Hamas vs Israel: Some unanswered questions
November 6, 2023: The Hamas vs Israel crisis is still snowballing. A deadly tit-for-tat is underway. The Hamas terrorist group started the crisis with a massacre on October 7. And Israeli forces are now going after them. It’s time we put the spotlight on Hamas. If you look closely at how they work, some disturbing questions come up. Let’s take them up one by one. Let us look at the missing pieces of the puzzle in this unending Hamas vs Israel tussle.
Question 1
Hamas is a designated terror group. It is a stateless body that violently took control of Gaza Strip in 2007. Since then, it has been running the Palestinian territory, and routinely carrying out military-style attacks on Israel, letting the Hamas vs Israel conflict simmer perpetually.
A key question surrounding the Hamas vs Israel is: how can a stateless entity be so well-armed and well-trained? They own tonnes of sophisticated military-grade equipment. Who do they get it from? Gaza is strictly landlocked by Israel from north and east. To Gaza’s west is the Mediterranean Sea, which is meticulously patrolled by Israeli forces. Gaza’s south border is with Egypt. That border is strictly guarded by the Egyptians. In fact, they are building a military-grade concrete wall to stop innocent Gaza residents from escaping the battle zone.
So, how on earth do sensitive killer weapons enter Gaza and reach Hamas? There’s a lot of talk in the media about how much aid is going in for the poor civilians. But the mainstream press doesn’t investigate how military-grade weapons go in.
Let’s look at the weapons that Hamas used during the October 7 attack. They claim to have launched about 5,000 high-calibre rockets in a span of a few hours, kicking off the ongoing bout of the Hamas vs Israel perpetual war. Only a state-backed, military-level operation can do it. Some say Hamas has about 30,000 such rockets. And many of them are long-range; they can bring down commercial planes.
The terror group also uses .50-calibre machine guns placed on pickup trucks in this Hamas vs Israel perpetual war. On October 7, they used rockets, AK-47 guns, grenades, and drones – all at the same time. Attackers used paragliders to fly into Israel, shoot civilians, and take hostages. They also used bulldozers to gatecrash into Israeli soil and trigger chaos. It was a full-spectrum attack from a highly armed and highly trained unit. It is impossible for a stateless body to get hold of such war machinery on its own.
The October 7 attacks, a major milestone on the larger Hamas vs Israel war timeline, were carried out by Qassam Brigades, the elite military wing of Hamas. They are not an ordinary bunch of ragtag, underground fighters. They are properly trained combat experts.
So, we ask this disturbing question about the Hamas vs Israel conflict: If Gaza is genuinely blockaded, how can so many killer weapons reach the attackers? What’s the route? Who is helping them from outside? Food and aid can’t go in easily to the struggling Palestinians. But weapons are going in for Hamas. What is the math here? What are we not being told?
Question 2
Let’s move on to the next point: the money factor. Hamas has high-end training, expensive arms, and a proper intelligence network. To put all this together, they require plenty of money, and a perpetual inflow of that moolah. Where does the money come from? We know that Hamas is based in Gaza, and Gaza is cut off from the rest of the world. So, how does the money reach their hands?
Assuming that the money is indeed delivered to Hamas or transferred to them by powerful outsiders, how do they spend it on buying arms and ammunition? Isn’t it practically impossible for Hamas to be able to do that, considering that they are an internationally banned and blockaded outfit?
An unusual truth is, because of the Hamas vs Israel perpetual war, the terror group is not an accepted business entity, but it possesses an enormous amount of money and assets. That’s why it can buy deadly weapons and carry out ambitious attacks. Reports in the German media say Hamas has about $500 million in assets. That’s a fortune for an organisation that is banned and blockaded! They amassed those assets by investing in multiple companies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Sudan. The investments are mainly in real estate and construction.
There’s more. We are told that the Hamas terrorist group is disconnected from the rest of the world. But they received $41 million over the last two years in cryptocurrency wallets. This was revealed by Bit-OK, a cryptocurrency watchdog. After the October 7 attack, Binance, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, froze hundreds of crypto accounts connected to Hamas to stop money from flowing into the hands of the outfit.
However, CoinDesk.com refutes the Hamas-crypto link narrative, saying that a section of the western mainstream media could be playing it up to pursue their own unconnected agenda of demonising cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
We are told a lot of money is channelled to the Hamas terrorist group through Iran and Turkey. They get $100 million every year through Iran. And they receive a lot of money through the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency. But how is the money transfer to a banned organisation allowed to happen? In fact, it sounds incredible, Forbes magazine declared Hamas one of the richest terror groups in the world in 2014. At that time, their annual turnover was an eye-popping $1 billion.
Apart from the invisible funding it receives to keep the Hamas vs Israel war going, the terror group also squeezes out big, fat taxes from Gaza residents. It sounds cruel for the people of Gaza; Hamas collects $12-15 million every month in taxes on goods entering from Egypt. Most of the tax money is collected from cigarettes, fuel, and construction materials.
So, Palestinian families in Gaza whose buildings are blown up by Israeli forces are forced to pay hefty taxes to Hamas just to rebuild their own homes. And they are forced to pay high taxes to the Hamas terrorist group every time they buy petrol and diesel to commute.
Hamas doesn’t control the West Bank. It only controls Gaza. The Fatah political party governs the West Bank. But strangely, Hamas collects heavy taxes on goods imported by the residents of the West Bank.
If you set aside the taxes and investments abroad, the broader question of money supply still remains. Building a terrorist empire can’t be done simply with donations, taxes, and profits from businesses. They definitely get a lot more money from bigger sources. But who supplies it? And how?
Question 3
Here’s another puzzling question. A top US official claimed that the Egyptian government had warned the Israeli government of a looming terror attack three days before the October 7 massacre took place. Israel categorically denied receiving any such warning from Cairo. They called it ‘absolutely false’.
The claim about Egypt’s warning to Israel, although unverified, was made by Michael McCaul, who heads a US congressional panel called the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. What is precisely going on here? Why is America making this unusual claim? And why are people higher up in government, like Joe Biden, silent on this? What is the American gameplan in the Hamas vs Israel war?
Question 4
We know that Hamas is a designated terror group. It was created in 1987. The US government declared it as a terror group on October 8, 1997. So, for the last 26 years, Hamas has been operating as a terror group banned by the US. Britain, Australia, Japan, and the European Union, apart from Israel, also officially consider it as a terror group.
The question is: why is the Pentagon sitting quietly and not trying to dismantle Hamas? We are asking this question simply because America is deeply obsessive and needlessly overactive when it comes to tackling terrorism. It launched the War on Terror campaign after the 9/11 attacks in the US. That campaign is still on, having directly claimed almost 10 lakh lives so far.
The US military has carried out anti-terror actions in multiple countries, even when not required to intervene. But it never decided to physically go into Gaza and finish off Hamas to snuff out the Hamas vs Israel tensions. Why the double standards from a country that intervenes in other countries’ affairs at the drop of a hat? What is the hidden reason?
Question 5
Here’s a question for those who support Hamas. Is Hamas really fighting for the rights of Palestinians? If so, why are they using the common people of Gaza as shields in this devastating Hamas vs Israel war? Every time Hamas attacks Israel, there is a strong and expected counterattack from the Israelis. And it is the common people of Gaza who take the bullet. They handle the retaliation, and the Hamas members escape to underground tunnels.
Hamas has built a sophisticated network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip. The tunnels are meant for underground operations and for the general safety of Hamas officials. But the public of Gaza doesn’t have access to the safety of the tunnels. They are meant only for the terrorists. The people on the ground are fully exposed to Israeli attacks. They have no protection.
That apart, we already discussed that Gaza residents are forced to pay extra money for essential goods they buy because the Hamas terrorist group levies heavy taxes on them. If Hamas is fighting for the Palestinian public, why is it making their lives more difficult?
A lot is being said about the Hamas vs Israel conflict. There is plenty of analysis going on out there in mainstream circles. And there is a constant flow of news about the daily developments. But no one is willing to answer these basic questions – these haunting questions. Maybe because the answers are too disturbing? Maybe because the answers will challenge the standard narratives that we are tactically spoon-fed?
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