New York Times: Netanyahu Was Behind Major Recent Funding for Hamas, Through Qatar, as He Calls Critics "Pro-Hamas"
Above: Present aerial view of Gaza
A New York Times and other media reports, both American and Israeli, describe how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was behind funding Hamas to the tune of many millions in the years just prior to the October 7 attack, even as other Israeli politicians questioned and condemned it.
One of Netanyahu's favorite counter-attacks on critics of his Gaza policies is to call them "pro-Hamas."
Netanyahu has acknowledged approving the payments to Hamas, saying in 2018 that the millions in financial support to an organization which was firing rockets at Israel and kidnapping and murdering it citizens was for "humanitarian" purposes.
CNN reported in 2023:
"The prime minister defended the initiative at the time, saying the deal was made “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).”
"In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza Strip. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases – delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation with Israel....
Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier.
Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas."
Naftali Bennett, who became prime minister in 2021, stopped the suitcases full of cash, which would be ideal for buying weapons on international black markets. Bennett told CNN:
"Why would we feed them cash to kill us?”
Since 2006, Hamas has been launching rockets into Israel every year, totalling thousands, according to the IDF. In 2017, the year before 2018 Qatar mission, there were 35 rocket attacks on Israel launched from the Gaza Strip. In 2018, hundreds of rockets were fired into Israel. In 2014 Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers, Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel.
According to the New York Times, The cash payments ceased under Bennett, but the flow of funds to Gaza continued under Bennett’s leadership. According to former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the suitcases full of cash resumed when Netanyahu retook power.
In October 2023 the Times of Israel reported in "For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces":
"Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip."
In February 2020, former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, now head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, told Israel Channel 12 News that Netanyahu had a few weeks before "begged" Qatar to continue the flow of money to Hamas.
Liberman said, as reported by The Times of Israel in 2023:
“On Wednesday two weeks ago the head of Mossad… and the head of [IDF] Southern Command visit Qatar on an errand from Netanyahu, and they simply beg the Qataris to keep sending money to Hamas after March 30. The Qataris have said they will stop sending money on March 30,”
The Times of Israel wrote in 2023:
"With Israel’s approval, Qatar since 2018 has periodically provided millions of dollars in cash to Hamas to pay for fuel for the Strip’s power plant, allow the group to pay its civil servants and provide aid to tens of thousands of impoverish"ed families....
Recently tensions along the border with Gaza have escalated due to an increase in rocket attacks and the use of helium balloons carrying explosives and incendiary devices into Israeli territory....Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip began sending clusters of balloons and kites into Israel laden with explosives beginning in 2018. "
IDF Soldier Questions Stand-Down Order on Morning of October 7
As it has been pointed out in a previous report by this author, in December 2023 the New York Times wrote in "‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas":
"Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.
For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them."
In December 2023 the New York Times revealed that the Israeli military had a confirmed authentic copy of a Hamas battle plan which, it was later seen, resembled in great detail the October 7 attack, but was ignored, or shelved for other reasons (NY Times: "Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago." )
As if these two news stories were not explosive enough, Netayahu's significant and determined financial advocacy for Hamas, and detailed intelligence which was simply ignored, in recent weeks an IDF soldier has stepped forward to report that his unit was ordered, inexplicably, to cancel a patrol at a key time and location before the October 7 attack.
Sgt. Shalom Sheetrit told the Knesset last month:
“We were playing on the phone [at 5:20 a.m.] and suddenly a strange message comes from my battalion commander…And what he says on the call is something like this: ‘I don’t know why, but an order was issued that there are no patrols at the fence until nine in the morning…."
Sheetrit said:
"And Tomer gives us this look like,. What? You know, we’re simple soldiers, just combatants. we’re infantry, not commanders or officers who can ask questions, right? It’s an order from the deputy battalion commander. we take the order and and don’t ask questions …and sure enough exactly an hour later suddenly sirens…."
With Israel now on the brink of annexing the Gaza, a long-held goal of the Israeli right-wing, many wonder how much of the complex web of events of the past years is not accidental. (See: "IDF Soldier's Testimony Backs Ex-DIA Director Gen. Mike Flynn's Contention That October 7 Attack Was an "Inside" Job")
Below: Shalom Sheetrit: IDF Soldier Testifies to Knesset That His Unit Was Given “Strange” Order on 10/7 to cancel critical fence patrol. Includes audiotape of direct order.
Below: Headline from Jerusalem Post, March 4, 2025
