Articles on Netanyahu’s Support of Hamas Before October 7 and on Israeli Women Soldiers’ Warnings of a Possible Hamas Attack Being Ignored
There are news stories that can be found in unexpected places that deserve much greater attention and should be frequently cited.
One such article was in the New York Times on December 10, 2023 under the title ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas.
A second example was published by Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, whose president describes Zionism as “the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.” The July/August 2024 issue of Hadassah Magazine contains an article with the title “Ignored Until it was Too Late.” It covers how “repeated warnings [from female observer soldiers] about a potential Hamas infiltration” [prior to October 7] were “ignored?”
Readers of the New York Times article are informed that “For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip—money that helped prop up the Hamas government there.” Furthermore, and of significance, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.” (emphasis added) These payments came to “billions of dollars over roughly a decade.” Additionally, the payments, “ostensibly a secret” were “widely known and discussed in the news media for years.”
Without this support, could Hamas have carried out the actions it undertook on October 7, 2023? According to the article, Netanyahu called any suggestion that he sought to empower Hamas “ridiculous.”
Much of what is covered in the story indicates otherwise.(1)
The article describes a trip to Qatar, just weeks before October 7, undertaken by the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) chief, David Barnea, in which he was asked if Israel wanted the payments to Hamas to continue. Barnea is paraphrased answering “yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha, [Qatar’s capital].”
The subheading of the New York Times article is “Prime Miniter Netanyahu gambled that a strong Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state.” However, according to the report, “Even as the Israeli military obtained battle plans for a Hamas invasion and analysts observed significant terrorism exercises just over the border in Gaza, the payments continued.” (emphasis added)
The Qatar payments supposedly had “humanitarian goals…But Israeli intelligence officials now believe that the money had a role in the success of the Oct. 7 attacks” since they allowed for funds to be diverted “towards military operations.” And the Netanyahu government did not know this to be the case? Is hot sauce hot?
A motivation for allowing this support of Hamas is provided:
“As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.”
The reporters continue, “The official in the prime minister’s office said Mr. Netanyahu never made this statement. But the prime minister would articulate this idea to others over the years.”
In fact, according to the article, in 2017, “Netanyahu even lobbied Washington on Qatar’s behalf…as Republicans pushed to impose financial sanctions on Qatar over its support for Hamas.”
This lobbying effort happened despite Netanyahu’s defense minister in 2016, Avigdor Lieberman, writing a “secret memo” to Netanyahu stating that, in the words of the New York Times reporters, “Hamas was slowly building its military abilities to attack Israel.”
The Israeli government’s support for Hamas clearly represents a typical imperialist divide and conqueror strategy. In this case, support one’s enemy, even one you view as calling for your elimination, to reduce the power of another enemy.
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The Israeli government’s support of Hamas has been reported elsewhere. The Times of Israel, well before the New York Times article, on October 8, 2023, just after the Hamas attack, had a story with the headline “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces.” Netanyahu’s “policy” treated “the terror group as a partner.” Why? From the article: “The idea was to prevent [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas…from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.” As a result, “Hamas became stronger.”
Israeli Government Advance Knowledge of The October 7 Attack
One of the key questions surrounding the Hamas attack on October 7 is whether the Israeli government knew about it in advance, and did not act to prevent it. The New York Times article asserts that Israeli leaders and “intelligence officers” assessed that Hamas “was neither interested in nor capable of a large-scale-attack” that this paper of record attributes to “intelligence failures and other faulty assumptions.” However, again, in the same New York Times report, the Israeli military had “obtained battle plans for a Hamas invasion and analysts observed significant terrorism exercises just over the border in Gaza.”
Details about that advance knowledge are provided in the Hadassah Magazine article. It profiles young women who were part of the Israel Defense Forces Combat Intelligence Corps working as observers who were “monitoring Israel’s border with Gaza” at a base located less than a mile from the border with Gaza.
They were trained in firearms usage. However, they were unarmed because in the past, some observers had committed suicide.
On October 7, many on the base were killed, including 15 unarmed female field observers. Seven were taken as captives.
Before October 7, the observers
“had informed their superiors repeatedly that Hamas appeared to be planning an attack that would likely involve breaking through the border fence…As early as May 2023…they witnessed part of a large-scale, all-day Hamas drill that likely served as preparation for the October 7 attack.”
One of the observers saw, as paraphrased by the reporter, “many Palestinians…approach the border fence with maps, examining the area and digging holes” only to be “told by her superiors they were farmers and not to worry.”
In the months before the attack, another observer described how the training went from once a week to almost nonstop and that it, as paraphrased, “included driving tanks and even crossing the border into Israel.”
When an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson was asked about the “observers’ warnings” not being “heeded,” this person replied, “Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”
Reasons provided in the article as to why the observers’ warnings were ignored include gender bias (sexism) in the Israel military and their low rank.(2) In the words of one observer:
“We were 18- and 19-year-old girls. Even though we knew the whole area perfectly and could tell you about it in our sleep, we were not considered high enough ranked, so they did not listen. They liked to belittle us. It did not surprise me.”
Could there be other reasons not discussed in the article? Could there have been a desire for a Hamas attack to be used as an excuse for carrying out the subsequent destruction and mass murders to enable Israel to fully take over what remains of Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip and West Bank? Is the war an attempt to complete the dreams of a greater Israel (that includes Southern Lebanon) held by some of the founders of Israel?(3)
Notes.
1.) A November 21, 2023 Politico article quotes former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying “In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas. Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi [Netanyahu] saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.”
Another Politico article points out: “Most incriminatingly, Netanyahu himself said in 2019 at a Likud party conference: “Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.””
2.) From the Haddasah article: Women in the IDF “constitute 45 percent of junior officer positions” that shrinks to about “20 percent at the lieutenant level” and declines further among senior officers.In other words, in general, women are not treated as equals within the IDF. Nevertheless, after October 7, “there has been a significant increase in women enlisting in combat units.” At the same time, the observers “still have no weapons and the hierarchy in the army has not changed.”
3.) Ben-Gurion is described in Wikipedia as “the primary national founderof the State of Israelas well as its first prime minister.” In “The Birth of Israel,” Pantheon Books, 1987, author Simha Flapan, who was a committed socialist Zionist (pg. 10), wrote on pg. 31 “Ben-Gurion had always viewed partition as the first step toward a Jewish state in the whole of Palestine, including Transjordan, the Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon.”
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