> None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
As a WP editor, the anti-Israeli editors have become a very strong majority, making it a poor source of objective information. For example the first paragraph of the Zionism article now reads: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."
The article you link to essentially boils down to the fact that Qatar funding for some (ostensibly) infrastructure and humanitarian aid projects in Gaza, with Israel facilitating it. It's not really support for Hamas, except in the sense that such Gaza aid projects require the involvement of its government.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit... - There is even an article that explains exactly how 'a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around Israel with alarming influence'
Who knows where the balance actually lies, but it's not just pro-Palestinians doing the propaganda here. Israel has engaged in far more propaganda than pretty much everyone (except maybe the United States) since the hasbara policy was first established following the public image fallout from the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
>In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle
It's pretty evident that the person who wrote your article is just complaining that wikipedia is at least somewhat resistant to being used as a platform for pushing zionist propaganda.
Israel approved money from
Qatar to flow into Gaza as a goodwill, trust establishing gesture, and as part of previous ceasefire agreements. It was supposedly used to pay salaries for the Gaza government.
Was it wrong in hindsight? Of course. Was it used to create division? No.
Fine, sure, I guess - the article is demanding an email address so I can’t read it, but I buy it.
I’m responding to the statement “Netanyahu was the one that helped put them there in the first place. He did this to try and derail the two state solution - famously delivering them thoses briefcases full of cash.”
This is a vastly different statement than “Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80’s”. It’s referring to a specific (“famous”!) instance, and attributing it to a specific person (Netanyahu), and putting it at a specific time frame (before Hamas seized power) so as to have a specific consequence (Hamas’ acquisition of power) for a specific reason (to derail a two state solution). Very little of this is correct: Netanyahu was not the one responsible for putting them into power (he wasn’t prime minister at the time), the Qatari money being referenced was allowed into Gaza many years after Hamas was in power, it was unlikely to do much to prevent a two state solution as one hadn’t really been on the table since Arafat, and so on.
That other people in the Israeli government, at a different time, backed Hamas in different instances for different reasons does not warrant conflating the two events. It’s like saying Bush did 9/11 because the CIA funded Bin Laden in the 80s.
And Israel sold arms to Iran to use against Iraq in the 1980s. "My enemy's enemy" etc.
> Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year
The 1980's were a very different era. The PLO was a terrorist organisation backed by the Soviet Union, and Israel was aggressive in trying to support any challenges to it.
> As the Hamas leadership pointed out, this objective failed.
Israel's objective from day one has not been to expel Hamas from Gaza (that's virtually impossible), but to remove it from power. And if the rumors about the ceasefire are true (and if the ceasefire is going to be respected), that's what's going to happen.
You make it sound like Hamas was passive in this. Baiting your enemy into attacking you in order to galvanize your side still requires them taking the bait. It’s a legitimate strategy, just not a very nice one. See also: US/Japan relations ahead of WW2.
For context:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...
> None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226691760/the-long-and-bitte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_...
There's even a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to documenting Israel's decades long support for Hamas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
As a WP editor, the anti-Israeli editors have become a very strong majority, making it a poor source of objective information. For example the first paragraph of the Zionism article now reads: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."
The article you link to essentially boils down to the fact that Qatar funding for some (ostensibly) infrastructure and humanitarian aid projects in Gaza, with Israel facilitating it. It's not really support for Hamas, except in the sense that such Gaza aid projects require the involvement of its government.
That sentence you are critical of has 17(!) supporting citations listed.
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https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit... - There is even an article that explains exactly how 'a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around Israel with alarming influence'
To be fair, the JIDF has been astroturfing Wikipedia for far longer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY
Who knows where the balance actually lies, but it's not just pro-Palestinians doing the propaganda here. Israel has engaged in far more propaganda than pretty much everyone (except maybe the United States) since the hasbara policy was first established following the public image fallout from the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
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>In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle
It's pretty evident that the person who wrote your article is just complaining that wikipedia is at least somewhat resistant to being used as a platform for pushing zionist propaganda.
3 replies →
Damn if you do damned if you don’t.
Israel approved money from Qatar to flow into Gaza as a goodwill, trust establishing gesture, and as part of previous ceasefire agreements. It was supposedly used to pay salaries for the Gaza government. Was it wrong in hindsight? Of course. Was it used to create division? No.
The “briefcases full of cash” began flowing into Gaza in the mid-2010s, IIRC. Hamas had been in power in Gaza for around a decade at that point.
Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80's
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
Fine, sure, I guess - the article is demanding an email address so I can’t read it, but I buy it.
I’m responding to the statement “Netanyahu was the one that helped put them there in the first place. He did this to try and derail the two state solution - famously delivering them thoses briefcases full of cash.”
This is a vastly different statement than “Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80’s”. It’s referring to a specific (“famous”!) instance, and attributing it to a specific person (Netanyahu), and putting it at a specific time frame (before Hamas seized power) so as to have a specific consequence (Hamas’ acquisition of power) for a specific reason (to derail a two state solution). Very little of this is correct: Netanyahu was not the one responsible for putting them into power (he wasn’t prime minister at the time), the Qatari money being referenced was allowed into Gaza many years after Hamas was in power, it was unlikely to do much to prevent a two state solution as one hadn’t really been on the table since Arafat, and so on.
That other people in the Israeli government, at a different time, backed Hamas in different instances for different reasons does not warrant conflating the two events. It’s like saying Bush did 9/11 because the CIA funded Bin Laden in the 80s.
And Israel sold arms to Iran to use against Iraq in the 1980s. "My enemy's enemy" etc.
> Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
The 1980's were a very different era. The PLO was a terrorist organisation backed by the Soviet Union, and Israel was aggressive in trying to support any challenges to it.
> As the Hamas leadership pointed out, this objective failed.
Israel's objective from day one has not been to expel Hamas from Gaza (that's virtually impossible), but to remove it from power. And if the rumors about the ceasefire are true (and if the ceasefire is going to be respected), that's what's going to happen.
Hamas is the casus belli that they spent decades creating
You make it sound like Hamas was passive in this. Baiting your enemy into attacking you in order to galvanize your side still requires them taking the bait. It’s a legitimate strategy, just not a very nice one. See also: US/Japan relations ahead of WW2.
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