(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Netanyahu is the Greatest Threat to Israeli Security [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-02 There is a key set of facts about Hamas and the current crisis that has gotten very little attention. The fact that Hamas was the creation of the Israeli government. For years, Netanyahu funneled money to Hamas. Propped Hamas up as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, granting them the power to distribute work permits and playing an active role in ensuring there would be no deal between Hamas and the Palestinian authority. Netanyahu ensured Hamas got unhindered access to funds flowing in from Qatar and Iran. He did little to install checks and balances to prevent these funds from being used to build the military wing of Hamas and spread an extremist ideology that denied the right of Israel to exist. The purpose of this alliance between Netanyahu and Hamas was to divide Gaza from the West Bank and prevent a peace deal that would establish a Palestinian state under a unified Palestinian government. “Whoever opposes a Palestinian state must support delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with Likud MKs “We need to tell the truth,” Israeli major general Gershon Hacohen, an associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a 2019 TV interview. “Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.” — Haaretz Israel’s support for Hamas precedes Netanyahu. Just as the US thought that supporting Islamic Fundamentalists in Afghanistan could help bring down the Soviets. Israeli leaders thought the Muslim Brotherhood and its Hamas offshoot could weaken the authority of the secular PLO and Fatah. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the 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,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.” — The Intercept “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in 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. — The Intercept The result was not just a disaster for Israelis. It was a disaster for the Palestinians in Gaza. Before the attack by Hamas, an Arab Barometer survey was carried out in Gaza: The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side. So now, after a horrific attack where bullets and guns paid for by Netanyahu were used to murder Israelis. Netanyahu is going to save Israel from the Frankenstein he created by bombing a civilian population that does not support Hamas. Really? Let’s establish a principle here: Israel has an absolute right to defend itself. But is Netanyahu’s response about defending Israel and destroying Hamas? How does driving a million people out of their homes with no food, water or shelter help defeat Hamas or reduce civilian casualties? Now, you have an even more densely packed population in a smaller area in a more desperate condition that Israel is bombing. Because Israel is bombing the place where they directed the population to go - there is no safe place in Gaza from Israeli bombs, North or South, so what was the point of driving a million people from their homes? It had nothing to do with Hamas or destroying Hamas. It was an opportunity to execute Netanyahu’s long-held ambition of ethnic cleansing. Netanyahu has just removed a million Palestinians from their homes, and you can bet they won’t be allowed back for “security” reasons. The biggest bit of ethnic cleansing of the 21st century right under the noses of the collective West. Not only will this not help eliminate Hamas, it will make it harder to eliminate Hamas. But Hamas and Netanyahu have had an unholy alliance against peace and a two-state solution for decades that is still in effect. Gen. McChrystal created the term “COIN mathematics.” COIN is an acronym for counterinsurgency. The concept applies to the consequences of Israeli actions in Gaza. An Israeli general justified the killing of large numbers of civilians in a refugee camp to get at one Hamas commander. He flippantly referred to it as the “tragedy of war.” Had the Hamas commander been killed without the loss of civilians, it’s likely most Gazans who are fed up with Hamas rule would not have mourned his loss. Because 100’s of civilians were killed or maimed to get at one Hamas commander, that Hamas fighter will be replaced with 100’s of sons, brothers, and families of the innocents killed by Israel in that one attack. With no future, no home, and having lived through the Israeli terror in Gaza, there will be 100 replacements for every Hamas terrorist killed. The Gaza population is one of the youngest in the world. Nearly half (47.3%) are under 18. That’s more than a million young Gazans that will be shaped and hardened by Israel’s actions in Gaza. Hamas was losing its grip on the population of Gaza. Netanyahu has now driven them together in a way that would have been otherwise impossible. Netanyahu has once again proven to be Hamas’s strongest ally. Netanyahu’s response in Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas and everything to do with Netanyahu’s agenda. The manner in which Israel has responded is not just a violation of international law and a war crime. It will not make Israel safer or more secure, and that was the goal of Hamas. It doesn't matter now if Israel manages to kill most of the Hamas militants. Hamas has goaded Israel into a barbaric set of actions that will open a Pandora's box of unintended consequences that will not be good for the security of Israel. Why don’t Egypt and Jordan accept the Gazan refugees? Because that will encourage further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. If they accept the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the West Bank will be next. Next, Israel will demand they accept the Palestinians of the West Bank. This would completely destabilize these countries and create an uncontrollable growth of terrorist groups. Netanyahu’s strategy has not been only to divide Palestinians. He has been dividing Israeli Jews and attacking Israeli democracy and the rule of law as well. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis — approaching 5 percent of the population — participated in protests last weekend. Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, has encouraged Israelis to engage in civil disobedience if the proposal becomes law. And many military officers have said they would refuse to report for duty. — Israel’s Internal Turmoil Netanyahu is not just tearing up any chance at peace. He is tearing apart Israeli society from within as well. There are 7.1 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. If demographic trends continue, the Palestinian majority will increase substantially over time. There will never be a future for anyone if these two populations do not have equal rights and if Palestinian children's lives are not given the same value as Israeli children’s lives. Like it or not, the fate of Palestinians and Israeli Jews is tied together. It also impacts the security and safety of ethnic and religious minorities everywhere in the world, including the USA. If ethnic cleansing is tolerated anywhere against any population, it is a threat to everyone, everywhere. It is for this reason that Jews have to be advocates for Palestinian rights, and Palestinians have to be advocates for the rights of Jewish Israelis. The right of Israel to exist needs to be unconditional and absolute and not dependent on the say of anyone but Israelis. The same holds for Palestinians; their rights can not be dependent on conditions set by Netanyahu or any other Israeli. Just like Israel, their right to exist must be unconditional and absolute. Until both sides recognize unconditionally the rights of each other, there will never be peace. Just like recognizing Israel was a reality that the Palestinian Authority had to accept, so too will the Israeli government have to accept the same reality vis-s-vis the Palestinians if there is to be a future for Israel. This will never happen as long as Hamas, Netanyahu, and Netanyahu’s settler allies are running the show. They are a terrorist alliance of convenience who have no interest in peace and seek the destruction of each other’s populations. They are an Axis of Evil that presents the biggest threat to the security of Israel and the future of the region. 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