Israeli officials are facing backlash after years of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu quietly allowing Hamas to remain in power.
But reporting in the New York Times has revealed that Netanyahu’s government was more hands-on about helping Hamas: they helped a Qatari diplomat bring suitcases of cash into Gaza, indirectly boosting the militant organization, according to the report.
The calculus — the Times reported on Sunday, citing Israeli officials, Netanyahu’s critics, and the man’s own reported statements — was to keep Hamas strong enough to counteract the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, allowing Netanyahu to avoid a two-state peace solution and keep both sides weak.
Israeli security officials got it wrong; they didn’t think Hamas was capable, or even interested, in launching a large attack against the Jewish state.
if you’re american, that’s suitcases of your money going to terrorists because the corrupt right wing ruling authority of israel would sacrifice unarmed civilians in both israel and palestine to avoid a peace deal. the israeli government is not just rejecting individual proposed peace deals but sabotaging any attempt at peace because they need constant war and fear to stay in power. Bibi Netanyahu will kill your baby himself with his hands if he thinks it will help him remain in power. He’s a war criminal who deserves the Hague.
between this, the pullout in afghanistan and henry kissinger’s entire career, I have to wonder if there’s a terrorist anywhere on earth that isn’t shooting american guns and spending american money.
If imperialism was a timeshare…
You think I as an American wanted this money to go there? NOOOO! I did not.
What we want is just not something out government considers to be relevant. Since the cold war they’ve been operating on the principle that they know better than us stupid poors and that we should be grateful for the evil they do in our name. It’s very “a few good men”.
Americans meanwhile: “Hey, um we’re all going bankrupt and COL is insane and student loan payments just started back up again and my mortgage is up for renewal and no one can afford to receive medical attention, but keep donating billions of dollars to a country that doesn’t need donations!”
To an apartheid regime actively murdering civilians through collective punishment
Red welfare states keep electing Rs and wages there suck. The conservative extreme court blocked student loan forgiveness but Biden has managed to get an unbelievable amount of student loan relief but the MSM doesn’t give him credit for his wins.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Biden has managed to get an unbelievable amount of student loan relief
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Israeli security officials got it wrong; they didn’t think Hamas was capable, or even interested, in launching a large attack against the Jewish state.
I wholeheartedly don’t think they cared. Netanyahu and the other far right Knesset officials clearly knew about the impending attack, clearly they might as well have killed those people themselves.
Fascists allowing a couple of “common people” from “their side” to die in order to open the door for more violent action by said Fascists is just tradition.
The New York Times is late to this party. We’ve known about it since 2019.
Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
The symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, The Hill, October 22, 2023
Netanyahu’s policy, however, was in direct opposition to most of the Israeli defense and security establishment, which viewed cooperation with the PA to be in Israel’s security interest. Fans of the Netflix series “Fauda” will recognize that cooperation. Most security experts felt the PA needed to be strengthened, not weakened.
Since returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu made no secret of his desire to keep Hamas and the PA apart for his own political purposes. For example, in 2017, the PA and Hamas were negotiating a possible takeover by the PA of civilian control of the Gaza Strip. Even though the United States and Egypt supported this reconciliation, Netanyahu was adamantly opposed — lest it empower the PA.
Why Netanyahu helped fund Hamas and how that backfired for Israel, India Today, November 1, 2023
“Whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu as saying in 2019.
Prince Turki al-Faisal’s accusation against Israel comes days after a report by Reuters, citing a source privy to the matter, stated that Qatar’s financial aid to the Palestinian families in Gaza passes through Israel. The funds are transferred electronically from Qatar to Israel, following which Israeli and United Nations (UN) officials hand-carry the same over the border to the Gaza Strip.
How Netanyahu’s Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel, CBC News, October 28, 2023
Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that “if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas’s strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister.”
In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu’s “strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.”
Netanyahu’s current finance minister, West Bank settler Belazel Smotrich, explained the approach to Israel’s Knesset channel in 2015: “Hamas is an asset, and (Palestinian Authority leader) Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden.”
“But each time Netanyahu was asked, ‘Why don’t you negotiate with Abbas,’ he would say, ‘I can’t negotiate with a Palestinian Authority that doesn’t represent all Palestinians.’ And so he would use Hamas and this division to justify his absolute objection to any negotiated peace agreement.”
“Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas, as though it was an environmental organization. This is a policy of submission to terror,” he said, adding that Israel was paying Hamas “protection money” to maintain the calm.
The prime minister also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Saved as a reference!
Wasn’t this so they can justify not doing a 2statesolution on the world stage?
Which apparently Hamas was fine with.
Is hamas fine with a 2 state solution? I thought the issue was that Palestine was beginning to concede one so net@yahoo propped up hamas so they can keep fighting
In 2018, Netanyahu’s administration came up with a plan, according to the New York Times. As part of a peace agreement with Hamas, Qatar would bring millions into Gaza to distribute to Gazan families, the outlet reported. (…)
Though the money was meant for Gazan civilians, Western intelligence determined that Hamas was taking money from the funds to use themselves, the outlet reported.
Let’s take this at face value. 1) Why has Israeli media decried all sort of help towards Gaza Palestinians as “financing terrorism” if Netanyahu was willing to send them money himself? 2) If the Israeli government wanted to provide financial support to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, why not make the peace deal public? Why not establish criteria of transparency to make sure that the money got where it should have? 3) If you’re willing to send money to Gaza, why not send the required supplies yourself, when you’re the main country blockading it?
If we accept the narrative of the article, it is like Israel wanted the money to be misused.
Though the money was meant for Gazan civilians, Western intelligence determined that Hamas was taking money from the funds to use themselves, the outlet reported.
Yep, sure totally meant for civilians guys, wads of money in suitcases. Nothing to see here, a totally legit way of sending funds to civilians.
The US did that with pallets of cash in Afghanistan, but that was explicitly money for warlords. No one tried to hide it. It was completely different.
“I learned it from you”
I thought that was Iraq under W?
That’s US taxpayer money. Mazel tov!
This isn’t a new discovery, is it? People already know about this, it’s been like this for years. This has always been one of Netanyahu’s many criticisms, even at home.
Reporting on corruption, especially when fatal, needs to be repeated for as long as people are unaware.
It’s important to make the distinction between the Israeli religious authority funneling money to Hamas to create a political antagonist to the PLO/PA in the '90-'00s, and the object of this article.
Then there’s money coming from all over the world as support to Palestine. They need this money to buy food/commodities from the rest of the world. Israel has always overseen this flow of money, just like they and Egypt keep watch over which goods enter and leave.
This money was always passed to the PA as executive government of Palestine. But since 2006, Hamas took control of Gaza. So the aid money goes to Hamas. And because Hamas can’t have a bank account, it’s brought in cash.
How would the world have reacted if Israel had blocked aid money from entering Gaza since 2006? How many Gazans would have died?
Right, but Gaza needs aid because Israel has blockaded Gaza for decades (which Israel has claimed was an act of war when Egypt blockaded Israel). If Israel lifted the blockade, then they wouldn’t need to worry about funneling aid to Gaza.
Wasn’t al qaeda also funded by US back in its early days?
Pretty sure every terrorist group has US funding. All those caves in Iraq/Afghanistan were built by the Bin Ladens with funding from the US just to be bombed 20 years later.
It’s from the U.S. tyranny playbook: Allow a tragedy to happen, and then you get the support of the people to do whatever it takes to stop terrorism such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
As part of a peace agreement with Hamas, Qatar would bring millions into Gaza to distribute to Gazan families, the outlet reported.
Israel should have allowed this!
It’s easy to see why, neither Hamas or Israel care about Palestinians, yet Israel can still gaslight about Palestinians essentially being Hamas. Even a lot of Palestinians are brainwashed themselves into supporting them. This grander version of the agent provocateur is all the fashion in neocolonialism, and Israel, capital of the suddenly materializing Russian Jewish ties that allow for Israeli nationality for oligarchs, is itself is playing both US and Russia on this.
wtaf
It’s not necessarily new information, just that the NYT has conglomerated everything we already knew into a single article.
But it’s been pretty well known that Netanyahu and Israel were responsible for Hamas existing and being funded in the first place, in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority that was actually making progress toward a two state solution, which Israel really hasn’t been in support of for decades, but had to pretend they supported to stay the “good guys”.
Are you surprised the genocidal regime that has been slowly eradicating a whole people for the past 70+ years could go this far?
who cares, that’s too late now
now Hamas will get deleted off the solar system
Netanyahu might be replaced and even if a progressive PM is in power, it’s not like Israel will let terrorists occupy gaza again, it’s going to take years before gaza becomes safe again, it’s going to be occupied by Israel first, and maybe the UN later.
there’s just no way Israel will be fine with terrorists after october 7.
