25 Monday Aug 2014
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Without reporters and cameras there to document the carnage, the blood that Hamas compels Gazans to shed on its behalf would be wasted. Hamas thus needs reporters in Gaza. But the last thing it wants is a press corps reporting both sides of the conflict—documenting not just the result of Israeli airstrikes but also the Hamas rockets and missiles that drew Israeli fire in the first place.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/hamas-s-media-strategy_803523.html – 9/1/2014
25 Monday Aug 2014
[there are a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories circulating about ISIS at the moment- this article provides a good overview on the origins of the group]
by Ziad Majed
The organization abbreviated as ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is not new in the region, nor is it a newfound expression of the crises afflicting Arab societies at a moment of profound transformations, initiated by 2011 revolutions.
To the contrary, ISIS is the offspring of more than one father, and the product of more than one longstanding and widespread sickness. The organization’s explosive growth today is in fact the result of previously existing, worsening conflicts that were caused by the different fathers.
View original post 541 more words
25 Monday Aug 2014
For more than 66 years, the game against the Jews of Israel hasn’t changed much. From armies to rogue political movements to terrorist gangs, the genocidal, go-nowhere, nothing-to-offer character of the anti-Semitic aspect of the Middle East Conflict has not changed.
By way of American paychecks to his security forces, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been called the number one anti-Semite in the world, has been irrevocably compromised and therefore stuck in neutral as regards the destruction of Israel and the Jews.
By way of fanaticism, greed, and stupidity — and there is nothing more stupid than abusing children and putting them in the way of an enemy’s entire army — Hamas has sabotaged its own psychotically grandiose ambitions.
I’ve mentioned suzerainty on this blog, which may be too much or too little but at least addresses Egyptian and Israeli security issues associated with the strip, its inhabitants, and its Hamas and other parasites. What I haven’t brought into the BackChannels conversation is the power inherent in genuine local rule.
The Hamas enterprise, which has been about getting rich, offing the Jews (wow, what a combination), and aggrandizing itself beyond all measure, has never been about modern representative, responsive, and responsible local governance.
When The Occupation of Gaza By Hamas comes to an end, however it may do that, the arm twisting, conflict with Israel, deep smuggling, and plundering of the local population in the name of Islam will come also to an end. In that, and perhaps only that, is there a new dawn for Gazans.
I repeat the three “R”s: Representative | Responsible | Responsive.
Bring those three into honest existence, and the entire of the middle east conflict, sixty-six years of not only of empty promises but of futile and wasteful ends, concludes.
Can approximately two million people rise to reclaim their lives in the place where they have settled?
We shall see.
Source: Watch: IDF Soldier Reveals Extent of Hamas ‘Human Shields’ – 8/24/2014.
Related:
http://www.israellycool.com/2014/08/24/assessing-the-ocha-gaza-crisis-atlas-2014-report/ – 8/24/2014.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/08/another-fake-civilian-and-another.html – 8/25/2014.
Meet the Hamas Billionaires – 7/24/2014.
Yesterday’s headlines are that Hamas has just rejected Egypt’s offer of a ceasefire with Israel and instead continues to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns and cities.
Less known is a crucial fact: the people of Gaza are solidly against these Hamas policies. Indeed, by a very large majority, they oppose Hamas rule altogether.
Hamas’s biggest weakness of all is its unpopularity among Palestinians in Gaza now. A poll taken in June, before the latest fighting began, showed that 70 percent of Gazans wanted a continuing cease-fire with Israel; 57 percent wanted a Fatah-Hamas unity government to renounce violence against Israel; 73 percent thought nonviolent resistance had a positive impact, and large majority thought Hamas had failed to deal with crime and corruption.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/21/how-to-break-hamass-stranglehold-on-gaza/ – 7/21/2014.
Then as Gaza’s economy began to worsen almost as quickly as the Palestinian Authority’s corruption level grew higher, fed up Gazans finally voted the PA out – and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas into power.
Anyone who expected Hamas to do a better job for the Gazan population was soon sadly disappointed. A Sunni Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas remains fanatically resolved to destroy Israel and to murder millions of Jews in the process.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/gaza-and-palestinian-leadership_b_5589766.html – 7/23/2014.
I wonder if Gazans have the same question I do about Israel’s posture toward Hamas, a stance that seems invested in negotiating a peace with an entity that has long had all of its chips in for the annihilation of Israel and Jewry worldwide.
Related:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/with-ground-op-still-an-option-iaf-given-leeway-to-change-equation/#ixzz3BPh1VtWk – 8/25/2014.
When Hitler finally committed murder and suicide in his Berlin bunker, Germany had been already overrun by the military machinery it inspired and brought to life to do exactly that. There were no questions about leaving the Nazis in power or negotiating anything less with them than unconditional surrender. Has Hamas, which has grown fat off the people of Gaza, given them nothing, and brought heartache to their doors — the angered weeping of war is the province of all mankind — any different?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184410#.U_vE08VdV8E – 8/25/2014.
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24 Sunday Aug 2014
Last week, possibly after reading posts like this one on BackChannels — and as each BackChannels post suggests, there are many sources for aggregating data, Germany’s minister for development aid accused Qatar of aiding in the funding of Abu Bakr al-Baghdaddi’s Islamic State, albeit possibly without a shred of independent state-obtained (and held) evidence or intelligence.
This week: oh, what an embarrassment!
And that any should even think such a thing! Perhaps somebody’s feelings have been hurt.
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/08/24/qatar-denies-funding-extremist-islamic-state-group – 8/24/2014.
And yet . . .
How may any one state or defense organization of states audit another except by accepting declarations up front — while operating agents, perhaps, and again, “behind the curtains”, the same so convenient to the making of private agreements best kept private?
While often referring to the Islamic Small Wars as “wars for detectives and poets” — for intelligence sleuths and language experts — I’ve noted the same also pit the despotic against the democratic and the mendacious against those with great integrity — and at the end of a human day, not an ISIS day, integrity secures trust where power merely secures a vacuous obedience.
Qater’s royalty may well have taken a position looking westward and in the direction of peaceful cultural polyphony, but Qatar, no different than any other state featuring great wealth, may have also its outlaw elements: “Reports show that Qatar most recently seized nearly 75 percent of narcotics that traffickers were trying to smuggle here from South America” (reference published 9/17/2013).
Good for Qatar as regards that interdiction, but it brings up the question of how much criminal activity benefiting the terrorist fronts of Islam(ism) passes through the state, and, being presumably innocent of so many charges, how is it so much unwanted focus has come to rest on its name?
This post started not with Doha’s refuting Minister Mueller’s remarks but with alternative press agitprop in the form of a video. Reference to proofs of terrorist funding from West Point, the CIA, The Washington Post?
Call them “poofs” — thin air.
Vanished.
Searching up “Qatar” via the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point: I found no specific report.
From The Washington Post three days ago:
Today, the Post ran the AP’s article relaying the refutation by Qatar of any alleged Qatar-and-terrorism-funding connection.
Veteran journalist Christopher Dickey played the matter this way back in June:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html – 6/14/2014.
Accusations are not evidence, of course.
However, there remains with Qatar a certain discomfort borne of privilege, privacy, and the possession of serious money that may be getting loose — shall I add the 😉 😉 ? — from known controls.
A Congressional Research Service report that showed up in search conveyed this note similar to the bank charge of 2009:
The U.S. State Department has characterized Qatar’s counterterrorism support since September 11, 2001, as “significant,”16 but noted in its August 2011 report on terrorism issues that U.S. officials “continued to seek improved cooperation and information sharing” with their Qatari counterparts.
The 2012 State Department report (released in May 2013) stated that “Qatar’s monitoring of private individuals’ and charitable associations’ contributions to foreign entities remained inconsistent,” (see below) and noted that the Qatari government “maintained public ties to Hamas political leaders.”17
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL31718.pdf – 1/30/2014.
So somebody’s holding out — ” . . . U.S. officials “continued to seek improved cooperation and information sharing” with their Qatari counterparts” — or is at least lazy about transparency involving security-related intelligence.
In light of the 2009 indictment of the Doha Bank for flubbing the record on billions of dollars of business in New York City, the fact that in 2012 Qatar’s monitoring of ” . . . contributions to foreign entities remained inconsistent” seems also telling.
We’re approaching the end of 2014 — the start of the 4th quarter is today less than a month away — and perhaps it’s time for Federal and independent research updates on Qatar’s sincerity or vigor as regards anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering policy and performance.
The Gulf state is home to exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and is a key financial patron for the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls.
Qatar denies financially backing Hamas, however, and has sought to play a role in brokering a truce to end fighting between the group and Israel.
http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/qatar-denies-backing-islamic-extremists-despite-hosting-hamas-leader/ – 8/24/2014.
Doha denies supporting the hardline ISIS insurgents who have overrun large parts of Syria and Iraq and who this week sparked global outrage with the release of a video showing the beheading of US journalist James Foley.
A spokeswoman for Mueller’s ministry said he had merely “referenced press reports” and had made “no concrete allegations”.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to distance herself from the allegation too on Sunday.
“The IS militias are very, very well-equipped financially without, as far as I know, being directly supported by any state,” she said in an interview with ARD television.
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/08/24/qatar-denies-funding-extremist-islamic-state-group – 8/24/2014.
Four days ago:
“This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history … The ISIS troops, the weapons – these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq,” Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF.
“You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar – and how do we deal with these people and states politically?” said Mueller, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-right Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Mueller did not elaborate and presented no evidence of a Qatari link to Islamic State.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-iraq-security-germany-qatar-idUSKBN0GK1I720140820 – 8/20/2014.
This abomination of a country has been ruled by the Al Thani family for almost 200 years (according to the CIA Worldbook). Among other things, the family owns and controls the Al Jazeera Media Network. In size it is the world’s 166th country. It has a nominal population of slightly over two million, of which 75% are between 25 to 54 years of age. In other words, it is an aging population with fertility significantly below replacement.
This is the banker to the world of terror – Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram and more. They tend to pay more attention to Sunni organisations than to Shia. I say “more attention” but they have no problem funding Hezbollah and Syria, as well, just more quietly.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/20/the-bankers-to-the-terrorists/#ixzz3BKiuqMvB
“Hamas has been able to get away from its crimes thanks to support and sponsorship it receives from Qatar,” Prosor said on Monday as he spoke with reporters in New York outside a UN Security Council meeting on the Gaza conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Prosor-Qatar-will-soon-be-second-largest-sponsor-of-terror-371475 – 8/19/2014.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/22/weapons-banking-drugs-and-slavery-financing-terrorism-creatively/ – 8/22/2014.
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http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/ex-mi6-chief-cites-isiss-saudi-qatari-donors/ – 8/5/2014.
Related:
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Saudi Arabia is furious at Qatar for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and reportedly wants Qatar to expel two prestigious think tanks – Brookings Doha Center (BDC) and the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute (RQPI) – from the country.
http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2014/03/threats-to-close-brookings-rand-in-qatar.html – 3/20/2014.
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To date, only a handful of Qatari nationals have been found to participate in
extremist-inspired activities in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and the State Department evaluates the threat of indigenous terrorism as low in Qatar. The Embassy is aware of pockets of dissatisfied elements with extremist tendencies among Qataris and some expatriates here, but these elements do not appear linked or organized in ways that constitute a serious threat.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05DOHA1657_a.html – 9/29/2005.
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The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have fined Qatar’s Doha Bank – New York branch a $5m civil money penalty. According to FinCEN and the OCC, the bank’s branch in Manhattan – USA was engaged in high-risk services accompanied by lack of adequate anti-money laundering controls which led to the failure to report $7.4bn-worth of suspicious transactions in a timely manner. The OCC penalty order (PDF) states that the enforcement action was based on AML “deficiencies and violations” that occurred at the branch during the period between May 2004 and January 2007.
http://www.acc-co.com/content.asp?ContentId=598 – 4/23/2009.
Related:
Money laundering in Qatar is not a major issue. The financial sector is strictly monitored by the Central bank. In order to best protect itself from money laundering, Qatar signed the Anti Money Laundering Law on September 11, 2002.
http://www.bankersacademy.com/resources/free-tutorials/347-aml-qatar – n.d.
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Related on this blog:
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/21/qatar-terrorist-refuge-and-financial-platform/ – 8/21/2014
Update November 25, 2014
Apart from cash advances to terrorist entities, the Qatari government seems to be directly involved in other activities, notably the shipping of planeloads of arms to Libyan jihadists. These shipments include a C-17 cargo plane carrying weaponry to a militia loyal to a warlord who had fought alongside Osama bin Laden; arms supplies to the jihadist coalition that now controls Tripoli after the launch of Operation Libya Dawn, and some $3 billion and 70 planeloads of arms to rebel forces in Syria.
Private fundraisers who coordinate donations from individual or corporate donors in Qatar are never detained or subjected to restrictions in Qatar, a privilege that means the transfer of considerable sums to al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Hamas, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Syrian Islamist groups.
The U.S. Treasury has given details of terrorist financiers operating in Qatar.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4898/qatar-terrorism – 11/22/2014.
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24 Sunday Aug 2014
Tags
And I knew. We are falling, falling, falling into the trap, into the abyss of hatred. And that will be the end of the Jewish people for this is not our way. We came out of the desert 3500 years ago with an ethic that Irish author Thomas Cahill calls “The Gift of the Jews.” It was given in the desert, in the wilderness, publicly and openly, in a place to which no one had any claim. “Everyone who desires to accept let him come and accept.” (Mekhilta, Bahodesh 1) It is the revolutionary ethic that separates the civilized from the barbarian. The ethic that made it possible for some tribal societies to transform themselves over the millennia into democratic nation states that welcome people of all races, colours creeds religions and sexual orientation to live in one country without fear.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/we-must-not-become-the-barbarian/ – 8/24/2014.
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22 Friday Aug 2014
“In this new video series, Washington Institute experts assess the current state of military operations in Iraq and evaluate Abadi’s ability to extricate his country from deadlock, defeat, and disintegration.”
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/confronting-isis-and-the-future-of-iraq-video-series – 8/21/2014.
From the looks and sound of the productions, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI) has launched a DIY-AH (do-it-yourself-at-home) effort to promote its fellows’ analyses. May the TWI powers that be give them an upgrade in audio-visual recording technology.
What follows is an incomplete relay of the series, but in the way of the web, whether the viewer starts out with e-mail (as I did) or on TWI’s web page or YouTube, all routers lead back to some kind of primary media content.
Of course, if you heard it from me first — after I’ve heard it from them — in the older fashioned way of news, good!
“They are very good at using psychological operations to very quickly establish the sense that they control areas, putting up their flags on all key administrative buildings, cross-roads, wide visibility locations, and they’re very good at pursuing what they want in the mergers and acquisitions model of growth whereby they ruck into an area and immediately try to recruit the most like-minded insurgent group in the area to become part of ISIS.” (1:28 – 1:59).
“First, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq, without addressing the ISIS threat in Syria. Secondly, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria without addressing the foreign fighter problem. And third, the U.S. really cannot “solve” the region’s problems, because they are rooted in issues of religious and political identity and legitimacy, and this is a problem that can only be worked out among Muslims themselves. ” (2:18 – 2:41)
My “big picture” thought, which might make sense of an $11 billion arms sale): what ISIS scours Qatar will devour.
One day.
However, there are many days between this day and that one, and the Ummah, bloodied from Afghanistan to Yemen, has been pushed by the ambitions and behaviors of its own subscription into a larger global conversation about rightful power, despotism, barbarism, and democracy.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/21/qatar-terrorist-refuge-and-financial-platform/ – 8/21/2014.
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21 Thursday Aug 2014
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of American Islamic Forum for Democracy states: “Sharia-compliant finance only empowers Muslim Sharia Law leaders whose real long term vision is to impose Sharia Law on the world and recreate an Islamic Empire. These leaders want to overpower capital free markets and create their version of an Islamic economy. Bankers and business leaders are being duped.”
What about the rest of us?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65454 – 8/21/2014. “Different types of Jihad-including an attack on our economy.” Diane Weber Bederman.
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21 Thursday Aug 2014
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal lives in Qatar, and today Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is to meet him in Doha.
Is it even news?
What follows is about an hour’s worth of “scraping” across various searches containing the terms “Doha”, “Qatar”, “banking”, “financing”, “terror”, “terrorism”, “Hamas”, “Mashaal” – like Adolph, he’s achieved last name status — “funding”, etc.
The reportage underscores the idea that the Middle East Conflict has been sustained by an anti-Semitism that has its end the supersession of Islam, the same story that paved the way for Hitler’s adaptation of German Christian eschatology into the construction of the Nazi program of genocide that became the Holocaust.
Different talk?
Same walk.
Perhaps the question for Washington and the American public at large should be, “How did all this money and confusion get into our America the beautiful?”
Although Saudi Arabia has pledged $100 million to anti-terrorism activity, the sectarian Sunni vs Shiite competition nonetheless plays through the politics. There’s simply an awful lot of cash in the pool, and the pool would seem as dirty as it can be.
For the day, perhaps for its long history of shady banking and association with well known promoters of Islamic terrorism, Qatar perhaps deserves greater focus and increased scrutiny as a state-sponsor of terrorism, and if not for direct financing then for allowing or enabling indirect financing of the same criminality under its (therefore incompetent) auspices.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have fined Qatar’s Doha Bank – New York branch a $5m civil money penalty. According to FinCEN and the OCC, the bank’s branch in Manhattan – USA was engaged in high-risk services accompanied by lack of adequate anti-money laundering controls which led to the failure to report $7.4bn-worth of suspicious transactions in a timely manner.
http://www.acc-co.com/content.asp?ContentId=598 – 4/23/2009
Related four years later:
“The core disconnect between Washington and these two countries on the issue of terrorist financing stems from their unique political dynamics and security calculations, which drive them both to allow some local fundraising channels for foreign extremist and other groups. These dynamics also determine the extent of Kuwaiti and Qatari cooperation with America’s counter-terrorist financing agenda. Accordingly, Washington should not expect substantive changes in their approach to terrorist financing unless a shift occurs in some aspect of these basic calculations.”
Though you wouldn’t know it from visiting Qatar Islamic Bank’s web site, because they choose not to disclose their Shariah advisory board there, the chairman of the bank’s Shariah Advisory Board is none other than Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a man we have referred to in the past as “Creepy Qaradawi.”
Related, four year later:
“Responding to reports that the Egyptian-born Qatari cleric had been sent to Tunisia or Yemen, Al Qaradawi said on his official Twitter and Facebook accounts that he has spent over 53 years in Qatar preaching, calling and writing about Islam “without anyone telling me before what to say, what not to say or why are you saying that.”
http://dohanews.co/al-qaradawi-debunks-rumors-deported-qatar/ – 4/20/2014.
Recently, a group called the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) raised about $6.5 million in Qatar. The group is led by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a top Muslim Brotherhood cleric who calls himself the “Mufti of Martyrdom Operations.” He never shies from supporting Hamas and suicide bombings and got into a bit of hot water in 2009 when he said that the Holocaust was a judgment upon the Jews from Allah. He prays that the Muslims will deliver the next judgment. In November, the IUMS declared that Muslims must “revive the duty of jihad in all its forms” and prepare for the destruction of Israel.
http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/americas-friend-terror-funding-qatar – 5/20/2014.
In the 1990s, Doha was among the most active “financiers” behind the separatist rebellion in Chechnya. It sent money to local militants and trained Arab terrorists who participated in attacks on the Russian Army in the North Caucasus. When the rebellion was put down and peace began returning to Chechnya and the Arab “mujahedin” were almost completely destroyed, Qatar’s Emir provided a refuge for Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, “president” of the self-proclaimed Republic of Ichkeria and his many supporters, providing them with benefits and even government jobs.
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/qatar-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/ – 6/4/2013.
Cited Source:
http://orientalreview.org/2013/05/23/qatar-is-funding-international-terrorism/comment-page-1/ – 5/23/2013.
Most notably, Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas, a group that continues to undermine regional stability. Press reports indicate that the Qatari government is also supporting extremist groups operating in Syria. To say the least, this threatens to aggravate an already volatile situation in a particularly dangerous and unwelcome manner.
With new leadership in Doha, we remain hopeful that Qatar – a country that in other respects has been a constructive partner in countering terrorism – will continue to work closely with us to oppose and combat those who adhere to the warped and murderous ideology of Hamas and al-Qa’ida.
http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2308.aspx – 3/4/2014.
Qatar, no less than any other person or state, cannot have it both ways, and the remarks by the Treasury Department’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, do little to inspire confidence in change. In fact the excerpt from his speech fits well within this collection of cited material in that even a subjective researcher’s haul actually reflects what is immediately available through the search engines: the headlines are simply NOT screaming, “Qatar cleans up banking, expels Khaled Mashaal, exiles Quaradawi” or some such. The drift appears quite opposite of that.
While Hamas tactics directly orchestrate the murder of children in Gaza and in Israel (it’s certainly attempted by the hour), the bankers and royals of Qatar comfortably keep company with fellow billionaire Mashaal. They’re living large, and Gazans have been made to live very small because of them.
The Clinton Foundation and the terror group Hamas share a key donor: The government of Qatar, a leading backer of terror groups that has emerged in recent years as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline.
Qatar, which has been designated by the State Department as a “significant terrorist financing risk,” has pledged more than $400 million to Hamas since 2012 and has long harbored one of the terror group’s senior leaders, Khaled Mashaal.
At the same time, Qatar has sought to curry favor with elite Westerners, donating between $1 million and $5 million through 2013 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-foundation-hamas-share-major-donor/ – 7/11/2014.
Apaches and Javelin defense systems are heading off to Qatar as part of our wonderful relationship with the terror-sponsoring nation that also happens to share close ties with Hamas and Al Qaeda. The weapons are valued at $11 billion.
http://www.independentsentinel.com/obamas-11-billion-arms-deal-with-terror-sponsoring-nation-of-qatar/ – 7/22/2014.
“Qatar is a very strange place. They rely on the U.S. for protection and invest heavily in the U.S.,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noting that the U.S. has its largest Mideast airbase—Al-Udeid Air Base—in Qatar.
“[But] at the same time, just miles away from [the airbase], you can find the head of Hamas (Khaled Mashal), and there was even a Taliban embassy there for a while too. All of these things make for a foreign-policy anomaly,” Schanzer told JNS.org.
It’s getting harder and harder to deny that Doha and Ankara, two long-standing allies of the United States, are full Hamas partners.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/04/hamas_s_bffs_turkey_qatar_israel_gaza – 8/4/2014.
HAIFA, Israel – The latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended Friday morning when Hamas resumed its costly campaign of rocket attacks on Israel even as its 2 million constituents suffer from wrenching poverty.
Although the millions of Palestinians packed into the small strip suffer from chronic unemployment, and lack of electricity and running water, Hamas and its backers such as Qatar have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tunnels and rockets with one goal in mind: killing Israelis.
“Qatar has three Knesset seats for terrorism,” Kariv said, according to Israel Hayom.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/18/israeli-arab-knesset-members-visit-hamas-funding-qatar/ – 8/18/2014.
“There will be no return to negotiations in Cairo before we have ensured favorable circumstances that will force the enemy to meet the demands of the Palestinians.”
Mashaal said that the Palestinians’ top demand was the lifting of the blockade on Gaza
http://www.timesofisrael.com/mashaal-hamas-defiant-after-assassinations/#ixzz3B2DFDgVG – 8/21/2014.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the emir of Qatar, in Doha Thursday, according to sources in Ramallah.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Abbas-to-meet-Mashaal-Qatar-emir-in-Doha-371720 – 8/21/2014.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/20/German-minister-accuses-Qatar-of-financing-ISIS-.html – 8/20/2014.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html – 6/14/2014.
Addendum – 8/24/2014.
Either the state has been maligned, the state is lying in some part, or the state hasn’t control of its wealth or revenue throughput.
Every time out on this perilous blog brings insight into the fast mediated conflict environment. How would one report news from the “left” without compromising with the demands of an Hamas or PLO/PA . . . or an ISIS? Is there time to ask a question when a camera hog tells you, more or less, that “proof is irrefutable” and the news has been reported already by the CIA, West Point, The Washington Post? Do you says “Wait a minute” at the first assertion or do you give the talker his rope?
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