Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/9/24 Jeremy R. Hammond on How Israel Propped Up Hamas

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

In this episode, Scott brings Jeremy R. Hammond on to dig deep into the multi-decade Israeli strategy to prop up Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to thwart the formation of a Palestinian state. Scott and Hammond go through the history and discuss how these revelations destroy the case for what Israel is currently doing to Gaza. Discussed on the show: “How Israel Supported Hamas Against the PLO” (Libertarian Institute) Obstacle to Peace by Jeremy R. Hammond Devil's Game by Robert Dreyfuss “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas” (New York Times) “The Gaza Bombshell” (Vanity Fair) “Netanyahu Implored Qataris to Continue Funding Hamas in 2018 Letter” (Libertarian Institute) “Netanyahu’s Support for Hamas Backfired” (Antiwar.com) Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent journalist and a Research Fellow at The Libertarian Institute whose work focuses on exposing deceitful mainstream propaganda that serves to manufacture consent for criminal government policies. He has written about a broad range of topics, including US foreign policy, economics and the role of the Federal Reserve, and public health policies. He is the author of several books, including Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian Economics in the Financial Crisis, and The War on Informed Consent. Find more of his articles and sign up to receive his email newsletters at JeremyRHammond.com. And follow him on Twitter @jeremyrhammond This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line once again i've got jeremy r hammond he's our new research fellow at the libertarian institute and he wrote the book obstacle to peace and he's written a bunch of great articles and blog entries for us at the institute lately as well, including his latest great article here,

how Israel supported Hamas against the PLO, some very important history here. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Jeremy? Doing well. Thanks for having me on again, Scott. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Yeah, good times, man. Happy to have you back here. And, you know, you always get cited by me along with Richard Sale and Andrew Higgins and a few others who've told this history because you do such a good job of telling it in your book Obstacle to Peace. So I'm very happy to have this article here at the Institute by you explaining this because of course it's crucial to the story as you say the way everything's

being portrayed in the media now. History began on October the 7th but there's so much that came before that. So but you know I like the way you have as your introduction here this story, this memo that was leaked from the New York Times. their instructions to their reporters about what language they're supposed to use in order to describe what's happening over there. And essentially, it sounds like, you know, the Newspeak dictionary 11th edition. We got fewer words than ever, you know, from 1984. Because, uh, and, and the point being that their choice of words that they're excluding essentially exclude the history of what's happening. All you're supposed to know is these people attack these

people, which is why they're doing the thing they're doing. And that's all you're allowed to know, basically, because of the censorship of kind of individual words, vocabulary words, you know, that pertain particularly to this situation. So it really is an instruction there. Can you take us through that part of it? Yeah, sure. So I was citing the Intercept there, which has been just phenomenal since October 7th in their reporting, really rare type of reporting from the Intercept. And and they had um they're the ones who reported on this this memo from the new york from new york times editors and you're just instructing their reporters to not to not use terms like not to refer to gaza or the west bank as occupied territories even though that's their status under international

law like they're not supposed to refer to that as occupied territories which is absurd and it just goes to show the prejudice of the new york times another one was you know to avoid using the word genocide And we see this in the reporting on the campus protests. I mean, you report after report on the protests in the New York Times. And, you know, I just did another blog post about this on my site yesterday, where, you know, just citing examples, just the ones that I'm coming across from the New York Times. And they talk about the campus protests, and they don't provide the critical context, which is what people are protesting, actually, which is, of course,

Israel's genocide in Gaza. And, of course, they don't want to use the word genocide, so they don't, but they don't even, like there was one that I criticized in my post where the Times described that the protesters were, you know, were upset about the death of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Thousands, they said. Well, the number of deaths now is, I think as of the last couple of days, is over 35,000. And we know that about 70% of those, are women and children. So they're not protesting the death of thousands of civilians. They're protesting the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians

in what is clearly a military assault on the civilian population of Gaza with systematic targeting of the civilian infrastructure, including the systematic targeting of the health care system, in conjunction with a blockade of humanitarian aid, and the use of starvation is a method of warfare. where children are literally dying or literally starving to death but but they can't use the word genocide and you're saying they can't even use the word genocide to describe the students protests so they can't even use it to describe what the students are protesting that's right

they won't even use it to describe what the students are protesting which is absurd so of course if you don't without that context and then of course all the reporting on the protests you know it's it's as though you know there's always this underlie lying kind of hinting that they're just a bunch of Jew hating Hamas supporters, right? I mean, that's the narrative. And so, you know, without providing that context, without actually telling people, without telling their readers what they're actually, what these protesters are actually protesting against, which is what the International Court of Justice itself, the highest authority on the planet

when it comes to interpretation and application of international law has ruled to be a plausible genocide in a preliminary ruling, you know, but the times can't provide that context that they're protesting what they view to be a genocide and what, you know, is reasonably, you know, if you look at the definition of genocide in the 1948 genocide convention, Israel's actions easily meet the definition. And so we can kind of dispense with the plausible part part of what the ICJ ruled um but yeah it it's just it goes to show the absolute prejudice of the new york times which of course is america's newspaper of record and kind of sets the standard for the prejudice of all the newspapers um so i like to pick on the times as is you know when i do case

studies i like to pick on the times a lot because it's just so it's so demonstrative of how the media really do fulfill this propaganda function of manufacturing consent for the u.s policy of supporting Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. Yeah. And apartheid, too. They're not allowed to call it an apartheid regime. Is that right? Right. Yep. Right. Even though human rights watch, amnesty international, numerous UN agencies, the Israeli human rights organization, Betzelam, Gisha, they've all described it as apartheid because it meets the definition of apartheid under international law. But you're not going to read about that in the New York Times. Yeah. And again, not that they would not,

necessarily have to just call it that as a flat fact as they would if it was in their interest to. But they could at least be able to say, again, the protesters are protesting what they call an apartheid regime. What they say is a genocide going on. But no, we don't even want to have that term in the paper. We're going to pretend these terms don't exist. They couldn't possibly apply here. Because as you say... The discussion can't even be had. That's correct. Because there's this more important narrative that they need to hammer home, which is that the only people who oppose Israel oppose them for no good reason, only because of anti-Semitism. Yep, exactly.

Yeah. Which is a ridiculous hoax. I mean, just on the face of it, you don't have to give leftist protesters that much credit. I'm sure they're bad on a lot of things. But nobody thinks that they're racists, right? Like, that's the crisis of our age. Is they're so anti-racist, they won't leave anyone alone just for going about their day, right? But now all of a sudden, they're the Nazis. They're supposed to be to the right of the right wing in America now. Who could buy that?

It just sounds so stupid. Yeah, it is. And, you know, this reminds me of the whole, you know, the whole, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free slogan that they've been chanting. And, you know, the media keep hammering on about how, you know, just like the U.S. Congress and the House passing resolutions, defining that as anti-Semitic. Well, that's just so utterly stupid. You know, I mean, what people are, not to say that there aren't people who chant that, who don't, who aren't anti-Semitic. But, you know, most of these kids in college campuses and things who are chanting the slogan,

from the river to the sea, they're not advocating the slaughter of Jews in Israel. They're advocating a single-state solution in which all people have equal rights. They're opposing the apartheid regime. And that's what they mean when they say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

The other thing that renders that accusation that that's anti-Semitic so stupid is that, you know, if you look at the Charter of Likud, the party of current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, they use the same, essentially the same slogan in saying that, you know, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, there will be only Israeli sovereignty. You know, so, I guess, evidently Hamas plagiarized from Lekud. Yeah, well, and Netanyahu himself used that language in February, twice, I believe it was, and to reiterate.

And that exact language, not just, you know, previously back in, say, 2020, when they were flirting with outright annexation, He said, and there's a previous one too, but where he had said there will always be one monopoly on security west of the Jordan River. You know what I mean? So where he has this sort of unique way of saying it. But this year, he said from the river to the sea, Israel will always control all of this land. So nothing about freedom because it's absolutely a two-tier deal where half the population virtually or, almost half the population, five million people, are essentially in prison and denied their rights altogether. Yeah, and then he held up that map in September. I mean, literally, I think it was

less than two weeks. It was about two weeks before the October 7th attacks in the UN General Assembly. And he was standing there holding up that map of the new Middle East. And what did it show? No Palestinian territories, no Palestine, just Israel from the river to the sea. I mean, this is the type of extremism we're talking about. So the very type of extremism that the media like to attribute to protesters of genocide is precisely the type of extremism that we see in the Israeli leadership. So the hypocrisy is so staggering. It just blows the mind.

Yeah. All right. Well, so this brings us right to your article then. We're going to work our long way back around again to Netanyahu's speech last September. and what happened on October the 7th. But the article, again, is called how Israel supported Hamas against the PLO. So, first of all, why would they do such a thing? And then I'll let you demonstrate that you know that they did.

Sure. Well, the reason why is because Israel wanted to undermine Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO. And the reason for that was because the PLO had come to accept the two states. solution to the conflict based on premised on the applicability of international law to the conflict, including the implementation of Resolution 242, which was passed by the UN Security Council in the wake of the 1967 war and called on Israel to withdraw its forces from the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. And so from the mid-70s, the PLO,

began really shifting away from, you know, from armed conflict toward political engagement and diplomacy and acceptance of the two-state solution. And this is what was called described as, you know, is the PLO's peace offensive. And so there was this threat of peace from the PLO. And the problem with that is that, of course, Israel has always rejected the two-state solution. you know the Zionist leadership essentially they want as much of the land of former Palestine as possible but without the Palestinians and so this is why Israel has always rejected the two-state solution and and so it was the PLO's acceptance of the two-state solution that posed the threat you know where Arafat was you know was viewed he came to be viewed by the international

community, as a legitimate leader, as a quote-unquote peace partner, a legitimate peace partner for Israel. And that was a threat to Israel because Israel didn't want to negotiate on good faith with the Palestinians and really come to some kind of agreement along the lines of the virtual international consensus, which is in favor of the two-state solution. And when I talk about the two-state solution, another caveat that's really important for people to understand is that this was not the, so this was not, people confused the two-state solution with the, quote, you know, the so-called peace process. But implementation of the two-state solution was never the goal of the peace process, quite the opposite. The so-called peace process was always the means by which

Israel and its superpower benefactor blocked implementation of the two-state solution. And they would talk about a two-state solution, but that's completely different from the two-state solution. So again, the two-state solution was premised on the applicability of international law to the conflict, which requires Israel to withdraw its forces from occupied territories, you know, past the armistice line of 1949. But what Israel in the U.S. were advocating under the peace process was something completely different, which was premised on the rejection of the applicability of international law to the conflict, whereby the people living under Israel's oppressive occupation were required to negotiate with their occupiers over how much of their own land they could possibly keep and maybe

someday exercise some kind of limited autonomy over, which is completely ludicrous and contrary to what is required under international law. So it's just the entire peace process was premised essentially on a rejection of Palestinians' rights. And so people need to understand, you know, there's a lot of confusion about that. People don't understand that people think that, you know, that the two-state solution is what the peace process was aiming for. That's false. I document that just very extensively in obstacle to peace. So anyways, just for that caveat there.

So Israel has rejected the peace process. The PLO accepted it. And so the Israel's strategy was to undermine the PLO. And what better way to do that than to support the PLO's leading opposition within the Palestinian population, which after it was established in 1987 was Hamas and his charter was published in August 1988 which happened to be the same year

that the PLO officially accepted the two-state solution so that was the reason why okay so now how did this begin I know that sometimes people go overboard and they say well Israel created Hamas and then a Zionist says, well, that's just crazy, and that kind of ends that argument. So what really happened? Israel didn't create it, but it did, for example, so Hamas was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassine,

who was a quadriplegic, who had studied in Egypt and was really heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. And he ended up establishing kind of a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. And he registered the charity organization. It was a charity organization registered in Israel. So in Israel, you know, allowed that, allowed his organization to be registered and actually supported it, to my understanding. And so that was kind of the origin, the early origin of Hamas was this Islamic charity that Sheikh Yassine founded. And that was in the early 70s.

and then in 1987 he established Hamas and Israel at you know there's certainly minimally Israel tacitly supported Hamas as a counterforce to the PLO but you know you have you have claims from you know American intelligence officials US State Department you know who are who have said that Israel actually funded Hamas early on. And so, you know, so, but minimally, minimally, as I wrote in obstacle to peace, certainly Israel was tacitly supporting Hamas. And, you know, you could read about that in the New York Times at the time. A month after Islam published its charter, and I cited this, this New York Times article in my book and in my article,

you know, or they're talking about how that, that, Israel was using, you know, appeared to be using Hamas as a counterforce to the PLO. So, you know, it's kind of like, it's not really, I guess it's what you would call an open secret. That's right. Yeah, it's in the Washington Post. There's also a piece in the Washington Post about it, which is really just kind of, I think, recycling the Wall Street Journal. But then there's, of course, Richard Sale and UPI. And your great book has a lot of different citations.

I forget which all, but I know that. Wall Street Journal in 2009 reported about it. Yeah, that's Higgins. Yeah. And then Robert Dreyfus, in his book, Devil's Game, has a great treatment of this as well. How the U.S., it's devil's game, how the U.S. helped unleash fundamentalist Islam. And, of course, they inherited the policy from the U.K. after World War II. And so basically, in a way, what Israel was doing with Hamas here is just what Israel, pardon me, what the U.S. and the U.K. were doing on a larger scale. It was, you know, Israel's version was writ small of essentially. essentially back the Islamists in order to thwart, one, the nationalists and to the socialists who were the enemies during the Cold War, and including the communists, too. So this was the policy of essentially backing the Muslim Brotherhood all across the region. It was the U.S. and U.K. with Saudi Arabia who had essentially, again, not created it, but had bankrolled it and given it leadership and all of this for years. And, you know, if you go back, I know I'm sure you're familiar with the stories of going back to the 60s where Saddam Hussein is the head of the secret police going around lynching all the commies. It's like Pol Pot killing anybody with glasses and that kind of thing.

Like it's really, you know? And then so this is the same thing. We'll use the Islamists to thwart the nationalists and the communists in the form of fatah and like the popular people's front or whatever they call it, you know? Yeah. I mean, it was the old divide and rule, divide and conquer strategy. And so it really shouldn't be surprising to people that this was the case. And the other thing to say about that, you know, for people who are kind of like skeptical, you know, Israel, some more, some mosques, I mean, just read, you know,

if you have been reading the Israeli media since October 7th, it's completely uncontroversial. Right. in Israel that Netanyahu, for his entire tenure, has maintained a policy of utilizing Hamas as a strategic ally to block any movement toward peace negotiations with the Palestinian. Okay, but now you're skipping ahead in the story because, I mean, just... Yeah, that's fast forwarding. Yeah, just to make the point about just how uncontroversial it.

That's right. Yeah, no, and that is an important point that, yeah, anybody can Google that up now and there's even, you know, again, an explicit story in the New York Times. They call it buying quiet. That was their little catchphrase for it and everything. Hold on just one sec. We've got to make some money here. Man, Starbucks support for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is almost disgusting as their coffee. Don't you just hate them? You, me, and a lot of other people, too.

It's time to boycott and divest from those genocidal blood-drinking traitors at Starbucks. But you're still going to need your caffeine in the morning. Well, you guys are going to love Mundo's coffee. It's so good. And the price is right. Check out a massive variety of awesome tasting coffees at Mundo's artisan coffee.com. You'll be glad you did.

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at Scott Horton.org. keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies

by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. So wait, we're going to work back up to that though because going back to like why this is credible even, if you read Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal and Richard Sale and UPI for a couple of really good ones here, you mentioned that earlier New York Times story too, but you know, I think Richard Sale has really the best dive in here.

And he's just quoting sources from the shit. bet, Mossad, and IDF, along with the CIA and think tank experts with security clearance and stuff, it's the highest level people. It's not, again, not controversial at all of whether this is true. It ought to be controversial that it is true, but that's different, you know? But whether it's true, it absolutely is, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There really is no question about it, that this was the case.

And I don't, I, anyone who's serious and actually knows the history doesn't, doesn't deny that. Yeah. And I mean, he's quoting cabinet ministers here, right? Like, yeah, the highest level people over there. I'm sorry if everybody can hear my dog snoring in the background. She's old. Dangal. So now, so to fast forward a little bit here because this, you know, and I know you give this a super in-depth treatment in your book about the whole breakdown of the negotiations.

in 2000 and all that. But as soon as that's over, anyway, let's just put that aside for time here, Jeremy, because in fact I'm going to have to, I got about 20 before I got a bail out of here. But putting that aside, after that came Sharon. And Sharon was Lakoud,

and Sharon wasn't playing any of this Yitzhak Rabin, even make pretend half-ass Palestinian state, like Rabin and I don't know if Perez even really went along with that or, you know, Ehud Barak gave it a shot for what it was worth, you know, what he was trying to do with it. But Sharon comes in and Sharon has a policy that I don't know if he was, and maybe you do know, if he was at that time directly backing them. But he clearly was playing the same game with the divide and conquer as part of his withdrawal strategy. as his minister

Dov Weiss Glass or Dove However you somebody criticized me for saying it wrong So I'm all self-conscious DOV I guess Dov Weiss Glass Said hey look man Oh because they were They were being criticized

Oh you're getting out of the Gaza Strip You're pulling all the Jewish Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip This is 2005 W Bush years Sharon years And Sharon's advisor Weiss Glass says Oh yeah

no don't criticize us you don't understand what we're really doing is we're being sneaky here and this is a scheme basically that we came up with and here's everybody's keyword to google is to put the peace process in formaldehyde now i don't know if he even uses the word hamas but he doesn't really need to in the thing he's just saying we can point at the people in gaza or the leadership in gaza and we can say to the united states Congress and the American president, you don't expect us to negotiate with them, do you? And so we have a license, he says. We have a certificate. That's what it is, not a license. A certificate. A no one to talk to certificate. And so by pulling out of there, they get to

half-ass make it look like, oh, see how nice we're being and we're giving them their own little territory there and leaving them alone, even though that's an illusion and the whole thing is still under siege, while at the same time, completely dividing and conquering and depriving anyone in Congress of the talking point, right, of the ability to say that, oh, come on, Mahmoud Abbas can probably be trusted with a government, you know what I mean, which would be the argument for a state, that, well, Abbas doesn't matter because what matters is Hamas and their al-Qaeda and their ISIS and they are beyond the pale. No pun intended. Yeah, this is all related to Sharon's, you know, so-called disengagement plan, which the media

touted, just the way you described, is, you know, like this benevolent action by Israel to withdraw from Gaza out of the goodness of its heart. But, you know, like you just pointed out, Sharon's top advisor described that as the formaldehyde that was necessary to essentially, you know, put the so-called peace process to rest because even the peace process, which was already like premised on a rejection of international law and already, you know, where the U.S. was already acting as Israel's advocate, essentially serving as Israel's lawyer, but even that was like too much for the Israeli leadership. You know, they didn't want to have any negotiations at all. And no matter how biased in their favor they were. And so the whole, one of the main purposes

of, there were two really main purposes. One was to shift resources from Gaza to the West, to support the settlement regime in the West Bank. And the second one was also, as you mentioned, just to kind of create that illusion of this kind of benevolent intent. And, oh, look, we withdrew from Gaza. You know, look how wonderful we are. And yet, all we got returned was thousands of rockets, right? And then I guess, I guess there are three main reasons. And the third main. reason being to, yeah, to block the peace process. And so with this disengagement plan, you had to withdraw. And it's not the case that in response to were, you know, just rocket fire. In fact, you know, you can look at, you can look at the history there and Israel repeatedly violated

ceasefires, in fact. And also there was what the media, Western media, described as the, you know, how Hamas came to power. This is a really important part of the story. You know, the story of how Hamas came to power in Gaza, which the Western media described as a violent Hamas coup. Well, no, actually, going back to 2004, in early 2004, Sheikh Yassin had announced a shift in Hamas policy, saying that Hamas would be willing to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel along the June 1967 lines, which are the same as the 1949 armistice lines, with a long-term truce to establish mutual intent. And Israel's response to that was to assassinate him. And, of course, at the time, it was criticized by people within the Israeli security military

establishment as an act that was dangerous and would only escalate the threat of terrorism and empower the more extremist members while sidelining the more moderate members, which is, of course, all true. And then you had, so you had Hamas, and Hamas has maintained that position, you know, had maintained that position for many years. In 2017, they issued a policy document,

explicitly stating that they're... Wait, go back to 04 for a second here, because it really is important. I was researching this earlier, well, a few months ago, I guess. and I have all the footnotes of the timeline there where you're exactly right what you say that

here's Sheikh Yassine is climbing down from terrorism and saying it's time to compromise and that was why they killed him they're willing to turn a blind eye to everything he's doing they're willing to arrest all his opponents and even as you say as Richard said reported directly

finance his operation as long as he's a problem but as soon as he stops being a problem and like you said earlier about Arafat even called it a peace offensive As soon as Yossin adopts a peace offensive Blam missile strike And then here's her thing you have to forgive me for interrupting you

Because I hope you can keep your train and thought But this is so important This is such an important part of the story Is when they assassinated Cheek Yassin That's what caused the riot in Fallujah And the great reporter Dar Jamail the American reporter Dar Jamail. He was there, and you can still find,

I might be on Archive Only, but you can find the articles that he wrote from Fallujah, where the riots broke out, the guys called themselves the Al Yassine Brigade. They had pictures of them in the windshield of their cars as they're dragging the bodies of the lynched blackwater guards through the street. and carrying their bodies on the roof of the car or the hood of the car and these were the black water guards that were then their burnt corpses strung up on the bridge that was such a provocation that w bush then gave james mattis the marine general license to go in there and raise the place which you know wasn't quite as bad as gaza now but it was really bad the attack then that mattis

unleashed on Fallujah in the spring of 2004 in March April 2004 and this was one of the major turning points for the worse in turning a kind of slight resistance into a massive Sunni-based insurgency against the American occupation and you know there were four of the Shiites in Iraq War II there and it was Israel that started it and the Americans and the Iraqis and he's had to pay for the blowback from that, or the back draft, the immediate consequences of that assassination, again, of a guy because he wanted to sign on the bottom line, and that was the last thing that his opponents wanted is his surrender. Yeah, the last thing Israel wanted was for Hamas to follow the footsteps of the PLO and

move away from armed conflict toward engagement in political processes. Because that was the problem with the PLO. That's why Israel supported Hamas. So when Hamas started you know, when Sheikh Yassin came out with that statement, you know, that kind of explains why they decided now's the time to assassinate him, you know, in 2004, after all these years of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and, you know, why, why was it only, and it was like a month after it was like no more than like two months after he had made that statement, you know, this policy shift that he was assassinated. I don't think that's a coincidence. And anyways, yeah, so I was mentioning the 2017 policy document from Hamas that explicitly said that

Hamas' grievance is not against, you know, that its fight isn't with Jews because of their religion, but it's against Zionism. And of course, you know, anti-Zionism is, of course, not the same thing as anti-Semitism. And of course, the media found that policy document remarkable for the fact that it contained no mention of any desire to, you know, to eliminate Jews or even to wipe Israel off the map kind of thing. But anyhow, coming back to 2004, in the same year, Hamas started participating in municipal elections in 2005. It continued and was winning seats, was winning local councils. And then in 2006, was the parliamentary elections that Hamas defeated Fatah in the elections.

And that is how it came to be that there was a Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories. Although even then they had to have a coalition because they had kind of just barely won, I think. Yeah, I think it was a plurality. I don't recall the details. But they did defeat Fatah. That's a real important point when it goes to the supposed collective guilt of the Palestinians. And this was Ellen something or other wrote about this in the Washington Post. You can find it where Hamas actually did not win a majority in any single district in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

They won only a plurality in some places. Now, they did win a majority in the parliament because of the way the districts are divided up and whatever. And they still won because the other side was divided. but they never won more than 50% in any place in that election. So now, you know, their children are supposed to be guilty of that 20 years later, 18 years later, somehow anyway. But it's not even true that a majority supported that position at the time. And it's also important to look at the reasons why Hamas did receive substantial support among Palestinians. And it wasn't because, you know, they were engaging in acts of terrorism.

or anything like that, it was because Palestinians viewed the PLO increasingly as just this kind of incompetent organization, corrupt, you know, Arafat had really humiliated himself by signing onto the Oslo Accords after having, in 1988, after having issued a declaration of Palestinian independence, and then he kind of basically tore that up by signing on to the Oslo Accords and essentially agreeing to serve as Israel's collaborator in its occupation regime, which is essentially what the Palestinian Authority was created through the Oslo process as a sub-agency of the PLO and serves that function, and it has served that function ever since. And so the Palestinians just viewed Hamas as being more willing to stand up for their rights

and to stand up against the occupying occupation regime. and against the corruption of the PLO. And so those were the reasons why Hamas was supported among the general population of Palestinians to a large extent, which is important. But Israel and the US responded to Hamas's electoral victory by essentially trying to, by supporting Fatah against Hamas, a coup against the Hamas-led government.

And this included training and arming Fata special forces, Abbas's presidential guards. And so what happened was that that coup attempt proceeded. The U.S. and Israelis supported coup attempt proceeded, and Hamas defeated Fata forces and expelled them from Gaza. And that's why you have this division of the leadership where Hamas is ruling in Gaza and the PA is still ruling in the West Bank. And so the media's narrative is literally the opposite of what actually happened.

They say it was a Hamas coup. It was actually a Hamas counter coup because it was Israel in the U.S. that was attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government in the Palestinian territories. Best piece on that is the Gaza bombshell by David Rose. And I know it's in Vanity Fair and that sounds fancy or something, but it's a good article. Yeah, great, great article for sure. Yeah. Hey, y'all, Scott here.

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Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800-874-9760. That's 800-874-9760, or check them out at r-rbi.co. That's r-rbi.co. You'll be glad you did. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interview a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh?

Scott Horton'show.substack.com. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton Show and Libertarian Institute, shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs too. That's Libertasbella.com. Okay. And so then that brings us back to Netanyahu now because he's King Beebe, as they say, the ruler of Israel longer than any other prime minister, including Ben Gurion, the founding

prime minister. And so now there was a break there. He was, you know, originally there in 96, of course. And then after Sharon and Olmer, he came in. And he had to step aside for a minute for a coalition, a guy's for one year or something like that. But basically he's been in charge ever since what, 2008? 2009, I think, yeah. 2009, right.

This is the one thing that I really feel bad for Barack Obama and I got nothing but resentment for the guy and he deserves every horrible thing that he's ever got or will. But, you know, imagine just putting yourself in his position that you get elected somehow. Stars align and you

literally get elected to be the president of the United States of America and then right at the exact same time Benjamin Netanyahu is coming in to be the Prime Minister of Israel. Like, oh, man, talk about a millstone around your neck. I mean, that poor guy, poor Obama must have just been like, oh, this is going to suck.

And then it did. But yeah, so he's been charged all this time, and I'm sorry, I'll shut up. Get to the point. Talk about Netanyahu's relationship with Hamas since the Obama years there, Jeremy? Yeah, I mean, just to summarize it, he is essentially used for his entire time in power. Like you said, he had a little stint where he wasn't in power, but essentially he's been the prime minister since 2009 with one small break in there. And he's maintained a policy of utilizing Hamas as a strategic ally to block implementation of, well, to block any movement towards negotiations with the Palestinians.

And this is completely acknowledged. Again, you read the Israeli media, it's no secret at all, and, you know, there's so many quotes out there from other Israeli leaders, you know, Ihood Barack. Incidentally, here's a quote, here's a quote from Ihood Barack in 2003 for people who think that, you know, this is, you know, the guy who was at Camp David during the peace process. And after he was replaced by Sharon, he was kind of, he was kind of like criticizing Sharon and basically saying Sharon needs to do what what Sharon eventually ultimately did do, which was the disengagement plan. And here's what Ehud Barak said in 2003. He said, quote, luckily it seems we won't get there meaning we won't get to like peace negotiations all right so luckily

it seems we won't get there because there's no Palestinian partner on the horizon ready to eradicate the terror infrastructure so there you have it but you know it's just so widely acknowledged here's erud barak again in in 2019 talking about Netanyahu's policy he said his strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking even at the price of a bank ending the citizens, meaning the citizens of, you know, like in the south of Israel. Right. In order to weaken the PA in Ramallah. Right.

So it's just, there's just, there's no controversy about it whatsoever. And now, by the way, just so that people don't misunderstand, because I think a lot of times people jump to conclusions when they're uncomfortable with what they're hearing. And if anyone, you know, thinks that what you're saying is that Netanyahu put them up to this attack, that's not your point at all, right? you're saying well what are you saying yeah well you know yeah this kind of leads into the belief that a lot of my readers have you know a lot of people have this belief that the 107 attacks were you know quote unquote an inside job they believe that like it was a deliberately loud to to occur um and i think they just misunderstand the politics of it um so i think it's yeah maybe important to kind of head that's you know that's not what i'm saying at all i'm not

You know, there's people who have believed that, you know, like Hamas is literally creation of and controlled by Israeli Mossad, you know. It's nothing like that. It's just, you know, it's just that, essentially, Israel needs the threat of terrorism in order to maintain its occupation and an apartheid regime because that's its whole justification for perpetuating its apartheid. regime right now you're quote from netanyahu earlier where he said outright that this is how we prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in that same quote he is said to have said

but don't worry or I may have added that but we control the height of the flame and so in other words what are they going to do about it we got them right where we want them they make a great scapegoat and they make a great you know reason that we have our or no one to talk certificate, but at the same time, we're not really putting our people in danger because what are they going to do about it? And that's the real point, is that imperial arrogance. And that was leading back to where we started here with Netanyahu's speech at the UN, as you said, just two weeks before the October 7th attack. Not only did he hold up that map that just showed Israel, greater Israel, taking over all that territory and no Palestinian territory there at all,

But that was what the speech was about, too, was that, you know, of course, the way he puts it is like the Palestinians or the aggressors holding peace hostage or whatever the way he phrases it. But what he's saying is essentially the Sunni kings, their policy had always been. They won't make peace with Israel or, you know, completely normalized relations. There's no war going on, but they won't normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians get their state or citizenship or, you know, some kind of a fair deal that the Palestinians themselves. accept. And what had happened was Trump and Kushner had figured out, well, what's your price? See, American taxpayers and Federal Reserve printing machines can afford it. And so just bought them off. And so Netanyahu is saying, Neener, Neener, I got away with it. The Netanyahu doctrine is you don't get a state, you don't get citizenship, you don't get nothing. We win,

you lose, and nobody's coming for you. And nobody's even holding out on people. being friends with us on your behalf. So you Palestinians can just lay down and die. I mean, I'm obviously loosely paraphrasing, but that was the point of the speech. And in fact, I read somewhere that when he says, this is the new Middle East, that he's mocking Shimon Peres. Because that was what Perez said when he was talking about, look, we're going to give these people some justice. And that's going to help us get along with these other countries. And Netanyahu's going, ha, ha, I proved that I don't have to give in an.

inch to the Palestinians in order to have that relationship with the Sunni Arab states there. And then we saw how it blew up right in his face just two weeks later. Hamas said, you know what, we have a vote in this. And that was what led to the current crisis. Right there was Netanyahu thinking he's so big, but he's not. Yeah, yeah, absolutely his arrogance. It was 10-7 was absolutely blowback from his policies. And, you know, you described the process of, you know, quote-unquote normalization.

You had the Abraham Accords. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to refer to. You had the U.S. working at the time working to try to negotiate a very similar deal with Saudi Arabia. And Hamas reacted and said, you know what? We're still here. Exactly. The Palestinians are still here. Yep.

And, of course, they've thrown all that into jeopardy by causing the reaction and then all the counterreactions. and you could say at the expense of the poor Palestinian population that Hamas has really played Israel like a fiddle and it's true from the war I mean it's in the New York Times right now that all the intelligence agencies are agreed they can't root out Hamas here essentially they're doing all this for nothing they're making a big show and they're killing a lot of innocent people

but Hamas will still be there when they're done unless they drop an H-bomb on them which is negates the whole dang point right you can't do that so and I don't think they have H-bombs They definitely have A-bombs. But anyway, so, you know, it's just as Ramsey Baroud said, just weeks into the war, maybe one or two or three weeks, might have been November. Baroud said Israel's already lost this war. We already saw what happened when they tried to invade in 2014. And Hamas guys pop up with an RPG out of the rubble or out of the ground and blow up their tank.

They can't get that far with, you know, just a mechanized force here. So at some point, they're going to have to give up. because of politics, because of pressure, they're going to have to stop short of this insane goal which amounts to, what, killing every fighting aged male in the place? Yeah, and every one of Israel's prior military operations in Gaza, you know, Operation Casled, 2008, 2009, Pillar of Cloud, 2012, Protective Edge in 2014. It didn't weaken Hamas. It strengthened Hamas. And so, you know, this goes, you know, all, all.

those instances of Israel, you know, what they would call mowing the lawn. You know, this goes along with Netanyahu's policy and his kind of, you know, his blindness to what was really happening. You know, there were intelligent, Israeli intelligence did have indications, you know, very strong indications of Hamas' operation, which it called, you know, Alaksa flood. Because of course, Hamas views itself as the protector of the Alaksa mosque and, you know, on the Temple Mount. And so there were, I mean, Israeli intelligence, absolutely. They knew about it.

But, you know, the political leadership had just blinded itself to the threat because Netanyahu just had this perception. You know, again, and his incredible arrogance, as you described, he just had this, he just, his policy was premised on this idea. And he absolutely believed it that, you know, that you had the Palestinians locked away in the concentration. in the Gaza concentration camp, as it was described by Gior Island, even before the 2006 blockade, Gior Island being the national security person at the time in Israel. So the Palestinians were locked away, you know, contained in the concentration camp. Hamas was contained in there too. And you had the PA serving as Israel's collaborator and enforcing its occupation regime in the West Bank.

So everything's fine there. And that was Netanyahu's view. And to the extent that you had, you know, you had him pulling off soldiers off of the armistice line fence, moving them to the West Bank. You also had, you know, the judicial coup, as Israeli media describe it, where he was trying to essentially undermine the Supreme Court and basically remove the Supreme Court as an obstacle to the furtherance of his policies. of, again, just essentially taking over the West Bank and effectively annexing large swaths of it, and while containing Palestinians in the West Bank and their Bantustan-like enclaves, you know, all of this speaks to his just incredible arrogance and his rejection of any kind of reasonable approach to solving. You know, peace is not in his interests.

He has no interest in peace. He wants the land. And he basically represents that extremist settler community of extreme Zionists who view all of the land is Eretz Israel, the land of Israel. And they want as much of that land as possible without the Palestinians. And so what you see happening in Gaza, essentially the thin veil has been lifted. And the world can see the true face of modern political Zionism unfolding horrifically in Gaza, With an invasion of Rafa now, pretty imminent, despite the entire world, the entire humanitarian community crying out saying, you know, this needs to stop, this cannot happen in the U.S., has been to date supporting Israel, despite meaningless rhetoric to the contrary and meaningless, you know, humanitarian efforts like the peer that, the U.S. built to try to deliver humanitarian aid. But, you know, in all of the humanitarian agencies

are saying, like, this is not a substitute for getting the trucks in there. We need the, we need the crossings open, and we need to get the trucks in there. And, of course, the U.S. has been fully supportive of Israel's blockade and siege of Gaza. And so you have, you know, you have this rhetoric of, you know, pretending to care about Palestinian civilians, Well, at the same time, you know, when Israel drops 2,000 pound bombs on civilian populations in Gaza, well, those bombs are being supplied by the U.S. And so, you know, you have the situation where the U.S., and this is why I told my book, Obstacle to Peace, because in my assessment, the U.S. is the biggest obstacle to peace. Why? Because Israel's crimes against the Palestinians could not continue without U.S. support. And so if we want to see peace in the Middle East, we have to resolve this problem of the U.S. serving this function of protecting Israel, vetoing ceasefire resolutions in the Security Council, you know, and just protecting Israel against international censure and against being held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yep. All right. Well, listen, man, we'll have to leave it there because I'm out of time here. But thank you so much for coming on the show. So it's a really important article how Israel supported Hamas against the PLO, and that is at Libertarian Institute.org. And by the way, there's a new article brand new out by Connor Freeman today. Netanyahu implored Qataris to continue funding Hamas in 2018 letter. That's news that just came out yesterday in YNet. And of course, Connor and I have our giant thing that we wrote last fall about this called Netanyahu support for Hamas backfired, where we collect as many of these quotes as we

possibly could from all the inside sources. Yeah, great article. So if people want to take a deep dive into that, definitely start here with Jeremy R. Hammond at the Institute. Thank you again, Jeremy. Appreciate you. Thanks, Scott. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

APS Radio.com. anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.