HAMAS and Israel

[MJM]

I read recently that HAMAS was created by Israel to rival the PLO.
Is this common knowledge?
I didn't believe it at first but after a quick search I found a little evidence to support this.
Anyone know anything about this?

[Fires of History]

I didn't know that, would be interested to hear more, links, etc.

Although with how amazingly screwed up that entire region is, I would believe anything at this point...

Power To The People,
Trance

[Reuben]

I didn't know that they were actually created by Israel. I knew that when Israel banned donations to the P.L.O. they were building up Hamas as a counterweight, please give me more info if you have any.

[MJM]

The info I found on the net was quite small, only 1 article about Netanyhu.
I read it in a book actually 'State Secrets' I doubt it's available outside of NZ and the refference was only made in passing.
I think what you said was correct Rueben, they sponsored as opposed to created HAMAS. Sorry about that.

http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/97co..._it_All_on_Bibi (http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/97cov/_Mission_Implausible__or_Blaming_it_All_on_Bibi)


A horrified Netanyahu may even find he's created a sort of Palestinian
Khomeini--a nice irony, since Israel help found Hamas in the 1980s to
rival the PLO.

It's right at the bottom of the article, I just skimmed over it so I'm not sure on the complete content.

[MJM]

#6 The Chosen Country.
http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/chom...m#_Toc514947288 (http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/chomsky/pfrm/pfrm.htm#_Toc514947288)

Chomsky on this:


Israel's record and its attitude toward Hamas have evolved over the years. Didn't Israel once favor it?

They not only favored it, they tried to organize and stimulate it. Israel was sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists in the early days of the intifada [the uprising of Palestinians within Israel against the Israeli government]. If there was a strike of students at some West Bank university, the Israeli army would sometimes bus in Islamic fundamentalists to break up the strike.

Sheikh Yaseen, an anti-Semitic maniac in Gaza and the leader of the Islamic fundamentalists, was protected for a long time. They liked him. He was saying, "Let's kill all the Jews." It's a standard thing, way back in history. Seventy years ago Chaim Weizmann was saying: Our danger is Arab moderates, not the Arab extremists.

The invasion of Lebanon was the same thing. Israel wanted to destroy the PLO because it was secular and nationalist, and was calling for negotiations and a diplomatic settlement. That was the threat, not the terrorists. Israeli commentators have been quite frank about that from the start.

Israel keeps making the same mistake, with the same predictable results. In Lebanon, they went in to destroy the threat of moderation and ended up with Hezbollah [Iranian-backed fundamentalists] on their hands. In the West Bank, they also wanted to destroy the threat of moderation -- people who wanted to make a political settlement. There Israel's ending up with Hamas, which organizes effective guerrilla attacks on Israeli security forces.

It's important to recognize how utterly incompetent secret services are when it comes to dealing with people and politics. Intelligence agencies make the most astonishing mistakes -- just as academics do.

In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier, the dominant power, has to justify what it's doing. There is only one way to do it -- become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you've lost your capacity to understand what's happening.

The US in Indochina was the same. They never could understand -- there are some amazing examples in the internal record. The FBI right here is the same -- they make the most astonishing mistakes, for similar reasons.

[MJM]

More info:
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902...2isr_hamas.html (http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2902isr_hamas.html)


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."

[Reuben]

Great stuff just before from chomsky. It has really clarified some things.


I agree that the threat to Isral comes from those who have some legitimacy. What I think is happening at the moment is that Yasser Arafat has gained too much legitimacy through his huge compromises, so now they are trying to destroy him.

Reuben