Amanda
25th November 2023, 07:00 PM
https://swprs.org/why-israel-created-hamas/
Why Israel Created Hamas
Insider insights into the creation of Hamas – and other designated terrorist groups.
∗∗∗
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.” – Benjamin Netanyahu (2019 (https://archive.ph/20231014033824/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000))
“In the visible dimension Hamas is an enemy, in the hidden dimension it is an ally.” – IDF Major General Gershon Hacohen (2019 (https://archive.ph/20231021203347/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-needed-a-strong-hamas/0000018b-1e9f-d47b-a7fb-bfdfd8f30000))
“Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet.” – Charles Freeman, US diplomat and ambassador (2006 (https://archive.org/details/devilsgame_201907/page/n199/mode/2up))
∗∗∗
Why Israel helped create Hamas
Since the founding of Hamas in 1987, Israeli, American and Palestinian officials have repeatedly acknowledged that Israel did indeed help create and fund the Islamist group.
The point made by many of these officials is not that Israel “allowed” the rise of Hamas or that Hamas emerged in response to Israeli “occupation” of Palestine. Rather, their point was and is that Israel’s intelligence agencies actively helped create and finance the Hamas group.
As the officials cited below make clear, the overall goal of supporting Hamas has been to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state and avert the implementation of a two-state solution to the Palestine question. From Israel’s perspective, a two-state solution would reduce Israel’s territory to the internationally recognized pre-1967 borders, prohibit any future territorial expansion, and prevent the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
More specifically, supporting the Islamist Hamas group has served several Israeli objectives at once: first, it undermined Yasser Arafat’s secular nationalist PLO; second, it helped prevent the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords; third, it undermined the Palestinian National Authority and isolated Gaza from the Westbank; fourth, it impeded Western support for the Palestinian cause; and fifth, it justified Israeli (counter-)attacks on Palestinian territory.
In other words, by secretly supporting a group that does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel and does not accept a two-state solution, Israel does not have to accept the existence of a Palestinian state and does not have to support a two-state solution, either.
It is sometimes argued that while Israel initially supported the creation of Hamas, the Islamist group got out of control and Israeli officials came to regret their support (the “blowback theory” (https://odysee.com/@swprs:3/How-Israel-Helped-Create-Hamas-Intercept-2018:d)).
While this is certainly true for some Israeli officials and for the Israeli population affected by Hamas rockets and terrorist attacks, it is not true for Israeli grand strategists, as the quotes below make clear: for them, Hamas has continued to serve its intended purpose even after the Oslo Accords in 1993 and after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
For the grand strategists, the presence of Hamas in the remaining Palestinian territories might provide, one day, the necessary pretext for a “final solution” to the Palestinian question.
“A creature of Israel”
The following sections provide a chronological overview of insider statements on the creation of Hamas made since 1981 by Israeli, American and Palestinian officials.
These officials include a former Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military intelligence chief, two Israeli intelligence whistleblowers, a retired IDF Major General, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, as well as former American government and intelligence officials, late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and an early Hamas leader.
Yitzhak Segev, Gaza military governor (1981/1986)
Already in 1986, one year before the official founding of Hamas, New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, David K. Shipler, revealed how Israel supported the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip that would give rise to the Hamas group. Referring to Israel’s military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, Shipler noted (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780394012735/page/176/mode/2up?q=yitzhak+segev) in his book, “Arab and Jew”:
Politically speaking, Islamic fundamentalists were sometimes regarded as useful to Israel because they had their conflicts with the secular supporters of the PLO. Violence between the groups erupted occasionally on West Bank university campuses, and the Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, once told me how he had financed the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the Communists. “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques,” he said.
During the May 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_crisis), Shipler reiterated (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-palestinians.html) these statements in a letter to the New York Times and emphasized the active role played by Israeli authorities:
Nicholas Kristof is right when he mentions that Israel once allowed the rise of Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization. But Israel did much more than “allow.”
In 1981, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, Israel’s military governor of Gaza, told me that he was giving money to the Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor of Hamas, on the instruction of the Israeli authorities. The funding was intended to tilt power away from both Communist and Palestinian nationalist movements in Gaza, which Israel considered more threatening than the fundamentalists.
Judging by a distressed phone call I got later from the army spokesman, General Segev’s superiors were not happy with his disclosure of a practice that did not look very clever, even at the time. They thought incorrectly — but apparently wished — that he had made his comments off the record.”
Sources: Arab and Jew (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780394012735/page/176/mode/2up?q=yitzhak+segev) (Shipler 1986) and Letter to the Editor (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-palestinians.html) (Shipler 2021)
Israeli intelligence whistleblowers (1992/1994)
In 1992, Israeli military intelligence whistleblower, Ari Ben-Menashe, revealed (https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/) how Israeli intelligence agencies were using “Palestinian terrorists” to sabotage the Palestinian cause:
“The slush fund helped finance the intelligence community’s “black” operations around the world. These included funding Israeli-controlled “Palestinian terrorists” who would commit crimes in the name of the Palestinian revolution, but were actually pulling them off, usually unwittingly, as part of the Israeli propaganda machine.”
In his 1994 book, The Other Side of Deception, former Mossad case officer and whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky revealed (https://swprs.org/mossad-whistleblower-victor-ostrovsky-1994/) how the Mossad secretly supported Hamas:Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas (Palestinian fundamentalists) to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.
Sources: Profits of War (https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/) (Ben-Menashe 1992) and The Other Side of Deception (https://swprs.org/mossad-whistleblower-victor-ostrovsky-1994/) (Ostrovsky, 1994)
Guela Amir, mother of alleged Rabin assassin Yigal Amir (1997)
In March 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr. published an article (https://web.archive.org/web/20110717125139/http://www.jfkmontreal.com/jfk_jr_&_rabin.htm) by Guela Amir, mother of Yigal Amir, the alleged (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/11/03/yigal-amir-is-israels-oswald/) assassin of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Guela Amir recalled the Hamas terrorist attacks in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Rabin and provided some evidence that her son was part of an Israeli intelligence plot to remove Rabin and prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state. John F. Kennedy Jr. died two years later (https://odysee.com/@swprs:3/Israel-and-the-Assassinations-of-The-Kennedy-brothers:85) in a mysterious plane crash.
“In September 1993, the Rabin government signed the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The accords, and the series of terror bombings that followed their implementation, brought thousands of previously apolitical Israelis into the streets and onto the barricades in embittered protest. These neophyte activists poured into the pre-existing right-wing groups and placed themselves at the disposal of experienced organizers such as [Shin Bet informant] Avishai Raviv. One of these new activists was my son Yigal.”
[B]Source: A Mother’s Defense (https://web.archive.org/web/20110717125139/http://www.jfkmontreal.com/jfk_jr_&_rabin.htm) (George Magazine, 1997)
US government and intelligence officials (UPI, 2001)
In a February 2001 article, American news agency UPI revealed (https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/) how “Israel gave major aid to Hamas”, quoting several current and former US government and intelligence officials:
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat [the Second Intifada], 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,” 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. ()
Funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini’s Iran. ()
“The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the pace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” said a U.S. government official. “Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with,” he said. ()
Former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson told UPI: “The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They 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.”
Source: “Israel gave major aid to Hamas” (https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/) (UPI, 2001)
PLO leader Yasser Arafat (2001)
In December 2001, during the Second Intifida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada), PLO leader Yasser Arafat gave interviews to two leading Italian newspapers and discussed the genesis and operation of Hamas.
In an interview with L’Espresso, Arafat stated (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html):
“Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorizations, while we have been limited, even to build a tomato factory. Rabin himself defined it as a fatal error. Some collaborationists of Israel are involved in these [terror] attacks,” he said. “We have proof, and we are placing it at the disposal of the Italian government.”
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Arafat stated (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html):
“We are doing everything to stop the violence. But Hamas is a creature of Israel which at the time of Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir [the late 1980s, when Hamas arose], gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques. Even [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of [Egpytian President Hosni] Mubarak.”
Source: Israeli Roots of Hamas Are Being Exposed (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html) (EIR, 2002)
Why Israel Created Hamas
Insider insights into the creation of Hamas – and other designated terrorist groups.
∗∗∗
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.” – Benjamin Netanyahu (2019 (https://archive.ph/20231014033824/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000))
“In the visible dimension Hamas is an enemy, in the hidden dimension it is an ally.” – IDF Major General Gershon Hacohen (2019 (https://archive.ph/20231021203347/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-needed-a-strong-hamas/0000018b-1e9f-d47b-a7fb-bfdfd8f30000))
“Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet.” – Charles Freeman, US diplomat and ambassador (2006 (https://archive.org/details/devilsgame_201907/page/n199/mode/2up))
∗∗∗
Why Israel helped create Hamas
Since the founding of Hamas in 1987, Israeli, American and Palestinian officials have repeatedly acknowledged that Israel did indeed help create and fund the Islamist group.
The point made by many of these officials is not that Israel “allowed” the rise of Hamas or that Hamas emerged in response to Israeli “occupation” of Palestine. Rather, their point was and is that Israel’s intelligence agencies actively helped create and finance the Hamas group.
As the officials cited below make clear, the overall goal of supporting Hamas has been to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state and avert the implementation of a two-state solution to the Palestine question. From Israel’s perspective, a two-state solution would reduce Israel’s territory to the internationally recognized pre-1967 borders, prohibit any future territorial expansion, and prevent the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
More specifically, supporting the Islamist Hamas group has served several Israeli objectives at once: first, it undermined Yasser Arafat’s secular nationalist PLO; second, it helped prevent the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords; third, it undermined the Palestinian National Authority and isolated Gaza from the Westbank; fourth, it impeded Western support for the Palestinian cause; and fifth, it justified Israeli (counter-)attacks on Palestinian territory.
In other words, by secretly supporting a group that does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel and does not accept a two-state solution, Israel does not have to accept the existence of a Palestinian state and does not have to support a two-state solution, either.
It is sometimes argued that while Israel initially supported the creation of Hamas, the Islamist group got out of control and Israeli officials came to regret their support (the “blowback theory” (https://odysee.com/@swprs:3/How-Israel-Helped-Create-Hamas-Intercept-2018:d)).
While this is certainly true for some Israeli officials and for the Israeli population affected by Hamas rockets and terrorist attacks, it is not true for Israeli grand strategists, as the quotes below make clear: for them, Hamas has continued to serve its intended purpose even after the Oslo Accords in 1993 and after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
For the grand strategists, the presence of Hamas in the remaining Palestinian territories might provide, one day, the necessary pretext for a “final solution” to the Palestinian question.
“A creature of Israel”
The following sections provide a chronological overview of insider statements on the creation of Hamas made since 1981 by Israeli, American and Palestinian officials.
These officials include a former Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military intelligence chief, two Israeli intelligence whistleblowers, a retired IDF Major General, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, as well as former American government and intelligence officials, late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and an early Hamas leader.
Yitzhak Segev, Gaza military governor (1981/1986)
Already in 1986, one year before the official founding of Hamas, New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, David K. Shipler, revealed how Israel supported the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip that would give rise to the Hamas group. Referring to Israel’s military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, Shipler noted (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780394012735/page/176/mode/2up?q=yitzhak+segev) in his book, “Arab and Jew”:
Politically speaking, Islamic fundamentalists were sometimes regarded as useful to Israel because they had their conflicts with the secular supporters of the PLO. Violence between the groups erupted occasionally on West Bank university campuses, and the Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, once told me how he had financed the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the Communists. “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques,” he said.
During the May 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_crisis), Shipler reiterated (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-palestinians.html) these statements in a letter to the New York Times and emphasized the active role played by Israeli authorities:
Nicholas Kristof is right when he mentions that Israel once allowed the rise of Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization. But Israel did much more than “allow.”
In 1981, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, Israel’s military governor of Gaza, told me that he was giving money to the Muslim Brotherhood, the precursor of Hamas, on the instruction of the Israeli authorities. The funding was intended to tilt power away from both Communist and Palestinian nationalist movements in Gaza, which Israel considered more threatening than the fundamentalists.
Judging by a distressed phone call I got later from the army spokesman, General Segev’s superiors were not happy with his disclosure of a practice that did not look very clever, even at the time. They thought incorrectly — but apparently wished — that he had made his comments off the record.”
Sources: Arab and Jew (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780394012735/page/176/mode/2up?q=yitzhak+segev) (Shipler 1986) and Letter to the Editor (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-palestinians.html) (Shipler 2021)
Israeli intelligence whistleblowers (1992/1994)
In 1992, Israeli military intelligence whistleblower, Ari Ben-Menashe, revealed (https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/) how Israeli intelligence agencies were using “Palestinian terrorists” to sabotage the Palestinian cause:
“The slush fund helped finance the intelligence community’s “black” operations around the world. These included funding Israeli-controlled “Palestinian terrorists” who would commit crimes in the name of the Palestinian revolution, but were actually pulling them off, usually unwittingly, as part of the Israeli propaganda machine.”
In his 1994 book, The Other Side of Deception, former Mossad case officer and whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky revealed (https://swprs.org/mossad-whistleblower-victor-ostrovsky-1994/) how the Mossad secretly supported Hamas:Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas (Palestinian fundamentalists) to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.
Sources: Profits of War (https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/) (Ben-Menashe 1992) and The Other Side of Deception (https://swprs.org/mossad-whistleblower-victor-ostrovsky-1994/) (Ostrovsky, 1994)
Guela Amir, mother of alleged Rabin assassin Yigal Amir (1997)
In March 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr. published an article (https://web.archive.org/web/20110717125139/http://www.jfkmontreal.com/jfk_jr_&_rabin.htm) by Guela Amir, mother of Yigal Amir, the alleged (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/11/03/yigal-amir-is-israels-oswald/) assassin of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Guela Amir recalled the Hamas terrorist attacks in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Rabin and provided some evidence that her son was part of an Israeli intelligence plot to remove Rabin and prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state. John F. Kennedy Jr. died two years later (https://odysee.com/@swprs:3/Israel-and-the-Assassinations-of-The-Kennedy-brothers:85) in a mysterious plane crash.
“In September 1993, the Rabin government signed the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The accords, and the series of terror bombings that followed their implementation, brought thousands of previously apolitical Israelis into the streets and onto the barricades in embittered protest. These neophyte activists poured into the pre-existing right-wing groups and placed themselves at the disposal of experienced organizers such as [Shin Bet informant] Avishai Raviv. One of these new activists was my son Yigal.”
[B]Source: A Mother’s Defense (https://web.archive.org/web/20110717125139/http://www.jfkmontreal.com/jfk_jr_&_rabin.htm) (George Magazine, 1997)
US government and intelligence officials (UPI, 2001)
In a February 2001 article, American news agency UPI revealed (https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/) how “Israel gave major aid to Hamas”, quoting several current and former US government and intelligence officials:
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat [the Second Intifada], 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,” 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. ()
Funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini’s Iran. ()
“The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the pace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” said a U.S. government official. “Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with,” he said. ()
Former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson told UPI: “The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They 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.”
Source: “Israel gave major aid to Hamas” (https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/) (UPI, 2001)
PLO leader Yasser Arafat (2001)
In December 2001, during the Second Intifida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada), PLO leader Yasser Arafat gave interviews to two leading Italian newspapers and discussed the genesis and operation of Hamas.
In an interview with L’Espresso, Arafat stated (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html):
“Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorizations, while we have been limited, even to build a tomato factory. Rabin himself defined it as a fatal error. Some collaborationists of Israel are involved in these [terror] attacks,” he said. “We have proof, and we are placing it at the disposal of the Italian government.”
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, Arafat stated (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html):
“We are doing everything to stop the violence. But Hamas is a creature of Israel which at the time of Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir [the late 1980s, when Hamas arose], gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques. Even [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of [Egpytian President Hosni] Mubarak.”
Source: Israeli Roots of Hamas Are Being Exposed (https://larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html) (EIR, 2002)