Financially Strapped Hamas's New Army of Children

...Hamas has made it clear that it plans to send the teenagers to launch rockets and mortars at Israel, with the hope that they would achieve "martyrdom." But this does not seem to bother Abbas or the Palestinian Authority, or even the international community. If and when the International Criminal Court convenes to consider "war crimes" in the Middle East, the first thing the judges should look into is how Hamas sent thousands of Palestinian teenagers to their deaths and, as that was happening, how Abbas and the Palestinian Authority looked the other way.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
18 February '15..

For the past several months, Hamas leaders have been complaining that they do not have enough money to rebuild the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the last war with Israel.

However, it appears that Hamas does have enough funds to train, arm and indoctrinate thousands of young Palestinian men and boys.

While thousands of Palestinian families who lost their houses during the war continue to live in public shelters throughout the Gaza Strip, Hamas recently established 18 camps for military training.

The Hamas military training camps, under the motto "Vanguards of Liberation," have attracted some 17,000 Palestinian males aged 15-21. The young recruits were trained how to use various types of weapons, including pistols, rifles and mortars. They were also "educated" about the need to eliminate Israel and "restore Palestinian rights."

Samir Abu Aitah, a 15-year-old boy who joined the Hamas-run militia, said: "I now feel very happy because they trained me how to use weapons so that I could fight against the soldiers of the occupation. The Jews have killed thousands of innocent people and that's why I decided to join the path of jihad (holy war) and fight against them with weapons. We want to expel the Jews from our occupied country."

Another 15-year-old boy, Mahmoud al-Kurd, said he really enjoyed being trained with weapons at Hamas's camps. "Our enemy understands only one language – the language of swords."

Al-Kurd's friend, Ismail Elayan, who is also 15, told reporters who visited the training camps: "I decided to join the camp because this will pave the way for liberating all of our country. This is our major goal."

Mohamed al-Najjar, 16, said he joined the training camps because he "loves martyrdom." He added: "I want to pursue the path of resistance until I'm martyred."

Hamas later held a "graduation ceremony" for the young recruits who are expected to serve in its future "Liberation Army." And when Hamas talks about "liberation," it means it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and replace it with an Islamic state.

Foreign Aid, Rich Terrorists and Willing Dupes

...More than anything, Hamas needs cash flows from abroad to further line its own pockets and underwrite its military capabilities. Amassing, maintaining and deploying rocket arsenals doesn’t come cheap and neither do mobilizing, training and sustaining sizeable militias. Perversely, foreign NGOs pay for all that, thereby sowing the seeds of more destruction in Gaza – the very sort they are now purportedly out to repair.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
16 November '14..

Hamas, which imperiously rules Gaza, has been named in the latest issue of Forbes Israel as the world’s second-richest terrorist organization. It annually rakes in a billion dollars, outdone only by Islamic State (a.k.a. Da’esh, ISIS, ISIL) which – with an annual income of some two billion dollars – tops the chart of terrorist moneybags.

Hamas’s financial success has by far eclipsed Hezbollah, Taliban and al-Qaida.

IS finances its offensives by selling thousands of barrels of Iraqi oil every day on the black market. Hamas’s chief sources of earnings, according to the exhaustive Forbes report, are accrued from skimming hefty sums off foreign NGO donations and putting the squeeze on ordinary Gazans – the very ones the NGOs are ostensibly seeking to aid.

Hamas taxes them to the hilt, imposes harsh penalties and fees and also engages in black market commerce. All provisions and materiel that enter Gaza fall under the control of Hamas henchmen who heftily profit from their distribution and/or retail.

Such supplies enrich Hamas and enhance the organization’s power – above and beyond travesties like using cement earmarked for civilian construction to reinforce labyrinthine attack tunnels into Israel.

The Forbes data should, if nothing else, induce a sobering rethink among those who for all intents and proposes are underpinning the very terrorist hierarchy that foremost brings misery to Gaza but then pleads for overseas assistance to fix the damage. These include charities, businesses, financial institutions and foreign governments.

They all appear intent rebuilding Gaza after the ravages of last summer’s fighting. The problem is that the very overlords who inflicted disaster on the population under their sway happen to be extremely affluent.

Instead of going hat in hand to the international community, they might be asked to bankroll some of the reconstruction. They have impressively deep pockets.

More than anything, Hamas needs cash flows from abroad to further line its own pockets and underwrite its military capabilities. Amassing, maintaining and deploying rocket arsenals doesn’t come cheap and neither do mobilizing, training and sustaining sizeable militias.

Perversely, foreign NGOs pay for all that, thereby sowing the seeds of more destruction in Gaza – the very sort they are now purportedly out to repair.

Will Their Bet Pay Off? Hamas’s War for Cash

...It remains to be seen, of course, how well Hamas’s bet will pay off for Hamas. The price paid by the people of Gaza is enormous, but that was part of Hamas’s goal: no destruction, no reconstruction money to skim. The basic situation remains: every citizen of Gaza is a Hamas hostage.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
05 August '14..

Nowadays most of the press takes for granted the demands for a “Marshall Plan” for Gaza, rehabilitation of Gaza, and payment of salaries for civil servants. The humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza are very great, but take another look: it seems this war was started by Hamas because it was short of cash.

It’s well known that Iran’s payments to Hamas were diminished or eliminated when Hamas -which is Sunni- sided with the Sunni rebels in Syria against Iran’s ally, the Assad regime, It is also clear that the Egyptian army has taken serious actions to close down the vast network of smuggling tunnels from Gaza into Sinai, which Hamas taxed to produce much of its income. The result was a fiscal disaster for Hamas, visible in the fact that it has been unable to pay salaries to its people. There are a remarkable 43,000 people on the Hamas payroll in Gaza, of whom about 13,000 are men under arms.

So what did Hamas do to change this situation? First it tried to get the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to pay the salaries, by entering into a sort of non-party or “technocratic” government with the Fatah party in the PA. This failed: the PA, which is paying its own civil servants in Gaza, refused to take on the additional burden. So Hamas turned to war. That such a war would be a disaster for the people of Gaza, would surely result in hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded, would destroy many homes and public facilities, must have been clear to the Hamas leadership. They had spent years planting their rockets and tunnels in and under hospitals, schools, and homes, which predictably would be hit during the war. No matter. That was a price the people of Gaza would have to pay.

And then would come the payments to Hamas. The goal of the war was to shake things up, to get Hamas out of its fiscal crisis, by getting the world, the “international community,” to get money moving. Perhaps Qatar would agree to pay those salaries. Perhaps the United States would pressure Egypt and Israel to open more passages more hours, and without undue inspections of what was going through. Perhaps the Americans and the EU and the wealthy Arab oil producers would go for as “Marshall Plan” for Gaza, sending hundreds of millions of dollars.

And all the while, Hamas would remain in charge. As Guy Bechor pointed out in Gplanet, it’s as if all the Marshall Plan funding directed at Germany had been sent with the Nazi Party still in charge in Berlin rather than after the destruction of the Nazi regime and while American troops were stationed in Germany.

The How and Why of Europe's Good Intentions Harming Gaza

...When Europeans finally find the courage to conduct full, independent and credible investigations of these policies, the reports will make tragic reading. This could take some time. The European Parliament in 2004 ordered the EU's Anti-Fraud Office to investigate previous funding for Yasser Arafat. A decade later, that report remains top secret—a blatant affront to democratic principles.

Gerald M. Steinberg..
WSJ Opinion Europe..
29 July '14..



Jerusalem

In response to the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, European leaders have issued the familiar calls for peace and made the usual four-hour pilgrimages to the region. Yet little has come out of this European engagement, with the Continent remaining "a payer, not a player" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If anything, the war between Hamas and the Jewish state can in part be blamed on the massive and unaccountable aid Europeans have poured into the Palestinian territories. The European Union and its 28 member states continue to channel millions of euros, pounds and kroner annually to both Hamas-controlled Gaza and the West Bank, without responsible supervision, transparency or oversight.

In Gaza, instead of building schools and developing a functioning economy, Hamas diverted resources into the two main local "industries": acquiring thousands of missiles and building a huge underground infrastructure designed to terrorize Israeli civilians. The miles of concrete-lined strategic tunneling under houses, schools and hospitals are estimated to have cost €1 billion, which wouldn't have been available without European aid.

The EU's Court of Auditors issued a detailed evaluation of aid to the Palestinians in December 2013. Yet the contributions to the war industry were noticeably missing. The report discussed the EU's project for private-sector reconstruction in Gaza, which pays for buildings "destroyed or damaged during the Israeli 'Operation Cast Lead' offensive of 2008." But there was no mention of the role of these structures as facades for the underground maze. Auditors visited Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but their report doesn't mention the concrete bunkers below the emergency room, which house a Hamas military command center, according to Israeli officials.

By contrast, the report repeated the standard EU slogans condemning Israel for trying to protect its citizens from Hamas attacks, writing that "restrictions on Gaza are particularly severe." Framing the conflict this way promotes the Palestinian-victimization narrative, which is then translated into intense pressure on the Jewish state to relax restrictions. When Israel accedes to such demands, Hamas accelerates its acquisition of thousands of missiles and the transformation of Gaza into an underground terror fortress.

Flying Flotilla To Gaza Will Flout US Law To Aid Hamas

Daled Amos
06 September '10

IMRA notes that it is being reported that there is now a plan to send a flotilla to Gaza by air next year:

A pro-Palestinian group based in the US will send a plane loaded with aid to the Gaza Strip in defiance of Israel's air and sea blockade, an official said Sunday.

"We intend to send an aircraft to Gaza in much the same way boats were used -- without going through Israeli or Egyptian airspace," said Paul Larudee, an organizer with the California-based Free Palestine Movement sponsoring the flight.

Authorities in Gaza are supportive of the initiative and are working to locate a landing site, Larudee said. Gaza's now-defunct Yasser Arafat International Airport is not being considered, he said.

In the meantime, Free Palestine Movement officials will look for a plane designed for rough landings and takeoffs such as those used in Alaska and other locales lacking proper aviation facilities, Larudee said. The plan is to send a light aircraft equipped with material sometime in the spring of 2011, after the next sea voyage.

"Breaking the blockade by air may be even more feasible than by sea. An aircraft cannot be boarded while in flight, and the right aircraft can land almost anywhere in Gaza," a statement on the group's website says.

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Humanitarian Crisis? No, Gazans Are Bored!

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
14 July '10

Left-wing propagandists have spent the last several years successfully painting a picture of Gaza as a place where children starve and where all are in need. In reply, Israel and her defenders have attempted to point out that such tales are pure myth and that, in fact, there is no shortage of food or medicine in Gaza despite the limited blockade that has been imposed on the region since Hamas seized power there in a bloody coup. But there’s no need to listen to the Israelis on that point. As the New York Times makes clear in a 2,500-word dispatch published today about life in Gaza, the residents of the strip have no reticence about refuting the lies about a humanitarian crisis:

There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem. In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.

The picture painted in this story of life in Gaza is not pretty. But it makes it clear that what is really bothering Gazans is how boring life in Hamasistan can be. The Gazans chose to be ruled by an Islamist terrorist group dedicated to perpetuating the war against Israel and to the idea that Israel can someday be destroyed. But they think it is unfair to pay any price for the state of belligerency that exists with Israel — even if their basic needs are guaranteed by both the international community and the country they wish to destroy.

To their credit, authors Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner make clear that the Palestinians’ biggest problem is the civil war being waged between the Hamas and Fatah organizations, as the latter’s decision to shut off electricity to Gaza to get even with Hamas illustrates.

As far as Israel, Palestinians are a bit confused. They desire its destruction, but at the same time, they think it is unfair that they should not be allowed to work there or that trade between Israel and Gaza should be halted because of the terrorist campaigns waged against the Jewish state by the groups Palestinians support.

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Go Figure: Allowing More Aid Into Gaza Devastates Gazan Economy

Daled Amos
28 June '10

I suppose that may be one of the reasons that the Hamas terrorist 'government' refused to let Flotilla 'aid' into Gaza.

More to the point, the free flow of aid disrupts the very backbone of the Gazan economy--the tunnels. In The Myth of the Siege of Gaza, Jonathan D. Halevi writes:

"Smuggling" is not the correct word to describe the network of tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. Whereas smuggling connotes illegal activity carried out clandestinely, the Palestinian tunnel network is out in the open and extends the whole length of the border.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) published an abstract in May 2009 of an investigative article that appeared on the Al Arabiya network which presents the method of operation of the tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border. The following are the main points as described on the ITIC website:

The reporter for the Al Arabiya network, Waal Issam, toured Egyptian Rafah, in the market where goods sent to Gaza through the tunnels are sold. The report said that the market is the major source of the fuel supply to Gaza. Some 10,000 people work in the "tunnel industry" on a daily basis. The value of the trade via the tunnels is estimated at approximately $200 million annually. Along the border, which is some 13 kilometers long, nearly 800 tunnels have been excavated. According to the report, most of the tunnels that were attacked during Operation Cast Lead have been reconstructed. The smugglers who were interviewed claimed that a tunnel can be built nowadays in 10-15 days. One of the smugglers reported that the tunnels end in buildings, groves, chicken coops, etc.20

But now, even the rumor itself of the easing of restrictions had an immediate impact.

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Who cares about Hamas's 'reign of terror'?

Stephanie Gutmann
telegraph.co.uk
14 June '10

As President Obama gets ready to send an additional 400 million dollars in aid to “ordinary Palestinians” (most of which will probably end up with a small inner circle of Hamas weapons enthusiasts) it’s worth remembering who is causing the most misery to the people of Gaza.

The Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has written a blistering essay for the Hudson New York blog headlined, “What About Hamas’s Siege of Gaza?“. He reminds us that while the world bayed about Israel’s naval blockade, “Hamas [has continued] its reign of terror on the local population in general and its critics in particular.”

What is that reign like? Well, here are some snapshots of life in Gaza under Hamas: on June 6, “A senior United Nations official… expressed deep concern at reports that Hamas has broken into the offices of [NGOs] in the Gaza Strip… confiscated materials and equipment, and forced the offices to shut down.”

In late May, masked gunmen raided a UN children’s camp, tearing down tents and burning storage buildings. It’s not known who was behind those masks but earlier what the Irish Times called “a previously unknown militant group, The Free of the Homeland, issued a statement criticising [the UN] for, ‘teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.’” Hamas often uses proxies and has been attempting to impose strict sharia law. In April, as the same Irish Times article points out, Hamas sent “police to break up the Gaza Strip’s first major hip-hop concert [because, it said,] organisers failed to get a permit.”

Toameh was born in the West Bank city of Tulkarm 45 years ago.

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Turning of the Tide?

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
05 June '10

It seems that the problem was Turkey, not Israel:

IDF forces piloted the Rachel Corrie to the port of Ashdod early Saturday evening after boarding the ship earlier in the day. None were harmed in the military operation as the international activists on the ship cooperated with the boarding party. The activists went as far as lowering a ladder to the soldiers patrol boat to allow them to board, army sources have revealed.

The boarding of the Rachel Corrie containing activists and aid for Gaza was described by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday as a quiet operation. Netanyahu was quick to distinguish between the boat of Irish and Malaysian activists and the Turkish-sponsored Mavi Marmara which was boarded May 31 in an incident that left nine dead and scores wounded.

“The different outcome we saw today underscores the difference between peace activists who we disagree with but respect their right to express their different opinion and flotilla participants [on the Mavi Marmara] who were violent extremist supporters of terrorists,” said Netanyahu.

The Obama team has spent the week perpetuating the notion that it is Israel that needs to be investigated. But the tide seems to be shifting as the facts come out. The Washington Post editors, whose initial reaction was to scold Israel, have changed their tune.

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So how urgent was the need for humanitarian aid for the Gazans?

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War: A Blog
03 June '10


How urgent was the humanitarian aid that the cynically misnamed Freedom Flotilla tried to force through Israel's naval blockade of Gaza? We can get some idea of the answer by considering a little-noticed report put out yesterday by the spokesperson's office at the IDF. That report is online here. under the plain-spoken headline "Hamas Refuses to Allow Flotilla Aid into Gaza Strip".

The essence of it is this: 25 Israeli trucks, laden with the so-called aid found onboard the flotilla vessels, are standing by idlely this morning (Thursday) while the Hamas regime that rules the Gazan Arabs plays its eternal game, honed by years of experience, of political-point-scoring while shafting its own population.

The "aid", if that's an accurate term, that arrived on those boats includes large quantities of expired medications, along with clothing, blankets, some medical equipment and toys. Hamas, according to the IDF, "is unwilling to accept the cargo and the trucks filled with humanitarian aid have not been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. It appears that Hamas is in fact stopping the transfer of the humanitarian aid. Hamas did not explain his opposition to the transfer of the aid." Meanwhile there are reports of additional boatloads of allegedly urgent aid on the way, along with additional boatloads of the same kind of thugs and provocateurs we witnessed in the past few days. A great pity.

Israeli interests have always been to give the Palestinian Arabs, including the Gazans, something to value, something to protect, in their lives. This may be driven by self-interest but it's a legitimate standpoint nevertheless. These interests are served by ensuring a steady stream of goods and equipment into Gaza. Though a good proportion of the world's news media avoid reporting this, the reality is that deliveries from Israel are routine and frequent. So are the two-way transfers of people for for medical, religious, welfare, business or diplomatic reasons.

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