This report suggests the Hamas MP could easily work for Israel.
by David Livingstone
(abridged by henrymakow.com)
The Israelis created Hamas. But before we explore why, let’s be clear that Israel does not want peace. They want all of Palestine, and their belligerent settlement practices confirm that.
But the Israelis are taking advantage of the world’s ignorance of the realities in Palestine, and posturing as being willing to talk “peace”, only to actually stall that very peace process, so as not to interrupt the further colonization of Palestine.
So anything that can be offered as an excuse, will be. The most convenient ploy, presented with the sycophantic assistance of the media, is that of “terrorism”.
But the masses are naive, and fail to suspect the Machiavellian extremes that certain leaders will resort to. This includes creating a false enemy, in this case, Hamas, whereby the right-wing leadership of the Israelis can point the finger to some “enemy” to blame for supposedly stalling the process.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The West’s sponsorship of Islamic terrorism is nothing new. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, the British and Americans filled the vacuum by providing their own versions of “Islamic” leaders. This started with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood through a grant from the British. Under British sponsorship, the Brotherhood today represents a powerful force in the Islamic world, and is behind almost every act of terror in the name of Islam.
More correctly, the Brotherhood has been a tool shared by numerous Western intelligence agencies, starting with the Nazis, followed by the CIA, but also the Russians, French, Germans and Israelis.
Since the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the Muslim Brotherhood has been used to rally naive Muslims under the banner of Islam. Ever since, the Americans and others have been able to manage the Brotherhood like a rabid dog on a leash to keep the atheist Communist threat at bay.
With the collapse of the Cold War however, the Brotherhood has been used as the bogey man which the Americans can chase into the Middle East and Central Asia, starting with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel’s long-standing relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood was instrumental in the founding of an offshoot organization, Hamas.
According to Robert Dreyfuss, author of “Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam”:
- “And beginning in 1967 through the late 1980s, Israel helped the Muslim Brotherhood establish itself in the occupied territories. It assisted Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Brotherhood, in creating Hamas, betting that its Islamist character would weaken the PLO.
According to Charles Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet [Isreali domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.”
One aspect of that strategy was the creation of the Village Leagues, over which Yassin and the Brotherhood exercised much influence. Israel trained about 200 members of the Leagues and recruited many paid informers.
New York Times Reporter David Shipler cites the Israeli military governor of Gaza as boasting that Israel expressly financed the fundamentalists against the PLO:
“Politically speaking, Islamic fundamentalists were sometimes regarded as useful to Israel, because they had conflicts with the secular supporters of the PLO. Violence between the two groups erupted occasionally on West Bank university campuses. 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.”
As Dreyfuss notes, “during the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and the West Bank did not support resistance to the Israeli occupation. Most of its energy went to fighting the PLO, especially its more left-wing factions, on university campuses.”
After the Palestinian uprising of 1987, the PLO accused Hamas and Yassin of acting “with the direct support of reactionary Arab regimes… in collusion with the Israeli occupation.”
Yasser Arafat complained to an Italian newspaper: “Hamas is a creation of Israel, which at the time of Prime Minister Shamir, gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques.” Arafat also maintained that Israeli prime minister Rabin admitted to him in the presence of Hosni Mubarak that Israel had supported Hamas.
Essentially, as analyst Ray Hannania pointed out, in “Sharon’s Terror Child”, published in Counterpunch, “undermining the peace process has always been the real target of Hamas and has played into the political ambitions of Likud. Every time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators appeared ready to take a major step forward achieving peace, an act of Hamas terrorism has scuttled the peace process and pushed the two sides apart.”
In “Hamas and the Transformation of Political Islam in Palestine”, for Current History, Sara Roy wrote:
“Some analysts maintain that while Hamas leaders are being targeted, Israel is simultaneously pursuing its old strategy of promoting Hamas over the secular nationalist factions as a way of ensuring the ultimate demise of the [Palestinian Authority], and as an effort to extinguish Palestinian nationalism once and for all.”
CONCLUSION
The Muslim Brotherhood, and its many manifestations like Al Qaeda and bin Laden, serve as an ever-present and manufactured “terrorist” threat, used constantly as a pretext to justify repressive measures at home and expanded imperialistic objectives abroad.
Because, despite all the rhetoric about the threat of “political Islam”, unbeknownst to the general public, the manipulation of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the world is still a mainstay of American foreign policy.