire. So when I don't surrender, they evacuate my family first.

They launch a missile into the house and they spray bullets like all. over the world. Like in my room, I had about like 150 bullets just in the wall. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. If you're new to the show, we have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional former jihadi. Each show turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker.

Today, my friend Masab Hassan, this is, it's a heavy one, first of all. So much so, they've made a movie about it called The Green Prince. We'll link that in the show notes. From Masab, growing up, Hamas was the family business. If you're not familiar with Hamas, this is a group that is on the U.S. terrorist watch list and operates primarily in Israel, Palestine, elsewhere in the area. Of course, including the United States, Europe, Africa. These things do tend to spread.

In that area of the world, collaborating with Israel is the worst thing. anyone can do. It's literally seen as worse than raping someone in your own family. His dad was a very respected Islamic leader with a major following and a lot of respect all over the country. His father was essentially the leader of Hamas in Palestine and spent over 25 years in Israeli prison. Just think about that, 25 years locked up in Israeli prison. So he gets out of prison, takes Mosab as his assistant, essentially the gatekeeper to all these folks. Thus, Masab becomes the closest son to the leader of Hamas. the single most important asset of the Israeli security service once he was recruited. So today, I want to go over Massab's story of Hamas, getting recruited by Israel, and eventually escaping that

entire situation. You'll have to forgive the audio quality on this one. It's a little bit rougher than usual. This was recorded in an undisclosed location for obvious reasons. We didn't have our usual stuff, and there were a little bit of issues there. That's just what happens when you're recording something with somebody who is essentially on the run. Many groups, including Al-Qaeda still have a death sentence hanging over Masab's head. So I do hope you enjoy this. If you're wondering how I managed to get these amazing guests, it's because of my network and persistence. I'm teaching you how to create your own network, whether it's for business reasons, personal reasons, check out our course, six-minute networking at Jordan Harbinger.com

slash course. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company. Now here's Masab Hassan, the Green Prince. By the way, initially, this was like one of the, I've known you for a while, and I feel like we go away back, but this is one of the hardest shows to book. Initially, you didn't even want to do it, right? Your manager, like, couldn't reach you. Or the book publisher, I should say, couldn't reach you. Can we talk about that a little bit? You know, I said what I had to say. I don't like repetitions, you know, just keep repeating myself again and again through media outlets. My publisher, from their point of view, they want me to promote the book, which is a product. For me, if I said something, even to one person, it's already contributing to consciousness to the world. I don't need to repeat it a thousand times.

I take a break. I take a step back. I evaluate my actions. I evaluate my movement. I learn from my mistakes. You know, I'm not like a blogger or a politician or a religious leader, you know, that wants to control a bunch of sheep. I'm individual and I respect my individuality.

Sometimes I feel bankrupted. There is nothing else to say, you know, and I just dwell into silence. You know, I'm not afraid to say, I have nothing to say. That was the truth, you know. I hope that you did not take it personally. You know, I think your show is great and I think you're a great person. Then when time comes, you know, and they saw that you were like insisting, you know, that I was like, okay, see, maybe there's something there.

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, you do have very strong beliefs, and your story is really impressive because of that, because you basically were put in a place where you had to, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you almost had to trade your home to do what you thought was right. You had to trade your home and your family to do what you thought was right in the end. Not only home. In fact, I had to die to the old self. I had to die to everything that I knew, to my friends, to my family, to my culture, my society, my securities, all of them. Everything I knew, all the knowledge that I had, all of a sudden, I had to choose between that all the things that I knew were useless. And I walk into the unknown, not knowing what's going to be next, what's going to be tomorrow. And that's all for the sake of my. freedom, not to be in slavery to the expectations of a certain society or a certain group of people, including my own parents. I don't want to say that this is the ultimate price, but I had to go

through a lot, you know, from torture to like literally death. You know, my heart stopped. The level of pressure that I had to go through, my heart stopped for approximately 30 seconds. Most of human beings cannot make it back. You know, this is the level of stress that I was going through, you know, to lose family, to lose home, to lose my sense of security, my sense of being, which practically now I know that it was just a false sense of being. Let's start from the beginning because a lot of people don't really know, you know, your story, of course, but they also don't necessarily know what Hamas is. Can you explain what it is for people who've maybe never heard of it or only heard it on the news? Hamas is an Islamic movement, like al-Qaeda, like Hezbollah, Salafi jihadists,

and the rest of those groups. Of course, it has a cause, it has a national cause, it has a religious cause. Now, the United States of America and the rest of the free world, actually, consider Hamas as a terrorist organization. My father is one of the founding members of Hamas, you know, the seven original founders. Hamas at some point was my project also. Hamas for us was everything, you know, for me as a person who was born in the heart of Hamas leadership and witnessed Hamas evolution from the moment of establishment to the point where it became an army and a main player in the stability of the Middle East region. It fascinates me. You know, I cannot even say what Hamas is.

Is it the Hamas, 1987, the first was born, or is it Hamas 2003, killing thousands of people sending dozens of suicide bombers? Is it Hamas the political movement or is it Hamas the religious movement? Is it Hamas? It's a monster. When you say that it's a monster, I mean, I want to get into the evolution of this. I actually, of course, I read the book, I watched the movie. We'll link to those things in the show notes as well.

You grew up with Hamas throwing rocks at convoys, Israeli, convoys and things like that. Your dad was in Hamas. Your grandfather was in Hamas. What was your turning point where you realize, like, oh, I'm in the middle of this organization. I mean, I know when you were young, the police, the Israeli soldiers, I should say, came to your house to talk to your dad for five minutes. Was that story the beginning of your experience? It almost seems, as you tell it in the book, that that's the beginning of when you realize, like, oh, this is a real thing that I'm in here. This is like a family legacy that's pretty serious. First of all, my father was arrested by the Israeli forces many times.

He was just released a few weeks ago. He spent more than 25 years in Israeli prisons. And as a child, you know, I grew up where a bunch of uniformed soldiers considered by the Palestinian society, my society then as the enemy, the occupier. We did not like them. Actually, we hated them, and we won them dead. And for that, they would come. They arrest my father and his other Hamas friends and other Palestinian factions.

It was a war zone, you know. Not only arresting my father, we're not talking about, like, you know, the police coming into some protesters' house and arresting them in California, you know. We're talking about army coming into the house with their rifles, pointing at everybody and sometimes there was shooting and sometimes there was clashes outside, sometimes children got shot, sometimes elders got shot. Thousands of people died during the first person in an infathe. And I was living just right next to the cemetery of the town, which as a child at the age of 10,

I witnessed the burial of dozens, hundreds of people. On daily basis, you know, the bodies just keep coming and coming and coming. Of course, talking about it right now sounds exaggerating, but like even, And for me right now it's very hard actually to believe that I had to go through that to see the human brutality. It's not as simple as just like, you know, they took my daddy, you know, away, you know, and the child now have some prejudices, you know. We're talking about hardcore human ugly side, you know, as ugly as it can get where everybody's living in fear, where everybody wants to shoot everybody, where everybody's trapping everybody. So in this chaos, human chaos, where the truth is lost, where a child honestly doesn't know a better truth, my father was the truth. And what to do with those uniformed soldiers coming into the house to just arrest my father, you know?

Of course, any child, if you were in my position, you would hate them. But that was not only a personal thing. It was ideological thing. It was a national thing. All the groups, religious groups, if you go to the mosque, the mullahs or the imams are inciting against those occupiers. Graffiti on the wall is inciting against the occupation. The media, the family, the parents, many external forces are pushing you to believe in one thing.

This is very, very dangerous conditioning process. When did you change the view, or did you change the view of your father? You know, like a lot of us, we look at our dads, we see this hero. When did you change your view from my dad as a hero to my dad is a complicated man that could rationalize the deaths of a lot of people? Of course, this is an evolution. If I tell you that there was like a moment to just figure out everything, then I would like for everybody in the Middle East to go through that moment to realize.

But this is an evolution. And I tell you something, you know, my father and his likes, and I don't mean to disrespect my father by any mean. You know, I love him, but I don't respect him, you know, that much. At some point, he was an inspiration, he was the freedom fighter, he was the one who's sacrificing his life in Israeli prisons and all that. But today I understand he just wearing a mask by the name of the cause, the Palestinian cause, which everybody's cause. and by the name of God or by the name of Allah, that's their God, or by the name of a certain ideology, or liberating the people, free in the people.

Every individual can have their own version of truth and hide behind it, all the desires and the lust and the hatred and the human delusion. And my father is no different, you know. I wish that he was of a higher understanding, you know, to just see that he's just only driven by hate, lust, anger, and delusion. And when an individual is blinded to that degree, they will cause harm. They will cause damage.

And the mind will always find a way to justify its actions. On one hand, he would kill and blow people up. On the other hand, it's like, okay, you know, we are defending our children. We're not killing others. We're defending our children. And the same mind that tells him the truth. the same mind that there's him the life as well. Tell me about, I don't mean to chuckle at this story,

but when I think about it, it's almost a little bit funny because it's like your teenage moment here. You're 18 years old, and you decide to buy a load of guns. First of all, what was that all about? That was like the worst plan ever, right? Well, you know, it's, I grew up in a jungle, you know, full of just hate, not only. only, by the way, from Palestinian-Israeli hatred, also the rivalry of Palestinian factions within

the Palestinian society. You know, the PA versus Hamas, versus Fatah, versus Public Front, and 10 other factions, if you don't have guns, nobody respects you in that culture. And if you don't have power, they will crush you. There, there was no government. There were a punch of corrupt politicians, basically criminals committing crime against humanity. So to grow up in this type of environment, you should not be very surprised, you know, that a child of that environment decided to go by guns. It's not like, you know, if I grew up in California, let's say in San Diego, then all of a sudden I decided to become a gangster and go by guns. Yes, it's idiotic. But for that region, it's normal. Today, looking back, of course, it was idiotic because I could have been killed

easily. The guns got me in trouble. They got me in trouble. They got me in prison. prison. And I spent 16 months in Israeli prisons. I was tortured. I was beaten up by soldiers. I was depravated from sleeping for months. I was tortured mentally and physically, you know, that I still have marks on my face from that torture. When I look back, it's really scary to just remember the minefield that I was walking in. But sometimes it's a blessing to go through a minefield, not knowing it's a minefield. And when you get out, then you realize it was a minefield. Otherwise, probably you would have not survived it. In the prison, what's going through your mind in there? Like, do you think you're going to be locked up in there forever? They're not being nice to you.

Like, you said, they're beating you up. They're torturing you. They're not letting you sleep. Like, what are you thinking at age 18 when you're locked up like that? I just can't imagine it. You know, it's very hard for any human language, actually, to convey a human feeling and a human experience at this depth, you know, to really express pain and frustration and anger and confusion of why, you know, all is happening. On one hand, you know, I was hurt a lot by my own society, you know, as a child I was abused and as a child I was hurt badly. Then I was beaten up, you know, by the parents and by the teacher and by the other kids in the streets. I was bullied. It was amazing, you know, to know that there's like an external enemy, you know, that I could blame everything on

that enemy, which happened to be Israel. Then you go on blaming Israel and now you buy guns and you want to kill Israelis to just express your anger and your hatred on one thing. For me, it's really like, of course, I can get emotional about it right now, you know, and it's like, oh, it's an unjust world. It's unfair. But today I see it differently. I see it as the greatest school of my life, you know, the brutality of the human society, and the human society, by the way, it just showed me, you know, something about my own nature. And I had to choose, do I want to be like this image, or do I want to transform into a more refined, higher consciousness, you know, that can handle pressure, that can handle pain. So today, really hard for me,

you know, to go back and recreate the blaming mentality, you know, that what they did to me in prison, what they did to me as a child, why they did to me at school. It's very hard for me to recreate, honestly, you know, because without those events, I would have not been able to transcend actually man, to transcend the limitation of the human conditioning. In prison, I know you had to choose a faction, right? Hamas, PFLP, Palestinian Authority, or PA, or something else. And you initially, I guess, agreed,

how did it come to be that you agreed to collaborate with the Shinbet, the Israeli Internal Intelligence Service? Because that seems like a really hard choice to make after growing up in one place. And it's like, okay, I guess I'll be the worst thing that everyone considers, you know, a collaborator. How do you make that choice? So back in the 1990s, a couple of Hamas, members succeeded in infiltrating the Israeli intelligence, they were double agents. They were heroes among the Hamas movement, like the most sophisticated, because, you know, Hamas does not have intelligence, like strong intelligence like the Israeli intelligence. And to be actually able to fool the Israeli intelligence and double play them was like a really badass in the

Palestinian street. So everybody wanted somehow to do it. And I was just another idiot. We thought that I could actually fool the Israeli intelligence. So this is why I agreed to work with Israel. With a hidden agenda or hidden intention is simply to be a double agent. Sure. Okay. That makes But what happened later, thousands of Hamas members were in prison. And now Hamas didn't know how their members and their cells and their secret operation was exposed by Israel. So they wanted to know who was actually who were the rats. So they started torturing their own people, anybody, any suspect. And they were tortured them brutally. And the peak of their torture was during the time when I was in prison. That was back in 1996, 97. Hundreds of prisoners were tortured,

dozens were killed, and the level of brutality of what they did to human beings exceeds anybody's imagination. And I don't exaggerate when I say this. Imagine putting needles under someone's fingernails, you know, and just like let them explain. experience pain, you know, slowly for months to squeeze information from them, you know, as they scream. I remember they would just put a soap bar in a prisoner's mouth, then tie it with a towel on the outside, blindfolded as, you know, they burn plastic on their bare skin. So basically, this is what Hamas was doing in prison to any suspect who had any relationship with the Israeli intelligence. And here I am, I'm coming to prison, you know, with actually a relationship

with Israeli intelligence, but, you know, with no intention to spy on my own people or commit treason or betray them. You know, I would never betray my father, for example. So I told Hamas, hey, guys, this is a situation. I had agreed to work for Israel, and I have some agenda. He said, okay, write it down. So I write down the story to the Hamas security. away. And they came back with more questions. But I said, I don't have answers for those questions. Like, for example, who is your network? That they give you a special device? What's your mission? And I told them simply, the Israeli intelligence said, go to prison, spend your time. It's like a cover. And after you're released, we will be in touch with. They did not give me a mission. They did

not give me a device, they did not give me a network, they did not connect me to a handler, and that was the true. So simply, Hamas did not believe my narrative and did not fit their imagination. So they start questioning. And this is where I felt Hamas, my own father's organization, that we as a family sacrificed everything so it can live. Here I am face-to-face with this monster. I'm even telling them the simple truth that I'm not a traitor. I stepped forward. They did not discover me. You know, I just came forward and I said, hey, I have a relationship. I established a relationship in principle. I never did any mission for Israel. And I have a national agenda. I want to take revenge from those enemies of our society. But Hamas did not believe it.

And they start interrogating me. Of course, my. My father was not there to protect me in prison, and I became all of a sudden accused, you know, for nothing I did. And that was the moment where I saw Hamas' true face, that they truly don't see Israel as the enemy. Also, I can be their enemy. Anybody else can be their enemy. Just disagree with them. Tell them a truth that isn't their truth, and they will hate you.

you, they will interrogate you, they were torturing. And this is what basically they were doing for many other prisoners. This is when I start having actually my doubt about other prisoners being tortured and killed. I know that I was innocent. And what if all these prisoners also were innocent people? So basically, as you see, I don't have like a simple answer to say yes or no. I go to work with Israel to take revenge from them, but somehow like I end up working for them. To the Muslims I oppose as a Christian, to the Christians I oppose as a Muslim, to the Israelis as a Palestinian, to the Palestinians as Israeli agent. All the opposite extremes of life exist within my journey. For me, I learned how to swim against the current.

Some people tell me, okay, so you cross the river to the other side. And was it greener on the other side? And I say, the truth is it wasn't greener. You know, when I swam, I got to the other side. It was not a greener. But I said, then what was the point? What was the point of departing? I say, simply, I learned how to swim against the current.

And in order for us to see and to know our higher potential, it doesn't matter where we came from. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, the Green Prince, Mossab Hassan. right back. And now back to Masab Hassan, the Green Prince on the Jordan Harbinger show. You'd said the world I knew was relentlessly eroding, beginning to reveal another world I was just beginning to understand. What the Israelis were teaching me was more logical and more real than anything I had ever heard from my own people. This is, I guess, how you felt when you were first released or while maybe you were still in prison with low eye, the Shinbet officer explaining that Hamas destroys itself more from the inside than anything Israel could do

from the outside. But it sounds like you see that happening everywhere. It is happening everywhere. Yes, I experienced slavery. Yes, the Israelis wanted to provoke intelligence within me because they wanted me to be effective. So, you know, they invested in me, you know, as a human being. I'm grateful to that, you know. When talking about intelligence service, this has been actually, or had been one of the biggest schools of my life, because somehow also we created reality, you know, and I saw the creation of reality, you know, what really creates public opinion and what really manipulates public's perception of a certain thing.

We do something on the ground. Then you see something on the media that is completely opposite of what we did on the ground. Then you start scenes like the gap, you know, between truth and perception of truth. Of course, they invested me as individual, you know, and they wanted me to go to school and finish university. And that was the first thing, you know. And now I understand why, you know, because I was much more effective that way. But also when we talk about Israeli intelligence, it is a prison of its own. This type of organizations, forget about it.

You go in and your chances to get out only as a corpse, you know. So they invested in you, counting that you would never find your way out. The truth at that level and the power that you experience within Israeli intelligence or any other intelligence service, we're talking about power. And we're talking about real intelligence. And we're talking about real creation, you know, like a huge orchestration, you know, that deceives politicians and media and average people. and you can create any scenario to anybody

and make them believe in it and they would believe in it. So when I was playing at a very young age and start having a taste of that powerful game, this is what everybody is fighting for or thirsty for, you know, to experience power. But for me, it was another form of slavery. And I did not like the fact that all that power

that I was experienced. It was just basically serving the agendas of politicians in a certain state, which I'm not against. I love Israel. I love Israel very much, you know, and it's very, it will continue to be an inspiring model, you know, for me. You know, such a beautiful nation, such a beautiful people, and they inspire me. But I don't want to be for the rest of my life, or I did not want to be for the rest of my life as part of Israeli intelligence and secret operation on daily basis, you know, in the morning,

something, in the afternoon, something, and in the evening something else. The game of deception and the reverse psychology and all that the intelligence services do, it's effective and it works, but it's limited. I want it just to try to convey the truth as is, you know, to my people, you know, what I have learned, what I have learned as a child, what I have learned growing up, what I have learned from all the hardships that I had. And also, I did not want to cut the part, you know, which was the part that would condemn me to execution, to death penalty, which was my affiliation with the Israeli conditions. And that was the hardest part, you know, but I needed to be honest with my people.

They did not recognize my work with Israel. They did not reveal or expose me. I revealed myself and I stepped forward and I told them this is the honest truth. I know now you're going to see me as a traitor. I know that you're going to crucify me for this, but you do it. But for me, I'm going to tell you the truth. If I fought 10 years to save human lives on daily basis, why should I be ashamed of it? Why should I be ashamed of it?

But back to the point, I did not want to stay in the intelligence game, in the deception game for eternity. and I wanted to find my freedom. So I got out. I got out to a higher truth, but also that was not fine. Why wouldn't they let you have relationships with women? I thought that was weird. You know, you talk a lot about like they're sort of going through some of the rules.

First of all, it doesn't seem like they trained you at all. Like they just kind of like threw you out there and they basically only had a few rules, one of which was no relationships with women. What's up with that? It's very strange, you know, to hear that the Israeli intelligence did not want an agent to have a relationship with a woman. Yeah. For them, they wanted me to always be and continue to be the Hamas member, the one who goes to the mosque, the one who follows the code of conduct of my society, respect the God, respect the parents, don't cross the red lines, don't do something that is morally offensive. through the eyes of that society.

Even the very ones, you know, who were telling me the stories, disagree with that. But right now they wanted me to be the perfect fit. They don't want me to hang out with women, which is not acceptable to the Arab and Muslim culture. It's a very conservative society. So the Israeli intelligence understand this situation. And they don't want me to go and do something that is abnormal,

something that is not acceptable by my own society, then if I lose my reputation, nobody would respect me. Then I would not have access to all the religious leaders, which basically were the very terrorists that we needed to establish relationships with them and to know what they are up to. I had a relationship, you know, I like secret relationship with a woman that I was in love with, but we really like had to like hide and go like to a different town, you know, to just go out for lunch, you know, it was like a long journey, impossible one, even like jump some fences, you know, at risk my life, you know, to just go and meet with her.

This is a Palestinian woman, or were you dating an Israeli woman? No, she was actually a Palestinian woman. And this is why actually what made the Israeli intelligence actually go against it. They, in fact, asked me not to hang out with this woman anymore. And I think they were right, you know, because it was dangerous for the woman and it was dangerous for me. She was very important to me, you know, that I would not even, in that culture, it's very, very hard for women. You know, if a woman hangs out with a man and let's say it's like, for example, loses her virginity or something like that, you know, she would never be able to marry again, and that's it. It's like in that culture, unfortunately, and please forgive me for

the comparison, but it's like a secondhand car, and it will always be like a secondhand car, not like in the United States, you know, it's like a divorce woman or a single, it's just a single woman, you know, single or in a relationship, you know. There are much more definitions of like, okay, this is virgin, this is not version, you know, and, you know, the 72 versions, you know, it's a big thing in that culture. Yeah, it's ridiculous, you know, but again, this is the human deluge. But anyway, my personal life was not easy, but I managed somehow against the odds, you know, to enjoy, you know, moments of my early. life, you know, as a youth, as a young man. And it was a very nice adventure, you know, today looking back, you know, and she's like, okay, there was love there, you know, to go meet a woman, you know, to jump the fence and risk your life and hide somewhere and change your look and, you know,

do all the impossible just like to spend with her, you know, it's like half an hour and that's it. There was something, you know. But here we are. And a lot of. learned what they learned. You did uncover a lot of suicide bomber cells, terror cells, and I assume you had to be pretty careful because the Palestinian authorities, so the government of the Palestinian territories at that time, they had CIA eavesdropping gear that they could easily have used both against terrorists and against people who are collaborators, right? I mean, you must have really been kind of between Iraq and a hard place, because Hamas now might be the authority in Gaza and the West Bank, but back then it was not. So you were.

were being hunted by Israel, by the Palestinian police, by Hamas, by everybody. That must have been a lot of pressure. Look, all you have to do, everybody's looking for you. And simply, just look with them. Everybody's like, who is this motherfucker? You know, who is passing the information, you know? And you just ask the same questions. And if people are looking, just go with them, you know, and look for that person. And they would never figure out. I had a very good cover. And as I told you before, it was like walking in a minefield, you know, truly a minefield. I was not only a target for the Israeli intelligence.

You know, it was also CIA, it was also all type of intelligence services, you know, in the region. And when you are in the spotlight, you know, as a son of a top leader of the revolution, of all the chaos that's happening, you know, and very close to decision making. in Yasser Arafat meetings and other top Fathah leaders and very close to Hamas military wing and understand the culture and hanging out with like basically top wanted top terrorists in the region. From the bomb maker to the suicide bomber to the mastermind behind them, you become just a target for everybody. And of course, everybody is looking for you. Only a handful of people know who you are.

even within the Israeli intelligence, a handful of people knew about my existence. Even when I had, let's say, solid intelligence, you know, like about, for example, I had information about Hamas taken over the Gaza Strip one year before Hamas took over. And I told the Israeli intelligence, Hamas is going to take over Gaza. They are planning for this. They are building an army, underground army. It did not make sense to them. They were like, no, this is, they won't be able to pull.

this together, even if they had the intention to do so, you know, they cannot do it. It's impossible. The Palestinian Authority is 10 times the size of Hamas and Gaza Strip. They've got much more guns. They've got much more members and they have the support of the whole world, you know. Hamas won't be able to take over the Gaza Strip and throw Fatah out. And I told them, okay, if you say so, you know, they could have stopped it. They could have stopped it. And look now what happened and how many wars happening in Gaza Strip today. So sometimes, you know, you just don't take seriously a piece of information. The reason I said this, you know, at this level of intelligence, you know, when you have like solid information, it goes to the prime minister,

for example. Now the prime minister does not see my name on the report. He would only see symbols. And if there was any piece of information that would lead to me, they would take it out or they would cross it out. So basically, even the report that goes to the head of the state, I would be totally coded so they don't recognize who I was. This is how much the game was very serious. And my life was in danger and I was like, if I get

cut, I am done. Matter of seconds, that's it. I would be with a crowd, with a mob, a punch of militia, armed men, waving with rifles, with rage, angry. Who the fuck give the information? It would be me.

Just right next to them. And you just need to trust. You know, anything could happen, anything. Were you lonely doing this? Like, you couldn't share your life with a woman. You couldn't tell any of your friends. You definitely couldn't tell your family. Nobody other than your handlers in Shinbet, so Israeli intelligence.

And even then, I mean, they're like, they're not your friends. They're people that you're working with. You can't just call them on Friday because you're feeling bored or alone or isolated, right? Was it lonely? You know, this term, lonely, it would be in a case if I now came to recruit you, Jordan, And it's like, hey, I want to send you on a mission. Leave your wife, you know, leave everything behind and just go behind the enemy lines. And it would be a totally strange culture.

Then maybe you would experience that. I was alone for sure. But I was still within my own culture, playing the same role that actually the majority of my society wanted me to play. I just needed to be careful so they didn't know the other roles that I had. When you do things like this, you need to understand the drive. If I was doing it for money, if I was doing it for revenge, if I was doing it for like any other human thing, then I would have greater fear. But if you keep your compass that the more I'm doing this, we are stopping suicide bombing attacks. Suicide bomb and attacks lead to death.

Then they lead to retaliation from the state. then they lead to more chaos. And those people, by the way, the victims of suicide bomb and attacks, not only Israelis, Arab Israelis, Muslims, Americans, like the Hebrew University, for example, six Americans were killed, students at the cafeteria on campus. And I knew the people actually who sent those suicide bombers to carry the attack. One of them is Ibrahim Hamid, and I helped locate him,

which was wanted for about eight years. Wow. Now he's spending life terms in Israeli prison. So we're talking about high-profile terrorists that did not only kill Israelis. You know, they killed the Americans, they killed all type of people. So now, when you have a head of your eyes

in this very dangerous scale, all the money in the world is not going to give you security or give you comfort in that situation. Actually, even if you were paid, let's say, millions, what are you going to do with the money? You live in a small town where all the eyes on you. And even if you had all that money, you cannot spend it because you would be exposed immediately. You know, in fact, the Israeli intelligence did not like the fact that they had access to money from other sources, like the USAID or my father.

They were very careful to tell me, careful how you spend the money that you take from your father. Because people might think that we are the ones giving you the money, you know. And it was basically Hamas giving me the money. So practically, it's a very dangerous thing. And what can keep one alive in such a situation is your moral compass. What are you fighting for? And now I'm such a small player in that game. But this small role that I'm having can save a human life.

And this meant the world to me. This is why I was alone, but I was not lonely. You know, that bombing at the Hebrew University cafeteria, I ate at that cafeteria every single day, and the bomb was probably about three feet away from where I used to sit every time. So there's a, I had left Israel already, but I was a few months away from not being able to have this conversation. That's for sure, because it was right there in the French Hill, right? Yes, yes, yes. Wow.

Brother, I'm so glad that you are here and we are talking. I'm so glad that, you know, that eventually. Initially, Hamas military wing in the West Bank, the head of the Hamas military wing, which was Ibrahim Hamid. There was a very sophisticated operation, you know, that I brought him back to justice, you know, and I say it proudly. Of course, it's a team effort. But without the intelligence that somehow existence gave me, we would have not arrested him in time.

So now you tell him, it's like, thank God, you know, I'm alive. All that he was like, thank God, you know, it's like many others are alive because this man was brought to justice and was put in prison. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Masab Hassan, the Green Prince. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you've just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors for yourself and support us along the way, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode.

is also in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Masab Hassan, the Green Prince. You knew you were pushing your luck and it would eventually get caught, right? So the Sheenbet, the IDF, they launched this massive, I guess, fake, but also totally real operation to arrest you. And the way you tell it in the book is they set up this operation to pretend to try and catch you. And it was like this massive special forces operation.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? This is like the wildest thing that must, I mean, you have a lot of wild stories, but this is up there for sure. Gosh, man, you're opening those files from many years ago. I don't realize sometimes how old I am, you know? Yeah, well, you and me both, man. You and me both. So basically, there was an operation, and I had access to five suicide bombers, potential suicide bombers. I knew their location and it was a trick that I played on them somehow to just suspend their operation for about 48 hours and they somehow listened to me.

Somehow listened to me and I put them in a safe house and the Israeli prime minister decided within 30 minutes to bomb the entire building and just kill everybody in it. I did not want to be part of killing or assassinations because my motive was not revenge. So I told my handler, listen, I don't want them dead. But he said, if you don't want them dead, they will mention your name during the interrogation and truly like assassinating them is the best way to keep your cover. If they mention your name, you're done because you have to go to prison for a long period of time. And we cannot put you in prison for a long period of time. And if you don't go to prison, how can you explain this to your parents and to the other movement?

They would know that you are the one who give the information. So this is why it was very difficult. And they had to orchestrate one of the biggest plays, you know, to get me out of the situation, but also respect my request that I don't want them to be killed. They were just, by the way, 19 to 21-year-old young teenagers, basically. They didn't know what they were doing. So they decided to arrest them instead of assassinating them. And what they were afraid of happened.

One of them during the interrogation, in the first couple of days in the interrogation, he mentioned my name, that I was the one who helped them and gave them the house and give them the gun, which was, you know, basically one of the tricks that I used to get into their world. You gave them guns? That was the trick? It's funny. I gave them a handgun and I took a car full of explosives in return. It's a good trade, I think. I don't know. It was a craziest trade because on one hand, I told them you cannot move around in the city

full of intelligence services, full of army, full of IDF, Palestinian Authority, stolen car for explosives. So I made it about their safety and I made it about the plan and what's the right thing to do. So I told them, listen, I keep the car, I put it in a safe place. And here's my gun. So I just hand them my handgun. And I say you just use this in case you need something. To defend yourself, you need a gun.

You don't need a car full of explosives. And they kind of like the idea. And now I keep them on a leash because if they go with a car, they might find someone else to help them or just decide suddenly to just blow it up and it's over. You just hear about it in the news. But if they're explosive, they have to come back to them. And this is how we got in trouble.

I received a phone call from my handler and say, you know, we have a situation. And you need to go under the ground, like, right away. I was like, what's going on? He said, they mentioned your name. And he said, we prevent them from visiting any attorney or any family member or anybody. So the people don't know that your name has been mentioned. This is what usually prisoners do. if they mention some member of the movement name during interrogation, they would tell the lawyer

that we mentioned the name of this activist. So the lawyer would go to their family and say, hey, your son's name has been mentioned. It's just a matter of time before they are arrested. So now they don't want Hamas or the outside world to know that my name was mentioned. First thing, they deported one of them, which was a Jordanian national back to Jordan, immediately. This type of terrorists, potential suicide bomber with explosives on them, they would spend at least 15 years in Israeli prison. So now they sent one of them immediately back to Jordan, deported, no trial, nothing. So his friends were like immediately, how come he's just free? Two days later, you know, back with his family.

And the kid was just celebrating with his family, you know, not knowing the trap that he's in. So everybody in his own group thought that he was the traitor. So that was the first step. But that's not enough that we framed someone else. The second one, basically we totally framed an innocent person. The second step was to make me into a wanted person. So I could not go to prison at that time because I was part of so many operations and the relationships that we worked so hard to establish them with other terrorists, with other groups, with other dangerous people. To put me in prison, this means that we will lose all the leads that we have established over two years or so.

So I had to be still in the field. They said the best way is to make you into a wanted person, but they wanted that to be as real as. it can get. So again, as I told you, only a handful people in the Israeli intelligence knew about my existence. So the army, the special forces, you know, something similar to the Navy SEALs in the United States, they don't know about my existence. So now those people have to act like they are going after an enemy. So the Israeli intelligence give their own army and the special forces is the most wanted man's whereabouts, which in that case mean. We want him alive or dead, shoot him, don't hesitate.

You know, he's a very dangerous man. He's affiliated with suicide bombers. And that's like the truth that they wanted the army to know. So when the army came in, they come with, first of all, undercover agents, 50 of them or more, all just like civilian Palestinians in civilian cars. Palestinian plates surrounded the area. Before they got the okay to attack the house where I was supposed to be, you know, my family's house, I got 30 seconds to get out of the house and make it look like an escape. So I got out of the house. The special forces on the ground got the green light from the intelligence that I am inside the house still. So the special forces come. About five minutes out of that circle, they were like a punch of Mercava tanks. You know, the Mercava tank. It's like, I think, 40 or 50 tons of steel. And when this thing turns on, the engine is much higher than an airplane's engine.

And when you have 10 of them storming into the city, it's like an earthquake happening. So those were about like five minutes away. And they start driving towards the city center to my family's house. So it's like all this orchestration, it becomes like a war zone right now. Yeah. So my family right now is cut up in the fire. My family inside the house. And of course, my handler said, don't worry.

We'll do everything within our ability that, you know, your family wouldn't be hurt. But we want this to be real. Like, we want you to look like a real wanted. Otherwise, Hamas will kill you. They came into the house. In the speakers, they called for my name. And of course, I'm not at the house, but the special forces have reliable, intelligence that I'm inside the house. They don't know that they are also manipulated by their own

intelligence. So when I don't surrender, they evacuate my family first. Then they get the green light from my handlers to shoot the house. You know, they launch a missile into the house and they spray bullets like all over the wall. Like in my room, I had about like 150 bullets just in the wall. And the militia groups right now, they start gathering and surrounding the special forces, creating like another ring of fire and shooting at the forces and the forces shooting back at them. This is what brought the choppers. It became a war zone.

Everybody in the city knew that I'm a dead man. And my father, the Hamas leadership, even the suicide bombers that I was helping, everybody knew that I was in a deep trouble and Israel is not tolerating. And that gave me actually a very good cover in the city, but I had to act like a wanted man. I could not just like, you know, become a wanted man and just lead a normal life. So I had to actually become a wanted man. So Hamas was actually, my father was very afraid for my life. And through his connections with the movement, he arranged with the Hamas people to give me some of their safe houses and hang out with other wanted people that we were looking for for a long time.

So I end up hanging out at all the safe houses and knowing the locations of the most wanted people that we wanted. And this is how we cracked down the entire Hamas military wing in the West Bank responsible for 90% of the suicide bomb and attacks during the second person in the FDefat. So that was the play. Wow. Wow. That's a dangerous play, though, right? Like, you're almost getting a missile shot at you, or at least almost hit you. It did get shot at you.

There's bullets all over the place, but then you get this street cred as like a badass terrorist, and then they're schlepping you around to all of the safe houses, to hobnob with all the most wanted. I mean, it's absolutely wild. I wonder, though, you were already disillusioned with Hamas, but there's this one instance in the book, or one incident in the book, where it really looks like things went south. Hamas blew up a bunch of their own people at a rally and then blamed Israel. It was just a, they were showing off with, like, a rocket launcher or something. like that. What happened there? I mean, this whole thing is just such a cluster.

Look, Hamas, other terrorist movements, Palestinian movements, Palestinian leadership throughout this conflict. They never take responsibility for any of their actions. They want Israel to be responsible for all the problem in the Middle East. And this is to have a common external enemy that you export your internal crisis on has been the method. This is the mechanism and this is how they have survived so far. Hamas people used the Gaza children as human sheep. Then they blamed their blood on Israel when they had even an incident where their own explosives blow up and kill Palestinian people. Of course they couldn't be brave and honest enough to say, we did it. They wanted Israel to take responsibility for it. But how can we expect

from such dark organization without morality? And it's beyond just nationalism. It's like, okay, many people in the United States, especially like, you know, my friends in the liberal camp, also is like, you know, they went like, okay, justice for Palestinians. And we say it's like, define Palestine. Define Palestinian. You know, there is no such a thing. You know, we're talking about dozens of of rival parties, you know, layer upon a layer of darkness, of confusion, of ignorance, and you know who is crushed in between, the children. And all the Palestinian factions, with no exception, religious or secular, conservative or liberal, all of them put nationalism ahead of the children.

And as long as they are thinking this way, they should be held up. accountable. They should be countered by any means. And this is what Hamas is doing. You know, we cannot say, it's like, okay, Palestinians. No, the children of Gaza are helpless. Hamas store missiles at schools, at hospitals, at mosques, and lunch rallies, you know, with their homemade, kitchen-made missiles among thousands, hundreds of thousands of civilians. What's that? And we, When a mistake happens, they rush to blame Israel. That was like really taking it too far. Just man up for one time in your history.

You know, just take responsibility and say it was us. But they come out. They come out. I know you ended up leaving the Shinbet, the Israeli intelligence service. What happened? When was enough enough? You just decided one day, hey, look, I've had it with this crap. I mean, how did that thought process come about?

As I told you, this world of intelligence. the world of deception, also it's not an easy world. Anybody, whether you work for FBI, for CIA, for KGB, for whatever it is. It's a very dangerous world. They call it intelligence world, and yes, there is intelligence to it, but it's a human intelligence the end of the day. And I think intelligent people eventually will find the higher intelligence, and higher intelligence means leave, get out.

But when you try to get out, they have something to lose, you know, because if you still, an asset, if you still has juice in you, they want to squeeze you to the last drop, you know, excuse me for the expression, but this is what they want to do. I wanted to be the person I wanted to be. And that was not possible by just living a secret life with many secret identities and so many masks and hoods and all that. And this is when I felt the necessity, you know, for me to get out. Because, honestly, I cannot stop human madness. I cannot go in the head of every Palestinian or every terrorist and make them see the truth that I see. I cannot. If I see the truth, I needed to work on myself. I needed to transform myself.

I needed to actually emancipate myself from all the things that I had witnessed, from all the experiences that I had. that requires more freedom, that requires honesty, that requires to be truthful to who I am. Many people, of course, you know, they tell me, why don't you just talk more about your adventure and about the life? You save many human lives. I think it's like, what's the point, you know, if you save so many human lives and you lose yourself in the process, you know? You know, first we need to be able to actually help ourselves, you know, then we can help others. Even if we had an impact only on one person, we already have contributed a great deal towards humanity and towards consciousness. Tell me about the last conversation you had with your father when you told him about working for Israel.

I wanted him to hear from me. And again, in my silence in San Diego, California, back in 2007 and 2008, I decided that I wanted to document my journey. at that time I didn't know that I could write a book. I didn't know that you could actually profit from a book or you could make money from a book, which many people, you know, accuse me of creating a controversy and I was like, for the sake, profit. For me, it was like I have to document this story in case an accident happens to me, in case I die, in case I get assassinated, you know, I don't know. Maybe the Israelis come after me.

I have lots of government and state secrets. maybe terrorist groups would come after me, maybe just simply an accident will happen, you know. And I don't want all this experience to just go in vain, you know. I wanted to be documented somehow, you know, for maybe the next generation to read, you know. I didn't think it would be published. But I wanted my father to hear from me, from my mouth, you know, not from my book, not from others. And I wanted him to know the truth. So I told him, you know, I didn't know how I managed actually to tell him, you know.

It's just crazy, you know. And what a shock. You know, I was his right hand. I was his oldest son. I was his friend. A most trusted person that he had in his circle. I basically betrayed him. I betrayed him in order to save him.

There was no way around it, you know. There was no way around him to save him from himself. He would have been assassinated a hundred times now. All his friends at the same level of the, organization, all of them are gone, all of them are assassinated. None of them survived there. The Israeli politicians wanted him dead, and the army wanted him dead. The only thing that was stopping him from dying was me. Whether if he knows it or not, whether if he will recognize it ever, it really doesn't matter. For me, he was my father and I did not want him to die. I wanted

him to know. On one hand, I betrayed you, but on the other hand, I saved you. And this is what makes it very, very hard for him. In fact, this is what makes it very hard for the Palestinian people. First of all, I was not against the Palestinian people, and I still not against the Palestinian people. I'm against stupid ideas and the national ambitions and the sick beliefs. I am against all that, and I have no regrets to go against it. And I wanted to tell him personally, and that happened. And a few months later, you know, the book came out. It had more details in it, you know, of how things happened.

It was a great disappointment for him, you know. But the truth is, by the way, I gave him the option to this on me. Because I understood, even though he's a great leader of the society, if he keep giving me cover in that culture, he would be participating with me. So I told him this only. And he told me this is not an option. He told me you will always be my son, no matter what, you're part of me, you're my liver, you're my kidney, you're my heart, you're my soul, you're everything, I cannot disown.

The eve of publishing the book, I heard from the news, his statement. He made a statement and he disowned me from his prison. So this gives you just another idea, you know, of like where his heart is and where his mind is and the vast ocean in between. but our greed and our political ambition continues to divide us if it was able to divide my father and me and we really loved each other, you know,

and I am sure that we still do you know, love each other and the bond between us cannot be broken. But still, for the public image, you know, he has to go and tell the whole public, this is not my son anymore, I don't know him, you know, kill him if you want. How could you say that?

And if you were forced to say this, What does that tell you about the nature of this entire conflict? You know? What about unity? What about love? What about understanding? Will ever there be peace in the Middle East? If this is what happens, you know, for a father-son relationship.

Masab, thank you so much. This has been really an amazing conversation. You're really open, forthright, and I'm glad we're friends. I have one final question for you, though. They blasted Leonard Cohen all the time very loud when you were in prison. now you tell me your favorite artist was Leonard Cohen. How is that possible? You were 24-7 Leonard Cohen blasting in prison.

They're torturing you. Now you listen to it in your car while you're driving around. I don't understand this. Of all the things you've told me, this is the hardest for me to get through my head. Well, you know, so many of my friends criticize me. And I was like, okay, oh, very depressing. To listen to Leonard Cohen. He's actually not my favorite artist, but because, you know, how he was introduced

to me is like his thing. voice and loudspeakers and I was sitting on a small chair, you know, being tortured in Al-Mascobia. This is like the slaughterhouse in West Jerusalem. And Leonard Quinn's playing again and again and again, first we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. You know, but I had no idea what he was saying, because I did not understand English at that time. And I didn't even know who was the artist. So after I was released from prison, I kept looking, you know, and I could not Fine. How would I know? Who to ask? I'm not going to go back to Almascobia. What was the torture song that we were listening to?

Yeah. Can I borrow that CD? And one day I was listening to the radio and Leonard Cohen's song came up and I started shouting out loud like, anybody knows who the singer is the singer? Who is the singer? A friend of mine mentioned, he said, this is Leonard Cohen. Okay. And I took the name. I wrote it down. I was afraid that I would forget it. And I go and buy all his work, trying to find that song. And this is how I got introduced to Leonard Cohen. You know, you'd think you would have been staying away from that music. But I guess if you've got an it, you know, a mental itch, you got to scratch it, right?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Massad, thank you once again, man. This has been really, really an interesting conversation. Again, thanks for being so open. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're in the middle of nowhere. It was hard to track you down, but again, I'm glad we're friends now, and I'm glad I got this story on tape.

Thank you, Jordan. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, and best of luck. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before we get into that, here's a preview of my conversation with Dr. Matthew Walker, one of the top experts on sleep. We're talking about why we dream, what happens when we sleep, why chronic lack of sleep and driving while tired is more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol. This is one of our most popular episodes when it aired, and I think you're going to love

if you haven't heard it already. Here's a quick listen. Sleep is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. Sleep is a life support system. It is mother nature's best effort yet at immortality. And the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is now having a catastrophic impact on our health, our wellness, as well as the safety in the education of our children. It is a silent sleep loss epidemic and I would contend that it is fast-beast. becoming the greatest public health challenge that we now face in the 21st century. The evidence is very clear that when we delay school start times, academic grades increase,

behavioral problems decrease, truancy rates decrease, psychological and psychiatric issues decrease. But what we also found, which we didn't expect in those studies, is the life expectancy of students increased. So if our goal as educators truly is to educate and not risk lives in the process, then we are failing our children in the most spectacular manner with this incessant model of early school start times. And by the way, 7.30 a.m. for a teenager is the equivalent for an adult waking up at 4.30 or 3.30 in the morning. If you're trying to survive or regularly getting five hours of sleep or less, you have a 65% risk of dying at any moment in time. When you wake up the next day, you have a revised mind-wide web of association.

a new associative network, a rebooted iOS that is capable of defining remarkable insights into previously impenetrable problems. And it is the reason that you have never been told to stay awake on a problem. Instead, you're told to sleep on a problem. For more on sleep, including why we dream and how we can increase the quality of our sleep, check out episode 126 with Dr. Matthew Walker, here on the Jordan Harbors, your show. Thanks to Masa for coming on the show. This is a tough one for him to do in just so many ways. Just the memories are tough. The logistics were tough. The time commitment was tough. I really thank him for coming and helping here today. Israeli soldiers came to his house when he was a kid to talk

to his dad for five minutes, but he was gone for years at a time. It's so unfair, so terrible for a kid. And when his dad was in prison, his uncles wouldn't help financially. He had to sell pastries to construction workers that his mom made, and then his uncles made him go home and stop doing that because it brought shame on the family. So this is a kid that has had a rough life, rough upbringing just from the get-go. He does have some really interesting stories

in the book and the movie as well. He told me offline about a story when he was in prison himself that there's a TV in there, and you have to hold this rope that slams aboard over the TV when women without headscarves are on the TV. So basically more than half the TV shows,

commercials, everything. They slam this board over the television so the guys in this prison, who are hardcore Islamic a lot of the time, don't see a woman without a headscarf. And of course, the way he tells it, has a lot of humor to it. He told me also how the Hamas leaders communicate in prison. They take bread, they wad it up, and they jam messages into these breadballs and throw them over the fence because the prison is divided into different zones for security reasons and to keep information compartmentalized, among other reasons.

I can vouch for this, that enmity runs so high between Israelis and Palestinians. Once I was at a restaurant in Egypt in a popular location for Israelis to go on vacation, this is about 20 years ago now before the second uprising. The waiter came to our table and said that he was sorry he made us wait, but he wanted to go buy some medicine to put in the food of the Israelis at the table behind us. It's something that would make them sick. So we immediately got up and we warned. them and then the waiter got so pissed at us. He chased us outside. The Israelis were a couple and the guy

was some kind of soldier and he also spoke Arabic and just de-escalated the whole situation. It was scary, but I just couldn't let a couple on vacation get poisoned at the table next to us. I don't know. Maybe I'm the weirdo. Also the bombings that Masab had talked about that are in the book that are in the movie. French Hill, I used to live on the French Hill. That bombing was where I live. The Dolphinarium was a club I went to multiple times with friends, so I could have been there. Hebrew University cafeteria bomb that I mentioned during the show was right next to the counter where I used to sit every single day. So this is just very close to home for me as well. And some of you are inevitably going to ask, why is he called the green prince? This was his Israeli security codename.

Sheenbet is the name of that service. They called him the green prints, of course, because green, the colors of Hamas, and the prince because he is the son of the leader. So it's pretty obvious. I kind of hope that wasn't actually his code name in any documents, because it seems so obvious that you could put that together and find out who that actually was. We didn't really get into why he left and how, but for those curious, he was getting sick with the fighting and the factions and the bickering over the dead and who belonged to which faction. And also Saddam Hussein, when he was still around, paid $35 million some dollars to encourage people to become suicide bombers. He just got tired of the corruption, tired of the violence, and he decided to escape. He

originally wasn't even going to be allowed to leave, but Israel let him leave to Europe. He fled to the United States, ended up getting deported thanks to the security services trying to poison his asylum application, and now he lives in an undisclosed location. But we have a lot to be thankful for with Masab. He helped capture Hamas leader that was responsible for upwards of 80 deaths. He foiled a lot of terrorist plots inside and outside of Israel. And I'm telling you, Massab's story is even crazier. If you're interested, the book is good. We'll link it in the show notes. The movie is even more insane and covers a lot that's not in the book.

We'll link to that in the show notes as well. If you like spy stories, if you're interested in this kind of terrorism stuff, this is at the top of the heap in many, many ways. And again, I'm very thankful to my friend Massab Hassan for coming on the show here today. But this was very long in the making, people. You have no idea. The things I do for you. Links to everything in the show notes, worksheets in the show notes,

transcripts in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel. You can find our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Let me know what you think of this one. I worked a lot on this one. This was a huge pain in the butt. I would never normally do this for any show, but I had to get this story out there. No one else has.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me on LinkedIn. Now I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships, using systems, using tiny habits, using some stuff from some of those espionage and spy networks, that I've been hanging around lately. That stuff is all in the six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty, people.

This show is created in association with Podcast One. And, of course, my amazing team, that's Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

If you know someone interested in these types of stories or you think this is just going to wow them, definitely share this episode with them. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of the show. So please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time.

If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not.

The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work,

itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.