Gaza Health Ministry says over 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel-Hamas war

You can't start a war, without losses.

SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL thanks for the TOP OF THE MORNING READ OF THE DAY

Frank-stein’s Creation and Monster :

V1 : https://youtu.be/H4PckPdApIY?si=3vrhl6oBjUSgubPc


1.) How Israel went from helping 'create' Hamas to bombing it
HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR

TBS Report
14 October, 2023, 03:50 pm
Last modified: 14 October, 2023, 05:30 pm

Hamas has roots watered by Israeli funding, former military governor of Gaza admits 

Hamas would not exist in its current form without Israeli involvement, highlights a recent piece published by The Intercept.

The article by Mehdi Hasan, a British-American broadcaster and Dina Sayedahmed, a multimedia journalist based in New York suggests that Hamas, an acronym for the "Islamic Resistance Movement," creation was largely influenced by resources provided by Israel.

"This isn't a conspiracy theory," the Intercept article reads.

The article refers to comments from Israeli officials, such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, a former military governor in Gaza. 

Segev reportedly stated his part in financially aiding the Palestinian Islamist movement, viewing it as a "counterweight" to the secularist Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as "a creature of Israel.")

"The Israeli government gave me a budget," Segev confessed to a New York Times reporter, "and the military government gives to the mosques."

In a startling revelation, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli official who worked in religious affairs in Gaza for over twenty years, told the Wall Street Journal, "Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation." 

According to The Intercept article, during the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. 

"I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," he wrote.
Over the past decade -during 2009, 2012, and 2014- Israel has engaged in military conflict with Hamas at least three times, resulting in about 2,500 Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza. 

Hamas has been accused of killing more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian fighter group, mentions the article.

Reflecting on the chain of events, David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military based in Gaza, admitted, "When I look back, I think we made a mistake."

SOURCE : https://www.tbsnews.net/hamas-israel-war/how-israel-went-helping-create-hamas-bombing-it-718378?amp


2.) “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood
STORYOCTOBER 20, 2023

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is urging Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, where the death toll from Israel’s two-week bombardment has topped 4,100. Israel says a ground invasion may be imminent.

“This isn’t an effort to try to quell, to destroy Hamas specifically,” says Tareq Baconi, Palestinian analyst and author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.

“This is an effort to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip and beyond the Gaza Strip, as we see the violence rising in the West Bank.”

Baconi lays out Israel’s history of enabling Hamas while designating them as terrorists in order to maintain tight control over Gaza. After the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,400, Baconi says, “that equilibrium has now shattered.”

SOURCE : https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/divide_and_rule_how_israel_helped


3.) HISTORY
* MADE BY HISTORY
What the World Can Learn From the History of Hamas

The massacre by Hamas, which killed more than 1,000 men, women, and children, was an example of how that can happen. The terrorist group’s roots and strength date back to a Palestinian uprising that began in 1987—known as the first Intifada—when Israel turned a blind eye to the rise of Hamas so it could focus on what Israeli leaders saw as an even greater threat at the time: secular Palestinian groups, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat.

This move proved to be a disastrous miscalculation. The Israeli campaign against the PLO in the 1980s ended up enabling the rise of both Hamas and the Lebanese Hizballah (Party of God), two non-state actors that currently threaten Israeli security. Israel’s military campaign might weaken Hamas. Yet, Israel is unlikely to destroy the terrorist group—just as it never destroyed the PLO—and may instead encourage the rise of a group far more threatening than Hamas.

Beginning with the foundation of Israel in 1948, the PLO provided the de-facto leadership for Palestinians, many of whom had been displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars first in 1948, and then again in 1967. Palestinians turned to the group once they realized they could no longer rely on nearby Arab states like Egypt and Syria to liberate what they saw as their land.

First from Jordan and then from Lebanon—after the PLO was expelled from Jordan in 1970—the group conducted military strikes against Israeli targets. In 1982 and 1983, an Israeli military operation chased the PLO from Lebanon to Tunis—far from Israel’s borders. Israel’s military campaign, however, spawned the creation of a Shi’a resistance group in Lebanon called Hizballah, which later inspired the creation of Hamas.

In 1987, the first Intifada erupted as a spontaneous, homegrown protest movement. Some of the Intifada’s leaders, disillusioned with the secular PLO, formed Hamas (“Courage”)—a more hardline, religiously-motivated group.

Israel imprisoned Hamas’ leader, Ahmad Yassin, in 1989, but otherwise turned a blind eye to the group’s spread because it was a relatively minor threat to Israeli security, and Israeli leaders were focused on Arafat and the threat posed by the PLO.

In 1993, the first Intifada finally ended in a historic peace agreement signed by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Known as the Oslo Accords, the agreement that President Bill Clinton helped broker promised to eventually lead to Palestinian statehood.

Yet, almost immediately, this “two-state solution” began unraveling. 

In 1994, an American-Jewish settler living in the West Bank walked into a Hebron mosque and killed 29 Muslim worshipers, inflaming tensions. Then in 1995, another Jewish settler opposed to the Oslo Accords assassinated Rabin, just after he had addressed a peace rally. The loss of the prime minister removed a champion of peace from the top of Israeli politics. Finally, in 1996, an Israeli tunnel built under what Muslims know as the Noble Sanctuary or Haram al-Sharif, and Jews know as the Temple Mount, sparked Palestinian protests.

These events prompted a dramatic change in strategy for Hamas. The group became the first Muslim organization to embrace the use of suicide bombers. Its leaders had tired of waiting for a Palestinian state and understood that Israel had a superior military. They also recognized that the shock of the tactic would guarantee media coverage, sow fear, and push Israel to lash out.

Hamas’ decision ignited a spiraling cycle that destroyed the peace process and thwarted any attempt to create a two-state solution.

Israeli voters reacted to Hamas’ first two suicide attacks by replacing the incumbent, pro-peace Labor government with a more hawkish, Likud-led government helmed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Initially, although Likud distrusted the deal with the PLO, Netanyahu promised to fulfill Israel’s commitments. The prime minister even agreed to withdraw Israeli troops from most of Hebron in January 1997. 

SOURCE : https://time.com/6324221/hamas-origins-history/

——

* BONUS READ :

The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool?

Jean-Pierre Filiu
Journal of Palestine Studies
Vol. 41, No. 3 (Spring 2012), pp. 54-70 (17 pages)
Published By: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

SOURCE : https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2012.xli.3.54



V2 : https://youtu.be/BoIgloYGSTs?si=fDIpj15Yh51PGgmg