Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef

from talking to others who had been inside Israeli prisons that Palestinians weren’t always treated as harshly as I had been. Nor were they all interrogated at such lengths.
    What I didn’t know at the time was that Hassan Salameh had been arrested about the same time I was.
    Salameh had carried out numerous attacks in revenge for master bomb maker Yahya Ayyash’s assassination. And when the Shin Bet heard me talking to Ibrahim on my dad’s cell phone about getting weapons, they assumed I wasn’t working alone. In fact, they were sure I had been recruited by Al-Qassam.
    Finally, Loai said, “This is the last time I will make this offer, then I will be gone. I have a lot to do. You and I can resolve this situation right now. We can work something out. You do not have to go through more interrogation. You’re just a kid, and you need help.”
    Yes, I had wanted to be dangerous, and I had dangerous ideas. But clearly, I wasn’t very good at being a radical. I was tired of the little plastic chair and smelly hoods. The Israeli intelligence was giving me more credit than I deserved. So I told him the whole story, leaving out the part about my wanting the weapons so I could kill Israelis. I told him I had bought the weapons to help my friend, Ibrahim, protect his family.
    “So there are weapons now, I see.”
    “Yes, there are weapons.”
    “And where are those weapons?”
    I wished they had been at my house because I would gladly have surrendered them to the Israelis. But now I had to involve my cousin.
    “Okay, here’s the thing. Somebody that has nothing to do with this has the weapons.”
    “Who is he?”
    “My cousin Yousef has them. He is married to an American, and they have a new baby.” I hoped they would take his family into account and just go get the weapons, but things are never that easy.
    Two days later, I heard scuffling on the other side of the wall in my cell. I leaned down and toward the rusted-out pipe that connected my cell with the one next to it.
    “Hello,” I called. “Is anybody there?”
    Silence.
    And then . . .
    “Mosab?”
    What?! I couldn’t believe my ears. It was my cousin!
    “Yousef? Is that you?”
    I was so excited to hear his voice. My heart started beating wildly. It was Yousef! But then he started cursing me.
    “Why did you do this? I have a family. . . .”
    I started to cry. I had wanted so much for a human being to talk to while I was in prison. Now a member of my own family sat just on the other side of the wall, and he was yelling at me. And then it hit me: the Israelis were listening; they had put Yousef right next to me so they could listen to our conversation and find out whether I was telling the truth. That was fine by me. I had told Yousef I wanted the guns to protect my family, so I wasn’t worried.
    Once the Shin Bet realized that my story was true, they moved me to another cell. Alone once again, I thought about how I had screwed up my cousin’s life, how I had hurt my family, and how I had thrown away twelve years of school—and all because I trusted a jerk like Ibrahim!
    I stayed in that cell for weeks with no human contact. The guards slid food under the door but never said a word to me. I even began to miss Leonard Cohen. I had nothing to read, and my only sense of passing time was the daily rotation of colored food trays. Nothing to do but think and pray.
    Finally one day I was again taken to an office, and again, Loai was waiting to talk to me.
    “If you decide to cooperate with us, Mosab, I will do my best to see that you don’t have to spend more time in prison.”
    A moment of hope. Maybe I could make him think I was going to cooperate and then he would let me out of here.
    We talked a little about general things. Then he said, “What if I offer you a job with us? Israeli leaders are sitting down with Palestinian leaders. They have fought for a long time, and at the end of the day they are shaking hands and having dinner