The narrative is that Israel sponsor Hamas, and/or the CIA have something to do with it. This tweet is typical.
We do know the CIA backed the Taliban against the Soviet Union, but later had to fight the Taliban in the “war or terrorism” when coalition forces invaded Afghanistan. And it’s a fair bet to say that the CIA and Israel’s Mosad have their fingers in many pies in the Middle East.
But then so do most Islamist states or organisations – for example, the Israel strike on the Iranian compound in Syria was an attack on a number of actors that are involved in such clandastine activities themselves.
Since 2013 Iran has maintained a presence of its troops in Syria in response to the Syrian civil war, as Syria is a crucial ally of Iran. Additionally, it has been involved in training and funding paramilitary forces from Hezbollah, along with foreign militias from Iraq and Afghanistan, not only in Syria but also in neighboring Lebanon.
But, does the conspiracy theory hold up in sense claimed, that the CIA and Israel have been funding Hamas?
Hold that thought, that question, and for the moment, suppose it is true, that the CIA and Israel have been funding Hamas. This raises another question, and one that conspiracy theoriests of various sorts will be keen to answer – why would they? But let’s park the question of the motivation of the CIA and Israel. Let’s just assume they did.
What next? What can it tell us about the Muslims of Hamas that we didn’t know already?
If you’re a member of a law abiding organisation, a “religion of peace”, that’s at peace with its neighbours, because your neighbours are “people of the book”, what would you do if those neighers said, “Hey, here’s some money, buy some arms and come and attack us so we can make you look bad?” Would you be stupid enough to fall for it?
You see, the problem with this conspiracy theory is it absolves Hamas of all agency in the atrocities they commit, and futher, it is a particularly antisemitic conspiracy, because it feeds off the many antisemitic tropes about Jews and their coniving ways.
It still takes the motivation of the Muslims* of Hamas to actually do the following:
- Carry out the atrocities of October 7.
- Continue to fire rockets into Israel.
- Commit suicide bombings of buses and other targets in Israel.
- Indoctrinate their children on Palestinian TV to hate Jews, to become martyrs for Islam, and to stab Jews.
This hatred has been going on for 1400 years, instigated initially by Mohammed when the Jews of Medina would not side with him in his battles – his ‘final solution’ being to massacre the Jews of Medina, and to be invloved in that personally. This has set the model for Jew hatred in Islam ever since.
No, Muslims that support Hamas, al Qaida, ISIS, Boko Haram and many other extremist and terrorist Muslim organisations are fully motivated by Islam, and it is their own agency that is responsible for anything they do.
So, even if it were true that the CIA and Israel funded Hamas, it still takes Muslims to commit the horrifica attacks of October the 7th, and just to remind you, this is what they did, much of it taken from their own phones and body cams. I must warn you that this is terrible, but you have a duty to know what Hamas is capable of.
And this isn’t unique. And nor is this denial of Muslim agency. It happened with ISIS. Of course Obama pulled out of Iraq too soon, leaving it in a mess, and of course Bush and Blair take some blame for attacking Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein was a brutal dicator. But it still required “ordinary Muslims”, “nice young men”, “indoctrinated young girls” to make their way to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and start genocide of Yazidis, the taking of sex slaves, the burning alive, the chopping of heads, the cricifixions, and all manner of barbarity that echoes the ways of Mohammed and his Merry Men of 1400 years ago.
Muslims are agents that follow the Quran and Hadith. When they kill the way they did on October the 7th, it wasn’t some unusual event, or an act of resistance. It was Islamic terrorism, the Islamic terrorism we have seen time and time again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks
It’s one heck of a long list for a “religion of peace”.
* Muslims of Hamas … when we talk about hamas, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other Islamic terrorist groups, there is often the claim theya re “Nothing to do with Islam” or they do not follow Islam as they should. But it’s only ever Muslims. Even on October 7, I don’t know of any Christians or Druze from Gaza that joined them. Historically there have been instances of Chistians persecuting Jews in Palestine, but these are usually separate incidents. And in the 2oth and 21st centuries I don’t know of any Christians joining any Muslim Islamic terrorist organisation. Why is this significant? Because the narrative of the Middle East conflict is often framed as Israeli v Arab or Jew v Arab, when there are Arab Jews, and other non-Muslim Arabs, and Irainains consider themselves Persion, not Arab, and many reject the “Arab religion”, Islam. It would be far more accurate to speak as we find: Muslims engage in Islamic terrorism, not anyone else.
Ramblings 