2y ago

Israel drove suitcases stuffed with cash into Gaza to keep Hamas in power

www.businessinsider.com

Israel drove suitcases stuffed with cash into Gaza to keep Hamas in power: NYT

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.

191 comments

got it wrong
No? No they got exactly what they wanted. They'll be able to annex all of Gaza and eventually the west bank.
They sacrificed their people to accomplish their colonist goals.The plan went swimmingly.
- Correct, which is exactly the same thing the Zionist Federation of Germany did during WWII. They sold out their own people in order to keep much of their assets while beginning the process of annexing British Mandatory Palestine.
  Make no mistake, these same Zionists went on to form Lehi, among other terrorist/militant organizations that share a direct link to modern day Likud. Every policy the modern right wing Israeli government has employed they borrowed directly from the Third Reich's playbook.
  They are literally genocidal, ethno-supremacist, crypto-fascist psycopaths. In no way is that hyperbole. They are essentially Israeli Nazi's.
  Haavara Agreement
  Lehi
  Irgun
  Haganah
  
  Gonna look into this myself later, but I hope you're lying. That would be some fucked up shit
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"
  
  What about all those pallets that went missing?
  
  I have a vague memory of a $10B cash shipment going missing in Afghanistan.
  
  I thought that was Iraq under W?
- I mean hamas is the government of israel. Did you want israel to distribute the humanitarian aid in palestine as well? Might as well govern them too right?
  
  I mean, preferably. And then give them a vote, too. But then I believe in a one state solution.
  It's better than just keeping them all in an open air prison.
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".
I mean this isn't anything new. We've known this since at least 2015 when ex-IDF top brass officials that worked in Gaza during the occupation have come clean about it in interviews. And the motivation behind this is also logical. The palestinian authority was playing the white man's game. They were going through the UN, filing motions against Israel, passing resolutions, and so on. Hamas is much easier to deal with. They don't bother with all that civilised bureaucratic stuff, in part because no one recognizes them anyway. It's easier to drop bombs on Hamas than on PA officials and thus continue the illegal occupation. As the current Israeli president has put it in an interview before: "Hamas is an asset" for Israel. [1] They're easier to work with.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2023/10/14/hamas-israel-palestinian-authority/
- They fed a monster to destroy diplomacy and then act surprised when the monster mauled them.
  
  Because it then gives justification to seize the land
  
  Not quite. Hamas and Netanyahu are still quite comfortable. It creates a political situation they both want. The latter is "surprised" at all the innocent people the monster killed, but in reality they don't give a shit. The government gets to consolidate its strength and kill more people.
  They're enriching themselves off the backs of the Palestinian and Israeli people.
- It clearly is not known by people who go "Israel is needs to defend itself against Hamas". It's an obvious contradiction if you know Israel funds Hamas, which means, considering Hanlon's razor, those people simply don't know any better.
  
  It wasn't Israel funds being smuggled in, it was Qatari funds. And how would it have looked if Israel blocked official Qatari aid to Gaza?
Here the original & complete NY times article, for those who want to read what they have written, and not what is speculated.
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.
- 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.
- It's just an inconvenient one. It makes it a lot harder to jerk about how "complex" the situation is when there's such an obvious villain. Everything Hamas has done, Netanyahu is an accomplice to.
  
  The only complexity here is for people who can't fathom the concept of two bad guys. The only good people here are the civilians being happily sacrificed for Hamas and Netanyahu. Their leaders sip cocktails in luxury and don't care about how many die.
- Reporting on corruption, especially when fatal, needs to be repeated for as long as people are unaware.
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.
- This is every colonizer's playbook: you make constant small incursions, then when the people finally push back, you use it as an excuse to wipe them out and take the land.
- I understand you are not implying that pearl harbour and 9/11 where inside jobs.
  I think, you just referencing to the public support that followed those events. Right?
  
  Theres some who think the mistakes of Pearl Harbor wasn't anything but incompetence/human error.
  
  Not inside jobs necessarily but both events had credible foreknowledge of an imminent attack that wasn’t acted upon.
  
  No, not inside jobs, but not dealt with appropriately so as to get America involved or to pass the patriot act. We know for a fact that the CIA was still trying to flip one of the terrorist pilots the day of.
  
  He is a conspiracy nut
- Conspiracy theories and antisemitism go hand in hand.
  Case in point right here.
  
  I don't understand how this is antisemitism
  
  I don't fault anyone for being born, but I fault them for what they do with life. I am not against Jewish people, but Netanyahu's regime. I do not support HAMAS, but the Palestinian people who, along with ethnic jews, are being exterminated. Nuance. Fine details.
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.
- Israel is set to wipe Gaza off the map. Of course they wanted the money to be misused.
  Does everybody not understand Israel's goal is to eliminate Gaza and the West bank and replace them with Israeli settlements? They've been doing it for years.
  
  No not everybody does understand that. When we cry genocide they really don't understand that is EXACTLY what is happening. We're not just throwing the word around. They are killing and ousting a people group, that is two forms of genocode
  
  They made a blood tithe they feel can never be repaid. Compared to that it's pretty clear they see all this waves hand around as trivial amounts of collateral damage.
This shit makes my blood boil. I need to find an article on the 2006 Palestinian elections. I have heard that Bush kind of forced it on them and there were a bunch of centrist leaders on there that split the vote so Hamas was able to get in power.
It seems that Israel needs Hamas in power to be the boogey man, so they can justify their horrific apartheid policies
- Can we point out the fact that netanyahu loves Lehi, like dudes obsessed and lehi's newsletter was named "Hamaas" which means "the deed" in Hebrew.
- Israel's existence is propped up solely to pander to the "authority" of the religulous. The creation of Israel was an attempt to make the Bible be true. This is the shit that happens when you believe that book - not only do you immediately and ultimately betray the principles in that book, but you discredit it utterly as well, which it richly deserves.
  
  I am reading a book on the last hundred or so years of Zionism. It is really depressing, it is basically a product of European imperialism and racism. Europe was happy to fund Israel so they could do something with the Jews...
  The nascent Israeli's also kicked Palestinians off of their land and murdered them with paramilitary groups and then had Europe retroactively say it was ok because it was the Jewish homeland. Not to say the Palestinians didn't as well, but I can't say I blame them, they were getting invaded and killed and had their land taken.
  At this point the only "moral" path forward in my mind is a secular single state managing the region. That is never going to happen until the United States stops seeing Israel as the useful idiot projecting Western power into the region.
Israel is the absolute worst
- How so?
  I’d hardly call what they’re doing unique
  
  Oh no, Israel can't be bad since everyone else also kills and maims, but let's forget they have killed a large number of civilians in a span of 2 months, more journalists and medical professionals and UN workers in any other conflict ever. Boo fucking hoo.
  
  I mean, who hasn't done a little Genocide here or there amirite?
im glad they're finally talking about this in western media.
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.
- they literally did. that is what "allowing an action you could have stopped" means. They chose killing.
  
  At least Israelis have recognised that the blood is in Bibi's hand on October 7 attack. Many predict that the next elections could oust him for good.
- 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.
- Hamas takes all that money, historically, and gives little or nothing to the people of Gaza. They literally deny the UNRWA the ability to distribute material aid.
Remember Israel also stole Palestinians tax money. Effectively charging them for their own imprisonment
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
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Nooo but they said UNRWA was funding Hamas!!!!
- They literally are, though they are probably doing it under duress. Same way the doctors in Al Shifa hospital covered for Hamas, though almost assuredly at gunpoint.
  
  Proof?
- But it is? Unrwa workers labour in schools and teach using books, which say that jews must be eradicated.
Wasn't this so they can justify not doing a 2statesolution on the world stage?
The New York Times is late to this party. We've known about it since 2019.
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces, Times of Israel, 8 October 2023
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.
Video: Ex-Saudi intel chief accuses Israel of 'funnelling' Qatari money to Hamas, India Today, October 31, 2023
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."
Liberman: Netanyahu sent Mossad head, general to Qatar, ‘begged’ it to pay Hamas, Times of Israel, February 20, 2022
“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.
Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided, Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2019
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!
wtaf
- It makes a sick kind of sense. If you're one of the conservatives in power in Israel, and you oppose a two-state solution that would give Palestinians autonomy, keep two weaker factions fighting each other rather than stabilizing a new country.
  It doesn't excuse the inhuman barbarism committed by Hamas against civilians, but it does mean Netanyahu should be immediately removed from power and arrested.
  The Palestinian Authority is the only organization there with any actual legitimacy, and had Israel publicly, openly supported it, Hamas could never have gotten a foothold, while the Palestinian Authority would have had reason to normalize relations with Israel.
  
  Do you know the backlash israel would get if it could install governments in gaza?
  Lmao yall want israel to govern gaza and also not. No matter what israel does. It is gonna be the jews fault right?
- 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?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Israeli officials are facing backlash after years of Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu quietly allowing Hamas to remain in power.
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.
As part of a peace agreement with Hamas, Qatar would bring millions into Gaza to distribute to Gazan families, the outlet reported.
Israeli security officials would meet with a Qatari diplomat at the border between Israel and Jordan, according to the New York Times report.
The propped-up peace lasted until October 7, when Hamas fighters launched a terror attack across the Israeli border.
The original article contains 348 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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.
"IDF Claims"
Why is everyone mad about politics these days again? This shit is fine
In case there are clueless folk here, america pulls stunts just as bad as this - CIA dealing cocaine to poor blacks in order to destabilize cities, to list just one unequivocal one - literally every day.
- Your definition of fine is weird.
  
  I'd love to see this tried in a court of law some day.
  "Look judge, people kill each other all the time. I don't know why we're making such a big deal out of this. Geeeesh. Bunch of whiners."
  Anyway, people criticize the US for this stuff all the time. The whole idea of the left is to learn from and evolve and grow past those horrible roots.
- Someone doing something terrible is not justified because someone else is doing the same terrible thing.
  What the US has done is unconscionable.
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.
Does anyone seriously believe any of this crap from either side or has everyone's brains been saturated in the fog of war?

191 comments