Famed “Son of Hamas” Mosab Hassan Yousef, the 33-year-old son of one of the terror organization’s leaders and a former Israeli spy, told a largely Jewish audience in Montreal that he informed on his family and associates in order to protect his own people.

“If I felt for a second that I was betraying my people, I would not have been able to do it,” Yousef told reporters after the more-than 1,000-strong event at the Crown Plaza Hotel hosted by Chabad-Lubavitch of the Town and its directors, Rabbi Moshe and Dina Krasnanski. “I felt I was saving Palestinian lives, as much as those of Israelis.”

Yousef acknowledged that he is a marked man, and that if he entered an Arab or Muslim country, he would likely be summarily executed. Still, he maintained that the best thing for the Palestinians would be the dismantling of Hamas and the renouncing of terror.