>>"Hamas that was basically created by Israel and western intelligence/financial services"
Nope -> Hamas was established during the First intifada against the Israeli occupation in 1987, and has its origins in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, which had been active in the Gaza Strip since the 1950s and gained influence through a network of mosques and various charitable and social organizations." Please read the book "Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance" by Tareq Baconi (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35793669-hamas-contained)
In an August 2014 interview on Israeli television channel i24News, former Israeli Ambassador to Germany and the EU, Avi Primor, emphasized that Hamas had been created by Israel:
“It was the Israeli government, it was us who created Hamas, in order to create a counterweight to [Yasser Arafat’s] Fatah at the time. And we thought it would be a religious organization that would quarrel with Fatah, we couldn’t foresee what would become of it, but it’s our creation, these are the facts.”
That's not my point. When I said "created" I didn't mean Israel literally came up with the idea and then introduced it fully formed like an astroturf operation. Hamas has its own murky beginnings. I suppose it would have been more accurate if I said "HELPED to create..." Please read the link I provided.
"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”).
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. [...]"
and
"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 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, Shipler reiterated 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.”
You may be confusing two things into one. "Creation" (i.e. origin story) and "funding" are two different things that DO intersect further down the road.
In terms of Israeli funding the Muslim Brotherhood (and its impact on the formation of Hamas), are you suggesting a hypothesis that if Israel had not funded the Muslim Brotherhood, then Hamas would never have been created?
Israel definitely funded Hamas, and definitely supported Hamas, but did not CREATE Hamas. You may consider it semantics, but such distinctions are important to recognize.
BTW, Hamas was not the ONLY group/faction funded by the Israelis. There is the "Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades", the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and several more. Israel did not CREATE any of these entities (unless you mean to imply that by funding and supporting their activities or precursors to these groups in history it implies creation).
As an example, there are many groups in the middle-east (ISIS, ISIL, Al Queada, etc.) that are or were funded by various entities in the U.S. - though there was already resistance groups forming (and many other sources of funding besides the U.S. for these groups). Similarly, many groups/factions in Gaza had sources for funding besides Israel (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran to name a few). I suggest doing a deep-dive into history if you really want to understand the 'Hamas origin story'.
Also I'm well versed in the creation of Al Qaeda, assuming that in "its" beginnings it was even a unified "thing" at all. There are some scholars who point to the fact that "Al Qaeda" translates pretty closely to "the database" - but that's a topic for another time, and it's quite a time consuming one. All of it really ties back to the old "enemy of my enemy..." thing** and the Cold War era irrational fear of the spread of communism [or even socialism!].
** Not to mention the utility of having a VIOLENT resistance movement take the center stage, thus providing pretext for a VIOLENT counter-resistance!
Well, as I noted in my amended statement: "Israel HELPED create Hamas." And yeah, obviously Israel has had a hand in the creation and/or support of other "radical Islamist" groups.
Re “The U.S. Should Condition Aid to Israel on Reducing Conflict” (column, May 13):
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.
David K. Shipler
Chevy Chase, Md.
The writer was The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief from 1979 to 1984."
and
"This statement is extraordinary given the fact that Kurtzer is a very senior diplomat, having held the post of Ambassador to Egypt just prior to going on to Tel Aviv. He is also an Orthodox Jew who is not shy of criticizing the extreme anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views held by certain Arab circles. But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rarely grants the United States' highest representative in Israel an official audience.
The ambassador's comments are an acknowledgment of what any serious Middle East observers knows: Hamas has always been seen as a tool by which Israel could undermine the nationalist movement led by Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat. Similar statements by Arafat have been dismissed by Israel as "cranky" propaganda. In an interview with the Dec. 11 Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Arafat said, "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."
To the Italian daily L'Espresso, Arafat laid out the reasons for this support. "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.""
You mean Hamas that was basically created by Israel and western intelligence/financial services?
https://swprs.org/why-israel-created-hamas/
Don't take it from me, though. Read all the quotes and citations above.
>>"Hamas that was basically created by Israel and western intelligence/financial services"
Nope -> Hamas was established during the First intifada against the Israeli occupation in 1987, and has its origins in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, which had been active in the Gaza Strip since the 1950s and gained influence through a network of mosques and various charitable and social organizations." Please read the book "Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance" by Tareq Baconi (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35793669-hamas-contained)
Here are some more references ->
(1) Hamas: A Historical and Political Background by Ziad Abu-Amr (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.22, No.4) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538077]. Here is a more readable version (https://www.scribd.com/document/371883283/Hamas-A-Historical-and-Political-Background)
Here's some more: https://odysee.com/@swprs:3/avi-primor-israel-hamas-i24-2014:f
In an August 2014 interview on Israeli television channel i24News, former Israeli Ambassador to Germany and the EU, Avi Primor, emphasized that Hamas had been created by Israel:
“It was the Israeli government, it was us who created Hamas, in order to create a counterweight to [Yasser Arafat’s] Fatah at the time. And we thought it would be a religious organization that would quarrel with Fatah, we couldn’t foresee what would become of it, but it’s our creation, these are the facts.”
That's not my point. When I said "created" I didn't mean Israel literally came up with the idea and then introduced it fully formed like an astroturf operation. Hamas has its own murky beginnings. I suppose it would have been more accurate if I said "HELPED to create..." Please read the link I provided.
"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”).
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. [...]"
and
"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 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, Shipler reiterated 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.”
You may be confusing two things into one. "Creation" (i.e. origin story) and "funding" are two different things that DO intersect further down the road.
In terms of Israeli funding the Muslim Brotherhood (and its impact on the formation of Hamas), are you suggesting a hypothesis that if Israel had not funded the Muslim Brotherhood, then Hamas would never have been created?
Israel definitely funded Hamas, and definitely supported Hamas, but did not CREATE Hamas. You may consider it semantics, but such distinctions are important to recognize.
More in my earlier comments here -> https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/free-gaza-from-hamas-really-means/comment/104723538
and here -> https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/free-gaza-from-hamas-really-means/comment/104711350
BTW, Hamas was not the ONLY group/faction funded by the Israelis. There is the "Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades", the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and several more. Israel did not CREATE any of these entities (unless you mean to imply that by funding and supporting their activities or precursors to these groups in history it implies creation).
As an example, there are many groups in the middle-east (ISIS, ISIL, Al Queada, etc.) that are or were funded by various entities in the U.S. - though there was already resistance groups forming (and many other sources of funding besides the U.S. for these groups). Similarly, many groups/factions in Gaza had sources for funding besides Israel (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran to name a few). I suggest doing a deep-dive into history if you really want to understand the 'Hamas origin story'.
Here's another good one.
https://archive.ph/2023.10.28-143211/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
Also I'm well versed in the creation of Al Qaeda, assuming that in "its" beginnings it was even a unified "thing" at all. There are some scholars who point to the fact that "Al Qaeda" translates pretty closely to "the database" - but that's a topic for another time, and it's quite a time consuming one. All of it really ties back to the old "enemy of my enemy..." thing** and the Cold War era irrational fear of the spread of communism [or even socialism!].
** Not to mention the utility of having a VIOLENT resistance movement take the center stage, thus providing pretext for a VIOLENT counter-resistance!
Well, as I noted in my amended statement: "Israel HELPED create Hamas." And yeah, obviously Israel has had a hand in the creation and/or support of other "radical Islamist" groups.
Here's a good source as well: https://archive.org/details/devilsgame_201907/page/n199/mode/2up (starts on the right-hand page at the bottom)
https://archive.ph/iaEqX
"To the Editor:
Re “The U.S. Should Condition Aid to Israel on Reducing Conflict” (column, May 13):
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.
David K. Shipler
Chevy Chase, Md.
The writer was The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief from 1979 to 1984."
and
"This statement is extraordinary given the fact that Kurtzer is a very senior diplomat, having held the post of Ambassador to Egypt just prior to going on to Tel Aviv. He is also an Orthodox Jew who is not shy of criticizing the extreme anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views held by certain Arab circles. But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rarely grants the United States' highest representative in Israel an official audience.
The ambassador's comments are an acknowledgment of what any serious Middle East observers knows: Hamas has always been seen as a tool by which Israel could undermine the nationalist movement led by Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat. Similar statements by Arafat have been dismissed by Israel as "cranky" propaganda. In an interview with the Dec. 11 Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Arafat said, "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."
To the Italian daily L'Espresso, Arafat laid out the reasons for this support. "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.""
Read this Reddit post (it will take you some time) to disentangle and dive into further details (as it explains things much better than I can here) -> https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/1766ke5/debunking_the_trope_israel_created_hamas/?sort=old