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Doesn't Israel Fund Hamas? No. This is an unfounded allegation made by the CIA. Historical
and Investigative Research, Re-issued 8 August 2014 (first published 15 June
2005); by Francisco Gil-White For
those who study the social transmission of information, any statements,
ideas, habits, beliefs (etc.) transmitted socially are ‘memes.’ We’re
interested to learn by what mechanisms memes mutate, why certain memes become
widespread (populate many human heads) while others go extinct, and also why
certain memes become ‘sticky’—they stay
widespread even in the face of challenges from competing memes. In this
way, we hope to get a grip on the laws of History. For
a certain kind of empirical study of memetic evolution, it is very useful to
know when and where a meme first appeared. Usually this is impossible. But
every now and then a researcher gets lucky. In
the wake of the recent armed hostilities between Hamas and Israel I have been
getting emails from people who believe that the Israeli government created
Hamas, funds Hamas, and controls Hamas. I have seen the claim on TV and on
the radio. I want to be tickled, because I know where this meme originated.
But I can’t laugh—this is too serious. So
I got serious. I decided to dust off, revise, update, and comment on some
research I did years ago, back in 2005, when a reader sent me the following
query: “Dear Mr. Gil-White, Please walk me through this
article. Do you concur that it is a foregone conclusion that
Israel founded and continues to fund Hamas? M. Stehly” The
reader was referring to a United Press International
(UPI) wire from 2002 that alleges that Israel funds Hamas. This
is the source for the now widespread meme that Israel supposedly created and
controls Hamas. Below
I will examine this UPI wire and its ‘sources.’
Then I will have some comments about why this meme is so widespread and
apparently so ‘sticky.’ [NOTE: This article replaces the 2005 article.] UPI’s
‘sources’ Here
is what the UPI wire says at the top, by way of
summary: “Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly
combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence
officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect
financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.” The
above—take good note—does not say that Israel created and to this day controls Hamas, so
the current widespread meme is a mutation from this original one. But let’s
consider the original claim, as it stands. Did Israel give “direct and
indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years”? What
is UPI’s evidence? The
UPI wire reports what “several current and former
US Intelligence officials” said. I shall now reproduce every phrase in the UPI wire that refers to one of its claimed sources so
that we may consider them. I
start by grouping five that fit into the same broad category. 1) “...according
to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” 2) “a
former senior CIA official” 3) “One
U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named” 4) “According
to U.S. administration officials” 5) “a
U.S. government official who asked not to be named” I realize
that unnamed sources have now become commonplace in the Western mainstream
media, which breezily expect us to accept claims on their sheer
‘institutional authority’ or ‘prestige.’ And I realize that plenty of
well-educated, university-trained Westerners accept this with docility. But
what is the difference, really, between this state of affairs and accepting
someone’s alleged mystical inspiration or divine communication? If claims
cannot be verified, the media is a Church and we its faithful believers. It’s
idolatry, really. Next, 6) “Israel
‘aided Hamas directly...’ said Tony Cordesman,
Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.” At
least here we have a name. Good. The beauty of having a name is that the
credibility of the witness can be investigated. But unless it is investigated, we have no Fourth
Estate. Allow
me a brief digression on this. The press is sometimes called the ‘Fourth
Estate’ because it is considered a key building block of democratic
structure, acting as a check on the other three Estates: Executive,
Legislative, and Judiciary. But the press cannot be a proper check on
government unless it is independent.
If the press simply repeats what government says—especially if they repeat
what the intelligence services
say—we have naught but State propaganda. (And this way lies
totalitarianism.) Cordesman’s employer is
the Center for Strategic and International Studies or CSIS (UPI got
the name wrong), which describes itself as “an independent not-for-profit
organization.”[0] Such outfits
often call themselves ‘private’ policy institutes or think tanks, or else
‘non-governmental’ organizations. All of these qualifiers—‘independent,’
‘private,’ ‘non-governmental’—loudly convey the meaning: not the government. So when UPI quotes Tony Cordesman
it appears as a dutiful Fourth Estate, seeking information from sources outside State officialdom. But
is CSIS really ‘independent’ and ‘non-governmental’? Take a look at Cordesman’s CV: “He frequently acts as a consultant
to the U.S. State Department, Defense Department, and intelligence community
and has worked with U.S. officials on counterterrorism and security areas in a number of Middle East countries. Before joining CSIS, Cordesman served as
director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and as
civilian assistant to the deputy secretary of defense. He directed the
analysis of the lessons of the October War for the secretary of defense in
1974, coordinating the U.S. military, intelligence, and civilian analysis of
the conflict. He also served in numerous other government
positions, including in the State Department and on NATO International Staff.”[1] Cordesman looks the part
of a US Intelligence asset. This goes generally for CSIS itself, chock-full
of creatures of the US foreign policy, military, and intelligence
establishments. The
president and chief executive officer is John J. Hamre,
formerly deputy secretary of defense. And CSIS has a select group of
‘trustees’ and ‘counselors’ including a former secretary of defense (William
S. Cohen), a former assistant secretary of state (Richard Fairbanks), a
former intelligence-committee senator (Sam Nunn, who also chairs the board of
trustees), a former CIA director (James Schlesinger), a general who was
assistant for national security affairs in two administrations (Brent
Scowcroft), a former secretary of defense (Harold Brown), a former US
secretary of labor (William E. Brock), Henry Kissinger, who needs no
introduction, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former
national security advisor in the Carter Administration.[2] This,
folks, is an independent policy
institute, a private think tank, a non-governmental organization... Moving
on: 7) “said
former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro” Again,
a source with a name. Good. But UPI misspelled his name: it is Vincent Cannistraro. Another intelligence asset. And
finally: 8) “According
to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson” A
third source with a name. This is actually “Larry C.
Johnson, a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,
who moved subsequently in 1989 to the U.S. Department of State, where he
served four years as the deputy director for transportation security,
antiterrorism assistance training, and special operations in the
State Department's Office of Counterterrorism.”[3] So,
as UPI aptly summarizes at the top of its wire, the accusation that Israel
funds Hamas is basically one that US
Intelligence is making. I
find that interesting, because this accusation, if widely believed, harms Israel,
so it appears that US Intelligence is waging psychological (a.k.a. political)
warfare against Israel. Is
it wrong for UPI to make this accusation known? Certainly not. But UPI is not
doing its job unless it investigates the
accusation. Firstly, because a free and independent press cannot simply be a
mouthpiece for the government, and secondly, because US Intelligence
personnel, in particular, cannot be trusted. US
Intelligence assets routinely use fake identities and tell lies in order to
obtain information or to influence political outcomes. And they are famous
for ‘covert operations,’ which by definition require lies. As we
have documented elsewhere, the National Security Act of 1947 gave
US Intelligence explicit authority to corrupt and distort the media and
political processes in foreign countries.[4] So they have permission to lie. Besides
gathering information, lying is basically what people in the intelligence
business do. And
given this, if US Intelligence sources make a claim, one should not
automatically believe it. Especially not when US Intelligence is using
Vincent Cannistraro to attack Israel, for HIR has
documented that Cannistraro, one of the top people responsible for creating the
Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, also has a track record of telling
lies that hurt Israel.[5] So perhaps
this accusation about Hamas is part of a broader US Intelligence policy to
conduct psychological warfare against Israel. The real Fourth Estate (HIR) investigates below. Let’s
get to the bottom of this
But
where is the beef? Is there any documentation? And what does the accused
party have to say about it? According
to the journalistic rules of fair play, a major wire service such as UPI,
whose output is used by major mainstream newspapers, TV, and radio outlets
all over the world, after making such a grave accusation as it did, should
have gotten a reaction from the Israeli government. But UPI only pretended
to do this. [Quote from the UPI wire
begins here] “An Israeli defense official was asked if Israel had
given aid to Hamas [and he] said, ‘I am not able to answer that question. I
was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of
interest.’ Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that
Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev,
the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund
‘Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists,’ the
official said he could confirm only that he believed Segev
had served back in 1986. The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its
Web site when asked to comment.” [Quote from the UPI wire
ends here] Where
is the documentation? UPI offers none. The closest thing is a completely
abstract reference (above) to “a report by U.S. officials” that gives us
neither the names of the alleged authors nor the name of the alleged report.
It doesn’t even tell us which US department or agency supposedly produced the
alleged report. But
we are given a name. According to
UPI, the alleged report mentioned an Israeli official—“Yithaq
Segev”—who supposedly confessed to having funded
Hamas. It’s always good to have a name. It gives you something to
investigate, if you wish to try and verify. Is
that what UPI did? Not
exactly. UPI approached a (nameless!) “Israeli defense official” who knew
nothing relevant and explained that this was “not my field of interest.” It’s
almost as if UPI set itself up next to an Israeli defense building and
interviewed—at random—the first person to walk out. What is the point of
this? An
incorrigible cynic may point out that, by doing things this way, UPI achieves
two things: 1) it
states the accusation for the reader: that Gen. Yithaq
Segev confessed to funding “Islamic movements”; and 2) it makes it seem as if the
accusation went unchallenged, and even intimates that this is an official
‘Israeli evasion’ (further strengthened by the Israeli Embassy’s supposed
refusal to comment). If
UPI had really wanted to verify the accusation made by US Intelligence, how
to go about it? This is obvious: interview “Brig. Gen. Yithaq
Segev, the [erstwhile] military governor of
Gaza”—or at least people close to him, whether personally or institutionally. Admittedly,
this is hard to do when you can’t even get the guy’s name right: the military
governor of Gaza was Yitzhak Segev. But
anyway, did you notice the discrepancy? Segev is
supposed to have said that he funded “Islamic movements” (see above). But UPI
has been making a lot of noise about Israel funding Hamas terrorists. But
what’s the difference, right? The
phrase ‘Islamic movements’ easily mutates in the reader’s mind to ‘Islamic
fundamentalists’ and in turn to ‘Hamas terrorists’
(since this is Gaza). So if Segev confessed to
funding ‘Islamic movements’ he basically said Hamas terrorists (didn’t he?). And UPI is saying that he confessed, because the wire puts quotation
marks around “Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and
communists,” meaning that Segev pronounced these
words. Only
one problem: Segev never uttered the phrase ‘Islamic
movements.’ How
do I know this? Because in truth UPI is not getting its information about Segev from “a report by U.S. officials.” Rather, UPI
lifted this from an article published in the Middle East Times, a newspaper owned by the Unification Church,
which also owns UPI.[6] Here
is what the Middle East Times wrote:
Notice,
above, that the phrase “financed the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to
the PLO and communists,” which UPI put in Segev’s
mouth (by surrounding it with quotation marks), is not something Segev said, but rather something that the Middle East Times wrote. What the Middle East Times actually quoted Segev as saying was this: “The Israeli... military government gives [money] to the
mosques.” Now,
consider this. If you want people, through a process of mental mutation, to
end up with ‘Hamas terrorists’ in their heads, what should you prefer to
start them off with: ‘the mosques’ or ‘Islamic movement’? The latter, I
submit. So the Middle East Times distorted
matters in an interesting direction, and then UPI went one better. Fascinating. Now
I must make yet another correction. According to the Middle East Times Segev told the New York Times that he had been
distributing monies in the period “1979-84.” But it is quite impossible that Segev said that, for he spoke to the New York Times in 1981. Anyway,
but now we must get to the bottom of this, and this means reading the NYT article that reported the interview with Segev.[8] It’s
full of surprises. First
of all, Hamas terrorists are nowhere mentioned in the NYT piece. Does
that make sense? It does. The piece is from 1981, and Hamas would not come
into being until 1987.[9] Naturally,
Israel cannot be funding Hamas terrorists that don’t yet exist. Is
it really possible that “current and former U.S. intelligence officials”
don’t understand that? Please. Now
to the main point: What was General Yitzhak Segev
doing? The
year was 1981—the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty had just been signed in 1979.
So the NYT went over to Gaza and interviewed Segev
at length. The military governor of Gaza described the difficult situation
that he was charged with improving: “ ‘For the last
thousand years, all life here [in Gaza] existed without democracy,’ General Segev tried to explain. ‘There are no elections. The
people are afraid of each other like animals. There is a stream supporting
the P.L.O. Many P.L.O. leaders are from here. The father of Abu Jihad (a
leading P.L.O. official) lives here. There is a stream supporting Jordan. The other stream
supports Egypt and supports the peace treaty.’ ” What
was this “stream [that] supports Egypt and supports the peace treaty”? As it
turns out, it was led by some important Muslim religious figures, as the New York Times explained: “The most significant political killing after the signing
of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in March 1979 came three months later, on
June 1, when Sheik Hashim Huzandar,
known as the Imam of Gaza, was killed near his home after leading a
delegation to Cairo to endorse President el-Sadat’s program of peace. He had
been warned. The P.L.O. took responsibility for the murder.” What
is an Imam? “An Imam is an Islamic leadership position. It is
most commonly in the context of a worship leader of a mosque and Muslim
community by Sunni Muslims.”[10] So
in 1981, long before the invention of Hamas, we have that a Muslim religious
figure—of such importance that he was identified with the entire territory
(the Imam of Gaza)—was at the
forefront of the pro-peace movement. For this, he was murdered by the PLO. That’s
an important context, because Segev is supposed to
have said that he was funding mosques.
That is not looking so bad now, is it? So what about that? The
NYT reported that, according to Segev, certain drug
smugglers in Gaza were cooperating with Israeli Intelligence, and for that,
and because drugs are strictly forbidden in Islam, they had probably been
killed by “fanatic religious extremists.” Following this, the New York Times wrote: “But the Islamic fundamentalists are also receiving
some Israeli aid, General Segev said. ‘The Israeli
Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the
mosques,’ explained the general, who was a military attaché at the Israeli
Embassy in Teheran before the Islamic revolution there. The funds are used
for both mosques and religious schools, with the purpose of strengthening a
force that runs counter to the pro-P.L.O. leftists.” Did
you notice? Here we go again... Segev did not say “Islamic fundamentalists are also
receiving some Israeli aid.” That’s the
New York Times putting words in Segev’s mouth. What
did the NYT actually quote Segev as saying? This: “The Israeli... military government gives to the
mosques.” Is
this the same thing as giving aid to “Islamic fundamentalists” or “fanatic
religious extremists”? Obviously not. Especially not when the leading figure
in those mosques, the Imam of Gaza, had just led a delegation to Cairo to
support the peace treaty, for which he then gets murdered by the PLO. In
this context, giving support to the mosques is quite obviously a strategy for
peace. Indeed, funding these
mosques made sense for Menachem Begin’s Israeli
government as a move for “strengthening a force that runs counter to the...
P.L.O.”—for the PLO obviously wanted war. What
Yitzhak Segev stated to the New York Times cannot be interpreted to mean that Israel had a
policy of fomenting Islamist extremism, much less Hamas terrorism. Psychological
warfare
The
prejudice against the Jewish state is so strong that UPI’s entirely unsourced
allegation was quite sufficient to set off a social transmission rampage
that, with a few mutations, convinced large numbers of people that Israel
created and controls Hamas. People
do not acquire ideas in a vacuum—they surround them with explanations. So
once you acquire—on the basis of the presumed ‘authority’ of the mainstream
media and its US Intelligence sources—the meme that Hamas is a creature of
the Israeli government, you need to tell yourself why. Why would the Israeli government do this? To
an innocent mind this might seem like a difficult question to answer, but a
mind already poisoned by antisemitism will have nary a problem and will
quickly think: “Of course, the Israeli government created Hamas to give
itself an excuse to attack Gaza” (of
course, because all that a Jew ever wants is to find ways to murder
innocent Arab children—right?). This is indeed how Israel’s supposed creation
and funding of Hamas is discussed on the internet. And
so the effect is to make ‘the Jews’ guilty of whatever horrors Hamas visits
on the Israeli and Gaza populations. No matter what happens, ‘the Jews’ are
guilty. But
this is not merely antisemitism. Implicit here is also a deep-seated
anti-Arab racism that accords the Arabs no agency whatsoever—and no wits to
boot. Those who believe this tale obviously can’t believe that the Arabs
could set up Hamas and commit the horrors Hamas commits on their own—they
need the Jews to do it for them. And according to this worldview, neither are
the Arabs smart enough to realize that they are being manipulated by their
enemies. Nor can they be supposed to have access to the internet, because
otherwise they would have noticed all of the Westerners who claim that Israel
controls Hamas. Can
you hear the leaders of Hamas laughing? The
Western racist contempt for Arabs condemns them to be victims of Hamas.
Because the suffering of ordinary Arabs is not important to Western ‘bleeding
hearts’—not in itself. It matters only as a tool to attack the people whom
Western so-called ‘progressives’ really care (negatively) about: the Jews.
This is why you scarcely see Westerners protesting the suffering of Arabs when Jews cannot easily be blamed. And
that is why this meme that Israel
created Hamas is so tremendously successful, despite its absurdity: because
it fits so well with the hoary outlook of a civilization—the West—built on
the origin myth where God is murdered by ‘the Jews.’ This old tradition, and
the fear and loathing of Jews that it necessarily teaches and turns into a
diffuse and diaphanous culture, is
the memetic ‘attractor,’ the honey swabbed on the flytrap to which all
antisemitic memes will stick—and stay stuck.
It
works.
Footnotes
and Further Reading [0] http://csis.org/about-us/-brief-history [1] http://csis.org/expert/anthony-h-cordesman [3] Larry
C. Johnson | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Consulted 7 August 2014] [4] “Did the National Security
Act of 1947 destroy freedom of the press? The red pill...”; Historical and
Investigative Research - 3 Jan 2006; by Francisco Gil-White [5] “The mainstream Western media loves Raymond
McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA agents
and anti-Israeli propagandists”; from THE MODERN ‘PROTOCOLS OF ZION’: How the
mass media now promotes the same lies that caused the death of more than 5
million Jews in WWII; Historical and
Investigative Research; 25 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White [6] News World Communications | From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia United
Press International | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [7] Middle East Times, 9 November, 2001; “Policy
Blunders That Spawn Terror” by Dilip Hiro, London NOTE 1: Both UPI and the Middle East Times are now owned by the Unification Church, and
attempts to access the old Middle East
Times website (www.metimes.com)
now redirect the browser to UPI’s web page. NOTE 2: However, the piece in its entirely was
republished by Dawn, “Pakistan's
oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper” (Wikipedia) and can
be read at their website: NOTE 3: The author of the piece, Dilip Hiro, has a
history of attacking Israel with nonsense. NOTE 4: Just in case the article disappears from the
Dawn website as well, we reproduce
it below: [Article begins here] “LONDON: While waging its war against the Taliban,
the United States is actively promoting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance as
the major - if not sole - alternative. But the record of the eight-year-old
Alliance is an unpalatable one. Washington has blundered often in its Afghanistan
policy since 1979. Its decision in 1980 to back Islamic fundamentalist
Afghans, ignoring the secular, nationalist groups opposing the Soviet-backed leftist
regime in Kabul, produced the Afghan Mujahideen -
and its progeny, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Though the title Northern Alliance today applies
principally to the ethnic Tajik-dominated political formation in a small
north-eastern enclave of Afghanistan, it was originally coined by Gen Abdul
Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and leader of the
National Islamic Movement. After consolidating his control of six north-western
provinces of Afghanistan (out of 31), he began calling himself ’President of
the Northern Alliance’ in 1993. Dostum, 47, is a
chameleon-like character. He started out as a Communist union chief at a gas
field constructed by Soviet technicians. Following the Soviet military
involvement in Afghanistan from December 1979, he was told to establish an
ethnic Uzbek militia. By the mid-1980s, it was 20,000 strong. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, he actively
helped leftist leader Mohammad Najibullah retain
power. But in March 1992 he switched sides and went over to the seven-party
Afghan Mujahideen Alliance. Najibullah
fell the next month. Dostum served briefly
in the Mujahideen government headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik. Soon he broke away
to become President of the Northern Alliance, with his capital in Mazar-e Sharif. He enriched himself and set up an
airline, Balkh Air, which did not last. In August 1998, the Taliban defeated
him, and he took refuge in Turkey. In March 2001 he returned to Afghanistan and
nominally joined the Northern Alliance, which by then had become almost
totally Tajik. Given the record of flip-flops, his statement that if the
Taliban were overthrown, he would accept President Rabbani’s orders must be
treated with great scepticism. When Soviet troops went into Afghanistan in late
1979, there were several secular and nationalist Afghan groups opposed to the
Moscow-backed Commu-nists, who had seized power in
a military coup 20 months earlier. Washington had the option of bolstering
them and encouraging them to ally with the three hardline Muslim factions, two
of them monarchist. Instead, it beefed up the three radical Muslim
groups there. Moderate Islamic leaders saw no option but to ally with
hardliners, which led to the formation of the radical-dominated Islamic
Alliance of Afghan Mujahideen in 1983. The main architect of this US policy was Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to
President Jimmy Carter. A virulent anti-Communist of Polish origin, he saw
his chance in Moscow’s Afghan intervention to rival his predecessor Henry
Kissinger as a heavyweight strategic thinker. It was not enough to push Soviet tanks out of
Afghanistan, he reasoned. It was also an opportunity to export a composite
ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Soviet Union’s Muslim-majority
Central Asian republics in order to destroy the entire Soviet order. With this in mind, a US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance set
about financing, training and arming Afghan and non-Afghan Mujahideen, an enterprise that lasted almost a decade.
But though the Soviets left and the American involvement ended, the programme of training and financing assorted Mujahideen to fight holy wars in different parts of the
world continued. It culminated on Sept 11 when three flying bombs
destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and damaged the Pentagon in
Washington DC. Washington is not alone in foisting such short-sighted
policies. Israel made a similar mistake in regard to the Palestine Liberation
Organisation - a secular nationalist body. With the PLO emerging as the dominant force in the
occupied Palestinian territories in the mid-1970s, Israel decided to
encourage the growth of an organization known as the Islamic Centre, based in
the Gaza Strip. Brigadier-General Yitzhak Segev,
then military governor of Gaza, told the New York Times how, during 1979-84,
he financed the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to the PLO and
Communists: “The Israeli government gave me a budget, and the military
government gives (money) to the mosques.” The mosques to which Segev
channelled government cash were the ones run by the
Islamic Centre. In 1980, when Muslim radicals burnt down the Red Crescent
Society building in Gaza city, a body funded indirectly by the PLO, the
Israeli army looked the other way. The Israeli army and intelligence
complicity was later confirmed by Moshe Arens,
Israel’s defence minister in 1983-84. “There was no doubt that during a certain period the
Israeli governments perceived it [Muslim radicalism] as a healthy phenomenon
that could counter the PLO,” he wrote in his memoirs. [HIR NOTE: Once again, the same trick. Moshe Arens did not say “Muslim radicalism.” These are words
put into his mouth by the newspaper (hence the brackets).] When the first Palestinian intifada erupted in
December 1987, the leaders of the Islamic Centre established Hamas, the acronym
of Harkat Al Muqawama Al Islami, Movement of Islamic Resistance. Hamas in turn set
up a military wing, naming it after Izz al Din Qassam, a leader of the Arab intifada of 1936-39 against
the British mandate in Palestine. Hamas has since proved to be unrelenting
opponents of the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian Territories -
more so than the PLO. Now things have come full circle. The rather
unreliable Gen Dostum is being encouraged by the US
to recapture Mazar-e Sharif. And the ‘war against
terrorism’ is spawning a revival of activity in Egypt by al Gamaat as well as the more extreme Al Jihad Al Islami, which is allied to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. [Article ends here] [8] The
New York Times, March 28, 1981, Saturday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1;
Page 2, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1355 words, UNDER GAZA'S CALM SURFACE: DEATH,
DRUGS, INTRIGUE, By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times, GAZA [9] “Based
on the principles of Islamism gaining momentum throughout the Arab world in
the 1980s, Hamas was founded in 1987 (during the First
Intifada) as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.” SOURCE: Hamas |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [10] Imam |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia UPI Accuses Israel of Funding Hamas United
Press International, June 18, 2002, Tuesday,
GENERAL NEWS, 1181 words, Analysis: Hamas History Tied to Israel; By RICHARD
SALE, UPI Terrorism Correspondent. UPI - In
the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus
that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance
Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast. Israeli
officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years. Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight "Palestinian
terror" and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the
organization that Sharon had once described as "the deadliest terrorist
group that we have ever had to face." Active
in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and
establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained
notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism. But
Sharon left something out. Israel
and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several
current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s,
Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of
years. Israel
"aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a
counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said
Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center
for Strategic Studies. Israel's
support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for
a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said
a former senior CIA official. According
to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based
Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim
Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and
Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War
in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies. After
1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to
their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the
Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational
and cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that
worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees,
confined to camps, and many who were living on the edge. "Social
influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then
on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of
anonymity. According
to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the
name Al-Mujamma al Islami,
which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda
and social work. According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement
came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The
PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas
wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like
Khomeini's Iran. What
took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to
surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang
up in southern Lebanon vis-à-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources
said. "Nothing
provides the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one
administration expert. A further
factor of Hamas' growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of operations to
Beirut in the '80s, leaving the Islamic organization to grow in influence in
the Occupied Territories "as the court of last resort," he said. When the
intifada began, Israeli leadership was surprised when Islamic groups began to
surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and
violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but
the doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected
to suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S.
government officials. But with
the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of
Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain in
strength in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the
Israeli occupation. Israel
was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence source
who asked not to be named said that not only was Hamas being funded as a
"counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose:
"To help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who
were dangerous terrorists." In
addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could only listen to
debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous
hard-liners," the official said. In the
end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many
collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism
became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to
compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very
existence. But even
then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to
give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing
Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control,
would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any
agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not
to be named. "Israel
would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal
with," he said. All of
which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials. "The
thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy,"
said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro. According
to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson,
"the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting
terrorism." "The
Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it
out by hitting it with a hammer." "They
do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it," he said. Aid to
Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth
the waters," he said. "An operation like that gives weight to
President George Bush's remark about there being a crisis in education." Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian
intelligence to fund Egypt's fundamentalists had also come to grief because
of "misreading of the complexities." An
Israeli defense official was asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas said,
"I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a
unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest." Asked to
confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq
Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S.
officials he had helped fund "Islamic movements as a counterweight to
the PLO and communists," the official said he could confirm only that he
believed Segev had served back in 1986. The
Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site when asked to
comment. |
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